Chapter 588
The Child’s Dream and Nightmare
In the Fairy Kingdom, mortal audiences with the Queen seemed a sacred and rare matter.
As Eivass walked upon the rainbow bridge filled with dreamlike colors, the Fey around him visibly increased in number.
They had all come to watch.
Perhaps it was because “Grace” was an acquaintance of the Fey. The fickle Fey were curiously drawn to Eivass’s side. The first Fey clung to him, while some later ones flew low around his feet like scampering puppies; those who arrived even later could only surround Eivass, hovering around him like mobile cannons.
At some point, singing suddenly came from the front.
At first, there was only brief chaos, which then immediately harmonized into an extremely harmonious chorus.
The Fey conjured various musical instruments in their hands. Although they looked small, their sounds were loud; when gathered together, they became roaring sound waves.
When the Fey gathered and began to sing, a fairytale-like miracle was revealed—
First, a floating magic carpet appeared, allowing Eivass to sit down cross-legged instead of walking; then, the magic carpet turned into a silvery-white carriage, with two unicorns conjured to pull it.
Then, at a visible speed, the carriage gradually became more magnificent—from one layer to two, then to three. Finally, it simply turned into a giant cake tower, with Eivass sitting at the very top of the cake tower like a fruit decoration. In addition to the two unicorns pulling the carriage, a large flock of white doves also appeared.
In front of Eivass, an ancient piano appeared at some point. The piano was alive—it also had small fairy-like wings and hovered in front of Eivass. Clearly, some fairy had transformed into this form.
He touched the keys with a nostalgic gesture, a wistful look in his eyes.
Soon, Eivass began to play the keys.
The piano playing was rather clumsy, but it contained extremely rich emotions. Soon, Eivass became skilled again.
Grace behind him looked at Eivass in astonishment.
…The Archbishop can do this?
The surrounding Fey also cooperated with Eivass. Soon, the joyous chorus turned into a symphony. It wasn’t a difficult piece, but it had a whimsical, fantastical flair.
Against the backdrop of this “background music,” the cake carriage beneath Eivass sped up. Grace behind him was no longer walking on the ground but flying in the air. Even so, the main group was getting farther and farther away from her—
Soon, the rainbow bridge passed its peak, and the opposite shore could be seen in the distance.
It was an exaggeratedly giant royal palace.
Pure white, spire-like palaces, which upon closer inspection, were made of ice and snow. It was still snowing in the sky, and toy soldiers in red cotton clothes guarding the entrance shivered from the cold.
The end of the rainbow bridge was a high slope with a large arc, and the cake carriage Eivass was on was directly thrown up by the Fey—those who didn’t fly high enough were directly blasted away, tumbling in circles. Only the Fey on Eivass could spin along with Eivass while screaming.
Very inexplicably, when the cake carriage beneath Eivass began to rotate, this giant, towering cake tower did not collapse, nor did it shake Eivass off. They were like a bone flying at high speed in the air, emitting a whistling sound like a boomerang.
At this moment, a carpet made of blue ice spread out from inside the ice and snow palace.
However, the ice carpet was not laid on the ground. It wound around several times like a roller coaster. Finally, when it reached under Eivass, it sliced the tall cake carriage in half!
Only the small section under Eivass—a tower-shaped cake about one meter high—turned into a small stroller. Eivass, like a child in a supermarket stroller, sped through loops and loops of the ice roller coaster. During this process, the shivering Fey tenaciously continued to play music, providing background music for Eivass.
Eivass had no choice but to continue playing the piano.
However, during this process, a large half of the Fey on him were shaken off—for every fairy that fell, one less voice joined the ensemble. In the end, only the little fairy Nilim, burrowed into Eivass’s sweater and tightly gripping Eivass’s collar, managed not to be thrown off.
Of course, perhaps it was simply because she did nothing, while the other Fey were diligently playing their instruments.
In the end, only Eivass’s solo remained.
But even in the wind and snow, the piano music easily pierced the sky.
As the cake carriage slid rapidly on the ice carpet, all the doors of the ice and snow palace opened one after another upon hearing the music. The toy soldiers guarding both sides of the doors, clad in red cotton clothes, uniformly looked up and saluted Eivass with chests puffed out.
They were less than half a meter tall, and their thick cotton clothes were visibly made of wood. But they shivered from the cold, appearing as if they were alive.
Although this scene seemed quite whimsical and amusing, Eivass knew that these simply designed toy soldiers were actually terrifying Phantom Demons, on the same level as Succubi and Punisher Demons.
Moreover, they had all survived for a very, very long time, and any one of them, upon descending to the Material Realm, would be at least Sixth Tier. Depending on the “atmosphere,” various absurd buffs could be added.
