The Record of Unusual Creatures

Truth be told, Hao Ren really did not expect the first found survivor to be a robot.

Only after he got close to further inspect the wreck did he realize what a sorry state the robot was in. Not only was she severed from the waist down, but most of her remaining body parts were also barely intact. Additionally, a majority of her outer shell and synthetic skin had been burnt away by the flames post-crash, resulting in a warped skeletal structure. One arm had come off during her crawl out of the wreckage, and it was about two meters away from her body. The other arm was literally a mess of frame and wiring. As most of the facial features were burnt, Hao Ren could not tell what the robot originally looked like. But from the body shape, he could deduce that it was designed with a feminine body in mind, so Hao Ren decided to use “she” to refer to the downed pilot.

“From the state of her body, this robot probably still had some mobility left. She tried to climb out of the cockpit and was badly burned in the process. She lost all mobility here,” the MDT explained as it scanned the robot and used a blue light marker to mark out the pilot’s trail before she lost her mobility. “Her energy source and control system’s centered in the torso with a very solid carapace. Even after losing all mobility, she was still able to remain in an extremely low-powered standby mode. Lily’s approach probably activated her automated defense mechanism, and she attacked. But the gunfire’s vibrations totally ruined her already fried circuits, and the short circuit was followed by a total shutdown.”

“…Giving a robot an autopsy sounds very weird.” Lily mused as she poked her chin with her finger.

“This isn’t even serious enough for an autopsy.” The MDT vibrated. “She’s only offline. I think her logic core and memory core are still salvageable. As long these pieces of hardware are intact, a robot won’t die all that easily.”

“Her logic and memory cores are still there?!” Hao Ren was suddenly intrigued. “Let’s save her now! I have my droids…”

“Not here.” The MDT swung from left to right. “The droids can fix the ship based on blueprints but they don’t have the research and analysis module in them. This robot was made with indigenous technology, and while it may not be super-advanced, we still need to analyze it before we can figure out a way to fix it. Take it back, let Nolan run a scan in the lab on how to fix her…”

Hao Ren nodded as he commanded his droids to carefully dig that robot, which had almost turned into scrap metal, out of the wreckage. At the same time, Wuyue wondered aloud, “My healing spells are useless here, eh… Such different lifeforms, much intrigue.”

“Nonsense. If you throw your healing orb on her, it’ll all be over.” Lily rolled her eyes at the siren. “You wanna short-circuit the motherboard?”

Simultaneously, Hao Ren was hit by an epiphany. The whole idea of bringing Wuyue along was to have her patch up a still-living survivor if there was one, but it seemed like there was no certainty to the outcome of initial plans. While they indeed found a still-living survivor, she was not waterproof…

“I never thought that the aircraft yesterday were piloted by robots.” Vivian frowned as she mumbled to herself, seemingly disappointed.

The MDT was gazing at the droids cutting open the metal hull as it heard Vivian’s words. “No, if I’m not wrong, this robot is a co-pilot and support computer. Her inner frame has a series of codes and identification marks. They were probably imprinted when she got out of the production line. Her model and usage are marked in there.”

“A co-pilot, huh?” Hao Ren raised an eyebrow. “Then let’s just call her robo-adjutant for now. If she’s a co-pilot, that means there’s a… human pilot as well?”

“Logically speaking, yes.” the MDT wobbled as if nodding. “But, if the pilot was human, there would be no corpse left. This cockpit fragment is the biggest amongst all of the wreckage, and if the co-pilot is already damaged to this degree, you can imagine the rest. A weak carbon-based lifeform would pretty much evaporate in that extreme heat and explosion.”

Hao Ren clicked his tongue, feeling dissatisfied. “Tch..”

The droids took a very long time before they safely extracted the robot from the cockpit. Due to the extreme heat, the robot had fused together with the metal around her. On top of that, her body was already at its breaking point, and even with the droids’ nimble handiwork, extracting her unscathed was very difficult. So, only a part of her body, arm, and an almost complete head was pulled out. These parts did not look like they could hold on much longer either. She looked like a horrifying dismembered corpse even when she was placed on the ground, and Hao Ren quickly stored her in a safe container before he kept it in his Dimensional Pocket.

After completing the retrieval of the survivor, Hao Ren hoped against hope as he expanded the search area, with the MDT and the droids scouring a radius of several kilometers wide for any other survivors. But there was nothing but disappointment. They did find plenty of wreckage but no human pilot or any intact cockpits remained. Worse still, they did not even find a second robot co-pilot.

