Illusion Report

She remembered being six or seven years old, living in a high-rise apartment in the Bay Area. Her father was already very rich back then, and her mother was still alive.

To her young eyes, the living room was practically the size of a soccer field.

The floor-to-ceiling windows were like a massive, breathtakingly beautiful painting. Beyond them, the most prosperous and dazzling Blackmoor City stretched between the skyline and the bay, its reflection a river of stars in the Human World.

When she pressed her forehead against the glass, she saw the vast nightscape outside; when she stood up straight, she could see her own reflection, and behind her, the reflections of her parents.

Just a faint, hazy, and unreal part of them.

"Don’t take that out in the house," her mother said warily.

As she spoke, her mother stood at a distance, separated from her father by the sofa, an end table, and an entire rug. "That thing is dangerous, isn’t it? And Brianna is here."

Hearing her name, Brianna instinctively turned around.

It was strange. She was clearly right there, and her mother knew she was right there, yet at that moment, it seemed her mother both remembered she was home and simultaneously forgot about her. Perhaps it was because her mother’s attention had been taken hostage, as if against her will, by the thing in her father’s hands, leaving her no room to heed anything else.

"It’s fine."

Her father seemed to have truly forgotten she existed. He didn’t react to her name at all, just said without looking up, "As long as it’s not activated, it poses no danger."

"H-How do you activate it?" her mother asked, not taking a step closer.

"As for how to use it... Even the Hunter who sold it to me hadn’t fully mastered it. Otherwise, I doubt he ever would have parted with it."

Her father’s eyes never left the object in his hand for a second, as if he were deeply mesmerized. He didn’t answer his wife’s question; in fact, it seemed not to matter whether she was there or not, as he was simply carrying on a conversation with himself.

He said a few more things after that, which Brianna couldn’t remember. Only one sentence, which she hadn’t understood at the time, somehow stuck in her memory: "Kai Luonan seems to think I can only input a command and then observe the result..."

Her mother listened for a moment and seemed to say, "I don’t understand this." Her father shook his head, having lost the interest to continue speaking with her.

"All these things are dangerous. Just don’t get Brianna involved in it," she insisted.

"What do you mean, ’get her involved’? How can she possibly not learn about this?"

Her father suddenly let out a cold laugh.

"She doesn’t even have a single brother. The empire I’ve built might really end up in her hands one day. That’s already a bad enough situation. If she ends up just like you—ignorant and terrified of Illusions—I might as well donate my entire fortune right now."

Her mother lowered her head and said softly, "I’ve been seeing a doctor, too. It’s just... at my age, it’s not easy to conceive again..."

Just then, her father suddenly remembered Brianna. As if on purpose, he called out to her, "Bree, come over here."

She walked over slowly and stood by the arm of the sofa.

Looking down, Brianna finally got a clear look at the object her father had been holding. It wasn’t large; both its size and shape were similar to a child’s Rubik’s Cube. Her father’s hand could close around it completely.

The difference was, this cube was pure black.

It was like a chunk of space had been fractured, hollowed out, and had collapsed into a cubic black hole. It had devoured a piece of the room, yet it was hard to tell where its boundaries were.

It seemed to have a gravitational pull of its own, sucking a person’s gaze and consciousness into it, making it impossible to look away. By the time she came to her senses, it felt like several minutes had passed.

"Interesting, isn’t it? Come with me to the warehouse at the docks tonight. I’m going to test a few ideas. You can learn the basics of Illusions, like fundamental operations and their property classifications."

Brianna glanced at her mother. She looked like she wanted to protest, but she said nothing.

"Okay, Dad." She was always more obedient in her father’s presence, as if to make up for the fault of not being a boy.

Westley nodded, his expression unreadable.

Back then, it seemed he still had some expectations for Brianna.

That was a time before Brianna’s half-siblings were born, a time when she hadn’t yet realized she would never even be able to play the role of an "ordinary woman." That was a time long before Westley would remove her from his will.

Brianna had few memories of spending time with her father in her youth.

But she truly wished that, back when she was six or seven, she had paid more attention when she went with Westley to the warehouse to test the Illusion. If only she had committed everything he did to memory.

If she knew how Westley used that black cube, she would be far more confident about eliminating Chaisi tonight.

"He’s definitely at Between the Backlight," Morando’s voice was languid over the phone. "I had someone confirm it."

’She still has a soft spot for Chaisi,’ Brianna knew.

When Morando first became a Hunter, it was Chaisi who had practically shown her the ropes. She still used some of the techniques and tricks he had taught her to this day.

