The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

The vociferation from beneath Tartarus and the strong sense of pressure became more violent over time. Even Hao Ren and Hasse could not help but be impressed. When Lily heard the name, she could not recall it at first. “Are you talking about Zeus’ father?”

“Who else could it be if not him?” Hasse’s face was deadpan, but the emotions in his eyes said that the situation did not look good. “A massive dungeon is beneath Tartarus. When Zeus abandoned this place, he proceeded to throw his father, the mad titan, into the dungeon. That guy’s nasty!”

As if responding to Hasse, a roar rose again from the underground, followed by a powerful shockwave, which came out of nowhere. Dark red lightning burst out from a ruin inside the copper palace and struck a towering minaret right in the middle. The tower fell and the debris turned into ashes midair before they could even hit the ground.

Hao Ren froze and looked at Hasse in with horror. “Why is this titan still alive? How could your Sacred Army leave this scourge behind?”

Hasse was helpless. “Because we did not want to incur unnecessary losses. Kronos is being held in the deepest cage of the Underworld; he could not have possibly escaped. Even if we were to kill him, it would take too much effort. First, we needed to take the cage apart, which would seriously affect the rhythm of the entire operation. Our original plan was to kill Hades and then destroy the Olympus Control Center, and the space-time storm would rip Olympus and the Underworld apart. By that time, Kronos would be dead in the cage. It is necessary to know that in the original history, no one has come here to wake the three-headed hound up and Kronos has never escaped.”

“All right, it is my fault,” Lily said with a wrinkled nose. “How did I know the three-headed freak would open the cage of Kronos? By the way, how did the dog open the cage? Did you not say that the cage is secure?”

“The dungeon is of course very secure, but Cerberus is the dungeon watchdog,” Hasse said. “It probably has the final order to release Kronos to ensure mutually assured destruction with the enemy. When we first raided this place, our investigation was still—”

Before Hasse could finish, and an earthquake swept through the entire Tartarus region.

The magnificent copper palace shook, and many towers began to fall like dominoes. The land where the copper palace sat mourned in pain as tens of millions of tons of rock cracked open, squeezed and smashed. When looking down from above, Hao Ren would be able to see that the whole of Tartarus was cracking open starting from the palace of Hades. This land floating in a different dimension, surrounded by the Styx, was coming to an end. A breach had formed and spread in the earth and even reached the border of Elysium.

This place could no longer hold up.

Hao Ren turned and glanced at the large crack on the Sighing Wall and the robotic tower connecting Mount Olympus and the Underworld. He shouted, “Hurry up! Don’t fight Kronos!”

Everyone began to realize that they were not here to fight the boss; the appearance of Kronos was just an unexpected epic CG. As a group of space-time travelers with a mission, they did not have to worry about the gods of Olympus, especially the gods would soon be all dead anyway.

Everyone followed Hao Ren and rushed into the Sighing Wall.

The foundation of the black robotic tower was in sight.

It was a weird structure. It never crossed Hao Ren’s mind that there was such a portal that looked like this. A large number of rotating metal shafts and alloy plates that constantly switched places made up the tower’s outer wall. Inside those structures were turning gears. How it worked was a mystery, and it was hard to even tell whether the tower was a magic installation or a machine. But Hao Ren could see a fixed metal structure on the tower pedestal where all the moving parts of the tower avoided. A gate-like arch structure as there, and apparently, it was an entrance.

Without much effort, Hao Ren had hacked the encryption on the door, mainly using high-tech precision blasting and plasma cutting.

And Hao Ren called it physical decryption.

A group hurried into the tower. As soon as they stepped into the empty cylindrical space filled with electric light, they felt the gravity field had reversed.

Everyone began to float. The gravity force came from above, and it felt like they were falling head first.

Not long after the ‘fall’ began, Hao Ren saw through the gaps of the moving parts that the copper palace of Hades finally broke apart.

It was shattering, not collapsing. The force from below tore the magnificent palace apart like tearing a piece of paper. Fragments of building shattered under the powerful energy impact. A large crack had formed in the earth, glowing in red. Inside the crack, a large palm of lava and lightning broke open the surface, as a terrifying body started to climb up from the ground.

Only a small part of the titan was out of the crack. The head and one-third of his upper body were still trying to break free from the earth. Chains and light shackles bound the rest of his body and seemed to drag him back down into the dungeon. But even with that small part of his body exposed, it was enough to strike fear into the hearts of everyone.

Before this, Muru and Lemendusa were the most massive humanoid creatures that Hao Ren had ever known. At ten meters tall, the guardian was worthy of the name of the giant. But this Kronos was even larger than the guardians.

The head of Kronos alone, which looked like the cast of rock and black iron, was more than ten meters tall. If his body proportion was similar to that of a typical humanoid, Kronos’ height could be about 80 meters.

Such a terrifying monster.

The titan struggled and groaned. His vast body was only a speck of dust compared to the earth. But the energy ejected from him was enough to further tear the crack of Tartarus. The titan, who was considered the second generation of the gods in ancient Greek mythology, hit the earth with his shoulders so that the ground within a few kilometers radius instantly surged like water ripples. The chains and light shackles began to break apart and fell off his body.

Hao Ren then saw more huge arms coming out from behind Kronos. Those were the arms of other Titans, who climbed and shoved their way out along the cracks in the earth of Tartarus.

These titans were smaller than Kronos but still equally hideous. Their bodies looked as if the cast of stone and metal, many of them were deformed as if from a lesion. The arms of some of the Titans were unequal in size, and some of the Titans had tumors that spurted hot air like volcanoes. Some even had multiple arms.

They were like a group of monsters coming straight out of horror myths. They broke out from the dungeon of Tartarus and went on the stage at the end of the Mythological Era.

“They are the Titans who were being imprisoned together with Kronos.” Hasse took a breath. “Now these guys have escaped. I am afraid that they are not going to stay still and perish with the Underworld.”

Hao Ren and his team were still rising—or falling toward Mount Olympus. They were about to reach the top of the Underworld, from which they could take a bird’s-eye view of what happened on the ground.

The Titans were angry. As if they had lost their minds, they violently tore the last piece of copper palace apart. They then stopped for a while before looking up.

Led by Kronos, these ancient Titans roared in the direction of Mount Olympus.

The Titans might have lost their thinking ability, but it did not mean that they had also lost their conditioned response and instinct. After a while of chaos, the Titans finally acted. Kronos first crossed the Sighing Wall, which had also wholly collapsed, and then held on to a moving metal plate on the tower and climbed.

The other Titans followed suit.

Under the weight of the Titans, the complicated but delicate passage suffered severe disturbance and damage. Kronos’ fingers were stuck in the energy channels, and moving parts, flames and lava from his body came into contact with the delicate machine and caused catastrophic damage. It overloaded the tower of the Underworld, which finally gave way as explosions began to rise from the bottom up.

The explosion shattered the base of the mechanical tower. Rotating parts and magic-charged metal plates flew out in all directions like fireworks. Flames and lightning ran in gaps of the tower and quickly spread upward.

The Titans seemed to have realized this. Their little remaining logical judgment told them that they should climb faster. Below them, the tower of the Underworld was exploding and disintegrating, and above them was the space crack that led to Mount Olympus. It was a scene that could only be seen in mythology.

The previous generation of gods had broken free from the prison of Tartarus. They were climbing the tower that connected to Mount Olympus to launch a revenge war against their descendants.

But their descendants had been defeated in another war.