After meeting up with Topaz, the group split into two teams.
Stelle and March took Yanqing, Bailu, and Qingque to Qlipoth Fort to greet Bronya and arrange accommodations at the Goethe Hotel.
Meanwhile, Huohuo followed Topaz and Nero to Nero's Fragmentum Factory to settle the Mirror Holders and Phantylia in.
Naturally, from the player's perspective, the story followed Stelle's group, but Nero's Fragmentum Factory was indeed one of the new maps introduced in this update.
The factory had been built out on the snowfields, connecting the surface and the underground.
The underground section consisted of some of the earliest towns to be completely consumed by the Fragmentum.
It was an enormous factory. Although the overall operation relied on driving Fragmentum monsters to work, it still symbolically provided a few positions for the people of Belobog.
Mostly overseer-type jobs, responsible for motivating the Fragmentum creatures to keep working. These positions were generally filled by retired Silvermane Guards veterans.
Because other factions had invested in the project, the state of Nero's Fragmentum Factory differed from both the Overworld and the Underworld. It was far more modernized.
Under Topaz's guidance, Nero and Huohuo carried the gourds in their arms as they passed through steel-cast structures, moved across virtual screens, crossed production lines and residential zones, and eventually stepped onto the central elevator platform on the factory's upper level while the sounds of massive machinery gradually faded behind them.
Huohuo stayed squeezed between Nero and Topaz, nervously glancing around at those figures that looked human at first glance, yet obviously weren't human at all.
Some wore armor. Some were dressed in rags. There were even ones that looked exactly like Hanya and Xueyi.
But all of them possessed unmistakably bizarre traits. For example, some had one arm shorter than the other, with the short arm splitting open like a blooming chrysanthemum. Others had heads no larger than eggs.
Huohuo had worked in the Ten-Lords Commission for a long time already. Although she was timid, dealing with eerie entities in her daily life was unavoidable.
But almost all the things she encountered were heliobi. And with Tail constantly accompanying her, her tolerance toward heliobi had clearly improved over time.
It wasn't that she stopped being afraid, but even when she felt fear or thought something was frightening, it was hard for her to find it truly uncanny.
But here, inside Nero's Fragmentum Factory, she genuinely felt something deep in her heart screaming that this place was wrong.
Like the one to the left, whose body looked like a rectangular brick with long, thin limbs, while its head grew from its rear.
Or the one on the right, whose body was shaped into a grotesque cylinder, its head entering through its backside and emerging from its stomach, with intestines hanging across its face.
Feeling the warmth from beside her, Huohuo couldn't help reaching out and grabbing Nero's arm.
If there weren't two people beside her right now, she felt like she might actually faint from fright.
And even more terrifying was the fact that in this situation, these grotesque creatures, inside this giant technologically advanced yet unnaturally silent space, not only weren't attacking anyone, they were honestly standing to the side with empty little carts in hand, as if they were genuinely hard at work.
Huohuo absolutely did not want to know what those carts were used to carry. This environment, which was clearly abnormal yet somehow overly normal at the same time, was simply too horrifying.
If straying from normalcy was what defined abnormality, and abnormality itself was what created eeriness, then Nero's Fragmentum Factory felt like someone had thrown every bizarre thing imaginable into a blender, crushed them all together, added water, and produced a drink that looked perfectly fine on the surface.
Still, while Huohuo was terrified, Tail clearly felt differently.
"My god, this place is way too creepy!"
Tail let out a heartfelt sigh. On the matter of Nero's Fragmentum Factory being far too bizarre for normal people, he and Huohuo were completely in agreement.
But very quickly, Tail burst into laughter.
"HAHAHAHAHA! Just imagining those Mirror Holders and Phantylia having to work in this kind of place together with all these crooked-eyed, twisted-up freaks doing the exact same job makes me start worrying for them already.
"HAHAHAHAHAHA! Hey, little scaredy-cat, did you see the work schedules earlier? The monsters here don't even get breaks! Hahaha!
"Oh man, just thinking about what those Mirror Holders and Phantylia are about to go through, and what kind of future awaits them... even I can't help but offer a moment of silence for them."
In the end, Topaz led Nero and Huohuo to a relatively open area. It was the perfect place to release newly captured workers.
Huohuo recited an incantation and activated her spell technique, releasing batch after batch of Mirror Holders.
Perhaps due to Nero's influence, these excessively fanatical devotees of Beauty turned out to be unusually cooperative.
None of them had any complaints whatsoever about Nero arranging for them to work at Nero's Fragmentum Factory.
Under the confused and astonished gazes of Topaz, Huohuo, and Master Tail, the group listened to Nero with sparkling eyes.
Even when they left to follow the factory's veteran workers to their assigned posts, they still looked at Nero with reverent expressions, tearfully thanking and bowing to him before departing.
The devotees of Beauty had already been abnormal to begin with, but seeing them act like this still left people stunned, making it hard not to wonder if they had somehow become even crazier.
Nero, however, showed no reaction to this at all. His expression practically said this was perfectly normal.
From his perspective, the people he met were all very reasonable. And the unreasonable ones eventually became reasonable too.
So the Mirror Holders acting like this was normal... at least in Nero's eyes.
After all the Mirror Holders had left, Nero nodded in satisfaction.
"Mhm! That went pretty smoothly. Everyone cooperated really well."
Then he handed the gourd he was carrying to Huohuo.
"Alright, now let Phantylia out too."
Huohuo nodded and once again activated her spell technique.
Then, as she opened the mouth of the gourd, a cluster of ghostly green flames slowly floated out from within.
The instant she emerged, Phantylia realized this was not the Xianzhou.
Even now, she still had no idea what kind of madness had possessed the Hunt that day for the Luofu to suddenly come after her personally.
But none of that mattered anymore.
Because this wasn't the Xianzhou.
Which meant she could run.
She didn't know why the Xianzhou had taken her away in the first place, but since this clearly wasn't Xianzhou Alliance territory, something had probably gone wrong during transport.
With that thought, Phantylia immediately prepared to escape.
But after only flying a few meters away, she abruptly stopped midair. Then, as though something yanked her backward, she shot straight back.
Feeling the wind binding her in place, and seeing Nero smiling at her, Phantylia understood.
Whether something had actually gone wrong during transport or not, as long as this white-haired brat was here, there was no way she was escaping today.
At this point, Nero's image in Phantylia's mind had become utterly terrifying.
That kid might look harmless to humans and animals alike, but he was a monster who could swallow a neutron star explosion whole and walk away completely fine.