The Children's Dreams and Nightmares

In the Fairy Kingdom, it seems that it is a sacred and rare thing for mortals to have an audience with the Queen.

As Iver walked on that dreamlike Rainbow Bridge, the number of fairies around him visibly increased.

They all came here to watch.

Perhaps because Grace was a familiar face to the fairies, the fickle fairies curiously gathered around Iver. The first fairies clung to him, while others flew low around his feet like stray puppies; those who arrived later could only circle around Iver, following him like floating cannons.

Suddenly, singing started coming from ahead.

At first there was only a brief period of chaos, but then it immediately became a perfectly harmonious chorus.

The fairies conjured up all sorts of musical instruments. Although they looked small, their sounds were loud; when they were gathered together, they became a roaring, surging wave of sound.

When the fairies gather together and begin to sing, a fairytale-like miracle unfolds—

At first, a floating magic carpet allowed Iver to sit cross-legged instead of walking; then the magic carpet transformed into a silver-white carriage, with two unicorns appearing in front to pull it.

Then, at a speed visible to the naked eye, the carriage gradually became more ornate—from one level to two, then three. Finally, it simply transformed into a giant cake tower, with Iver sitting atop it as a fruit-like decoration. In addition to the two unicorns pulling the carriage, a large flock of white doves also appeared.

Before Iver, an old piano had appeared out of nowhere. The piano was practically alive—it had tiny, fairy-like wings and hovered before Iver. Clearly, some fairy had transformed itself into this form.

He touched the piano keys with a nostalgic air, a look of melancholy in his eyes.

Soon, Iver began to play the piano keys.

It was a rather unpolished piano performance, but it contained an extremely rich amount of emotion. Soon, Iver became proficient again.

Grace, standing behind, looked at Iver in astonishment.

... The archbishop can do this?

The fairies around him joined in. Soon, the cheerful chorus transformed into a Iver. It wasn't a particularly difficult piece, but it possessed a rather whimsical and fantastical quality.

Against the backdrop of that "background music," the cake cart beneath Iver sped faster and faster. Grace behind her was no longer walking on the ground, but flying through the air. Even so, the main group was falling further and further behind her—

Soon the Rainbow Bridge reached its apex, and the opposite bank could be seen in the distance.

It was an enormous, outrageously large palace.

The palace, a pure white spire, was upon closer inspection made of ice and snow. Snow was still falling from the sky, and toy soldiers dressed in red cotton coats stood shivering in the two rows of entrances.

At the end of the Rainbow Bridge was a high slope with a huge arc, and the cake cart containing Iver was thrown into the air along with the fairies—those fairies that didn't fly high enough were simply slapped away and spun around before falling. Only the fairies on Iver's back could scream and spin along with Iver.

In a way that defies the laws of physics, when the cake cart beneath Iver began to spin, the enormous, towering cake tower neither disintegrated nor shook Iver off. It was like a bone spinning rapidly through the air, making a booming sound like a boomerang.

At that moment, a carpet made of blue ice suddenly spread out from inside the ice palace.

But the ice carpet wasn't laid on the ground. Instead, it circled around like a roller coaster several times. Finally, when it reached beneath Iver, it cut the tall cake cart in half!

Only the small section of the tower-shaped cake beneath Iver —about a meter tall—transformed into a small cart. Iver sped along like a child in a supermarket cart, rapidly circling the ice roller coaster. Throughout this, the shivering fairies relentlessly continued playing music, providing background accompaniment for Iver.

Iver had no choice but to continue playing the piano.

In the process, however, most of the fairies on his body were also lost—with each fairy lost, the ensemble lost a note. In the end, only the little fairy Neelim, huddled inside Iver's sweater and clung tightly to Iver collar, managed to avoid being thrown off.

Of course, it might also be because she did nothing, while the other fairies were busy playing their instruments.

In the end, only Iver's solo remained.

Even amidst the wind and snow, the music easily pierced through the sky.

As the cake cart glided rapidly across the ice carpet, all the doors of the ice palace opened one after another in response to the music. The toy soldiers in red cotton coats guarding the doors raised their heads in unison and saluted Iver with their chests out.

They looked to be less than half a meter tall, and their thick cotton coats were visibly made of wood. Yet they were shivering with cold, appearing almost alive.

—Although this scene looks quite fairytale-like and interesting, Iver knows that these simple-looking toy soldiers are actually very terrifying phantoms, on the same level as succubi and Punishment Demon.

