The Record of Unusual Creatures

Panda Novel

In the section of Olympus artifacts, there was a strange circular pedestal that caught Hao Ren’s attention. The pedestal was in a grayish white, with complicated decorative patterns around it. The top surface was smooth, like it was meant to be placed there. The circular pedestal looked like the pedestal of a sculpture, but said sculpture was nowhere to be seen.

“What’s so special about this pedestal?” Katreina saw Hao Ren halting his steps by that plain and inconspicuous piece of “rock” and asked curiously.

“It’s not… I just think it looks familiar.” Hao Ren studied the patterns on the vertical surface and felt like he had seen them before, but could not remember where and when. “Do you know what this is for?”

“I’m not sure.” Katreina waved her tail in response. “I can tell where some of these things come from, but the other details are hard to say. Sirens do not know much of the things from the outside world, especially things that came from the later days of the Mythological Era — that was a time of chaos. Demon hunters and Otherworldings were killing each other in a frenzy, which resulted in us distancing ourselves from the world on dry land. We do not have much information on most of the objects that fell into the ocean during that time.”

Katreine then sighed quietly. “We will never know the origin and background of many of these things. Their creators are already long gone.”

Lily approached the pedestal as well and circled around it curiously. “Katreina, does this pedestal look like this when you found it? Was there anything on top?”

Katreina stroked her chin and finally recalled more details about the stone pedestal. “Oh, right, there was a heavily damaged statue on top when we found it. Half of it was gone. Moreover, what’s left of the state went missing not long after this pedestal found its way into the gallery.” She shook her head slowly and said, “I always thought the status and the pedestal were just one thing.”

“Missing? From right under your noses?” The news tugged at a memory buried somewhere in Hao Ren’s head.

Vivian remembered it first. She slapped her thigh and cried, “Ah, I remember now! When we went to Athens Sanctuary last time, we found a remnant dimensional space of Olympus. Wasn’t there a temple in there? There was a statue in the temple! The pedestal it was on has the same patterns as the ones here!”

Lily stared at Vivian while she struggled to recall what Vivian was talking about. “Oh! I remember it too. That’s the statue of Batty that people worshipped, right?”

The werehusky lady never missed the opportunity to dig at Vivian. Vivian could only curl her lips and said, “Nothing good ever comes out of this dog’s mouth… Yes, it’s my ‘rock statue’ that people worshipped…”

Hao Ren could hardly stay calm at this discovery. When they found the Olympus temple at the Athens Sanctuary, he had wondered by the Olympus family would put Vivian’s statue in their own temple. Vivian had a good relationship with the Olympian Gods, but she was neither one of them nor someone close enough to have her statue in their very own temple. Before Hao Ren and his group could investigate further, the dimensional space collapsed and vanished. Much happened after that, such that the mystery of Vivian’s statue was soon forgotten.

The long forgotten mystery resurfaced today. Now that Hao Ren knew more about Vivian and the Goddess of Creation, he had a bad feeling that this rock pedestal.

Things were not as simple as they seemed.

Hao Ren studied the pedestal closely. He let the IDT work on decrypting the complicated patterns on the sides of the pedestal as he asked Katreina, “Besides the fact that this came from the Olympian Gods, do you know nothing else about this pedestal?”

“… After Mount Olympus collapsed, this was the final object that fell into the sea.” Katreina frowned as she tried to recall the past. The ‘Olympus’ she referred to was not the one on this planet, but the mountain of the same name created by Zeus and his family in their alternate dimension. “According to our observer at the time, she reported seeing the sky above the Greece Peninsula lit up with a bolt of crimson lighting, which struck and destroyed the bridge connecting Greece with the temple. The dimensional space of Olympus was thus exposed. After it hovered in the sky for several hours, Mount Olympus began to collapse. Demon hunters struck the mountain with a javelin, which started a fire that quickly spread towards the peak. Due to gravitational distortions, some of the seawater was sucked upwards to the sky. When the fire at the peak of Mount Olympus died, gravity resumed to normal, and things began to fall from the sky. This rock pedestal was the last one to hit the waters… Oh, by the way, it was said that a woman with a golden spear and round shield fell down together with the pedestal, but she was burned to ashes in midair by demon hunters with Heaven’s Flame.”

“Athena was the only Goddess who used a spear and shield. The last temple to fall was also Athena’s.” Vivian furrowed her brows as she bent down to caress the edges of the pedestal. “I knew Zeus and his family for years, but what exactly were they researching in secret…”

Before she finished, the pedestal suddenly glowed, freezing her in surprise!

When Vivian touched one of the symbols on the pedestal, it seemed to have activated some form of ancient magic. The mysterious and complicated engravings glowed brightly, illuminating the entire pedestal. Before Hao Ren or anyone else could respond, numerous grayish white micro particles materialized around the pedestal and merged on top of it into something solid.

The statue of a Goddess appeared on the pedestal. The Goddess was dressed elegantly, and in actual life size. The facial contours were true to the person it was sculpted after — it was Vivian.

“What in the world!” Lily leapt in excitement. “It’s activated!”

Katreina stared dumbfounded at the statue. She had just mentioned about the missing statue, but now it seemed that it never went missing at all — when the symbols on the sides stopped functioning, the statue was hidden!

“What is this… Some holographic project invented by the Olympian Gods?” Hao Ren felt a lot calmer, seeing this statue for the second time. “Vivian, what did you do?”

“I touched it, that’s all.” Vivian could not understand it either. “Maybe it sensed me and activated itself automatically?”

“The question is, what’s the meaning of this thing?” Hao Ren used his IDT to scan the pedestal, but could not find no other functions other than creating Vivian’s statue. “The statue is fixed in place, and not replaceable. There are not hidden functions in the pedestal… So, it’s basically a life size statue of Vivian, and quite a good one too.”

Vivian considered that for a moment — having multiple life size statues of her sitting around in someone else’s house. She hugged herself and shivered. “Why am I getting the chills?”

Lily studied her with an odd expression. “Honestly, maybe Zeus was secretly in love with you!”

Vivian quickly waved the idea away. “Beat it, didn’t I say this is something Athena came up with…”

Lily’s expression turned even weirder. “If it’s Athena instead of Zeus, then the situation is worse than I thought!”

“Can’t you two be a little more helpful?” Hao Ren could not stand the conversation. “Especially you, Lily, tarnishing a statue like that… Hmm? What’s this?”

Hao Ren noticed some tiny words along the edge of the pedestal. He peered closer to identify the partly damaged engravings.

“Construction and… Reach out… Avoid the calamity…”

Many of the words were no longer recognizable due to the damage on the pedestal, but it was still possible to glean the message from the few words that survived. The message was about reaching out to some “being” to avoid a certain calamity. From Vivian’s statue on top, it was not hard to guess who they were referring to.

Everyone felt a shocked and at a lost after deciphering the message, and they all looked to Vivian. After a long moment, Lily said, “Batty, they believed you could save them…”

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