The Record of Unusual Creatures
chapter-458

Chapter 458: Welp! That Was a Rather Eventful Ride!

Banuklaak clattered in horror as it felt itself in a totally unknown situation. No place to stand, and nothing to hang on. It was floating in the midst of the void, yet untold amount of primal energies were rushing into its body. It started gasping for air. That was however the least of its problems, the real threat was the ray of light that was unbelievably bright. The light was searing hot and contained unknown form of energy, the demon realised that he was dying by the passing second.

Its chitin carapace and demonic barrier had failed, and its body was quickly being reduced into nothing but mush.

Banuklaak struggled futilely as the searing light threatened to engulf him. Thrashing about, it was trying to get a good look on what the light was, but in real space, this was useless. It tried to use its spells to escape the area, but then realised he was being held by something even stronger. A gravity well so strong that it was being dragged right into the light, and prevent it from using any dimensional magic.

Sensing that its life was quickly fading away, the ancient demon finally felt fear, it noticed that the weird man who had sent him here was just before him, and it struggled to speak. “STOP…. STOP PLESAE!! I DON’T WANT TO FIGHT YOU!! I WAS BEWITCHED BY SERATHON! I CAN SWEAR MY LOYALTY ONCE AGAIN TO THE CRAZED DEMON KING…. OR TO YOU!!! PLEASE, STOP!!! GET ME…..”

Its voice was swallowed whole by the voice, and aside from the shuddering of its carapace, there was no sound.

Hao Ren was ‘standing’ not far away from Banuklaak. His shield rippled as it protected him against the cosmic radiation and other harmful particles. He was almost like the sun god incarnate as a sphere around him was ablaze. He looked at the giant bug demon slowly descending into the light and wanted to know what the latter was saying. But sadly, he could not hear anything. Shrugging his shoulders, he mumbled to himself. “This is the stars that you lot had ignored.”

Banuklaak, the sly and opportunistic ancient demon whose careers spanned multiple allegience, backstabs, misdirection. The demon who rose from a lowly hell maggot into a demon lord. Countless other allies and demon lords was waylaid by the scheming demon, and through his cunning he had lived longer than any other demon, but all that came to an end today. Drowning in the blaze of cosmic fire.

This proved that even how cunning, how well planned one was, it was nothing in the face of brute, primal force. Banuklaak perished under the power of nature, and he died a crisp.

Hao Ren eyed his shield gauge and turned back with a heroic swag. “Lets go.”

A real man does not turn back to see a crispy roasted giant bug.

The battlefield was a sea of chaos, at least for the Allied army and the demon host. The unknown enemy had thrown even the most experienced of generals into confusion and most soldiers could only scatter and run for their lives under the intense bombardment. Their ability to resist was almost taken out in short order. Both the Aerym fleet and the Demon King’s Army had noticed the turn of the tide and did not bother taking on the now demoralised soldiers. Their primary targets was still the arcane and demonic cannons. They never intended to harvest a sea of their enemy’s blood, it was only to protect the retreating space hulk. Neither the Allied Army or the demon host was on the target list.

“Destroy the cannons! Leave the men!” Y’zaks swung his blade as he roared his orders, partly for the benefit of the enemy. “Our mission is to protect!”

The Allied Army and demon host soldiers soon realised that they were no longer the targets of the flying metal boxes and chainswords, and their sense of preservation trumped their will to fight, and the soldiers manning the firebase ran for their lives. Not even General Grigory could stem the retreat.

Hao Ren suddenly reappeared on Lily’s head. A giant piece of pork rib was stuck into his spear. Pointing towards Y’zaks direction, he ordered. “Lets rendezvous!”

Lily’s eyes turned towards Y’zaks, and after letting out a bone-shattering howl, she sped towards to Helcrown. Vivian too reappeared from a mist of blood. All combatants were regrouping at him, and Y’zaks after scouting the area, was pleased find that all of the demonic cannon was wrecked. Nodding hard, “There’s nothing left here. Lets go.”

Hao Ren and the rest of the Demon King’s Army retreated under the protection of the Obsidian Colossals. Then again, little of what remained of the demon host came to stop them. The death of Serathon and Banuklaak had shattered their morale, and they were in no mood to fight.

Most demons are like this, aside from Y’zaks odd bunch of loyalists, most demon’s loyalty was dubious at best, and their foe was the demon king who toyed with them for the last hundred of years. Seeing Y’zaks vicious face coming after them, most of the demons ran rather than Lily. The retreat was a bloodless one.

All of them had went back to Helcrown and Vimm’s voice rang through the communicator. “All anti-air defence has been neutralised. They doesn’t seem to be keen on fighting further.”

Hao Ren wiped the sweat off his forehead, laughing. “Then, lets hit the gas pedal, we leave!”

The Aerym fleet escorted the behemoth of a space hulk, and Helcrown followed on closely. Every ship in the fleet burned their thrusters and under the fearful gaze of the surviving soldiers below, they sped towards the western skies. The space hulk was still a three to four hundred kilometre long giant, and it took a while before it passed entirely through the skies of the Shattered Plains, like a passing stormcloud. As it reached the end of the horizon, a blinding flash blasted forth, and it disappeared.

The next part of the journey could be described as very eventful.

The fleet was only disrupted in the early phase of the conflict by determined attacks from both camps. In order to get the massive dilapidated carcass of a space hulk into acceleration, the Aerym tow ships had to bust their engines to finally get the job done. At the same time, they had to endure whatever the Allied Army and demon host threw at them. But as the fleet gained speed, and left the worlds strongest army in the dust, no one could stop them from their home run out of the world.

The Petrachelys was the lead ship. But no one was on the bridge. Even the MDT got out of the control dock and skipped work to join the rest. That however did not affect the operations. There was no need for minute combat calculations, no need to decipher lightspeed travel data, all the fleet had to do was to follow the original course back. Autopilot would suffice.

One by one the natural dimension gates were transformed into hundreds of kilometre wide dimensional rifts by the Petrachelys’ powerful hyperdimension module. It was a miraculous supernatural phenomenon as each and every dimensional bubble grew. And Hao Ren led the fleet in a trail of blaze. The gates that they were about to crash was almost a meaningless fixture. If the demon host and the Allied Army could not do anything about them, what a few sentries at the dimensional gates could?

Most of the sentries had yet to perform the change of guard, and they were the first witnesses of the sky-shattering flying metal boxes. The confused soldiers looked up again, wondering why these bunch of clowns appeared again. Was this air show a multi-series run?

A few sentries had received word from the main camp and the order was to take stop the demon king and his otherworldly army. Many of the soldiers simply groaned, even as their officers barked orders. Talk was easy, how were they supposed to take that bloody thing down?

“The next realm is the last of the inhabited realms.” The MDT voice came out of Hao Ren’s pocket. “Y’zaks, got any last words?”

Y’zaks pondered for a bit. He somehow did have something to say. “Let me prepare.”

As they approached the last human sentry post, just as the Aerym fleet passed through the last dimensional gate, the panicking soldiers heard the crazed demon king’s voice:

“I shall reassemble my army in the deep of space. One day, mark my words, I will return! Apocalypse shall come!”

The dimensional gate expanded into a radiant light screen, and the entire fleet disappeared before the sentries very eyes.

Y’zaks turned towards Hao Ren, with an eat shit grin. “The last good deed for this world.”