The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-1757-30041322

Chapter 1757: The Engine Is Complete

The familiar dizziness struck again, but this time around it was shorter than the time they entered the illusory world. Hao Ren simply felt everything before him turn black in a flash, and by the time he felt his feet touch solid ground again, he realized that he was surrounded by the silver platform.

The giant discs still floated before him, and Rheia was standing on his left-hand side while Lemendusa was in a corner not too far away. Vivian, on the other hand, was on his right, and she was staring at him with curious wide eyes as she checked on him.

Hao Ren’s sudden opening of his eyes scared Vivian. “Whoa!”

She then waved it off. “I saw the discs grew dim but you two were not awake, so I came over to have a look.”

Hao Ren held his head as he tried to clear his muddled mind. “Uh…. we stayed in the illusory world a bit longer.”

“I’m giddy… giddy…” Rheia too had woken up at the same time, and as she had used her powers to open up the illusory world, so even a true god like her suffered the same dizziness like Hao Ren, and she was clearly not used to this sensation. “I’m not doing that again…”

When he heard Rheia’s voice, Hao Ren turned over to look at the goddess of creation, and the latter too had turned over, and as both of their eyes met just like that. The atmosphere soon turned very awkward.

As he recalled the things he saw in the illusory world, nothing he said would have been appropriate… perhaps if he should ask if the goddess about her heartrending experience?

Hao Ren pondered for a bit and decided to not be a mouth-breather at this point.

“The two of you…” Vivian looked at Hao Ren and Rheia curiously and felt something was off with the two. “What have you done? Both of you had entered the ‘illusory world’? What did you see there?”

Hao Ren was just about to open his mouth as he saw Lemendusa casting a similar curious glance over, and quickly turned whatever words he had originally intended to say into a series of coughs. “Ahem ahem, similar to that we saw last time, I’ll tell you the details later.”

Rheia also nodded with a deadpan face. “Yes, yes. We went to see what Hao Ren had seen back then. Nothing too big.”

The two were not lying, as they had indeed seen what Hao Ren did when he first entered the illusory world, but this time around, it was in the first-person view…

While she felt something was still off, Vivian still played along with Hao Ren and changed the topic. “Oh… so what about the Gilded Disc?”

Hao Ren and Rheia were relieved as soon as they heard that, and they had indeed checked the disc for the reason of its malfunction before they left, and Rheia nodded. “It should work fine now.”

Lemendusa took a step forward and bowed as he asked, “Mother, the reason for the malfunction was…”

“The memory of the divine had interfered with the disc’s original processes.” Rheia motioned. “Part of my memory fragments had attached itself to the disc, and while it was minuscule, not even fit to be called a shred of memory but due to its high-level nature it had interfered with the normal functions of the disc. I have retrieved the fragment and have clean it up as well, so the disc should work fine now.”

Lemendusa was relieved. “That is good. Then, the final assembly of the Creation’s Engine can be completed.”

“Do it now,” Rheia commanded. “Since I’m here, I may as well see it with my own eyes.”

“As you wish.” Lemendusa acknowledged the order and started the arrangement for the assembly process for the Gilded Disc and the activation process of the Heart of God as well as the Creation’s Engine.

The platform moved closer to the orbital surface of the Creation’s Engine to allow Rheia to inspect the activation process up close. The three Gilded Discs floated toward the massive gap behind the engine under the guidance of the tractor beams while with a group of engineering robots’ help, a large number of cables and seemingly solid light currents were pulled out from the interior of the engine and were affixed to the connection ports by the side of the Gilded Discs and the Heart of God floating near the gap.

The entire connection process was still down outside the Creation’s Engine, and while Rheia was sure that she had resolved the ‘error’ of the Gilded Disc, precaution was still needed in a massive engineering work like this, and to prevent any other unforeseen situations, before the whole process was completed without a hitch, Lemendusa had no plans of putting the Heart of God into the Creation’s Engine.

The tensed waiting process had someone soothed Hao Ren’s awkwardness, and as he looked at the assembly robots in the distance doing their work, he felt totally like a maintenance crew that had finally had his long-awaited leave approved and was taking a last look at the server room before leaving, he really hoped that nothing goes wrong at this juncture…

As his nervousness overtook him, Hao Ren even invoked the rarely mentioned Raven 12345’s name in prayers. “Please let nothing bad happen. I’ll exchange Raven 12345’s place being blown up three times to have this project complete successfully…”

Vivian, who was by his side, dropped her jaw when she heard that. “As a pope, do you feel no shame reciting such a prayer?”

