The Record of Unusual Creatures

Chapter 171: Forming a Party

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

By the time Hao Ren finished his shopping binge, it was late in the evening.

The moment he stepped into the door, Lily was the first to pounce on him. The husky was so excited that her wagging tail was almost a blur. She even had a bulky duffel bag in hand. "Mr. Landlord, let's go to bed now!"

Hao Ren did not have enough time to process what Lily said before she almost landed on him. With much effort, he held her at arm's length as she looked the part of an excited dog that wanted to lick its master. "Calm down would you?! Remember, you're still a girl!"

"So... can you bring others in?" Vivian questioned as she dragged Lily away by the collar. Her voice was composed but, one could clearly see the gleam of anticipation in her eyes.

"Yes, not a problem. I brought back five sleeping pods that will allow us all to access The Plane of Dreams. It will also prevent anyone of us from being accidentally ejected from the plane," Hao Ren said as he looked about the living room for a place to put the pods. "...Not enough space..."

"Sleeping pods? Where?" Lily's eyes widened as she circled around Hao Ren twice, looking for them.

Hao Ren simply grinned. "Come, let me show you some magic..."

As he said this, he extended his hand in front of Lily. A sudden glow of swirling light flashed by and a loaf of bread appeared on his hand. Lily jumped up almost instantaneously as the bread landed on Hao Ren's hand. "Wahhh!! What is that?!"

"A Dimensional Pocket!" Hao Ren lobbed the bread at Lily and crossed his arms, feeling all high and mighty. "I finally have a set of abilities worthy of a main character! The Dimensional Pocket can even store a few thousand old coots if I need it to."

Lily and Vivian gasped in amazement. The ruckus even drew the attention of Wuyue, who was playing with Lil Pea and she promptly brought the pot with her. Once again, Hao Ren, like a little child who just got a new toy performed his trick. Lily just slung her bag off and gave it to him. "Here, you're in charge of our baggage from now on."

Vivian ran towards the sofa like a gust of wind to pick her luggage up and passed it to him too. "Oh, here's mine."

Wuyue also put the pot down quickly and ran back upstairs to her room. She brought down two big bags. "And mine."

Thankfully, Y'zaks was rather understanding as he smiled sympathetically at the forlorn look on the latter's face. "I don't have much baggage to speak of."

Hao Ren was just about to nod and thank him before he saw the great demon pointing at the TV set.

"Bring that along would you. I'm afraid I'll get bored."

"There's no bleeding signal in the dream plane!" Hao Ren exclaimed exasperatedly and pointed at himself resignedly. "This Dimensional Pocket is such an amazing ability... Yet, I'm relegated to being a bellboy? What happened to the main character's signature ability?"

The four of them threw him a weird look and retorted in unison, "If it's not for carrying stuff, what good is it for?"

He was speechless.

From that moment on, Hao Ren did not ever dream of a moment where he would really outshine others... At least, he would not with this bunch of people around. He reckoned if he brought Frostmourne back from the Space Administration's office, having shaved ice for summer would probably be the first thing on the lot's minds.

"Talking about space... why not put them in the basement?" As Hao Ren fretted about where he would put those five caskets, Vivian remembered that the basement she was sleeping in was pretty spacious. "The basement is rather big no? Aside from the small storeroom, it's my sleeping space. I don't have much furniture to begin with so, it's pretty spacious."

Due to the fact that they all wanted to see how the pods looked like, they quickly ran down to the basement. Thank god, Hao Senior had the foresight to have a big basement when he designed the house. The spaciousness was almost at the level of a warehouse and it could store lots of stuff. At that moment, it only housed Vivian's bed, a short table, two chairs and a small cupboard. It almost fit her poor as hell image. Hao Ren actually thought about getting her some extra furniture like a sofa and a TV but, the vampire had politely declined as she was very satisfied with her living conditions. For her, being able to watch TV in the living room with the rest was a luxury that she would never have dreamed of. And so, the basement was still as empty as before.

Well.. before is the keyword here. Now, five brand new sleeping pods (cas-kets) lay in a line, facing Vivian's bed. Finally, something to fill the rather overly spacious basement.

