The Record of Unusual Creature

Becky was simply too stunned to react when she saw the group of familiar faces. It was not until Hao Ren called her that she snapped out of her stupor. A perplexed look remained on her face and she eyed the party again. Then she pointed towards her strange surrounding. “Where am I? How did I get here?!”

Hao Ren was even more shocked. “This is my home! How did you get here?!”

“Your home?” Becky almost jumped. “This is the Northern Empire?! I’m not well-read but don’t take me for a fool. Do the northerners’ houses look like this? Doesn’t look like the ones I saw in the papers!”

Hao Ren finally managed to get his bearings but, he still had no idea how Becky got dragged along into the Surface World. But seeing that it was the case, he needed to come up with a solution.

“Well… things are pretty complicated you see. This is not the Honnar Empire. We are nowhere near your world. I’ll explain in a bit. Keep your sword, lets go to the living room to talk…”

Becky still eyed Hao Ren suspiciously. She knew that the bunch was odd but, she never counted on having herself dragged into this equally odd situation. Despite that, she still obeyed Hao Ren and sheathed her sword. Something suddenly dawned upon her. “Wait a minute, is this another screw up of your dimensional teleportation?”

Vivian rubbed her face. “….It’s not exactly dimensional teleportation… but something did go wrong….”

Becky immediately stomped her foot. “I knew you bunch of dimensional mages were more amateurish than the last! I stood aside roughly more than 10 meters away just to be safe. Even that wasn’t enough!?”

Hao Ren’s face was that of utter defeat. He probably had no way to deny it anymore. Amateurs aside… his luck was quite seriously down the dumps.

Hilda had followed the group up to the kitchen and the appearance of Becky thoroughly confused her. The mercenary lass was supposed to stay back in The Plane of Dreams. As the procession went to the living room, her confusion turned into fear. She quickly grabbed Hao Ren by the shoulder. “Is there something wrong? Is the teleportation device broken?”

Her concern was apparent on her face. The thought of ‘can I ever get home?’ was always at the back of her mind and she was very sensitive about anything that suggested otherwise. Hao Ren gave her a comforting wave, “No, it has nothing to do with you. We on the other hand, are f*cked big time.”

Becky was busy looking and gawking ever since she got out of the kitchen. Everything in Hao Ren’s house was something new to her. In fact, it was a rather refreshing feeling. A girl decked in leather armor and combat-ready clothing, leather boots, windbreaker cloak and her enchanted longsword as well as daggers hanging from her belt; it seemed like an RPG character just walked into a modern home. This was not something you would see often unless of course, you have a pretty girl at home who dabbles in cosplay.

The mercenary lass was dragged by Lily to the sofa. As she was pushed down on the sofa, she sank in. Reacting almost immediately, she yelled, “It’s a trap!” before realizing that she had not totally sink. Laughing at her silliness, she shook the sofa for a bit. “Oh…. it’s a chair… a soft one at that. I heard that nobility love chairs like this. No wonder you were so generous back then. You’re a rich one aren’t ya?”

As the group had been away for a few days, there was no hot water. Vivian quickly went back to the kitchen to boil a kettle of water while Lily ran to the fridge eagerly and grabbed a bunch of stuff out; both regular food and her junk food. Dumping them on the tea table, she warmly invited Becky to take a bite. “Come ,eat! The bread’s about to expire too.”

“Oh, oh, thanks!” Becky was still dazed after being overwhelmed by so many new things she had seen that she simply nodded at whatever Lily said. As she extended her hand to take the bottle of juice Lily had passed to her, she suddenly recoiled. “It’s coldddd!!!”

Hao Ren smacked Lily on the head. “It’s already winter and you’re still drinking cold drinks. Not afraid of stomach aches?”

“Nope! I was even pulling sleighs up north some time back you know?”

The husky seemed rather pleased with herself and paid almost no attention to her origins anymore…

Becky by then had recovered from her confusion and stared at Hao Ren. “Now, hold your horses, you tell me what’s going on right now! Why… was I transported to this weird place. What’s all of this?”

