The Record of Unusual Creature

The longer Hao Ren knew Y’zaks, the less demonic Y’zaks seemed to be. He was more like a thinker and a philosopher, and maybe even a scientist. The rough guy had more profound knowledge than many scholars—a result of constant exploration and the long-term influence by a real scholar. This had become part of him.

Even if it was a demon, focusing on one thing for several hundred years would cultivate an amazing habit.

The world Y’zaks was living was an explored world with incredible spatial structure. The space here wasn’t continual; the so-called ‘long distance travel’ concept was confined to a self-contained, limited bubble, or more sophisticated name called ‘crystal wall system’. Coming from Earth, Hao Ren had difficulty imagining how it was like in a discontinous space. But this space had obviously shaped the unique cultures contained in them. difference races lived seperately in the bubbles. Some stronger ones occupied a single or several bubbles. They built their countries in the land floating in the void, and accustomed to using teleportation gateway which was deemed a natural phenomenon and had been in existence since time immemorial.

The natives of this world thrived relying on the bubbles and teleportation gateways, the nature had thus formed a unique ecosystem: many animals migrated periodically through the large teleportation gateways; they were born in one bubble then reproduced or hibernated in another. Even some plants relied on the gateway to reporduced. Various intelligent races regarded the dimensional door as a long-term strategic resource, just like the strategic point on earth. the races actively explored the undiscovered gateway, and carefully travelled through these gateways to find the ‘new world’ with rich resources. Each race had their own set of exploratory technique, but generally they were similar and had three common features: the way to find the gateway; the technique to detect the situation behind the gateway; and way to destroy the gateway if great disaster was detected across the gateway.

The ease of exploration, and the belief that there were an unlimited amount of resources in the other dimensions made most races in the world complacent. They didn’t think it was necessary to develop their own territoty, they just needed to open the various gateways and they would get what they wanted. Drow Arcanum, one of the three arcana of elf, was a planet the size of the Earth where elves only occupied a large piece of forest in the planet. As the forest was always shrouded in noxious gases and toxic radiation, they set up a shield and became content. They found a teleporting gateway in the forest where they could travel to another dimensions. After a deliberation, they opined that it was safer to get resources from other dimensions than to exploit their own planet.

Many other races had the same thinking: why the hassle to explore the difficult-to-go places in their own dimension when there was the convenience of telepoting gateway to other dimensions?

Of course, they did study the structure of their own spatial bubble, and had come up with a superficial ‘spatial structure theory’ of their own. But overall, their exploration was only limited to the surrounding areas around the gateways.

There was no problem in this kind of survival. In the world of discontinual space, such development was normal; astronautical technology was deemed unnecessary, there weren’t going to be a lot of stars to be seen, and so people weren’t interested in the universe.

But the problem of this world was the races were over-reliant on the gateways. Before the appearance of the mad human alchemist, no one had ever questioned the boundary of the bubble zone or was interested in the knwledge of the dimensions of the universe. Their default thinking was that the adjoining self-contained bubbles was the entire universe itself. They had never thought of their ‘applied theory of teleporting gateway’ which was developed in the course of thousands of years might be only applicable in a small part of the universe.

Y’zaks was the first person who had a sense of crisis.

“Of course, I’m not the last.” Y’zaks smiled as he looked at the gateway far ahead. “Goddess Tawil once said the variability and curiosity of the intelligent races were precious, someone was destined to find the right path, it was just a matter of when. The old man who developed the bubble theory was still regarded as a mad man by the orthodox scholars a thousand years ago. But since a hundred years ago, his manuscripts were studied and revered. They would be someone who cared to measure the world and understood the importance of unity. Perhaps my war of unification had had its influence, it had broadened their perspective.”

“At least it was to prevent the emergence of a second Mad Demonic King.” Hao Ren patted Y’zaks on his arm and said, “Let’s not delve into the past. I can’t wait to go to Osidian Plain. And by the way, where is Osidian Plain?”

Lanina stretched out her neck and looked over the horizon at the mountain range and barren land, her succubus tail waving before the tip of the tial pointed at a direction: “There!”

Y’zaks nodded before he led everyone headed in the opposite direction. “Let’s go this way.”

Lanina said, “…my king… you don’t trust me?”

“I trust you other than your sense of direction.” Y’zaks glanced back at his ex aide-de-camp. “And just call me Wang here.”

Lanina followed from behind, her mouth twitched and was muttering something. Hao Ren was amazed: succubus was supposed to be an evil creature, but every one he met seemed to be an oddball.

They descended from the hill and found the wilderness full of black gravel and strange plants ahead. Perhaps the continent itself was a remnant of a planet, the gravitational field was still ripping the land apart slowly with unstable geological environment. Canyons and smoking cracks were still pewing flame and smoke. Dar reed prickly vines grew stubbornly in the harsh terrain, making one wondering if this was actually a plant in the normal sense. There were occasionally weird creatures jumped out of the flame or even the lava, moving and hunting frenzily between the prickly vines. These monsters couldn’t be even considered as lower-demons. Each dimension had its own unique ecosystem, so did the demonic dimension.

“It’s hot.” They passed by a lava river. Vivian’s brow began to knit together. “Stick closer. I’m switching on the air-conditioner.”

A cold draft of air radiated out from Vivian. Hao Ren instantly felt like heaven in hell—Vivian was like a walking air-conditioner, maybe he could eat some ice-cream by the lava lake later if Nangong Wuyue could manage to extract some water out of the air.

Lily gazed into the distance at the lava flow, falling into deep thought. She suddenly yanked out her flame claw and walked toward the lava flow. Hao Ren quickly called out. “What’re you doing?”

Lily waved her claw excitedly. “I’m trying to the enhancement method as written in the book…”

No one could keep up with the husky’s line of thinking. Lily explained excitedly. “It’s written in the book. The magic weapons are forged in the abyss of fire, or the hell of magma. I feel that something is lacking with my claw, short of some enhancement. What do you think if I enhance it with teh lava of The Demonic Plane?”

Most likely the maiden had read too much fantasy novels. Hao Ren looked at her half-crying half-laughing. “You really believe things written in the novels? Do you think by just dipping the weapin into the demonic lava would be—”

Before Hao Ren finished, Lily had already ran to the lava flow. She squatted by the river like a child and dipped her flaming claw into the smolten rock and gave it a little stir. Vivian rolled her eyes. “Oh so now it really has become Flamejoy, eh?”

Lily tucked away her claw and frowned perplexingly. “It seems not working… but I think I felt something down there…”

Before her voice trailed off, the lava flow suddenly surged!