The Record of Unusual Creature

“Assaulting the Lair of Nightmares…” The very audacious plan seemed increasingly viable as the sprites discussed and Hao Ren, as well as co, thought it out.

Every impregnable citadel was easier to destroy from within than without. Now, if they could send an elite team into the Lair of Nightmares and decapitate the monster in charge of creating the corrupted army, everything would be resolved.

As Hao Ren needed the crystal of Amantir regardless, that meant he had to find a way to get rid of the Lair of Nightmares because it was connected to the crystal.

The best route to assault the lair was from underneath: Blowing up the crystal pillars that supported the crust would affect the Lair of Nightmares’ structure, and according to the sprites’ calculations, it would be enough to tear the lair in half.

“Won’t the entire crust collapse and the lair alongside a good portion of the surface area fall onto the grid?” After she heard the incredible plan, Nangong Wuyue started to think about what would come next. “It’d be best if we could kill the monsters with the fall…”

“That would be impossible. Even the weakest of their lot is about as strong as the guardians,” the MDT shook as it spoke in its typical blunt fashion. “Sides, just blowing up three pillars won’t be enough to topple the crust. I’ve analyzed the planet’s structure. While its crust is supported by the crystal pillars, the crust itself has a series of complex quake-reduction and stabilizing structures. The equator rift may have weakened the strength of this structure, but based on the southern frame of the rift, the upper portions of the Lair of Nightmares are still quite stable. Under ideal circumstances, the lair would probably lose less than a third of its size once the pillars are blown up. While it will open up a path directly to the center of the lair, that’ll be about the extent of the destruction.”

Amantir’s crust was equivalent to the planetary starship’s armored hull, and it naturally had many reinforcing structures. Collapsing the entire crust by blowing up three pillars would not be possible. It was about as fanciful a thought as dismantling an entire ship’s hull by removing two tiny screws.

Hao Ren was quite satisfied with the results of the simulation, “We only need to punch a hole into the Lair of Nightmares. It’d be more troublesome if the entire structure collapses, and crying would be pointless if Amantir’s crystal shatters in the fall.”

“All right, we already have a rough idea. Now we need to plan out the details of the operation.” Vivian nodded in agreement before she used her commanding presence to begin the discussion on the plan’s details. “Take every possibility into consideration, including the worst-case scenario of facing the awakened source of the nightmares. Besides, we also need to get the sprites downloaded into the MDT’s hard disk…”

“Somehow there’s something odd about the whole process…” the MDT mumbled.

The discussion for the battle plan took about four hours, and the sprites provided much help along the way; the group of messy sprites was not as unreliable as Hao Ren had expected, and they had actually done a surprising amount of stuff in their thousand-plus years of hiding in the planet’s core.

They had tried their best to monitor the changes on Amantir’s surface and recorded the entire process of the spread of the Mad Lord’s corruption and its subsequent changes to the planetary starship. They had looked into the information regarding the corrupted army and even collected their defensive layout as well as routine schedule. As the “operating AI” of the starship’s various systems, the data they had of the starship was even more detailed than the structure diagram Salaman possessed. Their data even contained records of the changes Amantir underwent after it was corrupted by madness, and that information was far beyond what Salaman was able to provide.

That was because, Salaman only had a pre-war blueprint, and he was totally unaware of the changes within Amantir, whereas those sprites… while they were trapped, they were trapped within Amantir.

After settling the finer details of the plan, Hao Ren along with his team took some time to rest and prepare on the tiny planet before they began the process of “downloading” thousands of sprites.

With their experience involving Sprite Number One, the process of the sprites entering the MDT went much smoother than expected, just that the MDT itself looked helpless during the whole process.

A few hours later, the last of the sprites entered the hard disk, and the first phase of saving the sprites was now completed.

Looking at the MDT hovering over Hao Ren’s shoulder, Nangong Sanba could not help but blurt out, “So you, a PDA, has gigabytes of little boys and girls in you. Should we ask how you feel about that?”

The MDT immediately glowed in rage. “I’ll smash your face!”

“All right, all right.” Hao Ren quickly held the enraged PDA down, “Frankly speaking, how are you feeling now? Is the storage of the sprites affecting your performance?”

“It’s not a problem, the load isn’t all that big,” the MDT said resignedly. “I’ve created a virtual reality zone for them, and they’re wreaking havoc there. I don’t dare allow them to link up with other programs. Goodness, how does a bunch of A.I get so noisy?”

Hao Ren had an eat-sh*t grin on his face when he heard that. The noisy tin-can he once wanted to dump into a pond of wet cement had finally met his match?

Anyway, Hao Ren was now relieved as he turned to Vivian. “It’s time for us to go then. Where did Lily and Rollie go?”

“They said they were gonna circle the globe…” Vivian said as she peered afar. “Oh, they’re just over there. They’re back.”

As she spoke, the werehusky and the dumb cat emerged from the “horizon” and quickly came before Hao Ren. The two ladies seemed to be very happy, and Lily even tugged at Hao Ren’s arm as she gloated, “Mr. Landlord, Mr. Landlord, I ran a full circle around the planet! Using the equatowooooooo…”

Hao Ren slapped himself in the face hard. Bloody hell, this doggie and kittie sure were a happy bunch… How bored were they?”

