The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

After disconnecting the call with Salaman, Hao Ren came before the little sprite, the tiny one with the ahoge was already chatting excitedly with the rest, or rather it was a one-way blabber and the ones that could keep up with her speed and thought were Lily and Vivian, who already had some understanding of the sprites.

By then, the tiny one had already learned from Vivian about the Queen of the Sprites and that fact astounded the former as she darted about excitedly around Vivian’s head yapping about like a thousand quacking ducks. “The Queen? The Queen? You are the Queen of the Sprites? And you have activated Naqdal’s crystal? Naqdal’s sprites had already recognized you as their Queen? Did you go to the core? Did you go to the Throne of Destiny? Did the throne recognize you? Ah? Blue screen? How can that be?! That’s the goddess’ design…Eh? You mean that you passed the test even though it blue-screened? Woah! Amazing! This sprite wanna see it!”

The little one was so excited that Vivian was thrown into a dizzy fit by her erratic movements, Hao Ren finally held his hand out to stop the sprite, “Wait up, wait up. Pipe down for a bit, we have something to ask you.”

The little sprite was still hard-pressed to hold her excitement back as she continued to yap about ‘the Queen had finally appeared’, and that she “needed to tell everyone”. Hao Ren had to interrupt her for a few times before the message got through her, “Eh? You were talking to me?”

“I’ll keep this simple. Our original mission is to take away Amantir’s crystal.” Hao Ren knew that he had to go straight to the point with the sprites, it will be a colossal effort to get back on topic if they diverge from it. “The survival of your kind is a surprise to us, our original plan was to take away the crystal, and then blow up Amantir.”

The tiny sprite was stunned for a bit before letting out a sharp squeak. “Aaahhhh!!”

“Quiet!” Nangong Wuyue was shocked by the sudden squeak and quickly engulfed the little sprite in a water orb and cut her scream off. It was replaced with a series of bubbling noises from the water orb.

After she was sure that the sprite would be quiet only did she release her from the orb, Hao Ren looked at the tiny sprite, “Quiet, you want to draw the monster’s attention?”

“This is not in their patrol path!” The little sprite once again had her arms on her waist with a smug look before turning nervous, “You want to blow the planet up? Then what about us sprites? And can you pull that off? The guardians had tried for so long and they could not retake Amantir, they never even made it here!”

“Of course we have that capability, but now the problem lies with the sprites, we want to take you along,” Hao Ren frowned, “You said the sprites are now fused with Amantir’s core? Can you still escape from there?”

“That is not an issue, but we need to find a new vector to fuse together, and it has to be a resonance crystal. It doesn’t matter if it is an original crystal or a crystal processed by the goddess.” The little sprite said with a rather troubled expression as she scratched her long hair, “Do you have crystals? Lots and lots of crystals?”

The sprites cannot survive independent of the crystal, this Hao Ren had known when he met the noisy bunch back on Naqdal. While these little buggers can fly about freely, they are only a conduit for external contact, and their real form is still those crystals, and the only crystals that the sprites lived on Amantir are the very core of the planet.

The other crystals had already long been tainted by the Mad Lord.

Vivian frowned for a bit as she pondered. “Can we use Amantir’s crystal?”

“No, Amantir’s crystal is special.” the little one shook her head. “The goddess had already stuffed the crystal full, there’s no storage space for us sprites to go in…”

“Wait up, storage space?” Hao Ren felt like he caught onto a keyword, “You mean to say, that the sprites are ‘stored’ within the crystals? What sort of process is your symbiotic relationship?”

The little sprite thought for a bit before motioning with her hands and legs, “It’s just stuffing ourselves, then lying down, or on our bellies…”

“All right all right, you don’t have to go further…” Hao Ren knew that he won’t get any meaningful information from the confused response, and immediately tapped on the MDT, “Check her… information structure.”

The MDT flew over to the sprite as it let out a beam that could analyze various information clusters on the latter, while the sprite immediately tossed about in the air, “EHEHEHEHE… that tickles! That really tickles!”

Hao Ren realized something as he saw that scene. For most normal beings, being scanned by the analysis beam would not trigger any reaction, even if it is an energy-based being, but this sprite actually felt ‘ticklish’ and that means his guess was on point.

Soon, the MDT completed the scan and its voice too was filled with amazement, “Incredible, pardner, I never thought that the sprites are a life form with a dispersed information state, from a physical level, they technically don’t exist!”

Everyone was stunned at that very moment, even Lily, the straight As dog could not help but to prod Hao Ren by the arm, “Mr. Landlord, care to translate to something we understand?”