Thinking this, the scene before him immediately became terrifying—at least thirty to forty terrifying Phantom Demons of Sixth Tier or higher, surrounded Eivass heavily. And as Eivass went deeper, their numbers continued to increase.
In reality, they were all apostles of the Queen of the Fey.
The Queen of the Fey was of the Heavenly Envoy level in terms of status. However, she was not called the “Fey Heavenly Envoy” according to convention because the title “Queen of the Fey” could be actively inherited—Titania was not the first, nor would she be the last, Queen of the Fey.
Although most Fey did not live to be twenty years old, any fairy had the potential to become the Queen of the Fey. And this was a very natural tribal rule: the Queen of the Fey created new Fey, and if the Queen of the Fey felt bored, she could abdicate. Then, a fairy would mature and become a new King or Queen of the Fey.
There were no clear promotion rules, nor were there specific duties or terms.
Everything was like the rules of The Path of Beauty, blurred and determined by whim.
And Titania was a rather capricious Queen of the Fey; the “decoration style” of the Fey palace often changed under her. Each time the style was changed, they would transform into creations corresponding to that style.
The Fairy Kingdom had no specific form, or rather, the Fairy Queen would live wherever any child invited into the Fairy Kingdom imagined, and it would likely take the form of the child’s imagination.
And no matter what form the Fairy Kingdom took, the actors inside these “moving things” were actually the same group of people.
If it were the Spring Manor, they would become handsome male and female servants; if it were a candy house style, they would become candy soldiers; if it were a horror theme, then they would be drifting ghost servants or haunted tea sets.
And this ice and snow palace before them was actually a crystal ball—if one approached from outside the rainbow bridge, they would find that the Queen of the Fey’s location was encased in a giant crystal ball, so this was actually a toy theme. Therefore, they were actually playing the roles of wooden toy soldiers.
Eivass had a particular impression of them—because they even had memories. In a later Fairy dungeon, a candy soldier would greet players with, “Eh, you guys are here again.”
These “toy soldiers” were extensions of the Queen of the Fey’s authority. They all possessed real and pure souls; in life, they were believers of the Queen of the Fey, and in death, they were her apostles.
Some of them, overwhelmed by the Queen of the Fey’s soul-shattering, reason-destroying beauty, fell in love with her as fervent followers—or rather, simps. Of course, their pursuit was doomed to failure… because Fey did not reproduce sexually; in a sense, they were like plants, reproducing through flowers and fruits.
Others, tired of the deceit, struggles, and pain of the real world, chose to immerse themselves in this eternally beautiful fairytale world. These were pure-hearted individuals, which was why they could play with the Fey.
For these people, this might also be considered a “beautiful afterlife”—no hunger, no pain, no death. As long as they obeyed the Queen of the Fey’s orders and spent their weeks playing different roles with a group of equally pure-hearted friends to entertain the Queen, the Fey, and the children, they could continue to live happily.
The only regrets were the lack of holidays and personal time. And they could not leave the Fairy Kingdom… because the Queen of the Fey treated them very well, bestowing them with much power; this also made them internally quite terrifying.
Although these soldiers did not possess the Fey’s peculiar ability to make their thoughts reality, because they were essentially the Queen of the Fey’s “imagination,” the intensity of this illusion was extremely high—it was not that the illusion was so tenacious that it could not be dispelled. On the contrary, the illusion had no defense and would shatter upon dissipation.
However, if one did not see through the illusion, their attacks would be very clumsy and comical, like elite soldiers in mascot costumes pretending to fight in slow motion. Once one attempted to dispel the illusion, they would transform into strange and abstract terrifying beings, their attacks becoming extremely swift, and they would exhibit abilities completely different from their original style, capable of wiping out the entire party on the spot.
It felt like, “Didn’t you notice the assassin sneaking in? His stealth is so clumsy.” “I noticed, so let’s not make a sound and pretend we didn’t see anything.”
And precisely because of this troublesome mechanism, the various statuses attached to them could only be removed by completing corresponding mechanisms—it wasn’t difficult, but it emphasized cooperation. Although the dungeon itself was indeed joyful and interesting… it was usually when playing with acquaintances with voice chat.
Considering that teammates with insufficient intelligence, who were too lazy to think, or who didn’t understand the mechanics, were frequently matched into the game, dragging others down to wipe out together, the matching environment for fairy-themed dungeons would become like a disaster movie.
At this point, the phrase “Eh, you guys are here again,” heard every time the game restarted, was quite damaging.
And these creations were, in fact, part of the fairy tale.
—They were actually “the child’s nightmare.”
Nightmares were also a part of fairy tales.
(End of Chapter)
