The Record of Unusual Creature

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation  Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

“You’re standing on my head right now,” said Ertos slowly.

Lily had just turned back into a human at that time. She was tidying up and picking at the fur on her tail. “Ertos? That Ertos?” She raised her voice upon hearing it.

The drawling voice rose again without emotion. “I don’t quite understand the way you’ve just put it…”

“Just ignore her.” Hao Ren pressed Lily down and looked up at the sky. The invisible “jellyfish” in the sky reappeared as the energy from the previous battle had not dissipated. Its undulating surface sparkled, and its slender tentacles hung from the air like threads in a cloud, connecting the colossi on the ground. “You’re… the one in the sky?” Hao Ren asked.

“You’re the first one who’s noticed me. You observed a part of me before I was influenced by the negative energy in the environment.” Ertos seemed to confirm Hao Ren’s guess. “It makes me interested in you… Very few creatures can observe the spirit bodies of the Chaos Wanderers, except those that are extremely special or very old. But no matter who or what you are, I owe you a debt of gratitude. Thank you for freeing me from this long labor…”

“The Chaos Wanderers? Is that the name of your race?” Hao Ren frowned. Before he asked what “long labor” meant, he was first interested in the creature itself. “Didn’t you die many years ago? Killed by the great ruler…”

As Hao Ren said that, a thought suddenly occurred to him. “The great ruler who had a big fight with you was the ‘evil spirit’ in the pyramid?”

“The Chaos Wanderers don’t die easily. Most of the time, death is just a change of form for us,” Ertos slowly explained. Its massive body stretched out in the sky as if it was repairing the damage it had suffered from previous battles. “As for the ‘great ruler’, she was indeed the fallen monster of the pyramids… But I’ve noticed that one of you looks a lot like her. May I ask the name of this person first?”

“You can call me Vivian. Don’t worry, I’m not like that crazy one in the pyramid. We just look alike.”

Ertos seemed to believe that. “So… interesting.”

Hao Ren coughed a little and returned to the subject. “So, you didn’t die? Was the great ruler deceived by you after the great battle?”

“No. Though the great ruler destroyed my form, we were not enemies, and I did not deceive her.” Ertos’ answer surprised everyone. “There has never been a battle between us.”

“What do you mean?” asked Y’zaks.

“The mural we found shows that you were a devastating monster in ancient times. You destroyed many human city-states, then the great ruler suddenly came and totally destroyed you,” said Hao Ren, frowning. “Is the legend wrong?”

“Humans have their own way of understanding what they see, but a lot of times they don’t see things as they really are,” Ertos elaborated. “The first half of the legend is correct. My activities led to widespread destruction, but that was not my intention. I can’t control my energy leakage, just as human beings can’t control their organ operation, aging, illness, and death. To the Chaos Wanderers, storms and flames are only part of our bodies, but in the eyes of man, they mean devastating disasters… I’ve tried to admonish creatures that come too close, but communication always ends in war… Ah, wars… There were wars everywhere…”

Hao Ren was surprised: Ertos was actually a pacifist?

Lily looked at the big jellyfish in the sky and asked, “So what’s the truth behind your fight with the great ruler?”

“She suddenly appeared in front of me and showed great strength. I realized it was an opportunity to solve a problem, so I reached an agreement with her,” Ertos explained. “I asked her to help me change my life form to relieve the damage I had unintentionally caused to the world. As you know, the way to change my form is to dismember my body.”

“So you weren’t at war with the great ruler?” Hao Ren never thought that the truth would be like this. He paused for a moment before he continued the conversation. “Why is there a record of you two fighting each other for days? You two were throwing lightning balls back and forth…”

“That was us talking. But for humans, such conversations were probably a little scary,” Ertos lightly clarified.

Hao Ren was speechless.

“I see…” Hao Ren sighed and continued, “History recorded by humans has always been limited by time and vision. So what happened after that? I suppose you stayed in the city like that? Why would the city of Ertos be destroyed?? What about the residents? What about those stone statues? How did the evil spirit in the pyramid ‘fall’?”