Hao Ren pondered for a bit before coming out with a brief explanation, “This is a sub-branch of the Theory of the Grand Unification of Information, and simply put that while the being that does not technically exists in the material universe, but has all physical attributes and a visible body.”

“For example, put something before you, and you can see, and feel it. That means you’ve come into contact with the information it has sent outward like how you can smell it, feel its hardness and temperature, or the weight when you lift it up. These are all additional material information, and this information allows you to confirm an item’s existence.”

“On the other hand, if there were actually nothing there, but it keeps giving out the corresponding information to you? Like you can see the body, and it gives out information about its weight and temperature, and let you feel with your fingers its toughness, does this object exist or not?”

A few not-so-studious ones were already seeing circles: Nangong Wuyue was staring at the ceiling, Nangong Sanba was digging his nails, Rollie started to chase her tail, but Lily could still keep up, and even asked a rather pointed question. “So if all information is true and can corroborate with each other, does that mean it exists?”

“Correct, this is the Grand Unification Theory of Information’s surface model: if all information is true and can corroborate with each other, that means the object exists, this state is called an agglomeration of information. But a dispersed information state is different, it states that all information is true and could corroborate with each other, but the target object does not exist, and that means, the ‘non-existence’ is a special trait of the target object, like a hidden footnote. You can’t feel it, and it will not affect any sort of expressions, but it could determine the entire system’s attributes…”

Lily processed the thought for a bit before raising the white flag earnestly, “I can’t keep up with that.”

“Explaining a Grand Unification Theory is very troublesome, but I have an easier way to let you understand what’s up with the sprites.” Hao Ren shrugged as he turned towards the MDT, “Turn on the information observation filter.”

“That is a top-level scanning function and is rather draining,” the MDT grumbled for a bit before activating the usually unused function.

A light screen spread out with the MDT as the center, and the world before everyone changed.

Every object around them still exists, but seemed to be covered with a very thin ‘screen’, and on the screen were countless tiny, almost invisible objects. Once focused, the tiny object will flow into one’s mind: Hardness XX, Temperature XX, Color XX, Name XX, Distance XX, Density XX…

A deluge of information that left everyone with a headache.

“Where’s the sprite?” Lily yelped and everyone soon recovered from the bizarre sensory feeling. They noticed now, the sprite was missing.

Hao Ren smiled as he pointed towards a direction, “She’s still there.”

Lily immediately turned towards where Hao Ren was pointing as suddenly saw a lot of words in her field of view:

// A sprite is floating before you, distance 0.732435 Pan

// The Sprite’s current unique state is #Referral Section- Ignored

// The Sprite looks at you curiously

// The Sprite was confused at your sudden yelp. She is waving before you but you do not notice her.

// The Sprite is yelling, she said, “Where are you looking at, this sprite is here!”

// The Sprite is angry

// The Sprite is no longer angry. Duration 0.15 seconds

Lily blinked and blinked but she saw nothing before her, only the lines of words.

“Whoa!!!” Y’lisabet yelled excitedly, “This is awesome!”

“MDT, turn off the filter.”

The blue light on the MDT’s surface immediately faded away and everyone’s vision returned to normal, those information scripts and symbols had disappeared, while the sprite, she was floating before everyone, looking as real as she can get.

“That noisy little bugger…” Lily held her hand out and the sprite went towards her out of curiosity and hugged her finger. “Actually does not exist?”

“You don’t have to worry too much about it, it’s just that on a physical level, it does not have a solid projection, but information-wise, her existence is very real.” Hao Ren smiled, and for the Grand Unification Theory of Information, if something exists on an informational level, it is considered as existing.”

Lily shook her head as the information overload reminded her of her first time at the University of Beijing. “So whatever attribute the sprites have actually means something?”

“Of course they do, moving an object that is in an agglomerated state is difficult, but a dispersed state…” Hao Ren said as he looked at the MDT, “They can be stored into a virtual drive. MDT, how big is your storage?”

The MDT immediately snapped, “Pardner! Don’t tell me you plan to store all the sprites in Amantir into my hard disk drive?!”

“The sprites are just a base level A.I of the crystals. Their information volume won’t be that big, how big a space would a simple driver take?” Hao Ren shrugged. “Aren’t you always boasting about your high specs and storage space? Why are you backing out now?”

“That’s depending on what you’re storing!” the MDT went nuts, “I would rather store p*rn in my drive rather than those chattering sprites! At least those p*rn vids don’t do anything if they are not played! I dare you to get me a pause button for these bunch of yapping sprites!”

Hao Ren pursed his lips. “I was thinking that your factory inspection date isn’t that far off already right? Or do you happen to miss Lil Pea already?”

The MDT had nothing to retort.