But... to use five caskets to fill in the space... Hao Ren was not sure whether to cry or laugh at the scene.

As he placed the pods in their respective spots and stepped back to have a look, Hao Ren felt like he was in a morgue. Not only were the pods shaped like bleeding caskets, they were even painted with the most common color one could find in the morgue. To add to the eerie atmosphere, the machines exuded a chilly and lifeless feeling, and there was a crystalline cross engraved on each of the cover of the pods. If anyone simply turned off the lights, you would not need special effects to re-enact a scene from Ju On.

"... Won't it be weird to put these where you're sleeping?" Hao Ren looked at Vivian sympathetically. He believed that even if the vampire was a kind enough soul, he should not be taking advantage of her like this. Who would have liked to sleep among caskets anyway?

"If you're not okay with this, I can move them upstairs. With two to three pods per room, there shouldn't be a problem. We have four empty rooms at any rate."

Once again, Vivian shook her head. "It's fine. It does feel like home with them."

Hao Ren then recalled that the vampire had slept in a casket before and spent many nights sleeping at the grave yard. Of course being surrounded by caskets seemed like home to her.

The MDT then floated to the front of Hao Ren and displayed the operating manual. Just as Raven 23333 said, the pods were very easy to use. They even supported mental input which made them accessible to even the dumbest of the Imperial citizens. (Hao Ren figured that higher end, military grade stuff would be much, much more complex.) It did not take long for Hao Ren to figure out the basics of the pods. He was even more impressed that each pod came with its own AI support and MDT dock, allowing the system to perform any automatic correction should the new user screw up somewhere.

Hao Ren grew curious of how Raven 12345 and Raven 23333 managed to wreck a device that even Lil Pea could learn to use. Got to give it to the crazy goddess though, she could even blew up the Reconfiguration Chamber, which only had a single button.

As he prattled on about the goddess to himself, Hao Ren forgot that he was connected to the MDT and his thoughts were being shared to it. The latter shook itself as it adopted a lazy tone to explain: "The reason that all Ravens were not able to use technological stuff is not because they can't remember the operational steps but, they always have to do something unnecessary. Most of the time you just need to wait for the system to start itself up but, they just had to use spells to do some 'enhancement' and wreck things in the process. All of the Ravens come with the knowledge to use technological stuff however, all of them have this 'I can do better than this' quirk. There's no exception to that... I guess it's because all of them came from the same template."

Hao Ren gave the MDT a perplexed look. "And this sort of information is disclosed to the public?"

"Why not? It's available on the Main Data Network. The earliest thread was about 2000 years ago."

Hao Ren was surprised. "Isn't this blasphemy? Don't the goddesses take issue with it?"

"The thread was started by His Majesty himself."

Hao Ren was at a lost for words.

Lily by then, had been circling the caskets for a good part of the day. She had in her hand, a multi-socket plug. "Where are the plugs for these things?"

"You expect a mere 220V to power such high tech stuff?" Hao Ren leered as he flicked Lily's ears. "The pods are self-powered. They use a micro-reactor furnace located in a sub-dimension for power. Once in operation, this machine will function to the world's end if it's not broken. Come, stop fiddling with it. I need to brief you guys on some stuff."

Hao Ren clapped and the crew gathered in front of him. Hao Ren pointed at the caskets. "This thing here will slow down our metabolism to the point where we're almost frozen and will sustain us while we are in the The Plane of Dreams. We won't have to worry about of dying from hunger. The basic concept you need to understand about bringing someone into the dream plane is the synchronisation of the mind. These cas... sleeping pods will synchronise our minds and use me as a 'guiding light' of sorts to lead all of you to The Plane of Dreams. Simply put, all of you will enter my dream and follow me to dream plane. Remember to stay close to me. You might be booted out of the server if you stray too far.

Lily quipped excitedly, "So.. you're like the WiFi?"

Hao Ren glared at Lily for a while and then he remembered something. "Oh right, Lily, do you know how to do dentures for canines?"