The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren did not expect Rheia to go berserk after entering combat. With countless divine words coiling around her, and a glowing sacred tome before her, yet she was cursing her heart out, cursing till the entire universe trembled, and if her group of devotees were to see her pulling that off now, at least a good ninety percent would have their faith shattered…

After all, those adherents had just only accepted the fact that their goddess was a cheerful loli with an arm on her waist and another showing the victory sign…

Rheia’s rage was also clearly beyond the goddess of annihilation’s expectation, and for a moment she was on the back foot. But not because Rheia’s verbal tirade had any effect on her since she had already fused with the Mad Lord, chaos and destruction was now hers. Even if Rheia’s cursing ability was any stronger it would not even faze her, the thing that got the goddess of annihilation on the back foot was Rheia’s myriad of attacks.

Regardless if it was to directly rewrite the laws to neutralize the power of chaos, or to use the divine words to restore the dimensional order, this was unknown to her. She had thought that as she was the same as Rheia, she could master the latter’s combat rhythm, but that was a mistake from the beginning.

“Where… did you get all these powers?!” The goddess of annihilation was once again forced to teleport away from Rheia’s area of attack, and she had totally lost her composure and started to feel flustered. “What have you done… in this mere few months?!”

Rheia smiled as she flipped her notebook to a new page. “What have I done? I was studying, I was studying nonstop, completing exercises every moment, completing my homework every moment! You will never understand what knowledge is power means, but now… have a taste of studying!”

Numerous runes appeared across millions of kilometers across the dimension, and the dimension consumed and torn apart by the goddess of annihilation was quickly restored by the runes, but just as the runes were half-way done, a shapeless force swept through the battlefield and snuffed out the runes.

“I have no interest in the source of your powers. Your party tricky may be better than last time, but it is meaningless.” The goddess of annihilation reappeared once again in the universe, and behind her, the changes were apparent on the dark, shrouded star. Countless dark red lights were moving within the fog, and the fog itself was slowly drained by the light, turning thin. “I do have to thank you, if you had not so mindless spread your divine powers about, this engine may not be completed so soon…”

The clouds around the dark star had finally faded away, and its hideous, revolting form had finally appeared before everyone. Hao Ren’s impression of it was that it was a blob of metal, rock, flesh, and bones being mushed up together, and these totally different materials were all piled upon each other forming the body of that abomination of a star. A cuticle-like crust had cracks all over it, and beneath the rents were rotten flesh, and between the flesh were complex metal structures, and all these objects writhed continuously, and the writhing objects formed a human face-like structure on the surface on the planet.

Compared to the image that they saw through the resonance when the Creation’s Engine was completed, the shock seeing the ‘Annihilation Engine’ directly was more apparent.

As she saw the Annihilation Engine, Rheia demurred and spoke after a long while. “I knew that you completed it.”

“And you are powerless to stop it.” The goddess of annihilation stood in the air, her hands held wide open, and her pale form became a symbol with the dark star as a backdrop. “You could only sneak it the way you did earlier, but even when you had managed to get through, you are powerless to destroy or strop the engine’s activation. My ‘sister’… you should be very clear what this thing is based on…”

The face surface of the dark star was getting clearer and clearer, and within that expression was endless hatred and suffering. Rheia looked at it but did not take any evasive or defensive actions. “As long as it can latch on to my divinity, the Divinity Annihilation mode will activate right?”

“Say your farewells.” The goddess of annihilation smirked. “After this universe is annihilated, there will be no one left to remember you.”

And the dark star activated.

A massive, bottomless stream of energy was bound, focused and then converted into a force powerful enough to affect the operation of the universe, powerful enough to wipe out the powers of a god. A huge number of dark appendages spread out and disappeared into the space, connecting with the universe’s basic data, then it started “looking” for the unique trait of the goddess of creation amongst the basic data, and prepared to wipe out this part of the data from the universe around it.

However, the goddess of annihilation had a slight change in her expression. She was a little puzzled, as Rheia had not taken any action at all, while Hao Ren, his swords in hand was staying far away from the battlefield doing absolutely nothing, and in fact, since the battle started Hao Ren had barely even contributed, the ones fighting were both Rheia and the goddess of annihilation.

As for Vivian… Vivian had already hidden away somewhere since the beginning, and she was nowhere to be found.

But her puzzlement only lasted a moment, as the dark red light flowed within the dark star had reached its peak, and regardless of what the goddess of creation had planned, it was all too late now.

