Illusion Report

The Nest’s adherence to common sense is like opening your closet and finding, in the darkness, a thing pretending to be human.

Even though you both know it’s not human—no human crouches in the shadowy corner of a closet, slowly unhinging their jaw as the black void of their face stretches longer and longer—the moment your eyes meet, it still mimics human custom, greeting you, "Good evening. Home from work?"

In other words, the Nest’s adherence to common sense is just like that: persistent, but utterly bizarre.

Take the poster-pasters, for example.

According to the Nest data in Mai Mingle’s mind, the Nest clearly considered the existence of this type of resident to be a matter of course:

Of course there have to be poster-pasters!

In traps or scenarios not overseen by a resident, don’t the rules have to be written down, printed out, pasted on walls, projected onto white screens, played on monitors... so that those nauseating, self-righteous humans—the world would be cleaner if they just died sooner—can see them? Isn’t that right?

So naturally, a resident has to go post the rules beforehand, or replace the old rules, clean up the limbs and blood left by the last person, scrub away any hints they left behind, optimize the trap, lower the chances of it being solved... Isn’t that just how things should be?

And so, naturally, there are janitors, also known as poster-pasters.

As for how the paper rules are printed?

That’s also very simple.

Although the residents can’t build them, when a Nest is born, expands, or updates, some of the buildings are bound to come with printers.

We’re like the snake and the apple born in the Eden Garden. We can use anything inside it. That should make it easy to understand, right?

Mai Mingle did not find this analogy easy to understand at all.

But the most crucial piece of information had finally surfaced in her mind as she was desperately studying the poster within the poster.

Poster-pasters, also called janitors, can be summoned.

Especially when it comes to paper rules, the paper might get damaged or dirtied in all sorts of accidents. On the premise that the Nest will "try its best" to ensure fairness, a Hunter has the right to know the true rules that govern them.

Ironically, this was something many places in the human world failed to do.

In any case, under these circumstances, a Hunter could summon a poster-paster to be provided with the correct rules again—of course, if the Hunter in question had no idea the "janitors" existed, then the Nest couldn’t be blamed.

Another point, also born from considerations of fairness, was that when a poster-paster was rearranging and providing the rules, the Hunter should not continue to be attacked.

Even if you were halfway sunk in quicksand, as long as the poster-paster had to "tidy the venue," your descent would have to halt—however, as Mai Mingle was the primary target for countless residents, whether this default rule would still apply to her was anyone’s guess.

"Post..."

Mai Mingle could barely get the word out.

She had just twisted her arm around to empty the last of her bullets into the old woman’s body, but the force clamped around her neck hadn’t loosened in the slightest, to say nothing of giving her a chance to escape.

’Why hasn’t the poster-paster appeared yet?’

’Should I call for the janitor?’

Red shadows began to bloom in the corners of her vision, like bursting capillaries, gradually staining her sight with blood.

Mai Mingle could still barely make out her reflection in the glass: her neck was squeezed unnaturally thin, the part extending from the old woman’s grip no wider than a bubble tea straw.

Her throat, windpipe, and cervical vertebrae should have shattered long ago... but she was still alive, her neck still intact.

The old woman’s method of killing didn’t seem to be through physical destruction... After twisting and warping a person’s body and mind, they were as good as dead even if they weren’t.

"Jan... janitor..." Mai Mingle’s call was formed entirely of escaping air. "Come out... The rules are wrong..."

"Ugh."

A strange voice suddenly rang out from the sidewalk around the corner.

The janitor—no doubt about it.

The moment you heard its voice, you immediately thought of a "janitor" from the human world—it sounded like a large ring of keys, dangling and clanking at someone’s waist as they walked.

"What do you want?"

Between its words, you could even hear the wet slap of a mop on tile floors; its breaths were the faint hum of electricity through a lightbulb.

"Those rules you saw, they haven’t taken effect yet, but they did have an effective date written on them. You didn’t see it. How can you blame the rules for being unfair?"

The janitor had clearly appeared, yet the old woman hadn’t loosened her grip at all.

"No... There are no... true... rules..."

"Who says?" the janitor snorted, a sound like a hammer striking a nail. "The real rules are right around here. You’ve probably walked past them several times already."

’What is it talking about? Where else around here could there be written rules?’

