The Record of Unusual Creatures

A new round of attacks.

The festered had escalated their offense.

Other than the first hundreds of years of war, large-scale attacks only happened once a month or a year with reconnaissance and skirmishes in between. But since the last four years, those freaks had increased the frequency of attacks, every ten days on average. The rate of attacks had increased to once every three days. An attack came right after the Apocalypse Torrent thwarted the one before that, giving soldiers no breathing time.

The general of the Guardian Giants, the Fearless Salaman, stood on the defense platform above the Heart. He watched as space lit up by artillery fire and magic. The pale light sprinkled on his hairy face with swaying shadows. The battle before his eyes was almost the replica of the one a few days ago. The festered swarmed the battlefield, occupying over half of his field of vision. They used cannons to weaken the defense of the Heart and to reduce the number of guardian giants. They left behind contaminants on the battlefield to create a longer-lasting and terrible threat. Here, the defense forces were too few to deter the enemy’s offensive.

Salaman could imagine how things would develop. He would have to restart Agodal’s doomsday weapon, and the Apocalypse Torrent would wipe out all the festered monsters on the battlefield, just like before. But it would produce an unintended consequence; the loss to the enemy was inconsequential, but the damage the doomsday weapon caused to the space structure near the Heart would be devastating. The Apocalypse Torrent would cleanse space of the corrupted energy. But before that, they had already inflicted significant damage to the shield of the Heart.

The thick ‘crystalline shield’ that enveloped the Heart was the energy that thousands of Denizens of Stars gathered from around the universe. The energy had saved the planetary shield from the first attack. But after three thousand years of continual enemy’s bombardment, its strength had dropped by half. No one knew how long the Denizens of the Stars could hold on because the guardian giants had lost contact with the consciousness of the Denizens of the Stars on the planet since many years ago.

“General.” A young guardian giant stood behind Salaman. “The enemy’s attack has become more frequent.”

Salaman turned around, his eyes glinting with wise light. “What is your opinion on this, my brother?”

“We are isolated in the Sacred Land and know nothing about what is happening in the other part of the universe, my brother,” said the young guardian giant. “But I think there must have been some changes out there that cause these deformed monsters so desperate. Their increasing rate of attacks has revealed the nervousness and panic in them. They step up the frequency of attacks at the expense of their potential.”

Salaman nodded slightly. He agreed with what his junior said but did not show it on his face. “You are right, these freaks are getting more impatient than before, and they are under some pressure. I have received a report that a few days ago, a legion of deformed monsters suddenly went into outer space and then never returned. After that, these freaks began to show some strange movements. I suspect that a third force has gotten involved in this world.”

“A third force?” The young guardian giant looked at the general. “Does Mother have other allies besides us?”

Salaman said in a low voice, “Mother has many secrets, some of which we do not even know they exist, just as the sacred place we are guarding now; it is unknown to outsiders. Maybe in other places, Mother has—”

Before he could finish, space suddenly distorted behind him, and then, a guardian in white armor emerged from the portal and hurriedly came up to him. “General, our soldiers have captured a strange thing on the edge of the battlefield.”

“A strange thing?” Salaman’s eyebrows arched. He had not heard such odd news from his subordinates for years. “What is that?”

The subordinate bowed his head. “A spacecraft. Its appearance and technology are of something we have never seen. It tries to making contact with us.”

Salaman’s brows knitted together. “Bring it to me.”

The two guardian giants quickly fetched the strange-looking spacecraft to the platform. Salaman could not help frowning again when he saw the thing. It really is a strange thing, he said to himself.

Carried by two giants, at more than a dozen meters long, the spacecraft did not appear very large in the hands of the giants. The strange silvery-white thing was apparently a machine. It had a metal shell, and a half-spacecraft, half-insect body. It had many instruments hung on the outside, but the most eye-catching one was the massive holographic words around it.

The words on the left read ‘Don’t shoot. Friendly!” The one on the right read, “Calm down.” The one in the middle read “The goddess of creation has some words for you.”

