Chapter 1 Fairies Can't Be Reasoned With

Apparently, you can’t be serious with fairies—because they simply don’t realize when you’re being serious with them, and they don’t understand what “being serious” means…

So Hao Ren and the others decisively gave up questioning why such important information could be forgotten, and instead began a more detailed inquiry and understanding of the “Nightmare Nest” known by the fairy.

Of course, staying in the ventilation ducts near the core area for too long was not a wise move, so they asked about these things while heading towards the deeper passages under the fairy's guidance.

Just like the fairy said before, her understanding of the Nightmare Nest was actually limited.

The surviving fairies of Amantir were only a small fraction, and even among these survivors, their range of activity was quite limited—for survival, they had to fuse with the Earth's core and build powerful shielding layers to completely isolate the outside world. While this ensured their safety, it also meant that all the fairies were trapped in a tightly sealed cage.

The fairies' only channel for sensing the outside world was through the crystals buried throughout the planet Amantir. These crystals had mostly been contaminated by the power of the Lord of Madness, or destroyed by corrupted monsters as energy and resources. Less than ten percent were still usable, and even those that were, the fairies dared not openly activate these information channels. They usually only used the narrow bandwidth generated by the spontaneous resonance of the crystals to a minimum extent to collect intelligence from the “upper” areas, and three or four of these crystal veins happened to be located near the Amantir Crystal and the Nightmare Nest. This was the fairies' only source of information about that terrifying place.

In the little fairy's disjointed narrative, Hao Ren learned that there was originally no underground space below the Amantir Crystal: before the planet fell, the area beneath the control center was a dense and thick layer of rock, which extended deep into the mantle. Further down was the “Crystal Pillar” and “Grid” area that supported the entire planetary fortress. The Nightmare Nest was created out of thin air only after the guardian giants collectively "fell."

Its creation time was shortly after the equatorial rift valley was torn open.

The Nightmare Nest was not located directly below the Amantir Crystal, but slightly offset to the south, which allowed it to avoid the tearing zone of the equatorial rift valley. The nest itself was an extremely vast elliptical area, wrapped in a powerful and strange energy field. The fairies found it difficult to sense what was inside, and could only roughly discern that it was a structurally complex cavity area, with many monsters taking root and living within it.

The Nightmare Nest was adjacent to the equatorial rift valley, and some of its "contents" penetrated the energy barrier and extended to the bottom of the rift valley. There, corrupted monsters had built numerous facilities to utilize those extended structures, which was the "summoning platform" that Hao Ren and his party had seen.

As for the "large monster entrenched in the center of the Nightmare Nest" repeatedly emphasized by the fairy in her narrative, Hao Ren never figured out what it was. He could only vaguely assume that it was an unprecedentedly powerful derivative of madness, possessing exceptional mental and dream-related powers—powers that might even approach those of Lockmarton back then. In order to continuously create troops for Amantir, the monster was in a prolonged state of slumber, weaving a vast nightmare, and its nightmare was projected into the real world through the extended structures at the bottom of the rift valley.

There, a large number of Brain Monsters gathered around devices called "Nightmare Pillars," and their task was to enter the dream with the "large monster" in the Nightmare Nest and more quickly "draw out" the monsters constantly born in the nightmare.

And this entire process was closely related to the Amantir Crystal.

The little fairy couldn't explain exactly what the connection between the two was, but in the fairies' monitoring, they could observe the energy of the Amantir Crystal being connected to the Nightmare Nest below, and constantly exchanging information on a considerable scale.

This made Hao Ren feel quite uneasy.

He was worried that the Amantir Crystal had been completely contaminated by the power of the Lord of Madness. If that were the case, it would be difficult to say whether it could be recombined with the other two crystals to form a beacon.

"By the way, do fairies usually come up here like you?" In the passage leading to the deeper levels, Hao Ren curiously asked the little fairy who was floating above the data terminal in the form of a holographic projection, "Were you the aura we sensed at the beginning?"

"We usually don't come out!" the little fairy said immediately. "The world above is full of those monsters. If we come out, we might not be able to go back. Several fairies who came out to scout have died like that—we only send an observer up here once every hundred years on average. But this time, a monitoring line we set up in the upper area suddenly sensed very strange energy fluctuations, and then we discovered a group of reckless guys we'd never seen before running into the monsters' base, so everyone sent me out to check the situation."

As she spoke, she puffed out her chest: "Of course, that aura you sensed earlier was me! I followed you for a long, long time, but you guys were too dumb and didn't notice it at all, and you recklessly ran off and attracted the monsters' attention. If I hadn't taken action at the time, you'd all be dead by now."

"Okay, okay, thanks to you for saving our lives," Hao Ren said to the little fairy with a smile, then looked up at his surroundings, "By the way, where exactly is the passage to your sanctuary?"

