Artifact Report

Chapter 424 Hyper - Seventeen Years Ago

...This is a nightmare, Hepburn thought.

Just minutes before, she was fast asleep in bed with her husband beside her, while Damian was in his own room; just minutes before, it was just an ordinary night.

She looked down at her white nightgown, which was stained with fragments of blood.

She looked up and saw that Damian's bedroom was a mess.

Outside Damian's bedroom window, the blinding lights of an ambulance were flashing as it plunged into the dimly lit room; for a moment it illuminated the bedroom with a bright red light, for a moment it turned blue, and for a moment it fell back down, revealing large patches of blood on the bedroom floor and walls.

This was of course a dream; she was sleepwalking. None of this was real.

But for some reason, she couldn't wake up.

She wanted to go to Damian's bed to check on him. Just seeing him sleeping peacefully in bed, feeling the rise and fall of his breath, would put her mind at ease and allow her to wake up.

Heper swam barefoot toward Damian's bed.

As she passed the wooden fortress in the room, a sharp pain suddenly shot through her foot. The pain was so clear and real that she almost wanted to scream and go crazy.

In the end, Haiper simply lifted his foot in a daze and saw a splinter embedded in his skin, with a small piece of clothing still hanging from the other end.

Her vision was completely blurred when she pulled out the splinter.

Through layer upon layer of tears that seemed to never run dry, she could see nothing clearly, but she still knew that they were fragments of Damian's pajamas.

"It must be a dream," Haiper thought. With each subsequent step, she trod on the wound on the sole of her foot, the pain acutely felt. "It must be a dream."

Not a dream.

There was only a splatter of blood on the bed—she only realized later that the blood must have been Chai Si's, and when she thought about how she had touched it, she wiped her hands vigorously—Damian was not on the bed.

Only Damian's phone lay coldly in the night.

It wasn't a dream, it wasn't a dream. When her husband rushed out of the room like the wind, the child he was holding in his arms was indeed her critically injured and dying child—it wasn't a dream, her child was in the ambulance downstairs—

Haiper, barefoot and still wearing her nightgown, turned and rushed out the door.

She seemed to be screaming and staggering the whole time, and she couldn't remember anything except that when she arrived at the hospital with the ambulance, she was still clutching Damian's phone tightly.

While Heper waited blankly outside the emergency room, Carolan sat beside her the whole time, holding her shoulders tightly. He didn't try to persuade her to put down her phone, nor did he ever stand up to ask about Chase's condition in the other emergency room.

At that moment, Hepburn felt a little grateful to him.

Because at that time, Hepburn's mind was still in a mess, and she couldn't figure out what had happened; she kept asking if a thief had broken into the house? Had the two children been playing together in the middle of the night and just happened to be caught by a thief?
Kaironan gave a vague answer, saying it didn't seem so, and refused to say anything more.

Heper was so crying that she was almost suffocating. It wasn't until a while later, when he got up to fill out some forms, that she belatedly realized what had happened.

...Oh, it's related to the nest.

She had been the wife of an illusion hunter for so many years. Even though Keronan didn't like to talk about work and even though she had never set foot in the lair, she had always observed from the sidelines, remembering every little detail and fragment of information, piecing together a clear picture of the lair.

For her, what she knew better than the nest was Kaironan himself.

Tonight's events are related to the lair, and it seems they are also related to the Chai Si.

Upon closer reflection, the fact that Kaironan never inquired about Chess's life or death proved this point: he suspected that Chess was inextricably linked to Damian's injury; his refusal to visit Chess was a subtle clue revealed by his barely suppressed anger.

Did Chais kill Damian? Why?
He had everything Damian had. Occasionally, when she saw how Carolan treated Chais, she would feel secretly resentful for Damian—if she hadn't been certain that Carolan didn't know Chais's mother before, she probably would have overthought things.

Why did Chais still target Damian?
As Hepburn thought about it, she subconsciously turned on Damian's phone. She just wanted to see Damian's favorite cartoon character, but when the screen lit up, she saw a message.

! Important information notification from the nest!

The unknown nest domination game

Congratulations! You have opened the world's most advanced pathway!
Recruiting

Young but not naive Damian

Become the first player in this round of Nest Domination game
Most of the text consisted of distorted, ink-like nest script interspersed with fragments of human language; however, reading it only left her with more questions.

...What? Damian has a passageway?
Hunters shouldn't receive a notification when they open a passage, right?
Hepburn suddenly remembered the splinter embedded in her foot and the piece of pajamas fabric.

She remembered that Damian's pajamas, which he had taken off during the emergency, only had a hole in the back—it wasn't surprising that Damian had a hole in his back due to the injury, but the rest of the pajamas were intact, proving that the torn piece of fabric originally came from the back as well.

So the clothes on his back were only torn by splinters... This is Damian's passage.
Just tear off a piece of clothing from the back.

But even if you knew, it wouldn't matter.

Heper prayed and vowed that once Damian came out of the emergency room, she would risk her life to never allow him to have any contact with the lair again.

The vows she made then seem ridiculously ironic compared to what she did later.

She knew when the lair began to transform from a demon she loathed and wished she had never encountered into her last hope in the world.

It was when the doctor called them both in to see Damian one last time.

