Artifact Report

Chapter 399 Brianna, yes, its name is...?

Why are you waiting for me?

Brianna thought to herself in a daze.

……Who are you?

In this world, no one belongs to me. No one is waiting for me.

I have lost my mother, my lover, and my father.

All I have are enemies; but even "enemies" can only be considered enemies if I take the initiative to attack them.

If I were to disappear, neither Chai Si nor Fu Tai Lan would ever think of me again.

"You don't know, but in this world, I'm the only one who's been watching you, paying attention to you, and waiting for you."

The host's voice, both deep and gentle, parted the lingering darkness, like an unyielding hand that stubbornly held onto Brianna's mind.

Sometimes she even felt that she wasn't climbing herself, but rather that she was being pulled forward little by little by the host's voice.

"...Why?" she murmured. "What are you waiting for me to do?"

The host chuckled. "I've been waiting for you for so long... You have no idea how anxious I was, you have no idea how long I waited to finally see you. I'm so happy, Brianna."

“You didn’t answer my question,” Brianna said.

In the boundless, layered darkness of loneliness, there was only her and the host; it was as if, having lived once, all that remained of her was this one-sided conversation.

The vulture never appeared—perhaps it disappeared after it came in.

But Brianna hoped it sensed something was wrong and ultimately didn't come in. Perhaps a tiny bit of "humanity" still remained within her, because she was somewhat reluctant for the vulture to dissipate into the Black Abyss.

"I can't even remember... how many years I've faced a problem that I can't solve."

The host's voice sounded a little different from how it was on the radio.

During his radio broadcasts, he seemed to faithfully play the role of "host," and his voice was mellow, gentle, and perfectly proper.

Now Brianna realized that his real voice sounded almost like—like it had splinters in it.

As it brushed against her eardrum, there was a slight pain, yet it also subtly tickled an itch she was unaware of. A tingling sensation spread across her scalp, a mix of pain and itchiness.

“The Black Abyss.” He said, then paused. “…The Black Abyss, the Black Abyss.”

"What's wrong?" Brianna asked.

“I can’t get through, Brianna,” the host said. “I’ve thought about it for years, but I still can’t find a way to cross the Black Abyss.”

"Isn't it right?"

Brianna paused, startled. "Aren't you leading me through the Black Abyss right now? You don't even need to go through it yourself. You've infected all the hunters' phones; when they returned to the human world, they took your radio app with them. Besides, you said before that you were inspired by someone else. So there must have been others who crossed the Black Abyss before me, right?"

“Yes…yes. But that’s not what I meant, Brianna.”

His voice gently pushed aside the darkness, leading her step by step forward.

Brianna seemed to hear a faint, ethereal sound of rain, almost like a hallucination.

"Only a small percentage of people can cross the Black Abyss. Humans with strong willpower, who have mastered the methods, can leave this place unscathed... or like you, not one of the inhabitants born from a human body, but rather transformed from a person into a resident completely..."

Even though Brianna herself had admitted it once, she still couldn't suppress her anger: "I'm not!"

"Okay, okay, that's fine too."

The host chuckled softly, seemingly indulging her completely and willing to go along with whatever she said. "Residents, and many more... but none of them can cross the Black Abyss. I've tried."

Have you tried it? Has he ever thrown residents in here?

What does "more" mean?
"This is really troublesome... really troublesome. No wonder the lair has existed for so long, yet only hunters have been traversing it... and our understanding of the lair has always been limited to a small group of people..."

As his emotions grew heavier, the splinter in his voice seemed to crack even more, scraping against one's ears—Briana instinctively shook her head.

"What 'Black Abyss Belt'... it should be called a 'Separation Belt' instead." The host sighed. "Even if there are occasional rifts in the human world, what emerges from those rifts is the Black Abyss Belt, not a lair..."

"A rift?" Brianna was taken aback. "What rift?"

"There must be a crack in the world for you to crawl into."

The host chuckled softly, the wooden splinter almost sharpening. "For so many years, all sorts of problems have blocked my way like stone walls... It's impossible here, impossible there... But heaven has indeed been on my side. All the impossible has become possible, and solutions have been found for each one. Only the last problem remains: how to cross the Black Abyss Belt? It has remained unshakable."

Amidst the increasingly clear sound of rain, he sounded as if he were about to cry, yet also on the verge of bursting into laughter. "And then... I found you, Brianna."

Every time he called out Brianna's name, it was as if he had shoved her a little deeper into her body.

"You've discovered...me?"

"You had already received the call-up notice, but you didn't know it. The moment you became a player in the Nest Domination game, you died."

The host murmured, almost as if recalling a beautiful dream, "When I found you, you were already wearing George Green's body, walking step by step into the nest... Behind you, your upper body was endlessly extending... So beautiful. So breathtaking... It was as if you were dragging a path of return behind you that you could never finish even if you looked back."

Brianna had to force back a sob.

“I didn’t understand what you meant to me then, Brianna. I didn’t realize then that you were the answer I’d been searching for.”

“Enough…tell me,” Brianna said, her voice rising. “Tell me, what am I to you? What do I have to do with the Abyss? What are you going to do to me?”

The host suddenly fell silent for a few seconds.

