The Record of Unusual Creatures

In a wild place like the realm of Chaos, nothing was constant. Even the mist in the wilderness had many changes in concentration and color over the past few years. These changes were usually telltale signs of the direction that the forces of Order and Chaos in Collow were heading in. They had a significant meaning to the mortals living in that world as every subtle clue was related to the survival of countless lives.

In the long history of struggle, humans had mastered the methods of observing and recording the environmental data of the realm of Chaos. One of the critical observation data centers was the sanctuary like the furnace tower.

The furnace tower was not only the heart of the land of Order, but also a sentry tower to monitor the realm of Chaos. It was capable of automatically recording the data of the tide of the Sea of Carnos, even if the furnace died down, the runic slate structure of the tower could automatically run and complete the recordings for an extended period. That was the reason Veronica must first check the status of the furnace tower; she had to figure out what had happened here.

The information on the Festered would quickly disappear once the monster died. So it was difficult to find any clues from the body of the Festered. What the knights did was just a routine. The real clues lay in the four runic slabs around the pedestal of the furnace tower.

Interpreting the slate was a skill that every aristocrat must master. The old knight Morian was an expert in this field. Upon returning from examining the surroundings, the old man came up to Veronica. He first nodded at Hao Ren, and then said to the princess, “It’s weird. Very weird.”

“What weird?” Veronica’s brows knit together. Her teacher’s ambiguous reaction surprised her. “Can you explain?”

“The powers of the Chaos and Order are present concurrently in the runes, and and the boundary between the two is much smaller than the standard value.”

Veronica froze. It took her for a while to digest the meaning of these words. “Are you sure?”

“What do you guys mean?” Hao Ren perplexed of what happened.

Veronica was in disbelief as if she had just heard a story of The Arabian Nights. But she had to explain to Hao Ren. “It means the two forces on the runestone are becoming assimilated. The boundaries between the Chaos and the Order are blurring. But it is impossible! How could this ever happen in nature?”

Hao Ren scratched his head but pretended to have understood what Veronica told him. “I get it. Then what are you going to do?”

“I must report it to my father immediately,” Veronica said. Her fingers had turned pale from gripping the hilt of her sword too hard. “This matter needs to be immediately discussed by the Royal Scholars. Only they can figure out what it means.”

The old knight Morian whispered to Veronica, “Also inform the Theocracy.”

“The Theocracy…” Veronica’s face turned gloomy hearing that name. Her brows pulled together as she kept repeating the name before she finally exhaled, “Then let the royal court officers decide. Let’s move. Knights!”

Hao Ren shrugged and said nothing. He had not figured out many of the rules of Collow, so he had better be a silent observer, he thought. While waiting for Veronica and Morian gathering their men, Hao Ren went to a side quietly and tried to contact the MDT and the Petrachelys.

The signal of the mental connection was still weak and full of noise though it was a little better than before. The MDT or Nolan must be trying to reach him too, he thought, and he trusted them to be able to figure it out.

While the knights stepped into the fog of Chaos and the light of the furnace tower died down, something was happening in another corner of the world.

On the southern border of the Kingdom of Taros, the land came to an abrupt end. The tail end of the shadowy forest in the south was neatly cut off here, where the dark fog was swelling at the bottom of the abyss. From this point onward, the world—lands, seas, rivers, forests—ended here.

But this was not the edge of the world but the border of the Ansu continent, where the Kingdom of Taros was located. This continent, like other continents, floated on the Sea of Carnos. The Kingdom of Taros was a small kingdom on the southern edge of the Ansu continent. It had a natural southern border. The “cliff” here was, in fact, the boundary of the Ansu continent.

The south of this border was not empty; many large islands were floating in the void.

Scholars believed that these huge floating islands were once part of the Ansu continent, and the Ansu continent and many other continents were initially one single piece of land. The evil giant, Rocky Marton, broke free from the shackles and struck the earth, breaking the Collow continent into several pieces. It was only after that the single continent of Collow became a world of floating islands.

Large continents were fixed in a position relative to each other in the Sea of Carnos, while smaller lands drifted in between the continents. Some of these lands became homes to the abhumans or monsters, while some became the transportation hub of the human kingdom.

The floating islands suspended outside the southern border of Taros were occupied by the abhumans, who live outside the civilized world.

These islands had dense jungles and magic-filled water sources. The beasts living on these floating islands were not only numerous, but they had also undergone some mutations. Under the influence of magic, primary intelligent creatures such as bear monsters, gnolls, and demonic apes had stood out among their relatives. Their level of intelligence was ridiculously low in the eyes of the humans, but it was enough to make them the hegemons of these floating islands. And because the islands floated in the dangerous Sea of Carnos, the chaotic atmosphere often produced storms in the void. For this reason, the high-intelligence species on the main continent rarely came to the small kingdoms on these floating islands. The life of the abhumans living here were peaceful.

But the status quo suddenly changed.

Gruglu was an old demonic ape living in the forest. At 345 years old, he knew little about the outside world. The floating island was lucky to miss the tide of Chaos that occurred in the last three centuries. The old demonic ape had witnessed many times storms tearing apart the forest on the other side of the void. To him, the outside world was dangerous. No smart demonic apes should be interested in going there even if the forest there looked denser, even if the land larger than that of the floating islands. They should stay away from it like a plague.

So Gruglu had never left his forest, and he did not have the mean to leave. Who could cross the emptiness between the island and the main continent other than those who could fly?

But now he could not hold on to his principle anymore because he had to prepare for a journey crossing over to the land on the other side.

The old demonic ape sighed and continued to work on the rattan and wood chips. Beside him, his people were doing the same thing. As one of the most talented handcrafter races in the forest, the demonic apes could make quite complex tools. And now this talent became their only daily task: their job was to assemble these things into very, very large baskets, and install them under something that called hot-air balloons.

Gruglu looked back and saw the gnolls were chanting a bunch of shibboleths as they hung a bundle of blue leather to dry on the shelves. Further afield, the imps were singing as they stacked the stones to make an oven to treat the wood collected from the forest. He heard that the wood would be built into the skeleton of the hot air balloon, or it may be a truss. Who knows? A monster bear spewed some nonsense after receiving an award from the alpha wolf. But the monster bear, notorious for his dumbness, might not remember what the alpha wolf had said.

Gruglu only knew one thing: the blue leather that the gnolls were drying was once a terrible monster, a wild blue-monster whale from the deepest part of the Sea of Carnos. The behemoth could roam freely in the energy-filled sea, but to the abhumans on the floating islands, it was a terrifying divine being. One day, the alpha wolf fought with the blue-monster whale for one day and one night and killed it. According to an ugly gnoll, the alpha sat on the body of the Blue-monster Whale, sucking the bone marrow and skinning the Blue-monster Whale. That was when the idea of making a hot air balloon started.

Gruglu had to obey the command of the alpha, though he was reluctant to leave the safety of the forest and had a great fear of flying over the void, he was still weaving the rattan, just like the gnolls and monster bears who had submitted their wills.

Grugle knew that the alpha was incredibly strong. At least stronger than the Blue Monster Whale.

There were no creatures on this floating island that could beat the alpha.

Since the alpha wanted to conquer the continent occupied by the humans, they could only obey.