The Record of Unusual Creatures

Just as Vivian spoke, a gust of wind blew through the forest and onto everyone’s face.

In the breeze, everyone heard cries of combat, as a dark, brooding, vomit-inducing aura assaulted them.

Everyone looked at each other as Hao Ren tapped the carriage. “Let’s head over.”

The magitech vehicle rumbled on as the modified engines smoothly increased its output, and the three caravans sped across the forest path and the breeze did not stop during this journey as the sound of combat and killing were sounding more real by the moment.

This direction was the same as Rheia’s instincts, and Hao Ren placed quite a lot of trust in Rheia’s instinct as a god, and now he was sure that he was approaching the ‘heart’ of the forest.

The caravans passed through another two forks and another thick forest, and finally the forest path came to an end as the caravans charged out of the woods into a vast open place.

No one thought that there were such vast open grounds within the Black Forest, and on this vast area, an apocalyptic battle was taking place.

The thick woods had stopped abruptly as the land before them looked like a country within the forest with vast flatland and a sea of buildings. Hao Ren did not know how this place looked like during peace time, but now all he could see was the fires of war and a sea of corpses.

Massive pillars of flame were lit everywhere as tall buildings in the distance were collapsing among the flames and smoke as warriors clad in argent armor fought bravely against the invaders. They held energy shields and photon blades or used guns or magic staves against their enemies, and the foes were the same monsters that had previously appeared in the woods and all sorts of other horrific creatures.

The monsters were like a rushing tide, and they were no less stronger than the argent warriors. Hao Ren saw the argent warriors were reeling under the intense weight of the attack. They were formed into squads of ten as they combined with others to form an army-wide shield, and even it was a combined shield, they were hard-pressed against the black tide of monsters and the shimmering shields soon died off one by one like fireflies in a mudslide.

And in the center of the battlefield was a particularly big cluster of buildings. It looked like a city and was the place the warriors were defending to the last.

A bright shield lit the skies above the city as dozens of glowing spires stood within the city center, some of the spires were maintaining the barrier’s energy nodes while some were pointing straight into the sky, as a blinding beam was being shot up into the open sky.

That was the first thing everyone saw the moment they got out of the thick forest.

“W…Watch out!” One of the guard captains had recovered as he drew his sword, his voice slightly distorted due to the high pitch yell.

Charlemagne quickly stopped the rash soldiers, “Calm down! These are all phantoms!”

The prince himself was nervous, and there was even cold sweat down his forehead, but he still managed to discern the real identity of the images before him, this was because a white flame had just exploded not too far away from the caravan, and he did not feel any heat or shock wave.

With Charlemagne’s forceful command, only did the guards did realize that the bloody battlefield was also an illusion of the Black Forest and calmed down a little. But they still held their blades tight and dared not relax.

After all with such a massive illusion before them, even when fake, danger still lurked within the illusions.

“This illusion is different from the ones before,” Hao Ren too was surprised by the scene before him, but he was much calmer than everyone present. As he spoke he turned towards Rheia, “The scale is massive, and it seemed to have lasted quite a while now, and it’s continuing.”

“There’s no smell…” Rheia suddenly blurted out something that seemingly had nothing to do with the matter at hand, “Regardless if it is a shade of falsehood or a phantom, it does not have any smell.”

Hao Ren was stunned for a moment, before turning towards Vivian, “Wait, Vivian, you said you smelt blood earlier?”

“Yes, and I can still faintly sense it now,” Vivian pointed towards her nose, “My sense of smell is not like Doggie’s, but my ability to sense blood is not totally dependent on my nose, I’m pretty sure my senses are on point.”

“There are not only phantoms here,” Hao Ren quickly made a judgment, “Stay alert everyone. Vivian, lead the way please.”

Vivian nodded as she pointed towards the direction of the city, “The aura is coming from that building clusters.”

Everyone had stepped into the ‘battlefield’.

Going through such realistic phantoms was the first for Charlemagne and his men as countless monsters and unknown soldiers were killing, bleeding and dying before their very eyes. The cries of battle, the smoke, and the explosions were all so real, aside from not being able to smell the smoke, everyone could hardly believe that these were phantoms but phantoms they were.

They were going through the brutal battlefield as they zipped through no-mans-land, and every phantom, monster or human, went past them.

Hao Ren had the MDT turn on the recording mode and he himself widened his eyes as well, not letting every detail of the battlefield escape him.

