The Record of Unusual Creatures

Hao Ren felt that he had gained an incredible innate ability. The ability that his target will self-destruct fifty percenty of the time when he wants them taken alive. It was not only the escaped brain monster, but this commander as well. Just as he ordered that the commander be taken alive, the god-of-war-like commander suddenly started chanting something with his sword raised before a blinding light shot out of his body, leaving no one any time to react. A powerful heatwave soon followed the shockwave of the explosion.

“Watch out!” Hao Ren could only yell out a short warning before grabbing a handful of her fur to pull her aside. Lily was still busying chomping the metal tincat in her mouth and reacted a tad bit slowly, and was sent flying by the shockwave a dozen of so meters away before smashing against the temple wall. Thankfully she was more physically robust and a mere heatwave would not do any damag against her, but that did scared her silly.

The one injured was Hao Ren. He was still clinging on to Lily’s fur around the scapula and when the husky smashed against the wall, Hao Ren was caught in the middle. Even when his steel membrane shield had taken out most of the impact, he was still in a daze..

Lily slowly slid down the temple wall and with a shake of her head she regained her balance. Hao Ren clambered up her neck in a sorry state. As he shake his head he grumbled. “Whose foot did I bloody stepped on… F*ck, he really went to blow himself up. That hardcore?”

He looked up at where the traitor commander once stood and there was nothing but a crater and molten metal and rocks flowed freely in the crater while a cackling thunderbolt darted about was slowly weakening. Y’zaks looked at crater before speaking resignedly. “Nothing but liquid now.”

“F*ck, that was a rare chance to capture one alive!” Hao Ren sled down from Lily’s forelimb. As the fighting early was so brutal with each side not giving other any quarter, lets not even mention sparing anyone, there was not even an intact corpse left. Hao Ren too noted the fact and sighed. “Forget it, I have sent out the probes from the ship, maybe there are enemy units that have not retreated…Hmm.. Lily what are you chomping on?”

He had only realised that Lily was still chewing on something as the sound of grating metal came from her mouth. As the latter heard Hao Ren’s question she let out a puzzled “Awoo?” before spitting the thing in her mouth out.

It was a traitor soldier in a torn armor and wounds all over.

The soldier was in a state so sorry it was beyond imagining. He had became Lily’s tooth grinder for a good ten odd minutes and his armor was pretty much given a total makeover with only bits and pieces of metal and cloth hanging on his body. The wounds and gnashes all over his body did not need to be further described, but yet, he was still alive, and looked perfectly intact. Even the gory wounds were nothing more than flesh wound.

The treacherous children had remade their body to be as tough as a werelwolf, and they have an even stronger set of magic and armor for protection, plus a whole set of bizzare trinkets that no one could identify it is was scientific or magical in nature. As the soldier had suffered the indignity of being chewing in a giant dog’s mouth for a good while, he was still in a daze after being spat out and struggled to stand. No one knew if the physical or the psychological wounds were more severe.

Yet Hao Ren did not care about this, he was elated and the first thing he did was to let the MDT smash into the poor sod’s head again to take him out. If Hao Ren was not wrong this was the second time the fellow was hit by the MDT in the head. As expected, the soldier grunted before falling unconcious, never finding out what actually knocked him out.

Hao Ren pulled out a droid and a bunch of restricting equipments before tying the traitor soldier like a ball of yarn. As an additionap precaution, Hao Ren had stuffed the poor sod into an crystal capsule meant for dangerous samples to prevent the soldier from self-destructing after regaining conciousness. Only then, did he patted Lily’s paws (the latter was just too massive, and with Hao Ren’s height, her paws was what he could manage.) “Good job!”

Lily grunted with a nod in acceptance of the praise before spitting out another item to the side. A ruined metallic boot.

Hao Ren saw many metallic bits and pieces still hanging between the giant husky’s teeth and reminded her. “Don’t change back yet, there’s a whole load of stuff stuck in your teeth. I’ll get the droids to give your teeth a brush later.”

Lily happily nudged Hao Ren with her snout before licking the latter half way into the air before turning heroically towards the temple complex. Muru was looking after his wounded comrade. The latter had been fighting the treacherous children for a good while now and there were no part of his body that was not somehow wounded. Luckily, he was still alive, and with the guardians powerful vitality, recovery does not seem to be difficult. He used the temple gate to support himself, confusing in his eyes as he looked at Muru. “I never thought that reinforcements would come… Which temple you’re from?”

“It’s complicated.” Muru did not know where to start before pointing towards Hao Ren. “These are our new allies, they brought me here.”

The guardian had not noticed a puny creature like Hao Ren earlier and there were many hostile traitor aura disrupting his senses and he did not pick up Hao Ren and Lily’s unique aura. Only when he was reminded by Muru that he realised something, and his first reaction was to reach for his weapons, exclaiming. “This aura… They are the treach…”

“Stop! Stop! Calm down!” Hao Ren had expected such a reaction and did not go close. As the guardian was about to attack him he too yelled back. “I’m not a treacherous child! We are not related!”

“Calm down my brother.” Muru too had stretched his arms out to hold on to the guardian’s arms and with some force managed to disarm the guardian. As the latter was already weakened, he did not resist. “I’ve mentioned, things are complicated. They are not the treacherous children, only having the same, or similar bloodline.”

The temple guardian’s eyes shifted between Hao Ren and Muru, not comprehending the situation before him. “What is the meaning of this? My brother, I trust that your will can never be bent, but these people…”

Muru immediately interjected. “Did you know that the Solenne Gateway was thrown into a timeflux?”

“A timeflux?” The temple guardian obviously knew what the term means, but did not immediately relate it to the present situation. “The timeflow here is distorted?”

“It was slowed down. While I don’t know the cause, but the Solenne Gateway was thrown into a bizzare dimension and had loss all contact with the universe beyond. I have searched for many years to return.” Muru’s voice was deep. “The time here was slowed down to a crawl, and when we first arrived here, we found out that there was a vast different in timeflow between the planet and the main universe, so…”

The Guardians are a very knowledgeable race and the temple guardian immediately understood Muru. “How… many years have it been?”

Muru opened his mouth, but words failed him on how to describe the present situation. Y’zaks then stepped forward. “The fall of Solenne was ten thousand years ago.”

Muru nodded in affirmation.

The Guardians would not lie to their own kin, this was the ironclad rule that the Goddess had set when designing their soul. The temple guardian’s facial expression stiffened, he probably had a hard time digesting what was going on. After pondering for a moment, he looked up, pointing towards Hao Ren and Lily, “So they are…”

“Probably the blood descendents of the treacherous children, or just having similar aura.” Muru looked at Hao Ren before nodding. “They have been apart from their ancestors for ten thousand years, and they even came from a different universe altogether. As you can see, they are on our side.”

While Muru too was cautious towards Hao Ren, but after spending time together and knowing the truth of things, the guardian had let go of his prejudice.