Illusion Report

After Emily turned into a nut, although she felt as if she were still walking on two legs, her speed was nevertheless affected.

According to her, after leaving the 3rd Floor Barrier, she had only gone down one floor in two or three minutes before she met Li Stan.

"Of course, that’s also because I was observing my surroundings as I went downstairs," Emily added, her voice tinged with cold defensiveness.

’She must be one of those people who’s terrified of being seen as weak,’ Mai Mingle thought.

Li Stan recalled that he had gone down two floors when he heard Emily’s footsteps behind him—even though the nut didn’t appear to have any feet.

Li Stan’s second floor.

Emily’s third floor.

The floor where Li Stan and Emily met.

"Is that the sequence?" Mai Mingle mused. "It’s strange. When Li Stan got down to Emily’s floor, he didn’t run into her... Did they just happen to miss each other?"

"It’s also possible the floor order is meaningless, and everyone is just randomly shoved onto a floor after they pass their trial and come through the door," Suo Beihua sighed, murmuring as if to herself, "Why is this so difficult... It shouldn’t be."

To say nothing of the fact that they were all confident enough to attend the Kai Family’s interview; being a Hunter—and a Hunter who had managed to stay alive—was proof enough that they were either highly skilled or incredibly lucky, and far from ordinary.

But in the end, all five of them were trapped in the trial, failing the mission together. The thought made Mai Mingle feel a pang of guilt.

’Could it be my fault this warehouse has become a one-way trip?’

As for failing the interview, and how she’d get her lipstick back...

Mai Mingle closed her eyes, cutting off that train of thought.

’First things first, get out of here. No need to torture myself with future problems right now.’

"Let’s find the exit, and fast. Are we going to just stand here and chat an exit into existence?" Robert suddenly pulled a pistol from the small of his back and ordered, "Get out of the way."

"What are you doing?" Mai Mingle asked.

"Ever heard of a Mobius Ring? For all we know, ’up’ and ’down’ are just illusions, and we’re just going back and forth between the same few floors. We have to test it to see if there are really infinite floors here."

Before the words were even out of his mouth, he fired several shots at a baluster beneath the handrail. Though everyone dodged onto the steps in time, it was a small stroke of luck that no one was hit by a stray bullet. The gunshots erupted, reverberated, and were quickly swallowed by the monotonous waterfall of concrete gray.

Robert snapped off the broken baluster and, with a flick of his wrist, tossed it down into the stairwell, which looked like an endless abyss.

Everyone held their breath and waited quietly.

There wasn’t a single sound.

The iron bar tumbled end over end through the void, slicing through the air as it fell and fell, like an object cast into deep space, until it vanished from sight. Only after a minute or two did Suo Beihua straighten up first, saying in a low voice, "...I don’t think we’re going to hear it."

After falling for so long without a sound of impact, even if the stairwell had a bottom, it was likely too deep for the sound to reach them.

"Looks like the infinite floors aren’t an illusion."

Li Stan also lowered his voice, as if afraid that if the bar were to land at that very moment, his words would cover up the sound. "Even if it’s not truly infinite, there must be a huge number of floors."

"The fact that bullets can damage the stairwell is a significant discovery."

Robert held the gun in one hand while subconsciously winding his own spring a few more turns with the other. He scanned his surroundings, as if searching for his next target.

His gaze fell on the wall of the landing between two flights of stairs.

"...Can we break the wall?" he asked.

Of course, not even a rookie Hunter as green as Mai Mingle would think they could break through a Nest’s trap by brute force—but whether the wall could be broken, how it could be broken, and what would happen after it was broken, that was all "information."

And if there was one thing this monotonous, repetitive, endless concrete stairwell lacked, it was "information."

Suo Beihua shrugged. "It’s not like we have any better ideas right now. Let’s give it a try."

Construction isn’t an easy task that just anyone can accomplish, but destruction seems to be a talent buried deep inside every human being.

Following Robert’s method, they each shot down a few balusters from the handrail. Then, they used their bullets to blast several holes in the stairs themselves. Using the iron bars, they dug at and widened the cracks, hacking away until they’d pried several large chunks of concrete from the steps. The whole process was so fast it felt almost unnatural. In no time at all, they had their tools for smashing the wall.