Moreover, they have all existed for a very, very long time, and any one of them that descends into the Material Realm would at least be at the Sixth Level. And depending on the "atmosphere," they can also have all sorts of outrageous buffs stacked on top of each other.

Thinking about it this way, the scene before him immediately became terrifying—at least thirty or forty terrifying illusion demons of the Sixth Level or above surrounded Iver. Moreover, as Iver continued to venture deeper, their numbers continued to increase.

In fact, they are all apostles of the Fairy Queen.

The Fairy Queen is ranked at the Celestial level. However, she is not called a "Fairy Angel" according to the rules because the title of "Fairy Queen" can be inherited voluntarily— Titania is not the first Fairy Queen, nor will she be the last.

Although most fairies don't live past twenty, any fairy has the potential to become Fairy Queen. This is a perfectly natural rule of the species: the Fairy Queen creates new fairies, and if Fairy Queen finds life boring, she can step down. Then, a fairy will mature and become the new fairy king or Fairy Queen.

There are no clear promotion rules, nor are there clear responsibilities or terms of office.

Everything is like the rules of the Path of Beauty: ambiguous and arbitrary.

Titania is a rather fickle Fairy Queen, and the "decoration style" of her fairy palace changes frequently. Each time a different style is adopted, the fairies transform into creations in that style.

The Fairy Kingdom doesn't have a specific design, or rather, the place where the Fairy Kingdom Fairy Queen imagines to live might become what the Children imagine.

No matter what the Fairy Kingdom becomes, these "moving things," and the actors in them, are all the same group of people.

If it's Spring Manor, they'll become handsome male and female servants; if it's a candy house style, they'll become candy soldiers; if it's a horror theme, they'll be wandering ghost servants or haunted tea sets.

The ice palace before us is actually a crystal ball—if you come from outside the Rainbow Bridge, you'll find that the Fairy Queen's place is encased in a giant crystal ball, so it's actually a toy-themed place. Therefore, they are actually wooden toy soldiers.

Iver had a particular impression of them—because they even had memories of them. Later in the game, there's a fairy dungeon where a candy soldier will greet the player with, "Hey, what brings you here again?"

These "toy soldiers" are all extensions of the Fairy Queen's authority. They all possess real and pure souls, and in life they were followers of the Fairy Queen, and in death they are her apostles.

Some of them were fervent followers—or rather, simps—who fell in love with the Fairy Queen because of her breathtaking, irrational beauty. Of course, their pursuit was doomed to failure... because fairies do not need sexual reproduction; in a sense, they are a kind of plant, reproducing through flowers and fruits.

Others, weary of the deceit, hardship, and suffering of the real world, prefer to immerse themselves in this eternally beautiful fairytale world. These are people with pure hearts, which is why they can play with the fairies.

For these people, this might be considered a "wonderful afterlife"—no hunger, no pain, no death. They only need to obey the Fairy Queen's orders and play different roles each week with a group of equally pure-hearted adults to amuse the Queen, fairies, and Children, and they can live happily like this forever.

The only regret is that they have no vacations and little personal time. They also can't leave the Fairy Kingdom... because the Fairy Queen is very kind to them and has given them a lot of power; this makes them actually very terrifying inside.

Although these soldiers themselves do not possess the fairy's extraordinary ability to make their wishes come true, because they are essentially the Fairy Queen's "imagination," the illusion is extremely powerful—not so powerful as to be unbreakable. On the contrary, the illusion has no protection and shatters as soon as it is dispelled.

However, if the illusion is not seen through, their attacks will be clumsy and comical, like elite soldiers dressed in mascot costumes pretending to fight in slow motion. Once they try to break the illusion, they will mutate into strange and abstract terrifying creations, their attacks becoming unusually rapid and exhibiting abilities completely different from their usual style, capable of wiping them out on the spot.

It gives you the feeling of "Didn't you notice the assassin sneaking in? His stealth is so clumsy," or "We did notice, so let's keep quiet and pretend we didn't see anything."

Because of this complicated mechanism, the various statuses attached to them can only be removed by completing the corresponding mechanics—not difficult, but requiring cooperation. Although the dungeons themselves are indeed fun and interesting... that's usually done with familiar people using voice chat.

Considering that teammates who are not smart enough, too lazy to think, or do not understand the mechanics will be matched in from time to time, dragging everyone else to a wipe, the matchmaking environment of fairy-type dungeons will become like a disaster movie.

At this point, the phrase "Hey, what brings you here again?" that you hear every time you restart the game is quite impactful.

These creations are, in fact, part of the fairy tale.

—They are actually "children's nightmares".

Nightmares are actually part of fairy tales.