The Record of Unusual Creatures

As the vast army of UAVs moved into the hub, unleashing a firestorm in the holy land, another battle was just drawing to a close.

At Naqdal, the invading army of corrupted monsters finally broke through the remaining troops after a fierce battle. Like wolves, those mutated, mad creatures gnawed at everything in their path, including deactivated armed UAVs and extinct sentry turrets. Wherever they advanced, the space was littered with the wreckage of battle: glowing metal shards, spark-leaping fortresses, flying pieces of flesh, blood, and black battleships torn apart by explosions. The wreckage showed the fierce battle that had taken place there and completely debilitated the judgment of the commander behind the corrupted monsters.

The resistance had been so fierce, and the defense extremely tight. How could it have been a trap? That had to be the base camp of those UAVs—no doubt the commanders behind the corrupted legion thought so.

Spurred on by this confidence and the sense of accomplishment that the battle had finally been won, the corrupted sped forth, pouncing on the high-energy response areas sensed by their detectors.

There was still some resistance along the way. They came from scattered armed UAV units and floating cannons stationed in space, as well as a sparse array of shield generators, which were barely functioning. They weaved together a blockade line that was no longer tight. But the corrupted legion was now under command, so they resisted the urge to fight those sporadic guards. After removing the most threatening turrets, the monsters went straight across the blockade and continued to approach the base group.

The gravity trap generator used to block the transition was shut down at some point. It was possible that the heat of battle had knocked out the power systems in the gravity wells, or that there was no such pesky equipment deep inside the base. The corrupted commander did not care. Without those ubiquitous disruptions, the monster army could advance deeper into the enemy strongholds at a faster pace. The changes taking place in the hub had raised a few alarms in the corrupted commander. It felt that it could no longer afford to waste its forces in the distant place, and the battle needed to be fought quickly.

The base was unexpectedly empty, but a large spatial structure appeared before the corrupted army. The scene in that structure dispelled or temporarily deflected the corrupted commander’s doubts.

It consisted of a loose, globular mass of weirdly-shaped spires, each emitting a straight line of rays and barriers. They were interwoven into one neat grid after another, and inside the grids, a variety of distorted and mutated debris samples were suspended silently.

It was a research facility that the UAVs used to study enemy vulnerabilities. The corrupted commander immediately made that judgment and realized the importance of the facility. The monster army then immediately fanned out cautiously around the spherical structure and approached the shimmering barrier.

As expected, the facility had its own defense system. The “node spires” at the vertices of the squares launched a counterattack as the enemy approached. However, for the corrupted army, which had broken through the entire blockade line, the self-defense firepower of the “research institute” was not worth mentioning at all. The existence of those defenses, on the contrary, reassured the monsters and allowed them to flood into every square.

They were destroying the research there and preventing the UAVs from continuing to grasp the weaknesses of the corrupted.

Then, the ultimate “skill” erupted.

Infinite heat and light burst out from each node spire, and even space itself began to tremble violently before the release of that horrible energy. The entire spherical space structure was filled with fire like an ignited cotton ball. Then, it collapsed inward together with space itself!

The monsters in the outer regions were ready to enter a hyperspace state to escape the horrible place, but they discovered that the transition interruption effect, which previously disappeared, had actually appeared again.

The grand “art festival” continued in the distant space, but the participants did not enjoy it…

“The ‘surprise’ we left behind has worked,” said the MDT, which flew in front of Hao Ren with a happy glow. “At least half of the intruders are trapped inside and none should be able to escape when space collapses.”

Hao Ren frowned at the good news. “Half? Not all of them?”

“Come on partner, don’t get greedy,” the MDT said while it swayed. “Half of those monsters went in because their commander was too confident, and it’s also thanks to the superb acting skills of the UAVs we left behind. With all those corrupted monsters, some of them would definitely escape. Let’s be prepared: the situation at the hub is clear, and the monsters know this is a premeditated operation, so those that have escaped from the base group may soon come here…”

“Never mind…” Hao Ren looked up at the tactical diagram. “We have more people.”

The battle between the guardian giants and the corrupted was no longer fierce, and the battlefield was increasingly being dominated by armed UAVs that were coming from all directions. In front of the vast sea of UAVs, the corrupted monster, which had always been proud of its numerical superiority, had been suppressed for the first time.

The UAVs were all over the place, they were endless. As long as you were in the field, all you saw was the ever-moving silver tide and the never-ending flash of artillery fire. The deep space background had long since been completely obscured, overwhelmed by the UAV fleet. As the battle progressed, anyone caught in the middle of it would find themselves unwittingly alone, with only UAVs in sight.