Mai Mingle’s ears were ringing from the gunshots. As she took a large chunk of a broken concrete step, she could only ask dazedly, "...Bullets can crack concrete?"

The antennae all over Li Stan’s face twitched a few times, the meaning unclear.

They had also blasted several bullet holes into the wall. The group lifted their concrete chunks, aimed for the cracks in non-load-bearing spots, and focused their efforts on just two points. Although Emily looked like a nut with no hands or feet, concrete chunks still appeared in the air above her head and slammed into the wall, one after another, looking just like some kind of movie special effect.

"It’s open!"

Emily suddenly cried out, "The sky—I can see the sky!"

Mai Mingle wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d been smashing at the wall for half an hour without breaking through, or if the wall itself had turned out to be infinitely thick. But when a beam of daylight actually streamed through the crack, she was genuinely startled.

Everyone crowded over to the nut’s side.

The hole was tiny—not even half the size of a palm; "peephole" might have been a better word for it. They had to press their faces close and take turns looking. For a moment, the stairwell was filled with shouts of "My turn!", "Don’t push me!", and "Move your antennae!"

When Mai Mingle got a clear look at the outside, she took a sharp breath.

Outside the wall was the very street where they had first gathered. From the perspective of the gathering point, the endless stairwell seemed to be located a few dozen meters to the right of the main gate. And next to that gathering point, a person was standing, head down, looking at their watch.

’The hour given for the interview was long over. The other two people were gone—had they already come inside to rescue them?’

"Tian Xi!" Mai Mingle couldn’t help but yell. "Can you hear me, Tian Xi!"

"There’s no way he can hear you," Li Stan mumbled.

But in the next second, Tian Xi raised his head.

He seemed unsure where the voice was coming from. He walked toward the sound, looked around for a moment, and finally tilted his head up, his gaze meeting Mai Mingle’s from two or three stories high.

"How did you..." He paused, stunned. "Who’s with you up there? What are you all doing?"

Encouraged, the group worked faster, widening the hole. Soon, it was like a small window, big enough for several of them to look out at once.

"What’s going on with you guys?"

Tian Xi yelled up at them, "If you can punch a hole in the wall to call me, why haven’t any of you come out?"

That was not an easy question to answer.

Talking over each other, they did their best to explain how they were trapped in the stairwell. Tian Xi listened for a while with his arms crossed, then nodded as if he understood.

"So, from the inside it’s an endless stairwell, but from the outside, it’s only about ten-odd meters high. The way I see it, instead of trying to break out from the inside, you’d be better off just trying to climb down the outer wall... Hmm, I’ll call the other two back. We’ll figure out the best way to get you down."

"Is that all it’ll take?" Li Stan seemed to find it equally unbelievable. "We can get out that easily?"

From the distance, they could faintly make out what sounded like a sigh from Tian Xi.

"What did you expect? This is the clearest path forward. Before anyone comes down, throw something out first to test it."

That was easy enough; they had plenty of iron bars and concrete chunks on hand.

Unlike the first bar, the items they threw down this time all landed squarely on the sidewalk outside. Mai Mingle squinted, and looking closely, she could even see that the paving stones had been damaged by the impact.

"I’ll find a way to climb a bit higher and toss a rope up to you. See if you can grab it. If you can, come down one by one. Be careful," Tian Xi instructed.

The predicament ended so suddenly and simply that everyone was both incredulous and unable to suppress their joy.

No, it wasn’t that the problem was solved suddenly or easily; they had, after all, put in a great deal of effort, chipping away at the wall piece by piece. Mai Mingle’s palms were scraped raw.

"There are traps you overcome with brains and reflexes, so it’s not surprising there are also traps you overcome with brute force," Robert said, winding his spring again. "Maybe this was the stairwell trap’s blind spot."

Even if they had failed the interview, at least everyone could go home safe and sound. The atmosphere relaxed, their spirits lifted, and it was as if even the surrounding concrete was no longer a gloomy gray.

"...I’m not leaving."

Suo Beihua said suddenly, her voice quiet.