“I’ve only found these.” after around half a minute, the Fog Dweller with tentacles and three insect-like legs handed Fubei Li three stone tablets: “If you’d like, I could put in a request for you, and they should be approved and delivered to you in less than half an Earth Day.”

“Thanks.” Fubei Li tilted his head to soften his stiff neck and asked: “I’ve gotta ask, why this generosity to share? I thought you were quite protective of your knowledge.”

“We are truly protective of our knowledge. But we are also willing to share it with our friends and allies.” the Fog Dweller said: “In recognition of your bravery in fighting amongst our fighters against the creatures of the gaps and protecting our realm, Perketta and other deputies who have witnessed your valor and battle prowess have agreed that you should have the fullest access to knowledge that they can give you, for they were made aware of the purposes of your visit.”

“Thank you.” Fubei Li adjusted his body once again and asked: “When will Dave and Xyankor come back?”

“They informed me that they will be doing a sweep with the help of some of our lords and deputies to locate the entity they’ve come here for, and they informed me that they will come back and meet you in one or two Earth Days. Now, shall I start reading the documents on the creatures of the gaps and the realms from which they come to you?”

“Yes please.”

During the battle, Fubei Li used the best wooden coin he brought along with him to cast a detection and disruption spell, in an attempt to peek into what the inside of the vortex and the other side of the portal was like. And to his total surprise, and which somehow shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to him, that there was actually another realm, and quite a young one on the other side of the portal - which meant several things: first, the creatures of the gaps actually didn’t come from the gaps between the realms that were all once a whole void; and second, that the occurrence of the new realm proved that the pieces broken off from the void were not the only source of inhabitable realms in this part of the universe; and lastly, and probably most concerning to the Fog Dwellers and the inhabitants of other realms around, the chaotic nature of the energy fields in this young realm had spawned the extremely aggressive, strange and volatile creatures that launched the attacks on this realm of the Fog Dwellers.

What was even more confusing and even troubling, was that these creatures, though ferocious, wild and primitive, it was impossible to deny their resemblance to Elementals - their bodies were made of condensed natural constructs of elemental energy, and the majority of them that came through the portals and joined in on the attack all had some kind of primitive and crude center of power and energy, or in other words, cores, just like the elementals.

As the Fog Dweller with an octopus body, at least a dozen tentacles and three insect-like legs continued to translate and read the information from the stone tablets to Fubei Li, Fubei Li, and in turn Jianmen, became more and more aware of the fact the current power structures of the different voidborns, whether they still called themselves this or not, were about to change.

From the records on the stone tablets, some scholars among the Fog Dwellers started looking into the origins and “energy physiology” of the creatures of the gaps from quite a while back, and they were even able to capture some of those creatures and keep them alive for short periods of time for research. From these observations, they were able to come to similar conclusions Fubei Li had now, that these creatures were immensely similar to elementals in many ways, and what was more interesting/concerning to these researchers, was that the more intelligent and “higher up” in the presumed evolutionary tree the creatures were, the more raw and “primal” their powers were, which, according to these researchers, was a characteristic possessed by voidborns of older ages.

One of the tablets was a detailed documentation of the work of several scholars on their research on one particular creature of the gap - coincidentally it was one of those pale green mouth creatures that could devour “it” from the other creatures of the gap. According to their research, the ability to curse their attacker just by virtue of getting injured was also a long lost ability from the ancient voidborns. In theory, the immortal voidborns who were born during the ancient times should still have this ability if they would like to spend time and effort revisiting and searching through ancient memories, but they had trouble finding an immortal Fog Dweller or elemental that would like to help them with this.

One theory proposed by the authors of this tablet, that the creatures of the void must have come from a realm, either an undiscovered piece from the old void, or a new one, which was not entirely unheard of for other parts of the universe. They proposed this theory because according to them, the condition of the gaps would not be anywhere sufficient for this kind of creatures to develop and grow, much less in huge hordes like this.

“... this research also brought about, once again, the same question that had been troubling us for ages, that is what is ‘it’? It’s often regarded as a blessing, yet it served almost no observable effect in helping an individual Fog Dweller or an elemental in their pursuit of power and knowledge. But it must possess some desirable quality for this creature, in order for it to have enough incentive to evolve in such a way. Some call it a curse, and yet there was no obvious evidence of that either. It was from ancient memory and lore that ‘it’ was somehow connected to immortality, but the path to immortality was basically entirely cut off for all voidborns and descendants of voidborns. And it was as if our elders made a trade to pick either our ability to procreate and have newborns or the gift of immortality.” the Fog Dweller with three insect-like legs finished up the last paragraph of the tablet with a very human-like sigh: “This is all from the current record. Would you like me to read you more?”

“Yes.” Fubei Li nodded: “Can you find me the records of your ancient lore - about how the void came to be, or who your first god is.”