"What do you mean? What does 'last look' mean?"

She stood by the bed, glaring at everyone around her, including Kaironan. Pointing to the electrocardiogram on the machine screen, she trembled violently, almost convinced for a moment that the whole world was lying to her. "Damian still has a heartbeat, doesn't he? Shouldn't you be continuing resuscitation efforts?"

The doctor was clearly not new to this situation. His demeanor was just right, his words gentle and tactful, yet the meaning was still conveyed: the machine was beating Damian's heart, one beat after another. Damian was brain dead. This was the medical definition of death.

“There’s no need to immediately decide to shut down life support,” the doctor concluded. “You can definitely spend more time with him…”

Once the machine is cut off, he will become a corpse.

He will forever fade into darkness and silence from her life; she will never again see the child she created and raised with her life and blood, the child who was once growing up vigorously and full of passion.

Her child.

"I see,"

After an unknown amount of time, Haiper heard himself say, "You all go out, I need to be alone with him for a while."

Everyone, including Carolan, was kicked out of the room by her. Her husband, who was usually not very talkative, only expressed slight objection this time before giving in to her opinion—Happer had shared a bed with him for twenty years and almost instinctively sensed that he was feeling guilty.

...That's really interesting.

Hepburn sat beside Damian, looking at his sleeping face, and gently smoothed his blond hair.

"Damian is amazing!"

She spoke in a tone that would make twelve-year-old Damian blush, as if he were a little baby, and said softly, "I knew you were an amazing child. You know, you have the best pathways in the world... Isn't that amazing? Your father, the hunters outside, none of them can compare to you. Mom is so proud of you. If you survive, you'll find that you've become a player in some kind of game... Don't you love playing games?"

Hepper buried his face in Damian's neck and shoulders, tears soaking his clothes and his soft, uncut hair.

She leaned on her son and whispered, "You've already amazed everyone with this amazing pathway. Now, can you surprise Mommy too? Because Mommy doesn't want you to go."

She waited a while, secretly hoping for a miracle that only happens in TV dramas; but Damian never opened his eyes.

“Look, your heart is always beating. With each beat, it pumps blood, sending it through your veins to your whole body… Every cell in your body is alive because of it. But they say you're dead.”

Heper had to stop and catch his breath for a while.

After catching her breath, she carefully lifted Damian's shoulder, revealing his back. She bent down, biting his clothes with her teeth, and tore off a piece of fabric with both her mouth and hands.

Heper waited a long time.

When she finally vaguely saw a faint black mist gathering at the tear in her clothes, as if it were about to form a passage, Haiper wanted to both cry and laugh.

The most prestigious pathway. The most gifted child.

She pressed the fabric back down, watching the pale black passage gradually lose its strength and disappear. This passage seemed to be affected by Damian's condition, and was also on the verge of death.

Heper thought for a while.

It must be done so discreetly, ideally so that only she knows about it.

But she had never interfered in the affairs of the Kai family, nor had she been involved with the hunter circle. She had no connections and didn't even know a single hunter she could bribe; if she asked a hunter from the family faction, it would be difficult to deceive Kaironan.

Moreover, this was something Damian could clearly do himself.

Heper leaned down and whispered to Damian, "Mom has thought of a way. You have to prove it to them, you have to surprise the whole world again, okay? Cooperate with Mom one last time, okay? I don't want you to just disappear like this. This is something no one else can do but you."

She kissed Damian's forehead once, then again.

"No matter what you become, I will not regret it. Even if only a tiny bit of you remains, even if it's just a single hair, a single catchphrase of yours... No matter what you become, as long as you are still Damian in a little bit, even if I never see you again in this lifetime, I will be very happy."

Highper called in Caronan and the medical staff.

She held her son's hand tightly, feigning calmness, and said, "I agree to shut down the machine, but on one condition."

"What are the conditions?" Keronan asked.

“He is my child, and now I will personally send him off. I will handle all the funeral arrangements; you need not interfere, and no one should contest them with me.” Haiper looked up at the life support system and asked, “How much does this machine cost?”

Before the doctor could answer, she said, "I bought it. My condition is that my child must be alive with me until Damian is buried."

The depth of Caronan's guilt was beyond her expectations.

No, perhaps a small part of him hoped to escape—to escape facing Damian's death.

Hepburn thought it would be difficult to tamper with it, but it seemed that no one except her wanted to look at the living dead whose heart was still beating in the coffin. Even Caronan, unable to persuade her, stormed off several times.

She said she wanted to spend one last moment with Damian before the funeral. She dismissed everyone, cut a large piece off the back of Damian's suit, and waited quietly.

When the passage finally emerged, barely alive, Haiper stood up, placed his hands on his son's chest, and slowly pushed him deeper into the coffin.

The tears that fell on the back of her hand and on Damian's chest were endless, like the torrential rain that was pouring down in Blackmore City tonight.

Hepper watched as Damian gradually disappeared into the bottom of the coffin, then pulled off the wire connecting him to the machine, finally revealing a smooth coffin bottom.

The coffin was empty.

She trembled as she closed the coffin lid and walked out of the church.

For the next seventeen years, all that remained for Heper was to wait.

(End of this chapter)