The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-404

Chapter 404: The Demonic Plane

Y’zaks old place was in a universe at the outer rims of the Empire’s borders. In fact, with the great expansion ten thousand yearas ago, the Empire had claimed plenty of uncultivated space. And this ‘reserve land’ had only the most basic of sovereignity hubs and monitoring outposts, and Y’zaks place did not even have a World Gate.

Hao Ren was planning a one-way teleportation for departure, and manual navigation to return. His plan was to use the World Gate to be ‘catapulted’ over to Y’zaks homeworld, while using the Petrachelys’ void drives to slowly make their way back. That was his conclusion after studying the World Gate’s activation rules and that could save them loads of time as well.

The ship soon arrived at the magnificent gate in deep space. It was a sight to behold as ever, and the traffic of various civilsations going in and out of the gate was as busy as ever. Only here, in the deep void of space that you could see so many extraordinary races and civilisations in the universe. This was the first time Lanina saw the World Gate, and was immediately stunned beyond words by the magnificence of the planet-sized structure. As the ship slowly approached the lightscreen, the succubus’ tail tied into a knot subconciously. This was a display of anxiousness.

“Ten thousand years ago there was no one-way launching capability,” The MDT explained as it slotted itself on the console. “Then, World Gates need to be present on both ends, one being the launching point, and the other the receiving point. Breakthroughs were made later for one-way launches and the World Gate could now serve as a guiding launch pad. I have already sent the coordinates to the World Gate and it will send us close to our destination. Of course, we will have to do it manually for the return leg.”

Hao Ren thought for a moment, “There won’t be any problem? If lets say a civilian vessel without a void drive accidentally entered the one-way launch bay, would it be stranded?”

“What do you think the Sovereignity Hubs are for? Looking pretty?” The MDT considered the question juvenile. “The Sovereignity Hubs have the ability to monitor the data transmission of every world, and similar to the control terminals used by the Celestials, it is to prevent unauthorised entry. Every person passing through the gate would be scanned, and any unauthorised persons or vessels would immediately be transferred back. Of course, there are extremely rare occurences of leakages, but those are very small data packets, similar to a human’s data. The ‘traveller from a different universe’ is basically this.”

Lanina did not understand the weird technological mumbo jumbo that was spouted by the MDT. She stared intently at the fast approaching lightscreen. As she realised that the real size of the structure could not be measured by eyes alone, she finally believed that Raven12345 and Hao Ren can be relied upon. She then popped the question, “This gate… was it created by your Goddess?”

There were reverence in her high pitch voice.

Hao Ren was checking on the ship status when she asked the question. Without turning back, “No, she did not. But that is under her supervision.”

Lanina took a deep breath, “So… if she’s that almighty, why she didn’t fix that house of hers?”

Hao Ren was truly confused and turned towards Y’zaks. “Old man, was there something wrong with your education? Why is this lady here so insistent about fixing house?”

Y’zaks covered his face with his hand, “Lets just leave it at that. You do your stuff. Any normal person who saw your house and then the World Gate would have the same reaction.”

Shrugging his shoulders, and after eyeing the information holograph, Hao Ren announced. “Hold on tight, we are almost ready to launch. This is a one-way launch, so expect a little rattling.”

As he finished, the Petrachelys hyper-accelerated into the almost borderless lightscreen, and only stardust lay in their wake.

After some violent shaking for a good while, things started to settle down. Lily climbed up from under her chair as she tugged Hao Ren’s pants. “Mr Landlord, you said there would be rattling? You call that rattling?”

Hao Ren stood up, still dazed from the experience. After confirming that the ship had reacted the coordinates, he pulled Lily up from the ground. He noticed that almost everyone was getting up with the exception of Y’zaks. That big dude seems to be stuck to the chair. Even the violent shaking did not make him budge.

Hao Ren slapped on the MDT, “Why was there such a violent shaking? One-way launches are like this?”

“Nonsense, you think that one-way launches are leisure services?” The MDT buzzed from the command console. “Only the military, or civil servants of the Empire would need to use the one-way launch. Most common races cannot use it. Besides, it’s standard Imperial facilities, the most notable trait being solid and reliable, so who have the time to consider comfort as a priority…. Help me. I’m stuck…”

Hao Ren used a chopstick as leverage to get the MDT out from the console as he looked at the holographic display of the scenery outside. “So we are here?”

The Petrachelys was floating above a roiling dark crimson cloud, and that gave out a vibe of an endless red smog, the light was eeriely dim as well, and you could scarely tell the light source. Hao Ren used the optical sensors to take pictures of the surrounding; there were no sun or any bright celestial bodies nearby. Only within the crimson clouds was a huge mountain range of sorts.

Y’zaks looked at the area and quickly realised where they were at. “We maybe inside the Herm Smoke Pillars. This is indeed a save space to enter. No one would open a dimensional gate here.”

He then pointed to a direction towards the red smog. “Over there.”

Hao Ren reconfirmed that there were no anomalies around the Petrachelys and let the MDT pilot the ship out of the smog.

The roiling thick red clouds seems almost impenetrable, but it soon thinned as the ship made its way through the clouds and outside of the ‘Herms Smoke Pillars’. The lay of the land now lay bare before them.

An eerie crimson land stretched on for miles on end, and the hue of the land seemed like it was blood-soaked, a rather scary image to have. The land was bereft of any green vegetation and the uneven terrain was dotted with many odd looking objects, from this distance, you’d be hard pressed to tell if those were the local flora. From the ship, they say rivers and valleys, plains and hills, but all had that unnerving blood red tint to them.

One of the mountains in the distance had some bright, winding, sinew-like flow to it and upon zooming in, Hao Ren realised it was a lava waterfall!

The skies above the crimson-tinted land were equally brooding. Thick clouds roiled acropss the skies as if there was something burning eternally behind the clouds. From a distance, streaks of lights raced across the horizon, and it was thunderous, almost as if falling meteorites were igniting the atmosphere.

“F*ck me….” Hao Ren gawked at the very inhospitable and hellish scene before him. “Your place sure is taking survival to the next level.”

Y’zaks looked longingly at the scene, and nodded nostalgically. “Ahh… I can finally see my old place again…”

Hao Ren rolled his eyes, “Should have just thrown you on Mars back then. That would probably ease your nostalgic itch.”

Y’zaks retorted with a seriously. “No way. Mars is too chilly, not even comparable to the warmth of my old place…”

Hao Ren let the ship look for a suitable landing site by the plains, and used the optical sensors to look at what the Herm Smoke Pillars is about. What he say was a sky-scraping great wall of smoke and it was bellowing smoke and dust all over the place. He could not even get a proper view of the thing. After letting the ship run couple of hundred of kilometers ahead only then he managed to get the full view of the scale. It was gaseous pillar that came from the core of the planet and had managed to pierce the sky. There were no signs of it spreading all over the land, almost like a smooth heavenly pillar.

The magnificence of the scene had everyone in awe.

Hao Ren then realised something: He was truly in the land of the demons, and caution was the name of the game. Anything that could survive in this hellhole and still wage world wars are not to be trifled with!