That was what it was like to fight an army of UAVs.

In the Aiur, Salaman, his adjutants, and his team of advisers were silent. No one spoke. Apart from the buzzing of various instruments and equipment, the bridge was quiet.

Everyone was staring at the sight of space, which was filled with UAVs and terrorized by the silvery waves. The battlefield was already filled with those cold mechanical beings, yet tens of thousands of UAVs still filled it every minute and every second. It was as if their goal was not to win the battle at all, but simply to physically squeeze the space into a dense solid block of metal.

Of course, this is just an exaggeration.

Finally, the young adjutant said, “Our soldiers everywhere have stopped attacking… It’s impossible to fight.”

“Optical observations are not working, space is full of UAVs, radars are blind, the battlefield is full of unrecognized jamming signals, and all artillery lines are blocked… If it hadn’t been for the ‘reserved channel’ that the UAVs left for us as agreed, I’m afraid we would have lost contact with all the combat units,” said the adjutant, looking a little pale.

Salaman could only comfort himself. “For now at least, these UAVs are operating in strict accordance with previous agreements.”

On the outskirts of the battlefield, the Petrachelys and Naqdal were quietly floating in space, surrounded by an armed convoy of numerous second echelon UAVs. After observing the battlefield, Nolan could not resist saying, “Boss, I don’t think we need Naqdal here…”

“The armed UAVs alone are enough to wipe out the front,” said Vivian while she nodded. “We’ve got all the armed UAVs in the entire Star Cluster X within range, and we’ve got hundreds of troops coming in from outside the Star Cluster X. The number of UAVs out here is too huge.”

Hao Ren shook his head and pointed at the holographic projection. “The presence of Naqdal is necessary. The only reason the UAVs are so successful is because that thing hasn’t moved yet.”

Hao Ren then pointed to the edge of the battlefield, where a dark red “planet” was standing still in an unnatural way like a dormant beast, neither orbiting nor rotating.

“Amantir… the corrupted’s planetary battleship,” Vivian frowned and said.

It was a dark planet full of ominous light. It, too, had a bright atmosphere and lush ecology like Naqdal, but the forces of the Mad Lord turned everything on the planet upside down. Now its waters were so corrosive, and its atmosphere so hot and poisonous that all living things had become twisted monsters. Sacred shrines and crystal towers had been destroyed, and a great rift valley lay at the planet’s equator, looking almost as if it was cutting the planet in half like a terrible wound. In the images sent back by the probe, Hao Ren could clearly see that there were large amounts of surging blood-like substances in the rift valley, from which a steady stream of monsters emerged.

The UAVs had tried to get close to the battleship, but the quantity advantage did not seem to work so well against it. After their huge loss, Hao Ren stopped the pointless waste and focused on the battlefront.

“The guardian’s planetary battleship, Agodal, is an equal deterrent,” Nolan said. “With it, Amantir will not come into play.”

“Agodal has been hit hard,” said Hao Ren. “Its conventional weapons are all but paralyzed, and its mobility, as well as protection capabilities, are less than a third of what they should be. Apart from the still-intact Apocalypse Torrent, Agodal can only serve as a deterrent. So, if there’s a real push, it’s possible for Amantir to come in.”

“Of course, Amantir isn’t that scary,” he added. “As far as I know, Amantir is not without damage. Its doomsday weapon has been damaged in past battles and is completely beyond repair, hence it poses a big but not total threat to the UAV fleet. The UAVs can still stack up against it, even more so with Naqdal to help with the battle—”

Before he could finish, Nolan’s voice interrupted him, “Boss! The enemy is retreating!”

The corrupted legion was finally beginning to retreat.

Although the corrupted that escaped from the trap joined the battle in the later stage, the overwhelming superiority formed by the UAV fleet had been irreversible, and the increasing pressure on the front battlefield worried the monsters. After dropping countless pieces of debris, they finally began to retreat.

But it was not a rout.

Even in defeat, the monsters remained orderly. They forced their way through a swarm of UAVs, then slowly pulled away from the battlefield under the cover of Amantir’s powerful fire.

“Shall we give chase?” the MDT asked. “If we catch up now, we should be able to expand our victory.”

“Yes.”

However, as the UAVs swarmed in the direction of the Amantir’s retreat, Nolan suddenly received an emergency transmission from the guardians.

“Boss! An urgent report from Salaman. He wants us to stop pursuing!”

“Stop pursuing?” Hao Ren was shocked.

“Yes.” Salaman’s image emerged directly in a holographic projection right before the console. “Listen to me, if we keep going, I fear the freaks might do something crazy that will destroy the fortress. Amantir cannot be destroyed!”