Slowly, emerging from the darkness, he asked leisurely, "...Are you confused?"

"what?"

"Are you very confused? Many questions, right? A lot of bewilderment, isn't it?" The host chuckled softly and said, "It's like... your head is full of question marks, isn't it?"

???

"So what?"

The host's response offered no answers, only growing Brianna's confusion and bewilderment—including the following words. "That's wonderful," the host said. "You're about to enter the world. Even the timing of your bewilderment is perfect... Heaven truly favors me. Heaven truly gives me the best... It's always been like this."

???

???

Amidst the countless questions that rushed through her like a turbulent storm, Brianna still remembered one crucial question.

Where in this world will I appear? I don't want to go to the docks—I can't go to the docks—

"Don't worry... the crevice you're going to crawl through is on Cain Street."

Cain Street?
While Brianna was somewhat reassured, new questions naturally arose. What was so special about Cain Street?
Or is it that the "crack" in the world just happened to appear on Cain Street?

The sound of torrential rain rose from the depths of the Black Sea, hitting our ears almost instantly.

No, it's not just the sound of rain.

The hazy, misty darkness of the Black Abyss suddenly vanished from Brianna, replaced by a raging, violent night—strong winds whipped up countless long, whip-like raindrops that lashed at her so hard she couldn't even open her eyes.

Where is the host?

Brianna squinted, crawling forward inchingly; the cold, wet, but firm ground was once again beneath her. Enduring the pain from the pebbles digging into her skin, she cried out, "What's going on? Am I really in here?"

No one answered her.

Brianna managed to turn over in the pouring rain and glanced back.

This is... this seems to be an old residential building complex. The unremarkable buildings stand out as long, square, dark silhouettes in the darkness and torrential rain.

Her body remained long and stretched out, crawling on the ground, endlessly extending backward until it disappeared into a large cloud of black mist.

Brianna squinted but still couldn't see clearly; she simply took out her phone and turned on the flashlight.

The white light barely penetrated the rainy night, like a layer of damp mist enveloping the residential buildings behind us.

...She didn't expect that the "crack" the host mentioned was not a metaphor.

There was indeed a crack in the residential building—or rather, it looked like a crack had been eroded by the black mist.

What emerged from that crack wasn't the apartment building itself, but layers upon layers of darkness—a black abyss that seemed to send one's soul plummeting into it at a single glance.

Is this really the human world? Aren't there buildings like this everywhere in the Nest?
The host might be lying to her. Because logically speaking, she shouldn't have entered the world looking like this—

and many more.

Brianna lay there blankly on the ground, suddenly realizing something she should have realized long ago.

When she heard her future self's voice on the radio in Shirley's room, she didn't hear "Jacolin's" voice, but "Briana's".

There was nothing wrong with that in itself—but she also heard background noise and car horns.

There are almost no cars on the roads leading to the lair.

The sound of car horns indicates traffic; traffic means that the future Brianna is still alive.

Moreover, she entered the human world in her original form.

Was everything decided at that time?
She herself didn't know that when she was able to enter the human world, her future self had already entered the human world.
"What exactly is going on?"

Brianna could no longer contain herself and roared, the torrential rain pounding against her furious shouts, almost sending white smoke billowing from her voice. "Come out here and tell me! What are you planning to do? Why did you help me get in here?"

I have so many questions, doubts, and confusion; my head is full of question marks, question marks, question marks, question marks!

I desperately need the answer! If you don't tell me the answer soon, I'm going to kill someone!
So torturous, so torturous, full of question marks, so torturous, full of unanswered question marks.
???

???

Wait, what is this thing I'm sensing? It feels like a nest? What could be such a nest?
What is it that floats in the rain, mixed with the rainwater, between heaven and earth? It permeates the water molecules, flows into the sewers, is everywhere, everywhere, everywhere… What is it? I know!
It's the original solution.

The human world has been completely soaked in the original liquid.

"Everything is going well, Brianna."

The host's voice rang out softly from a parked car not far away.

Brianna suddenly turned her head.

"All the key figures have gathered in Blackmore City tonight... All the key figures are caught in a deep and incomprehensible confusion tonight."

In the dark car, only the car screen glowed with a soft blue light, and the hum of the electrical current carried the host's voice, spreading it out into the world.

"The final target artifact, ???... has finally been born. When each of you—Maiminghe, Jin Xueli, Chess Munroe, Fu Tailan, Brianna, and the Observers... were immersed in the primordial liquid, tormented by unanswerable questions, and assaulted by incomprehensible anomalies... from your very minds, this artifact, ???, was born."

Artifact Report

Dear Nest Domination players:

This is a mass message.

Congratulations! Thanks to everyone's hard work and collaboration, the final illusion has been created.

It appeared in the human world, in the city of Blackmore.

What were originally clear and true objective facts will be distorted, questioned, and have their boundaries blurred...

It can shatter the boundary between reality and illusion, turn a bottle back into clay, and then mold that clay into a sky.

From the moment you were born, all the truths you previously knew may be overturned.

In other words, from now on,
The world has finally returned to normal once again.
Everything is full of possibilities.

Because only those who change the world deserve to move forward.

(End of this chapter)