The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-417

Chapter 417: An Impersonator?

As lame as Hao Ren was, he was simple and crude in method when it came to critical moment. Brute force was his key. What would people normally do when they want to steal from a safe? Hack the password and pry the safe open. But the first thought Hao Ren had in mind was to carry the box away…

Just when he raised his plasma arc welding spear and was about to cut the metal box, Lanina stopped him. “Wait a second!”

“What’s wrong?” Hao Ren held the alloy spear in his hand, feeling confused.

Lanina quickly pointed at the shimmering runes behind the metal case. “It’s an alarm. The alarm would be triggered if the the case is disconnected from the wall, or the case leaves the building. If that happens, the entire army in the barracks would surround the building.”

Only then Hao Ren noticed the metal case wasn’t just attached to the wall by the metal tentacles but also protected by flux of light below the metal tentacles. It was a safety mechanism more high-tech than anything else on earth!

As a former military strategist of Y’zaks, Lanina had a profound knowledge of magic and alchemy of the human world. She quickly checked the various settings on the metal box as her tail behind her contracted into a small lump. “The box shouldn’t be shaken, unlocked by force, its outer shell even the corner of it shouldn’t be damaged or else it would also trigger the alarm. The box has fused together with the building, you can’t remove it or move it…there’s a set of sensors here which in the event the box leaves the room the alarm will sound. Besides, the building itself has a magic array monitoring the box, once it’s disrupted, the building will sound its alarm.”

Hao Ren was stunned. “What the hell the world of magic have do with all the high-tech gadgets?”

“What is ‘high-tech’?” Lanina looked at Hao Ren, perplexed. “This is the elven and the dwarf’s masterpiece. So the crystal must be very important to them. We have miscalculated that.”

Hao Ren was a little at loss. His plan went perfectly until he came to the box—no wonder Grigory could be so easily lured away. The hardest part wasn’t the human general but hack the alarm system.

He was thinking what to do next: he couldn’t disassemble it, move it, open it or carry it way, he could only…

A thought crossed his mind. He patted on Lanina’s shoulder and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

The succubus follwed Hao Ren jumped out of the window, but was still perplexed. Outside was still chaotic as the noxious gases of the lava steam had spread to the barracks. The soldiers were strengthening the shield enchantment to prevent the noxious gases from overwhelming the whole place. Sentries around the watchtower who had been enchanted by Lanina weren’t going to notice them. As the ‘demonic army’ was engaging the Allied Army outside, it was just a matter of a few minutes before they found out the demons were just phantoms.

“What are you going to do?” Lanina glanced back at Hao Ren and saw him touching the watchtower with his hand.

His dimensional pocket was opened and the watchtower disappeared before them, leaving only the foundation behind…

Lanina was shocked beyond word.

“Let the alarm sounds in the otherworldly dimension.” Hao Ren grinned as he held the succubus by her hand and ran. “Let’s go and meet with Biggie!”

Lanina hadn’t realised what had just happened. As experienced and well travelled as she was, she had never seen someone doing thing so uncommon-sensically.

Meanwhile, Grigory was busy holding off the devilised demons.

A three-metre tall higher demon wielding a huge axe was coming toward him. Dark-green evil flame was burning on the osidian axe, the terrifying look had the battle-hardened soldiers flinch a little. But Grigory was fearless. His sword was burning with a magnificient white light as he charged toward the enemy like a ray of sacred light.

Sword versed the axe, the sword cut through the enemy silently before the demon turned into a red mist with an illusory ‘bang’ and dissipated in the air. Then a bat dropped down from the air but no one had noticed this little black shadow.

Grigory held his sword waiting for the demon’s next move, wondering as to where the demon had gone. He looked up and saw the demon had dissipated into a bloody red mist.

His stomach churned. He looked around and found his soldiers were in fact battling with a bunch of illusory demons which was quickly turning into mist. The phantom demons could withstand attack for a while before they dissipated, but the battle strength of the higher cavelier was so great that the phantom demon instantly disappeared in a puff.

“It’s not real!” A soldier shouted. Grigory instantly realised he was fooled.

“They are all phantoms!” Grigory shouted. “Team One, Team Two, follow me back immediately!”

The rest of the demons were still running around rampantly, but the soldiers had realised that the phamtoms weren’t lethal but just a diversion tactics of the enemy. They didn’t bother with the phamtoms and followed Grigory falling back to their defense position quickly. Following that, the ‘demons’ began to scatter around as if losing their interest. The ‘cerberus’ looked around before it bit a rock and vanished in a puff of mist.

No one had noticed a vampire was lying inside the ‘cerberus’.

Grigory quickly returned to the barracks and stared blankly in front of the familiar spot wondering if he had come to the wrong place. He turned around and asked his guard, “Have we come to the wrong place?”

“I don’t think so…” The guard was just as dumbfounded.

Grigory glared at the empty space, dumbstruck. He had forgotten he should first be worried about the dark-red crystal. He scratched his head for a long while before he choked up a word. “Where is my watchtower?”

By now Hao Ren and Lanina had retreated via the route they had planned beforehand and moved northward in Osidian Plain. They soon arrived at the osidian spikes—the monitoring blind spot of the Allied Army.

The place was far away from the Allied Army camp. The nearest sentry post was ten kilometres away. The reason the Allied Army didn’t put up a station here was because the osidian spikes were located at the confluence of two lava flows, the huge osidian spikes were shrouded in noxious gases burst out from the lava flows at the time. Also the osidian spikes weren’t large enough that even the demons wouldn’t choose it as a stopover. So no one was going to come here.

A thin layer of mist barrier was opened up in the osidian spikes to block the noxious gases out. Hao Ren, Lanina and the rest assembled at the space between the osidian spikes. Nangong Wuyue had transformed into a mermaid and soaked in a large basin filled with water to prevent dehydration while keeping the mist barrier in place. Meanwhile, Lil Pea was swimming around her. It seemed the two fish were pretty happy with what they had right now.

It was naturally that people would only appreciate life in a harsh environment. Nangong Wuyue, who used to complain that swimming pool wasn’t large enough, was a happy bunny in a basin.

“As there’s no blood magic in this world, they couldn’t tell if the demons were real or not.” Vivian boasted. “It seemed everything went pretty smoothly today.”

“Thanks Y’zaks for the intel.” Nangong Wuyue said as she raised her tail up wagging. “The guy has basically learned all the twists and turns and knew what to do and say here. He’s truly a nasty old rival.”

Hao Ren took out a small dark-red stone from the dimensional pocket. He said, “This is the crystal.”

Vivian looked at him, marvelling. “Isnt’ the entire room was still inside the dimension pocket? How did you get the crystal out?”

Hao Ren shrugged and said, “Haven’t you known there are autonomous robots inside? I let them cut open the box. Screw the alarm, it’s in the dimensional pocket, and there’s no wi-fi in there…”

Then Hao Ren lamented. “If we could think of this trick at the beginning, it would’ve saved us a lot of trouble. Maybe I’m not innovative enough.”

Vivian looked at Hao Ren with a strange expression, she couldn’t fathom how the mind of the fellow work…

OK, let’s see what the ‘last words’ of Y’zaks is all about.” Hao Ren shoved the dark-red crystal in the hand of Lanina. “Do you know how to use it?”

Lanina nodded. Then she carefully injected her magic into the crystal as a phantom appeared above the crystal.

Everyone’s jaw dropped to the ground:

The phantom was none other than Y’zaks, even the iconic broken horn looked alike!