By this time, the group had been traveling in the underground area for a long time, and the map showed that they had long since left the underground part of the control center and even entered an unmarked underground passage. The surrounding walls had imperceptibly changed from metal to solid rock with a peculiar shimmer, and the rock was inlaid with luminous crystals of various sizes, which made the entire passage appear bright enough even without lighting. The buzzing of mechanical equipment could no longer be heard in the passage, which seemed to indicate that the team had left the base clusters filled with mechanical facilities and entered the more primitive depths of the planet.

The little fairy's perception of the outside world now relied on the data terminal's various sensing modules. Although they were many times more sensitive and accurate than her original senses, they were quite clumsy to use because of the intervening data structure and lack of familiarity. So, the little one took a little time to complete the positioning in the formation: "Oh, oh, we're close to the Crystal Pillar Layer. Beyond the Crystal Pillar Layer is the Great Grid, and below that is where the fairies are hiding—but we don't need to drill around in the Crystal Pillar Layer and the Great Grid, there's a passage that leads directly to the sanctuary~"

"What are the Crystal Pillar Layer and the Great Grid?" Little Elizabeth asked curiously.

"This planet was built by the Goddess of Creation, so it's not like a naturally formed planet," the little fairy explained chirpily. "Below the crust is not an ordinary mantle, but a large area of crystal forming a pillar-like structure, that's the Crystal Pillar Layer. There are many automatically running energy units and ancient facilities there. Because they support the operation of the entire upper layer of the planet, even the monsters don't dare to mess with the things in the Crystal Pillar Layer. And the Great Grid is the barrier between the Crystal Pillar Layer and the Earth's core, it's responsible for making the planet more stable and coordinating the energy and information transmitted from each crystal pillar. Some of our monitoring lines are connected to the Great Grid~"

The demon girl was fascinated by the incredible structure of the celestial body in the fairy's mouth, and opened her mouth, stretching her voice in amazement: "Wow—"

As she spoke, the team suddenly broke free from the long underground cave, and the scenery in front of Hao Ren suddenly opened up, and the underground scenery left him dumbfounded.

Magnificent and fantastic colors filled his vision, almost dazzling.

Without the expected darkness and oppression, the vastness and brightness of the underground world completely exceeded everyone's imagination. Hao Ren only saw a crystal jungle spreading out in his field of vision. Everything in sight was made of crystal-clear crystals: forests, canyons, streams, shrubs… all refracting colorful and dazzling illusions in the light from an unknown source.

It was like a frozen world.

And in this boundless crystal world, Hao Ren saw the huge crystal pillars that supported the upper structure of Amantir: they were neatly arranged in the crystal world, like giant pillars supporting the heavens and the earth in mythology. The diameter of the pillars was probably enough to build a city-state on their cross-section, and their tops extended into the dark depths beyond the reach of sight.

The group had actually come down from one of these crystal pillars.

The lower half of these giant crystal pillars was surrounded by a faint light. In that light, Hao Ren saw many strange structures that revolved around the crystal pillars like suspended rings. Those should be the ancient facilities the little fairy was talking about.

The automatic running mechanisms deep in the underground of Amantir had been running in this underground world since the Goddess of Creation created this starship, and even though the world on the surface had changed, and the power of madness swept the globe, this place seemed to have been unaffected.

No, it was not unaffected—Hao Ren's gaze swept across the crystal world, and he soon discovered that some of the crystal pillars had actually been polluted. They had an abnormal purplish-red hue, and the ring-shaped facilities orbiting the crystal pillars were constantly bursting out with violent dark arcs of electricity, looking extremely dangerous.

"I... I saw a scene similar to this in the illusion of the Throne of the End," Vivian muttered dreamily, "but there were also many small animals there, and a crystal deer..."

"What you saw should be the Crystal Pillar Layer under the Nexus," the little fairy explained. "The Nexus and the three planetary fortresses were all created by the Goddess of Creation, and their structures are actually similar. The Crystal Pillar Layer of Amantir was also very lively at first, with many crystal animals living here, but later the crystal pillars began to mutate, and the area where the animals could survive became smaller and smaller. Now they have basically disappeared, even the forests you see... are actually dead, but crystal plants don't rot after they die, so you can still see them."

"Even if those monsters don't come down, the corruption has already spread here," Izhaks said, shaking his head as he looked at the distant crystal pillars that had obviously mutated, "so even if you hide in the Earth's core, you will be swallowed sooner or later."

"We know, but we have nowhere else to hide," the little fairy on the holographic projection said, spreading out her hands, her small size making this deliberately mature action quite amusing. "The door to the sanctuary is just ahead, I'll show you the way."