The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

There was something about Claude that Hao Ren could not really understand.

As an attendant and herald of the first sage, his appearance on the battlefield seemed to be a little odd.

An orc shaman had captured Claude. This shaman had been following Y’zaks since the early years of his reign. He was loyal and powerful. When Y’zaks summoned the shaman asking about the situation on the front line, he mentioned Claude. The orc had a deep impression of the young soldier he had caught. “He and other demon hunters were fighting against the sacred knights. At first, we didn’t notice anything unusual about him until he hurt several of our sacred knights. We realized that he could be a commander,” the shaman said.

Y’zaks frowned. “He was on the front line like a regular soldier? Was there any extra guard or entourage around him?” he asked.

“No,” the old orc replied. The shaman’s bell rang when he shook his head. “Had he possessed more obvious features, we would have recognized him earlier.”

“Well… at least you’ve caught a very prominent figure. You will be rewarded.” Y’zaks gestured the orc to leave him before he turned to look at the others. “What do you think?” he asked.

“There must be something happening behind the scenes when a top leader enters the battlefield.” Hao Ren pouted. “What are the sages’ intentions?” he asked.

“Our army has advanced up to the border of the Netherrealm Clock Tower,” Lanina said, looking at the suspended sand table in the center of the room. The floating temple models were marked with the insignia of the demonic army. The strongholds of the Council of Elders had mostly fallen into the hands of the demonic army. It was like being engulfed by a shadow from the bottom up. Only a few temples on the upper layers of Coldpath and the strange Netherrealm Clock Tower still remained in the control of the Council of Elders. Hao Ren and his team were now on the battlefront, near the square where Claude was captured. The battle there happened just over 10 minutes ago. “The Council of Elders has few soldiers left. There’s no strategy in their resistance. Claude probably just wanted to be a martyr.”

“Maybe…” Hao Ren said. He had no comment about Lanina’s speculation. Although the Council of Elders was losing the battle, it did not make sense when an attendant of the first sage left his master to join the battle. Something was suspicious. “What’s the situation in the Netherrealm Clock Tower?” Hao Ren asked.

“It’s quiet and shrouded in shadow. No one has come out from the tower since dawn,” Lanina said. She sounded confused. “We haven’t seen the tower have any communication with the outside world. Our scouts couldn’t get too close to the tower because it’s heavily guarded.”

Y’zaks and Hao Ren glanced at each other. Y’zaks nodded and said, “Keep the attack on the energy nodes.”

The highly-motivated coalition began to launch an unprecedentedly massive offense against the council’s last line of defense.

The remnants of the Council of Elders had all gathered around the Netherrealm Clock Tower. Despite behaving strangely, they still lived up to their status as elite soldiers in the battle, tenaciously resisting the demonic army. The elder and master demon hunters were giving the demonic army a hard time. Y’zaks doubled down on the number of forces to take down the last few temples and energy nodes that the Council of Elders controlled.

The writings were already on the wall; the resistance of the Council of Elders was futile. It was only a matter of time before they crumbled.

While the demonic army on the battlefront stormed the last bastions of the Council of Elders, Hao Ren and White Flame brought a small elite team near the Netherrealm Clock Tower via a newly-opened secret route.

They were standing on a vacant, floating platform, which had high walls and a temple. The broken stone tiles on the ground suggested that the place could be the remnants of a square. All the ruins in Coldpath possessed an independent gravity force of unknown origin. But the gravity on this platform was feeble and obviously inclined towards the Netherrealm Clock Tower. Standing on the platform would give one the illusion of slipping and falling towards the void.

Hao Ren stood on the edge of the platform. He took out a graviton grenade from his Dimensional Pocket and threw it out into the distance.

After the graviton grenade escaped the platform’s gravity, it flew straight into the darkness and disappeared into thin air before it could explode. But upon looking closely, the graviton grenade did not really vanish. Instead, it had smashed into something some 100 m away. It was shredded into pieces, and the process repeated until it turned into fine dust, becoming invisible to the naked eye in the darkness.

This matter-shredding space was one of the defense networks of the Coldpath dimension.

The surroundings of the Netherrealm Clock Tower looked vacant as well. But in reality, the floating temples and energy nodes were intertwined. There were dozens of different layers of spatial turbulence between them. Going in hastily into the darkness would cause one to end up the same way as the graviton grenade.

It was not until the demonic army destroyed 70 % of the energy nodes in Coldpath that the invisible dimension distortion defense system showed its vulnerability. Taking advantage of it, Hao Ren and his team drew closer to the Netherrealm Clock Tower.

The demonic army stormed the last energy node on the front line. Hao Ren and his team were just waiting for the moment when the defense system went offline.

“The Netherrealm Clock Tower is visible from here. There it is.” Master Teuton stood beside Hao Ren, pointing at a silhouette in the distant darkness.

Hao Ren looked up. There was a weird tower between the gaps of the stars. It appeared as strange as the sand table model, without a proper shape and structure. It was like a child who had stacked up blocks of different geometries to form a tower, which was silently suspended in the darkness. There were few lights in the tower. Most parts of the tower were buried in the dark, making it look like a lifeless, abandoned building.

“Any movement?” Hao Ren was a bit curious.

“It’s strangely quiet,” Teuton said slowly. “There used to be a lot of lights around it, but now most of the lights are out. No one on the outside too. I wonder what the sages are doing in the tower.”

“According to Lanina’s observation report, the Netherrealm Clock Tower’s been like that for nearly a day,” Y’zaks said in a deep voice. “The demon hunters on the battlefront are mostly fighting on their own. Though they’re putting up a fierce resistance, they obviously lack a unified line of command. If Claude’s capture is anything to go by, I suspect that something must have gone wrong in the tower.”

Hao Ren looked back at his team. He would have to leave the Nangong Family behind to take care of the wounded. Their combat strengths were not good enough for this operation after all. Other than Vivian, there was Y’zaks, his daughter, and Lily. White Flame and Teuton had also brought dozens of master demon hunters. They formed a small team of less than a hundred people, but they were currently the most formidable combat group. When the defense mechanism around the Netherrealm Clock Tower was lifted, the team would be the first to storm in.

Looking at the strange state of the Netherrealm Clock Tower, the master demon hunters were worried. Even when no one mentioned it, the uneasiness on their faces was apparent; though they had parted way with the Council of Elders, they were still concerned about the situation of the sacred land.

Y’zaks looked into the darkness in another direction with his arms crossed. There was a torch-like spire floating alone in the void, where flames from constant explosions were visible. Apparently, the fight was still in full swing on the battlefront. He silently looked at the flashes from the battlefield, sensing the state of his demonic army and calculating the timing of their actions. Soon, he whispered, “It’s almost time.”

Almost immediately, a bright light burst out of the torch-like energy nodes. The defense system of the nodes had been overloaded, igniting the runestones instantly. The demon hunters’ last line of defense was down.

While Coldpath’s ancient defense system was indestructible, it relied on a series of controls before it could be activated. When the runestones exploded, the old defense system shut down. Seeing a flash like a water curtain in the darkness, Hao Ren knew that it was time. “Let’s go!” he said.

The elite strike team immediately left the platform and flew silently towards the Netherrealm Clock Tower in the distance. They did not encounter any obstacles and quickly arrived at the strange tower.

Seeing the Netherrealm Clock Tower up close, Hao Ren was astounded. “Is this normal?” he asked.

It seemed that the darkness was swallowing the Netherrealm Clock Tower.

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