“The scripture has mentioned that only the most sincere of prayers will come true, and nowhere does it say it needs to be nice, it’s all about sincerity,” Hao Ren said with a straight face. “More importantly, it’s not like she can hear me over here…”

On the other hand, the connection between the Heart of God and the Creation’s Engine had reached its most crucial phase.

All of the connection facilities had already been prepared, and the entire system just only lacked the Gilded Disc. Now that everything was in place, with Lemendusa’s command, the last energy tubing was finally connected to the power core of the Creation’s Engine.

“Physical connection online. Power core online. All connections green. All monitoring nodes, initiate final inspection…”

Over on the platform, the flat AI voice broadcast from the manufactorium, and following the reports that came, Lemendusa looked at Rheia.

The tiny goddess of creation was never calmer before, and she nodded. “Activate it.”

“The activation command has been given. Activate the Creation’s Engine!”

It was a magnificent moment.

The golden outer shell of the Creation’s Engine suddenly turned ethereal before solidifying again. Rows upon rows of white-blue light streamed rapidly through the gaps of the metal surface, making the man-made planet glow like a heart that was being pumped with blood, and within the glow, the originally inanimate object actually gave off the vibe that it was “alive”.

Following that, an endless stream of light radiated from the Creation’s Engine, and the light engulfed every starlight across the vast universe, and yet it was not blinding. Hao Ren felt an incomparable power surged over him, and if this power was meant to use offensively, it was more than enough to annihilate him, and was enough to even kill a true god!

Yet this power was controlled. With the activation process proceeding smoothly, the radiance was quickly retracted, and Hao Ren saw the seemingly solid light return to the engine’s shell, and the moment the radiance faded away, he saw a phantom appearing in the dark void behind the Creation’s Engine.

The dimension there was shaking as an ethereal object appeared, there was a dark-red planet in space, and the planet was made out of multiple protrusions and a sea of flesh with multiple complex pieces of machinery were spotted on the rents on the mantle. Its size was almost identical to the Creation’s Engine, but unlike the Creation’s Engine which exuded an aura of life, it reeked of death and decay.

As this unholy celestial body faded away, a pale figure appeared in its place. She bore a face similar to Rheia, but there was nary an emotion or warmth on her face. She gazed icily at the Creation’s Engine, Hao Ren, and the rest as a voice that crossed the boundaries of dimensions rang directly in their minds. “…Futile.”

The phantoms then disappeared and the shuddering dimension was normal again, and Lemendusa, who was already ready to smash the alarm stood there stunned, as he asked Rheia in a daze, “Mother… that was…”

“A resonance, just as I had expected,” Rheia said softly. “The goddess of annihilation had completed her engine… and with ours of the same source, it is inevitable for something like this to happen when it is activated.”

“Wow, that’s some bloody smug attitude over there.” the MDT’s voice suddenly rang from the side. “The higher one’s horse is the harder they fall, such a simple saying yet so difficult to understand. She actually thinks that once she had merged with the Lord of Madness she’s invincible. It was just bad timing, if I was instead on the production line of the mainframe of an Eternal-class battleship back then, I’d plaster her face with a barrage so hard her mother won’t even recognize her…”

The sudden rambling caught Hao Ren by surprise. “F*ck me… since when did you arrive?!”

“Just about when you were reciting the part where our boss gets blown up.” The MDT shook its frame. “Bloody hell, you guys really just left after opening the gate. I wanted to catch up but I was a tad slow and got caught by your daughter. She even almost pried my casing open…”

“… You did not record that right?” Hao Ren asked gingerly.

“What are you so nervous about? You’re not the only pope in the galaxy to pray for our Goddess to get blown up.” The MDT snorted nonchalantly. “Say… the Creation’s Engine… is it completed now?”

Everyone’s gaze turned towards the void.

A faint gold man-made star was floating in the deep dark, brimming with energy as a layer of radiance covered it.

It was originally designed to delete everything with a trace of divinity in this world, and now, after Rheia’s reprogramming, it was now a weapon capable of breaching the Mad Lord’s defense and directly attacking the Prison of the Dark Abyss.

“Now our trump card is at hand,” Rheia said. “The main show… will start very soon.”

“We’ll need to visit the surface world for a bit,” Hao Ren said to the MDT. “There’s something that we need Raven 12345’s help.”