After all, if Morando wasn’t the type to be sentimental about old relationships, Brianna would have no way to force her to kill Chaisi.

Brianna could imagine how conflicted Morando must feel about going after Chaisi. Every time Morando went through major emotional turmoil, she would become lethargic like this. It looked like Brianna couldn’t count on her to make a move tonight.

"Can’t you just pick a different target?"

Just as she expected, Morando asked, "Your goal is just to acquire a Hunter Family Faction, right? Does it have to be the Kai Family? Even with his widow and those kids watching, you can still access the money needed to buy out a small Family Faction, can’t you?"

If it were just a matter of absorbing a Hunter Family Faction, then it didn’t necessarily have to be the Kai Family.

But Chaisi had to be killed. No exceptions.

As the most veteran player in the Nest Dominance Game, Brianna had previously completed a special objective. Her reward was the ability to occasionally receive progress updates on the game from the Nest.

The most recent update had been sent to her on the evening of the 19th. The message was simple, but it did little to lift her spirits—just as she’d suspected, after Fu Tailan, Chaisi Monroe had become the third player to join the Nest Dominance Game.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise.

Because she could tell that the Nest seemed to despise Chaisi Monroe.

Since joining the Nest Dominance Game, Brianna had seen four other players come and go. One was left with a permanent disability and voluntarily withdrew from the game; one vanished within the Nest, never to be seen alive again; and the other two were eliminated by the combined efforts of Brianna and Westley.

In her experience, players only appeared in the Nest’s progress updates if they’d made a significant breakthrough.

For instance, Brianna only learned that Fu Tailan had joined the game after he obtained a target Illusion. However, she still didn’t know what exactly he had acquired—at present, that was a piece of information known only to those who joined after Fu Tailan.

But Chaisi was the only exception. For some reason, even before he had joined the game, the Nest was constantly feeding her intel on him—one moment, it was that he’d obtained the "Tongue," the next, that he had officially joined the game. It was as if the Nest couldn’t wait for Brianna to kill him and get it over with.

Of course, Chaisi wasn’t her only target.

The Nest Dominance Game was like a meat grinder, and Fu Tailan and Chaisi were simply the newest batch of meat being fed into it.

After Chaisi, there should be another newcomer... because generally, the number of contestants always hovered between four and five. As long as no one collected the seven target items, the dead were simply replaced by new ones.

She still hadn’t received an alert about a fourth player. ’Is it because a fourth one doesn’t exist yet?’

’Or is the Nest unwilling to tell me?’

"I’ll go myself."

Brianna, lost in thought for a moment, finally just said to Morando curtly, "I’ll bring something with me and take care of him myself."

Before Morando could reply, she cut in, "Don’t worry. I’m not angry that you don’t want to make a move tonight. Unless he’s willing to withdraw voluntarily, I have to kill Chaisi... And speaking of that, I suppose I’m the one who’s wronged you in this matter."

After a few seconds, Morando said in a low voice, "You... Don’t say that."

She let out a soft breath.

For a second, Brianna almost thought she could smell the tea-scented breath mints Morando was always eating.

"Even if he’s in poor health right now, you absolutely cannot let your guard down around him. What’s more, the moment he left the hospital, he showed up at a crowded, conspicuous place like Between the Backlight. I highly suspect he’s deliberately set this up as bait. What if he has a trap waiting, just to lure you in..."

"This is the perfect time to strike him while he’s weak, isn’t it?" Brianna said. "Even if it is bait, I’m willing to take it. The item I’m bringing isn’t just any ordinary Illusion. I have faith in it."

She thought she had long since recognized and accepted the truth. But it wasn’t until Morando sighed and said, "Alright, then you must be careful," that she suddenly felt a pang of disappointment. So Morando really had no intention of getting involved.

So Morando really had decided to let her face Chaisi alone.

’Honestly, even she was starting to find her own duplicity annoying—saying one thing while secretly hoping for another.’

’Their old relationship, the way they used to interact—that was long gone. Yet here she was, still sulking in the shadows like some naive girl testing how much her lover truly cared for her.’

’...The person I am now is truly disgusting.’

Brianna thought, almost numbly.

Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t immediately notice the car gradually slowing to a stop at the mouth of a dim alley between two tall buildings.

"We’re here," the driver said respectfully, turning on the dome light. "The back door of the bar is just down this alley, Mr. Green."

Brianna looked up and saw a reflection of her current face in the rearview mirror.

A long, pale, loathsome, masculine face.