The last line was the reason why the guardian giants had not opened fire at the drone. They all knew that their mother was also called by the name the goddess of creation.

“It suddenly appeared on the battlefield, chased by a large troop of the festered. But it was incredibly agile, and no one could catch up with it,” said one of the soldiers. “Our automatic firepower almost shot it out of space. But its shield saved it, and then our men saw these words.”

The young guardian adjutant looked at Salaman, and his voice sounded a bit odd. “Is this… the third force?”

Salaman curiously looked at the strange silver-white spacecraft. His deeply recessed eyes were emotionless, so no one knew what was in his mind. Meanwhile, the young adjutant could not help but say, “The words are written in our language, but the technology of this thing is foreign to us. It is impossible that such an advanced species exist in the universe and yet we know nothing about them.”

“But they are here now and trying to communicate with us.” Salaman raised a hand to interrupt the adjutant. He then came to the weird machine and bent down. “I can feel something is looking at me through it. No matter who you are, if you want to talk, now it is the time.”

The strange silver-white machine suddenly shook. It required two giants to carry it earlier, but now it hovered in midair and spoke aloud as if it had come to life.

“Look! Look! That is exactly what I have said; these words would work. Everyone, including the guardian giants, has curiosity.”

And then came another female voice. “But the drone was just attacked.”

“It is unavoidable. I think it was automatic firepower, or it could not react in time. Anyway, the drone has survived.”

“Bah, whatever you say makes sense. Happy now?”

Salaman’s eyebrow arched. There seemed to be more than one person behind this strange machine, and the way they talk seemed to be so casual. Are they not soldiers? He thought to himself.

“Who are you guys?” asked the old giant with a frown.

The strange-looking machine emitted a strange sound, and then its front end suddenly lit up with a holographic image.

A man with a smiley face and a woman who looked calm appeared in the holographic image.

The image flashed, and another small creature with a long tail popped up from below the visual before sliding back down.

Salaman was like what the heck?

The old giant was struck dumb; he had never seen such weird things before all his life.

“You can call me Hao Ren. This is Vivian Ancestor.” Hao Ren was also observing the guardian giant, but he had not forgotten to introduce himself. “We are the observers.”

“The observers?” The old giant repeated this strange word. “You can call me Salaman. Who are you guys? What do you want?”

“We know you are in a war, and we are here to help,” Hao Ren said bluntly. He did not wait for the guardian giant to reply when he saw his reaction. “Please do not interrupt. I know it is only natural that you are suspicious of us who come out of nowhere suddenly. But before I explain, I want to show you something.”

The holographic image switched, and it now showed the footage of the battle around the Naqdal Continent.

Of course, these were edited; the footages of how the drone cluster arrived, the clandestine operation, size, and speed of deployment had been omitted. But Salaman could still clearly see how the drones overran and annihilated the festered army.

As a general who had been fighting the festered monsters for thousands of years, the feeling that Salaman, the old giant, had was a complicated one. On one hand, he was happy that the drones had wiped out the festered. On the other hand, he was rueful; the guardian giants should be the ones to clean up the festered monsters, which were used to be the guardian giants.

Toward the second half of the visual recordings, Salaman saw something familiar.

“Is that the temples of Naqdal?”

“You recognize it!” The video ended, and Hao Ren’s image reappeared on the hologram. “That is Naqdal, indeed. The battle was fought surrounding the fragment of Naqdal. Those mutant monsters tried to destroy Naqdal Continent, but my drone cluster had stopped them in time. This coincident intervention has also led us to the sprites on Naqdal Continent. There, we learned about the mutant monsters and the war in this galaxy.”

“We want you to know that you are not the only one who is fighting these festered monsters,” Vivian spoke at last. “We are going after this evil force in the entire universe.”

Salaman was silent for a long moment and finally said, “What do you want?”

“Let us cooperate,” Hao Ren said.