The Record of Unusual Creatures

Chapter 1283: Building a City

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

While Hao Ren was leaving White City with Lady Gloom to find the husky, in the southern part of the kingdom, a cloud of somberness was hanging over the high-ranking monk, Calaxus’ head.

Calaxus and the Alpha were standing on the towering wall of Fort Raven.

Since Calaxus last visited the weakened smoke monster in the dungeon, he had been mentally disturbed.

Lily had never seen her adviser having such a gloomy and nervous look. Even when bringing a group of survivors boarding the hot air balloon of the beasts and later crash-landing in the Black Forest, Calaxus had never displayed such a grave expression. But now the monk looked as if the world was coming to an end.

Perhaps the world had already ended in his mind.

“What the hell is going on?” Lily asked curiously. “Has what the ‘smoked meat’ said yesterday terrified you?”

“That thing is a Shadow of Nightmares. Never mind, calling it a lump of smoked meat is just fine.” Calaxus gave up to correct the alpha. He sighed, “What the thing said was a secret that only high-ranking priests and very few scholars could know. It felt creepy when this secret came from the mouth of a monster.”

“What secret?” Lily’s ears flickered. “Is it about Lockmarton crawling out of the abyss, or the prison officer has crossed over?”

These terrible words sounded so casual in the mouth of the alpha as if they never bothered her. Even Calaxus’ heart missed a beat when hearing that. Luckily that after spending all these days with the alpha, the monk had learned to adapt to the alpha’s style quickly. Calaxus took a few deep breaths and then quietly observing the alpha for a while.

After a long while, Calaxus decided to tell the alpha some secrets because, first of all, he thought that the alpha was just a naive girl who just came out of the wildland, it was not necessary to keep secrets from her. Secondly, the alpha possessed a powerful Light of Order, which reminded him of the legends of the children of God and stuff like that. Such a natural darling of Order certainly had the right to know certain things. Since the alpha had heard some of the secrets from the mouth of the Shadow of Nightmares, telling her more would make little difference.

“The world knows that the ancient evil giant Lockmarton is dead. The Chaos that remains in the world today is just his reverberation. But in reality, there is more than just an echo.” Colors drained from the high-ranking monk’s face. “In the Sea of Carnos, there is a forgotten abyss, where the evil thoughts of Lockmarton lingered. A prison officer of ancient times guards the entrance to the abyss day and night to prevent the spirit of the evil giant from returning to the real world and regaining his physical body. Alpha, I can only tell you these; any more detailed would be the top secret of Sanctum.”

Lily nodded slightly. She seemed not to care.

“Alpha,” the high-ranking monk looked at Lily curiously. “Don’t you think it is terrifying? If the monster is telling the truth, then this world is going to face a huge problem.”

“Everything will be okay,” Lily said, dismissing the monk’s concern. “You know what; I think I will find Mr. Landlord soon! Mr. Landlord is super awesome. He could easily bomb Lockmarton and his ancestors up into a million pieces. If we can find Mr. Landlord, everything will just be fine.”

The high-ranking monk was astounded as he looked at the happy alpha, feeling that she did not have a clue of what he was saying.

He sighed helplessly, feeling stupid to even explain this complicated problem to the clueless alpha.

He again thought of the monster in the dungeon.

The evil monster of Chaos that could communicate with people was shocking. Earlier, when Calaxus asked the monster from where it came, the monster stopped talking as if it was extremely cautious of revealing its real name and origin.

All this made him come up with many conjectures, of which no one was good.

“Uncle, what is in your mind?” Lily curiously asked as she noticed the high-ranking monk was silent as if deep in thought. “Are you hungry?”

“I am thinking of whether I should return to Sanctum immediately or continue our mission,” Calaxus said honestly. He felt it unnecessary to hide anything from the alpha now. “What the monster said was disturbing. I am afraid that something disastrous of a global scale is going to happen in Sanctum. But our mission is equally important and closely related to the survival of Sanctum, and by extension, of the world.”

