The group did not need to cross all nine kingdoms to reach Midgard—in fact, after Heimdall was killed, Midgard's space had been fixed at the seventh layer of the Nine Kingdoms. Behind this solidified spatial chain were the Nibelungen, the kingdom of the dead, and Helheim. It was said that the conditions in those two kingdoms were even worse than elsewhere, but Hao Ren had no intention of going there for now.
They arrived at their destination: Midgard's Twilight City.
In the days when the Norse divine system had flourished, Midgard had been the "courtyard" of the Nine Kingdoms. It was said that Odin had led the gods in opening up the various kingdoms on the branches of Yggdrasil and designated the courtyard as the place where humans would live. But in Vivian's memories, this continent had actually been the Norse "gods'" human experiment base and observation ground. Regardless of what this place had once been like, it was now little different from the other kingdoms.
Midgard's sky was a reddish leaden gray, and the dim daylight was almost indistinguishable from midnight. Turbid, heavy clouds covered the dry, twisted earth, hanging low as if they were about to collapse. Beneath the sky, the scorched land had long since lost all trace of its former appearance. Thick smoke and poisonous fumes constantly spewed from the crisscrossing ravines, while the Firstborn's tentacles snaked out of some of the largest fissures, forming ridges across the post-catastrophe landscape. Midgard had once possessed several rivers that flowed across the entire continent and a stretch of verdant mountains, but the rivers had now dried up, and the mountains had become completely barren. Hidden among those scorched mountains was the last spark of this "world": Twilight City.
The spherical aircraft glided silently through the darkness, gradually approaching