Illusion Report

His fall seemed to have been cushioned for a moment by some kind of force.

’...Was that my imagination, or did it really happen?’

But that force, that seemingly illusory bit of support, seemed to find Chaisi unpalatable. In the blink of an eye, it was yanked out from under him.

Chaisi plummeted toward the alley floor, hurled down by the Black Cube into the narrow gap that could crush a human body until it burst.

Countless things could have gone wrong.

For instance, Brianna might have preferred him dead rather than free. Or perhaps she was blindly confident she could find a way to dig the "rumor" out of his corpse later. Or maybe she’d only sent a subordinate to assassinate him, and before the underling could dare to make their own call, Chaisi would have already been crushed to death...

But if you weren’t willing to risk something, it was hard to wrest anything from the world’s grasp.

’When you die, you die. It’s as simple as that. Nothing to be afraid of.’

Chaisi closed his eyes. He felt as if he were sinking into the depths of the ocean, falling from a much greater height than he was. The descent felt far longer than he’d imagined—and yet, it was surprisingly short.

So short that before he could even finish a breath, he hit the cold brick ground with a heavy THUD.

Even with that momentary buffer during his fall, the impact still knocked the air from his lungs. His very bones seemed to thrum with a paralyzing numbness.

For a moment, all Chaisi could do was lie on the rough, uneven ground, his bare skin steeping in a cold puddle, unable to move. The pain from the hard slam made his vision go black as the breath was forced from his chest.

’Pain means I’m still alive. I have to get up, now, before the assassin—’

The thought had barely formed when a figure suddenly fell from the sky, slamming heavily onto Chaisi and knocking the breath he’d just managed to inhale right back out of him.

It wasn’t just the one on top of him. Several other figures tumbled down from the sky all around, making the ground tremble with each impact. For a moment, it was as if someone had sprayed a cloud of bug spray into the air, and now flies were raining down one after another.

’...What’s going on?’

Completely dazed, Chaisi gritted his teeth, grabbed the dead weight on top of him, and shoved it onto the ground. It was a man with a pale, tired face who looked vaguely familiar, as if he’d seen him in the bar earlier. Enduring the pain, Chaisi rolled over and scrambled to his feet, finding himself right in front of the door to Between the Backlight.

Just then, Han Liuyue happened to be poking her pale face out from the doorway.

The moment their eyes met, even Han Liuyue seemed to freeze, unsure of how she should react.

"Huh? How...?"

For a moment, she even forgot her intention to attack Chaisi. Instead, her gaze shifted, sweeping over the ground in the alley.

Perfect. Chaisi had no time to survey his surroundings or get tangled up with her right now.

While she was distracted, he kicked out, sending the door flying toward Han Liuyue’s face. She flinched back, and as the door slammed shut with a BANG, Chaisi turned and lunged into the alley on his left.

’When I was inside the bar, the assassin was to my right. Now that I’ve switched directions, he should be on my left. That has to be right.’

However, Chaisi forced himself to a halt, freezing as he stared into the empty alley.

’...Where is he?’

’From the time I landed and got up to the moment I lunged over here... it was two or three seconds, tops. The alley stretches straight for almost a hundred meters with no side paths, just building exteriors on both sides... How could he have run off and vanished without a trace in just a few seconds?’

’Did he hide behind a dumpster—’

"Chaisi, over here!"

By the time he realized it was Jin Xueli’s voice, Chaisi’s body had already reacted, turning back the way he came.

Perhaps because he was bare-chested under the cold, late-November rain, goosebumps kept breaking out across his skin.

Jin Xueli was still alive.

She scrambled to her feet. Other than her hair, which was soaked and plastered to her cheeks in strands, she looked completely unharmed.

"Why’d you take your clothes off?"

’Leave it to Jin Xueli to notice the least important detail first.’

Chaisi ignored her. His gaze swept across the alley, and he suddenly understood why Han Liuyue had frozen earlier.

’...Weren’t there too many people falling out of the Black Cube?’

Near her, the waitress from Between the Backlight was groaning as she got up. The woman who’d been selling lipstick was wide awake, dragging the man who’d been thrown down twice and hastily retreating to a nearby wall as if they were dodging bullets.

It seemed that even if someone entered the Black Cube, its user could choose to do nothing. Compared to Chaisi’s miserable state, the others who had been caught in it seemed to be in much better shape.

The man seemed to mumble something like, "You were right, we really should’ve left sooner," but Chaisi couldn’t quite hear him.

As the man limped aside, Chaisi saw him.

"Don’t move,"

A tall, thin man he’d clearly never met, yet who seemed vaguely familiar, was pointing the dark muzzle of a gun at him. Next to him stood the burly man Chaisi had thrown into the Black Cube, who had just found his footing. The man’s expression was a mixture of humiliation, anger, and awkwardness.

"...Did Brianna send you?" Chaisi asked, staring at the tall, thin man.

The tall, thin man’s expression didn’t flicker.

"Yes," he said. "Don’t make me shoot."

Chaisi almost laughed.

"If killing me was an option, you wouldn’t have been forced to deactivate your Illusion just now. Who are you to Brianna? No—who are you to Westley?"

An Illusion on the level of the Black Cube, and quite possibly one of the targets in the Nest Dominance Game, was now in the hands of this seemingly unknown man after Westley’s death. That was enough to prove he had a close relationship and a special status with Westley.