“You haven’t said what your mission is.” Lily stared at Calaxus. “We have spent so long together during our adventure, but you have just told me you guys are investigators—you have not been honest with me. Don’t try to fudge around with me. I tell you what; I am not stupid!”

Calaxus seemed to have made up his mind and nodded.

“We come to the continent of Ansu, purportedly to investigate the changes in the Chaos and explain to the Kingdom of Taros the reasons for the withdrawal of Sanctum troops. But in reality, we are here to search for a light in the wilderness.”

“A light?” Lily blinked. “I couldn’t wrap my brain around; why people of religion like to talk in such ambiguous language? How the heck could people understand you?”

“It is hard to explain,” Calaxus said with a smile. “It is a mission the Pope has assigned this way to us. We also have no idea what the light is but only know that its approximate location is in the middle of the barren land, where there is a temple called Cassouin. I guess few people in the earthy kingdoms have ever heard of the name, but it is one of the strongholds that Sanctum built on the Ansu Continent a long time ago. That is the destination of our investigation team.”

Lily let out a long ‘ahh’ sound with a thoughtful look.

Suddenly, Lily saw in the corner of her eyes the master of Fort Raven, Duke Ulysses, had come up to the city wall and was walking toward them.

“Hey, general!” Lily waved her hand at Ulysses. “You come out for a stroll?”

Duke Ulysses was visibly startled, but he managed to regain his composure and came before Lily. “Is Alpha observing the situation in the forest?”

“I’m here enjoying the breeze,” Lily sounded very frankly. “and having some chitchat with Calaxus.”

“Oh, ahem, yeah, the breeze is pretty refreshing here.” Ulysses, an old-fashioned aristocrat, was not comfortable with the bluntness of the alpha. He gave up on the pleasantry. “Alpha, I am here for something else.”

“What is it?”

“My men have recently observed that your army is entering the Black Forest in batches and cut down the trees. Many abhumans are clearing the land on the east and west and start to build barracks there. I shouldn’t have questioned about the movement of your army. But I’m curious; what are they doing?”

“Of course they are building a city,” Lily replied casually.

“Building… building a city?” Ulysses’ jaw dropped to the ground.

“That’s right.” Lily wagged her tail (but the wolf skin was covering her tail, so no one saw it). “They have to build a city so that they can settle down here.”

Ulysses did not know what to say. He had never seen anything like this before: beasts were building a city directly at the border of a kingdom of Order, right under the nose of Fort Raven.

As the general of Fort Raven, Ulysses’ first thought was that something was wrong. But soon he discovered that he just had no sufficient reasons to stop it.

Fort Raven was at the southern border of Taros. Before the invasion of the Chaos, the vast wilderness outside the fort had many small bases and even villages, but these places were more like an early warning system. When the war broke out, the kingdom had openly abandoned this large area south of Fort Raven.

It was a no-man’s land now. Anyone could take it as long as the occupier could survive the tide of Chaos that came later.

So even if the beasts were constructing a city there, and pushing the city boundary right up in front of Fort Raven, these beasts did not trespass an inch of the kingdom’s land. From a moral point of view, the beasts had the freedom to do so.

Looking from another angle, during the period of War of Chaos, the great wilderness was the battlefield. The people of Taros had been struggling to defend their fort and had no time to recover their lost land. Under such circumstances, when the abhumans built a settlement on this barren land, they were in effect helping to strengthen the defense of the kingdom of Taros and expanded the territory of the forces of Order. No one wanted to admit it, but Ulysses knew that it was the Beast Tide that saved Fort Raven.

If the abhumans could build a strong enough kingdom south of the great wilderness—though it was too early to say, the southern border of the Kingdom of Taros might become a peaceful place as it would no longer bordering the realm of Chaos.

Of course, this theory rested on the premise that there would be no war between the beasts and Taros.

After much thought, Duke Ulysses figured that at least at this stage, it was not a bad thing to see the abhumans building a city on the great wasteland. During this period of war, he could not afford to plan long-term.

Ulysses realized that he was only disturbed because he could not believe that beasts were capable of building a city.

How on earth could a group of wild creatures build a city?

What was this alpha thinking?