There were only numerous cooled metal fragments across the jungle.

It seemed like that torn-apart female AI copilot was the only survivor out of the four downed aircraft.

Once the necessary search was completed, the setting of the sun was only moments away. The planet’s day-night cycle was much longer than Earth’s.

However, Hao Ren did not plan on staying out in the wild. He looked up beyond the jungle and noticed the plantlife getting sparse there. The tentacles were barely a few thousand meters away. Just by looking up, he could see a blackish-brown “mountain range” with a tinge of green, stretching across the horizon. If he were to look carefully, he could even see that “mountain range” slowly undulate like a massive breathing beast.

After finding out the real identity of that mountain range, it was almost terrifying to stand in such close proximity to it.

Best not to loiter around a First Born without purpose, even when it was asleep. Just a mere toss would result in a quake with the magnitude of at least 8.5 on the Richter scale. That was the most important experience gained after being in the Plane of Dreams for so long.

“Let’s head back.” Hao Ren recalled the patrolling droids. “Let’s get Nolan to figure out how we can save our little robot lady friend… Say, where did Lily go?”

He turned around, unable to see the werehusky, and he asked Vivian on the wayside.

“She ran into the jungle to look for fruits. Said she was hungry.”

“…Can she actually have some sense of danger?!”

“Who knows.” Vivian rolled her eyes. “Being a beast herself, she’s probably confident about her instincts. Her survival skills are top-notch, and if you were to throw her on Mars, she’d probably stay alive by gnawing on rocks…”

Hao Ren knew how the werehusky operated, and he could just complain about it at most before he asked Wuyue to drag the fruit-picking werehusky back. After a short nag, the few of them returned to the Petrachelys.

Nolan was very interested in the robotic co-pilot that Hao Ren had brought back, so was little Y’lisabet.

The little demoness practically jumped when she found out what Hao Ren had brought back. The felfire energies shot up from her head as she volunteered to fix the robot, her words sincere and true. If Hao Ren had not known what sort of person the little devil was, he would have believed her!

However, just as the goddess was crazy, the destruction that the little devil’s handiwork wrought was the same. Truth be told, she was already known as the genius repair lass back in the Southern Suburbs. She even fixed the air-conditioners, fridges, and washing machines of the old folks along the street. But her level was at that of daily appliances. Anything more complicated, she would probably tear apart in five minutes but never be able to put back.

Although she had talent in fixing stuff, it came at the cost of Hao Ren’s own electrical appliances. The mound of broken electronics at the back of the house was her exquisite handiwork…

“You are forbidden from the lab.” Hao Ren nudged the little devil on the head as he gave her a stern order before pushing her back to Y’zaks side. He then gave Nolan his orders. “Prepare the lab, let’s see if the robot we brought back can be saved or not.”

Y’lisabet was still struggling even as her dad tried to control her. She was making faces at Hao Ren. “Blehhhh.”

Yet, Hao Ren had already turned to face the lab and did not even see it…

The robot’s broken body was placed on a multi-functional engineering platform, and next to it was a stack of broken parts: torn metal connectors, broken circuit boards, something that looked like a fragment of a chip, and some other non-descript stuff. Hao Ren could not see the use or value of the items but the MDT predicted that they were from the female robot. While pretty much broken beyond repair, those things could still help the mainframe computer recreate the robot’s technical data to aid with the repair work.

Nolan activated the lab’s system, and the body on the platform floated as the anti-gravity field came alive. A few robot arms appeared from the platform and swiftly disassembled the already-disassembled robot into its finer components.

After that, a scanning ray began to read the parts’ data and loaded the information into the system before it started a series of complex calculations and deductions.

Lily was chomping on one of the fruits she had plucked when she spoke. Her mouth was full. “The patient’s on the operating table… The patient has been disassembled into about 2,000 parts… The patient is stable…”

Hao Ren raised an eyebrow at the werehusky. “You sure this is safe to eat?”

“Of course, it’s crunchy and tasty. Wuyue already tested it. It’s not poisonous,” Lily said as she passed him one. “Wanna have one Mr. Landlord?”

Hao Ren was relieved. He found that the werehusky still had some common sense. Despite randomly plucking something to eat on a foreign planet, she still knew to get someone to check it first…