The army before the city were almost overrun as the argent warriors were being torn apart in a one-sided fashion as the monsters tore at the warrior’s defensive line and bodies, destroying and immolating everything in their path and yet the valiant warriors were standing fast, not buckling even under the one -sided slaughter, and neither showing signs of retreating.

They were defending the city, defending to the last man as if the fall of the city heralded the end of the world.

Aside from the almost overrun army outside the city, the only remaining combat ability was the defensive turrets on the outer city walls.

Hao Ren saw the city had a ring of glowing alloy walls, and there were countless of long-rail cannons installed on the top and outer rings as blinding electricity leap between the rails and following an ear-piercing blast, the shells, and plasma, accelerated to ten times the speed of sound crashed against the monster horde outside the city, and yet, these powerful attacks could only slightly slow the monsters down.

Another shriek broke through the sky, the sound came from above as Hao Ren looked up, he saw a black, spindle-like object was descending from the sky. And from the directions it was fired from, countless of massive silhouettes dotted the tainted skyline.

The city’s anti-air defenses had not stopped firing even for a moment, perhaps they had already been taking out the sky-borne attack for a long while now, and they were clearly at their limit.

The spindle-like objects smashed violently against the city’s barrier as it exploded into globs of mud and as the mud slid down the shield, every location where it had contact with the shield let out a blinding light.

Frantic anti-air alarms rang all across the city.

Hao Ren gently knocked on the MDT’s shell, and only uttered a word. “Analyze.”

“Seems like a rail gun bombardment. Based on the attacker’s silhouette and attack strength, there is a high probability it coming from low orbit.”

“Why do the defenders not have any air power?”

“Probably all taken out, based on their level of technology, it is impossible for them to not have any air force, and their absence could only mean that they had been wiped out.”

“Technology level?”

“At least planetary level, and considering their shield technology is unusually advanced, this can be revised upwards.”

Hao Ren nodded and did not ask any further, he trained his sights on Rheia who was at the front of the carriage staring at the scenes around her, “The L’Haronne you had seen nine thousand years ago probably did not have this sort of technology.”

“Of course not, and I have not seen this war either. The L’Haronne I saw was isolated and peaceful, and

while there will be a few lunatics who would pop up to destroy the world, most of the time they are taken out by the local heroes even before managing to destroy a village. There was never such a battle of this scale.”

“What you saw was that few hundred years, and this war clearly happened before that,” Hao Ren looked at Rheia, “And the past wasn’t some half-past six thing, it had probably gone beyond a civilization’s era… a space-borne invader, a well-oiled anti-air/anti-space defensive weapons. This is beyond a planet that is isolated in the sea of chaos that doesn’t even know what the atmosphere was.”

The caravans had arrived before the argent walls.

There were no entrance or exit on the walls as a clear, curved mirror blocked their path. Considering the battle outside, even if this city had a gate, it would probably be sealed shut.

The battlefield were phantoms of the past, and thus the walls were naturally so as well, as the seamless wall would not be able to stop them, at least in theory, but just as the caravan was about to enter the city, Rheia called out to Hao Ren.

“It’s not all phantoms here, there are some real objects here. We may crash into something if we are not careful.”

As she said that, the tiny goddess looked at the wall before her, and sighed. “We can go through this, let’s go.”

A massive part of the wall disappeared along with the goddess’ sigh.

Hao Ren then saw a blackened, collapsed wall, from the wreckage of the alloy and composite materials he could still tell that this was originally part of the wall, but now they had collapsed onto the ground and were covered by earth.

Vines grew along the wreckage and seemed to have been growing for a long while now, centuries even.

Hao Ren looked back at the battlefield, and the army was overrun and the monsters surging towards the walls. Clearly the soldiers were pretty much sent to their deaths, and the defenders had never thought they could hold on for long, and never thought to preserve their men, the army outside the city, was just a measure to buy time.

And now, the battlefield was slowly being swallowed by the creeping vines of the Black Forest, and in the Forest, there were no signs of the battlefield.

Perhaps the Black Forest had grown on top of a ruin, Hao Ren could not help but ponder.

But there were ruins of the city that were left behind, just like the forest path outside, leaving a permanent mark in this world where truth and falsehood crossed one another.

“How do we know which is real and which is fake here?” Lily could not help but ask, “Is there anything… ‘real’ about the Black Forest?”

Rheia’s answer was simple. “Only the inbetween.”