With a flick of her hand, Vivian sent two tiny sparks to both of their heads. “All right, all right. We’re heading off now.”

The two immediately got serious. Even Rollie nodded resolutely and checked if her shoelaces were properly tied and if her claws were sharp enough. While this cat was called a dumb cat every now and then, she was in fact, just ill-adapted to human life. She was very aware of what was going on and knew just what to do.

Since the sprites had left the planet’s core, all the temporary systems they abandoned in the core all slowly started to shut down. The hidden path connecting the planet’s core with the crystal pillar zone was becoming unstable too, but they could use it this once for the very last time.

Hao Ren’s elite team quickly went down the light path as time and material distorted, shattered, reformed and warped back to normal. Rock and crystals seemed to crash down from all directions but without a sound.

Their surroundings were silent, yet harrowing.

Sprite One’s image appeared on the holographic display. She was looking at the disappearing light path and in the general direction of the shelter, which had already disappeared. She sighed. “We have kept her hidden for so long. It has been a few thousand years…”

“That’s right. We never thought that we could get out!”

“The world outside, the world outside!”

“We can go play with Salaman again!”

“We can go to the Core to play as well!”

“H-A-P-P-Y!”

…Well, that was probably the best the sprites could do when it came to lamenting.

The Crystal Pillar Layer.

The massive awe-inspiring crystalline pillars still stood proudly, supporting the crust. The top end held the dark and brooding rock dome, while the end was firmly rooted within the grid. At such a distance, its size was beyond words, and mere mortals would be extremely hard-pressed to raise their courage to fight it.

However, Hao Ren had blown up bigger things before, so he quietly pulled out the explosives from his Dimensional Pocket.

Not too far away, Vivian and the rest sat out of the demolition works. They all took out their phones and started to take photos of that sky-scraping pillar as a memento.

“Quickly. By the time Mr. Landlord hits the big red button, it’ll all be gone!” Lily yelped.

“It just so happens that I’m waiting to take a picture of the explosion!” Y’lisabet replied.

Rollie looked at everyone taking pictures and she pouted before running over to Hao Ren’s side. As she tugged at his sleeve, she pointed at Lily’s phone. “Big Boss Cat! I want that, I want that!”

“Hush, you. Are you able to read now?” Hao Ren said as he commanded the droids to place the explosives on the preset points on the pillar before he glared at the catgirl. “You cry up a storm every time I try to get you to write your own name. Giving you a phone would be a waste of time. Come back again when you can read 3,000 characters!”

“Meowwwww… Oh.”

There were three pillars that needed to be demolished, and one of them was right below the Lair of Nightmares (directly under the command center) while the two other pillars were by the two corners of the equator rift, away from the Lair of Nightmares. So, their collapse would cause a massive quake on the crust and a small-scale distortion. The strength released from ensuing powerful compression would land a fatal blow on the base of the Lair of Nightmares. Based on the MDT and the sprites’ collaborative calculations, it was enough to rip open a path directly to the Lair of Nightmares, and it would also block most of the tunnels into the lair, cutting it off from any reinforcements.

The last of the explosives were finally placed on the third pillar.

Hao Ren looked up at the rock and metal dome. There was an obvious dark red belt on the gloomy dome. The dark red belt was covered by a layer of energy membrane, and by its side were many odd black substances writhing about. That was the exact position of the equator rift.

In the upheaval 3,000 years ago, a part of Nadqal crashed against it, and the earth-shattering crash tore Amantir’s crust apart. Sections of the planetary starship even dropped into the crystal pillar layer, but very soon, Amantir’s self-restoration system activated and forcefully began to heal the wounded planet. With that, the rift above was mended by force using an energy barrier, and it became the massive canyon that was visible from space.

If one looked up at the canyon from underneath the crust, they would see what Hao Ren saw.

The sprite’s image appeared on the holographic display, and she pointed at the crystal forest in the distance. Over there, something that clearly did not belong in the crystalline world was laying diagonally within the forest. The protruding portion looked like the head of a beast, pointing to the dome above. “That’s the wreckage from Naqdal. When it fell, a few sprites and guardians were still alive, but they soon died and their bodies were dragged by the monsters to serve as fuel to create more of them.”

The corrupted army did not all come from the nightmare, and some of them were transformed from physical beings. Collecting bodies from the battlefield was one of the methods they used to gather “materials”.

“They won’t die for nothing.” Hao Ren nodded. “We will end the monsters’ reign here, today.”

He then looked up at the crystal pillar supporting the planet.

The explosives had been placed in a ring along the circumference of the pillar, like a glittering necklace in the dark.

One by one, the sprites appeared in the holographic display, and they, too, were looking at the shiny explosives.

“Make a mess!” Sprite One raised her fist.

“Wreak some havoc! Make a mess! Wreak some havoc!”

Hao Ren pressed the big red button on the controller.