Ertos’ voice remained unhurried despite the bombardment of questions. “That was many years ago. When the great ruler, as you call her, finally freed me of that unadaptable shell, some of the natives took what they had and began to rebuild with my fragments. They made weapons and statues out of my armor, medication and living materials out of my organic matter, and a city out of my bones. My spirit had been wandering around them because these vibrant little creatures truly made me curious… After wandering around for a while, I found that the ‘great ruler’ had also moved into the city from the wilderness, which was even more surprising. So I simply attached my spirit to the city, trying to pass the time by observing the activities of such short-lived creatures… In the early days, all the races in the city were at peace. Humans worked diligently, and the larger tribal leaders, known as the ‘Beasthead Avatars’, gave orders. The great ruler lived in the grand temple at the center of the city, where she was worshipped by all of them as the supreme ruler—”

Hao Ren could not help interrupting, “That ‘evil spirit’ has been the ‘lord of the city’ for a period of time? How long?”

“Not for a long time, probably decades,” Ertos said, not minding Hao Ren’s interruption. “And she never really ‘ruled’ the city. She spent most of her time sleeping in the pyramid. But anyway, the city was peaceful for the first few decades… Then things got worse.

“The great ruler was not emotionally stable. In fact, I suspect that most of the time she didn’t have normal sense and logic. She seemed completely immersed in her own world, reacting to stimuli that seemed strange to me. She was a moody and unpredictable ‘god of chaos’. At first, her mood swings caused her to be occasionally violent, but as time went on, her temper gradually worsened.

“The increasing tyranny of the great ruler had, of course, caused consternation among the citizens of the city, but no one was a worthy opponent. The conflict became more and more serious as each day passed, and the behavior of the great ruler slowly reached a completely unreasonable level. Thus, the city residents finally rebelled under the leadership of the Beasthead Avatars.

“But, it was strange that the tyrannical ruler turned a blind eye to such blatant rebellion. She watched while the Beasthead Avatars and the people gathered in the city, and when the rebels were about to rise, she disappeared from the grand temple without a trace. The angry rebels were so emotionally overwhelmed that they were not aware of the abnormality of the situation. They ransacked the whole temple and took all the treasures home. Based on my years of observing people, I think it was a sign of fear.”

Lily nodded and said, “Fear can cause people to do things that go beyond fear itself because it is only by acting more crazily that they can become desensitized and escape their inner insecurities.”

Hao Ren felt that the doubt in his heart was finally solved.

Why did the grand temple show signs of being ransacked? A rebellion, it seemed, but in a form that was quite different from what they had originally suspected. It was not the lower classes who revolted against the high priests, but everyone, including the priests and the people, revolted against the “god”. During the early stages of the rebellion, the so-called “god” did not intervene, leading to the looting of the grand temple, so there was no serious damage.

“That ‘evil spirit’ certainly didn’t turn into a good person all of a sudden,” Y’zaks said in a muffled voice. “She soon fought back, didn’t she?”

“Yes, just as the rebellion ended so hastily, and the priests as well as the people dispersed, the great ruler suddenly appeared and brought on a great calamity.”

Hao Ren raised an eyebrow. “She destroyed the city of Ertos?”

“Worse than that,” Ertos answered. “She summoned a blood moon and bathed the city in its light. Moonlight ruled everyone’s mind, and everyone in the city started to kill each other. Some tried to get out of the gate, but the moonlight formed a wall in front of them. Some tried to record what happened here before they died, but the moonlight made them hallucinate, making them carve words in the air instead. The last of the sober Beasthead Avatars fought a near-death struggle and almost succeeded. They summoned the power of the ancestral spirits to crash down upon a section of the wall and punch a hole through the moonlight barrier. Yet, they failed…”

“Why?” Lily asked impatiently.

“Space collapsed,” Ertos explained. “The great ruler had torn the spatial structure apart, throwing the entire city into another space.”