“You may want to prepare yourself for this,” Hao Ren said as he cleared his throat and shifted his gaze towards Lily. “Stop using your teeth as a bottle opener! Hell, you were complaining back then when I asked you to help me open a bottle!”

After yelling at the house furry as usual, Hao Ren slowly explained the situation to Becky.

Under the Space Administration’s rules and regulations, aside from the parties directly involved in the mission, any activities done under the administration’s name cannot affect the lives of unrelated parties, while those who are somewhat involved are made to swear oaths of secrecy. However, Becky was a victim of circumstance and the Space Administration would take responsibility of that. Thus, Hao Ren simply forwent any pretense of secrecy. Granted, he still had a headache on how to actually solve the issue and submit his report as well as let the MDT investigate what actually went wrong.

As Becky listened to Hao Ren’s explanation, her eyes opened even wider. After taking a while to digest what she was told, she looked at Hao Ren suspiciously. “So… you’re saying this is not a prank?”

“I really wish it was simply just a prank,” Hao Ren said as he placed his face in his hands. “Things are already messy as it is. And now, I have even more on my plate. I don’t know if I’ve screwed up somewhere with regard to the teleportation… Well, I didn’t even do much. I simply clicked on ‘Confirm’ using my mind.”

Becky then demurred for a moment before looking up again. “So.. I’m in another world right now?”

“Yes, another world altogether.”

“And all of you were from another world and you were carrying out a mission where I’m from?”

“Yep, we are originally from here.”

“No wonder you guys were so weird there. You didn’t even have any basic knowledge.”

Hao Ren could only nod. “Yes, yes and yes. So that explains everything right?”

“No wonder you guys had no interest on the whereabouts of the orb,” Becky mumbled to herself. All of a sudden, she laughed out loud. “Ahahahaha! So stuff like the stories do happen! Wow, I’m really cut out to be a legendary mercenary!”

Becky’s reaction took Hao Ren absolutely by surprise as she appeared to be so unconcerned about her current situation, after being thrown across dimensions. “You’re not nervous or feeling lost? Not confused at all? Not looking to take down the perpetrator with you?”

“Why do you think that way?” Becky was curious. “This is a good chance to broaden my horizons. I never had the chance to go this far before. Even the most famous of heroes don’t have such an opportunity. I’ll probably stay for a few days to see what’s going on around here. It’s not like I can’t go back, right? You guys make going back and forth look easy. What do I have to worry about then?”

Hao Ren had no idea how to respond to her. Most of the time, people who cross into another dimension would panic as they have no way home… but for Becky, she quickly realized that she had been transported over by a known mean and after she has had her fill of adventure, she could simply go home. Hao Ren had not seen such a mental fortitude like hers.

Nevertheless, Hao Ren knew the about the anomalies involved in traveling from the Surface World into The Plane of Dreams and felt that Becky was celebrating way too early. However, seeing how happy she was, he did not have the heart to burst her bubble just yet.

Sighing, he said, “Sure, you can stay here for a while. I’ll let you have your adventure. Think of it as thanks for helping us so far.”

“Well said, well said!” Becky waved her hand as she mimicked Lily, gobbling down the food on the table. “Uwahh! The food here is pretty good! It’s just that the outer layer is a bit tough to open… Is this meant for adventurers or soldiers? The outer layer seems to be water proof as well…”

Hao Ren was still busy contemplating how he should go about solving the issue at hand before something struck him. “Oh right, why did you have to cleave my microwave in two?”

“Microwave? You mean that weird box?” Becky recalled the funny looking box that she had so unceremoniously cleaved and jolted herself with.” I didn’t even know what that was. When I was thrown over here and everything was still spinning, I had just touched it before some weird energy started to form inside the box. I thought it was some kind of booby trap and just cleaved at the energy’s focal point as usual…”

“…”

Hao Ren had a feeling that things were about to get very, very hectic from then on.