The engine had completed its search for the goddess of creation’s data, but what returned was an error 404.

The dark red light on the dark star’s surface quickly faded away, and the writhing things on it suddenly shuddered violently as if they were electrocuted. A series of explosions soon ignited from within the crust, ripping those thick cuticles and rocks out of its foundation, and sending massive debris flying in every direction.

It was totally silent, yet magnificent at the same time.

“Wha… How is that possible?!”

The goddess of annihilation had not reacted like this even when Rheia was cursing and flinging a bunch of ultimate finishers at her. The shock she felt now was far beyond the initial one, her painstaking plan to steal those Gilded Discs, and her efforts to create the Annihilation Engine were all for nothing.

She could have imagined Rheia using some tricks to block off the attack or accept that due to its inherent structural flaws, the engine had failed to activate, but she could not affect the fact that the engine had so mysteriously… blue-screened after activation.

In those few moments of shock, countless golden divine words appeared around her and locked all her movement dead, and Hao Ren, who was loafing about by the edge of the battlefield suddenly charged in and came crashing down with two deadly strokes courtesy of the twin Cosmic Shards.

The swords had visibly bit in, but an irresistible force suddenly struck back and Hao Ren was sent flying, and the divine binding Rheia had created flickered a few times before fading away.

The goddess of annihilation did not escape unscathed, and a scar finally appeared on her arm, but she was not concerned by it, and only glared furiously at Rheia. “What have you done?!”

“Just changed my account.” Rheia smirked, as many more divine words appeared around her. “But for you, you will never understand that.”

“Meaningless… totally meaningless…” The voice of the goddess of annihilation rang in everyone’s head, and the chaotic energy within the dimension grew stronger with her rage, and the stable dimension that Rheia had previously restored once again weakened, and Hao Ren, who had wanted to go for another blow too stopped, as he noticed there was another change in the dark star behind the goddess of annihilation.”

“It does not matter… If the engine cannot kill you, I can… but that only allows this pitiful universe a few extra moments…”

An innumerable amount of blood-red light stream faintly appeared between the goddess of annihilation and the dark star, and the Annihilation Engine, damaged earlier by the feedback was forcibly reactivated again, and for this massive divine artifact with endless supply of energy, that tiny explosions early was nothing, and in fact, the speed of its repairs were ahead of the damage done to it.

The dark red, blood-like light stream appeared once again on the surface of the star, and the writhing crust and flesh once again formed into a face, but this time around, it was the distorted face of the goddess of annihilation.

Even when the function to “annihilate a true god” had failed, the Annihilation Engine itself was still a potent weapon of war.

In that instance, the dimensional order started trembling and disintegrating, and the Dark Abyss, originally engulfed by darkness and chaos suddenly had a sea of stars in it as the distorted images of stars across the Plane of Dreams were projected into this dimension, as star systems big and small floated irregularly across the Dark Abyss, and that very moment, even this maddened place was beaming with starlight.

Nevertheless, in the abnormal starlight, dark torrents appeared out of thin air around the Annihilation Engine and surged towards Rheia and Hao Ren.

“Perish in chaos!!”

The voice of the goddess of annihilation roared in Hao Ren’s mind, and the accompanying mental taint clawed at his mind, and even his soul was shaken, yet a sudden toll of a bell calmed everything down.

The tolling reverberated across the silent void, and its omnipresence made it difficult to discern its origin, carrying a deep and mysterious aura.

As the bell tolled, a crimson moon suddenly enveloped the entire space.

The goddess of annihilation looked up in shock and saw a crimson moon appearing out of nowhere in the sky. It looked like a solid star, but it had an ethereal feel to it, and it was impossible to tell its exact location and distance just by looking, but she could clearly sense that the ‘energy’ from that crimson moon was interfering and suppressing the operation of the Annihilation Engine.

“That is…” the goddess of annihilation muttered to herself. Since she had almost the same memory as Rheia, she could easily discern the origin of the crimson moon. “A crimson moon… I remember now, it’s that tiny insect you had tossed over into the other universe… but her weak powers could never…”

“Of course you wouldn’t have known, because what I showed you was just a part of my memory.” Rheia could finally relish her smile now. “So you will totally have no idea that the engine that you had created… was just a half-finished product.”

The crimson moon hung high behind Rheia, and she spread her hands out, transforming into a symbol as well.

“The real Creation’s Engine comes in a bundle…”