’Could it be something other than text, like a broadcast?’

’But there isn’t anything like that either—and why hasn’t the old woman let go???’

"As long as the ’true rules’ exist and their content is accurate, calling me is useless. There’s nothing else for me to do, and I don’t want to do it anyway."

’??????’

’So it’s saying there actually is something it could do, but the janitor is also a resident on the other side, and it wants to kill Mai Mingle—no, me??’

"The fact that you can’t even find the real rules and you’re still called the most promising player in the domination game is just hilarious have you already become this unstable I can see the question marks popping up in your head but it’s no use being unstable I can’t control other resid—"

The voice from around the corner cut off abruptly.

The janitor had vanished mid-sentence.

’What happened???? What does it mean, it can’t control other residents!!!! Wait, wait, I think I get it!!!! Is it, AAAAAAGH I’m suffocating, I want to kill this old woman so bad, why can’t I just kill residents, AAAAARGH!! No, no, back to what it said—’

The voice that was Mai Mingle’s had become like a beast ramming against the bars of its cage, ready to fly into a crazed frenzy in her mind at the slightest provocation.

She tried not to think about how much time she had left as her body slowly deformed.

’Another resident must have interfered!!’

Mai Mingle forced herself to calm down—another resident had to have interfered.

There was another resident nearby, but why didn’t that resident attack Mai Mingle directly, instead choosing to "hold" her here, waiting for the old woman to arrive?

Not all residents necessarily have the ability to kill... Some can shapeshift to imitate humans, some specialize in providing false information, and some can turn an entire area into a trap.

The resident who managed to hide the true rules was, one, nearby, and two, had no offensive capabilities.

Mai Mingle’s consciousness was already blurring.

It wasn’t that she was about to lose consciousness, but that it felt like the old woman was drilling into her skull.

By the time she finally realized something was very wrong with her reflection in the glass, her hands were clamped tightly over her own face, and her ears were filled with the sound of her own sputtering laughter.

Mai Mingle forced her hands down with all her might, stifling the laugh.

’Think... think... The only time a resident actually appeared while I was walking around here was—’

Emily’s voice suddenly echoed in her mind.

"...I’m not lying. There really was a resident behind you just now, but when you turned around, it disappeared somewhere."

When she had turned around back then, the road behind her had been empty.

’Wait, behind—behind me—’

Sputtering with laughter, Mai Mingle desperately reached her hands behind her and clawed frantically at her own back, but she grabbed nothing.

’No, if the resident was on my back, Emily would have definitely seen it when I turned around. Emily isn’t blind—wait.’

Mai Mingle’s laughter stopped short.

The Nest data infused into her brain was a bit like the search engine Hai Luwei had shown her: without a keyword to trigger it, her thoughts could only drift aimlessly through a vast sea of information; but once a keyword appeared, the corresponding Nest data would come to mind.

Before setting out, when everyone had been sizing each other up, they had all focused on the front—a natural human habit of mind.

Even now, if asked to recall the backs of the heads and the backs of the other prospective Hunters, Mai Mingle wasn’t confident she could remember them with perfect accuracy.

In other words, when she turned around, what Emily saw— "Mai Mingle’s back"—was very likely not her real back.

Emily thought the resident had "disappeared somewhere," but the answer was actually very simple: it was still on Mai Mingle’s back. Like a dead-leaf butterfly mimicking a dead leaf, it was a resident that could disguise itself as a human back—and not long ago, Mai Mingle had seen it.

It had two habits:

One, it would lie flat on a person’s back, perfectly mimicking the back of their head, the area behind their ears, their neck, shoulders, back... all the way down to their heels.

Of course, it could also choose to reveal its true form—for example, by letting its vine-like black hair flow slowly down the street, or by letting its thick, yellowed toenails extend and twist—or, it could choose to only partially disguise itself.

After all, residents were very flexible things.

Two, it could jump from one person to another; if Person B saw the "back resident" on Person A’s back, it would then logically appear on Person B’s back.

The back resident had already jumped to Emily.

It had chosen not to disguise itself, making Mai Mingle too afraid to take a single step closer to her... Why?

’Was it because the true rules had been on Emily’s back the whole time?’

If that was the case...

Listening to the laughter tightly muffled beneath her palms, Mai Mingle wondered, ’Is my realization too late???’