After a pause, the tall, pale man said, "...To me, Westley was a nobody."

He turned his gun, aiming it at Jin Xueli by the door. In the light of the motion sensor, he looked her up and down a few times.

As if he’d suddenly realized he was looking at something deeply unpleasant, the tall man unconsciously furrowed his brow.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing distinctly.

"You’re right. My hands are tied, and I can’t kill you. But her... she’s one of your Kai Family, isn’t she? I’ve heard that Chaisi Monroe has always placed great importance on the bonds of his Family Faction. Is that true?"

It seemed Jin Xueli’s earlier shout had given him the wrong impression.

"...She’s not from the Kai Family," Chaisi said in a low voice.

"I’m really not," Jin Xueli said, a little flustered. "He still has a tab he hasn’t settled with me."

Even with a gun pointed at her, her attention was like a web; any stirring in any corner of it would immediately draw her gaze.

Among everyone in the alley, Jin Xueli was the first to notice the doorknob turning. Her eyes lit up, and she immediately pointed at the bar’s door. "If you’re looking for someone from the Kai Family, get this one! The one just coming out!"

It was too late to tell her to block the door.

Han Liuyue pushed the door open again, poking only her head out into the alley. Her deathly pale, mask-like face was completely unharmed. In a stroke of luck amidst the disaster, she didn’t attack the moment the door opened.

"What’s the situation now?" she asked, her gaze darting back and forth. "Who has the upper hand? Who’s left that can take me to see the mayor?"

’What an opportunist. And she doesn’t even try to hide it.’

"My offer still stands," the tall man said with a soft chuckle. "Chaisi Monroe is standing right here. Let’s see you make your move."

"Oh?" Han Liuyue said, turning to face Chaisi.

The situation was somehow even worse than it had been before the Black Cube trap vanished.

Before, the tall man apparently hadn’t realized Jin Xueli was on Chaisi’s side, which was why he let her out alive. Now, not only was Chaisi still at risk of being attacked by Han Liuyue, but Jin Xueli had become a liability.

But he had almost no cards left to play.

Other than trying to stall for time, Chaisi couldn’t think of what to do.

"Han Liuyue,"

From his appearance, no one would have guessed that Chaisi was just bluffing—because he had genuinely threatened people so many times before that he was an expert at it.

He lowered his voice and said softly, "I guarantee you, if you let me die, he won’t live long enough to take you to see the mayor."

"That’s true. If you died, the Kai Family would definitely avenge you..." Han Liuyue seemed to recall. "You’re Brother Chaisi, after all."

This fragmented way of thinking—one moment a familiar acquaintance, the next the cold-blooded Han Liuyue—was utterly grating to Chaisi.

"The most capable people in the Kai Family are all dead. Who’s left to avenge him?" the tall man said with a soft laugh.

Coincidentally, before the man had even finished speaking, Chaisi suddenly felt his phone start to vibrate in his pocket. A stroke of luck—it hadn’t been flung out during his fall.

At a critical juncture like this, he could only think of one person who would be calling him.

’Is Tian Xi almost here?’

"This is between us. There’s no need to involve innocent people."

Chaisi let one hand drop, pressing it against his phone through his pants as if by accident, muffling the vibration. He had to seize any excuse to stall for time.

"Those people have nothing to do with this. Why not let them go first—"

As Chaisi said this, he glanced over and realized that the lipstick woman, the limping man, and the waitress following close behind them had already formed a line at some point and were inching their way out along the wall. The moment he made his suggestion, however, the three of them froze as if they’d been caught red-handed, not daring to move.

’If you hadn’t opened your big mouth, we might have already slipped away.’

The lipstick woman didn’t say a word, but the thought was written plainly on her face.

Moreover, they seemed to feel that the tall, thin man who had let them out unharmed was safer than Chaisi. As they inched away, they chose to move behind the tall man.

The tall man glanced at the three of them out of the corner of his eye and hesitated for a moment.

’...So he really is one of Westley’s people.’

Even though the different Hunter Family Factions had their own styles, they rarely fought to the death. Westley’s side hadn’t even managed to successfully form a proper Hunter team; apart from a few rare exceptions, they likely preferred to solve problems with money. For the tall man to personally kill innocent people to silence them would require crossing a psychological threshold.

Besides, killing people here could become leverage for Chaisi to use against him in the future.

Blackmoor City, after all, was not a Nest.

"If you don’t want any trouble—" the tall man began, just as expected.

In the distance, Chaisi heard the sound of a car engine coming from the end of the alley behind him, then it cut out abruptly.

His message to Tian Xi had instructed him to bring men in from this very direction.

The screech of tires, the slam of car doors, followed by a pocket of telling silence... Chaisi could almost feel the threads of rain in the dim air vibrating, shattered by several sets of heavy footsteps. He pictured the drops falling like scattered stars into the puddles, only to be crushed under leather boots.

"Jin Xueli,"

Chaisi looked up and called her name in a perfectly ordinary tone.

Under the faint glow of the motion-sensor light, she turned her head at the sound of her name. The shadows seemed to melt into the dark, weary circles under her eyes, and the fine rain had washed her skin pale.

"What is it?"

"Get down."

The gunshot that rang out from the end of the alley came at almost the exact same moment Jin Xueli dove to the ground, the sound echoing thunderously through the narrow space. A stray bullet hit the motion-sensor light. With a sharp POP, the world plunged into darkness.