Artifact Report

Chapter 214 Brianna: A Connection to the Past
At the end of 2024, Brianna's biggest concern was revenge.

Of course, although it was called revenge, even she herself knew that it was more like a childish act of anger after being hurt - in her fantasy of successful revenge, Vesile would always regret, apologize, beg for her forgiveness, and accept and bless the partner she chose.

Sometimes she would even laugh out loud at how childish she still was.

Entering the lair, finding a rare and powerful artifact, but refusing to sell it to Weisilai - can this alone make Dad wake up from his dream and regret it?

How old is she?
Brianna has spent most of her young life in the world of the top rich.

Based on her understanding of this group, if Vesile really couldn't use money to buy the artifact that Brianna longed for but couldn't get, he would be more likely to hire someone to use force to take it away directly - if she was not sent to the hospital emergency room, it would be considered that he cared about his children.

After all, children are just the worst substitute for their regret of not being able to live forever.

Children are something you can have as many as you want.

After severing ties with Vesile and being removed from his will, Brianna was still able to live on the trust fund. In fact, this was all due to her status as the "eldest daughter" - when she was born, Vesile was also a father for the first time; at that time, he was still far from being a top billionaire and had not yet separated from the human race and become another species.

But people are so strange. Reason is reason, and emotions are emotions.

She wanted to hear Vesile say sorry to her.

No matter what means are used, no matter how slim the hope is, it doesn’t matter.

Morando once said that she could not avoid being emotional, but she also said that Brianna was a person with such passion and enthusiasm, and she was also very lovely.

After discovering that she also had a passage, Brianna entered the nest eight times in a row in six months - she didn't dare tell Morando this number. Half of the eight times, she went there secretly. Excluding the first time she accidentally broke into the nest, Morando thought Brianna had only gone there with her three times, but she still felt it was too many and too risky.

At that time, with Morando's experience and advice, Brianna had the illusion that she could always escape from the nest safely.

"Although I'm a novice," Brianna had protested, "I also want to grow into a qualified hunter as soon as possible. I don't need your care and guidance anymore, but I want to be a hunter who can fight alongside you."

This was only half the truth; she was too embarrassed to say the other half, the revengeful half.

"There's no shortage of hunters in my clan who can fight alongside me," Morandao said at the time, "but there's only one of you. I'd rather you stay alive and wait for me back in Blackmore City."

…It’s impossible to say I don’t regret the day I died in the nest.

Everything in the lair was incredible and contrary to common sense; Brianna thought she had known this for a long time, but she didn't truly realize the weight and meaning of this sentence until the day she died.

Her death was dragged out for an extremely long time.

She saw with her own eyes every cell in her body die.

She felt her lungs gradually collapse into dry skin, her heart became loose and swollen, pressing against her ribs; intestinal gas flowed back into her chest cavity, her larynx was covered with mold, filling up her throat, and she smelled a light gray odor emanating from the pores of her skin.

Several residents, one of whom seemed to be a child, squatted beside her; several faces hung over hers, drooling as they smiled.

"Dead, dead! When will it decompose? Oh, you haven't died yet? Hurry up and die, you are so ignorant."

…Why is she still able to sense everything even though she is dead?
But soon her soul also began to die, she felt it.

The feelings when being with Morandao, those feelings that humans call satisfaction, happiness, and joy, were the first to scream, tear, and resist, but were still pressed to the ground bit by bit by death, and the breath was strangled.

The joy of being praised for her beauty, the excitement of going skiing for the first time, the kiss her mother gave her on the forehead when she was sick...all gradually dried up and weathered.

What is left behind is not pure negative emotions, but a hollow and dark mess of ink that is difficult to tell what it is.

If nothing unexpected happens, she will continue to lie on the ground of the nest, slowly dying and gradually decomposing. The last scene she sees in the world is a few weird-looking residents.

Then, she would cease to exist, and only the inhabitants born from her body would walk the lair in her place...

Hunting Morando.

Brianna shuddered.

"What's going on? We were almost there, but why are we regressing again? Hurry up and keep dying." The resident was very dissatisfied and spoke in a coach-like tone.

She can't die, she can't die, she absolutely can't die. No matter what, she can't give birth to any residents. The residents she gives birth to will have a strong desire for Morando. Morando will definitely be killed by her residents.

"Ah! Wha-what, what is that?"

After an unknown amount of time had passed since he died, someone screamed in the distance, panicked, and fell to the ground.

Brianna's rotting face felt the ground shake.

It was a man's voice; he sounded like he had been squeezed out of tears by fear, and he scrambled to his feet and shouted, "Don't come over! Who are you - where is this place -"

Is it an ordinary person who just accidentally fell into the nest?
It was such misfortune that it happened to fall near his own body.

Her long death had long become a legend among residents in the surrounding area, gradually attracting more and more residents; now there are always a large number of residents surrounding her body, waiting for the moment when she is "dead".

The man started to run, but he didn't get far.

Less than a hundred meters? He was tackled by a resident who looked like a baby.

But he was much luckier than Brianna. He died almost immediately, and his death did not become a long process. Later, Brianna thought that maybe she was just particularly unlucky and happened to encounter the nest's whim.

"Dead, boring," one resident said. "Let's see what comes out of his body. This person doesn't seem to have much potential, maybe he can't even give birth to a resident. That woman is still interesting."

It was obviously not something she could sense, but in Brianna's dark eye sockets, she seemed to be able to see the place where the man's body fell.

Moreover, she had another strong feeling.

Just crawl over, and get in while the man's body is decomposing and opening but before any residents are born... Get in and you will survive, survive, survive, Brianna will not die. Isn't she thinking now? As long as she can think, there is still hope, hope, hope. The residents shouted, but she didn't understand what they meant.

It sounded like surprise, excitement, as if he had seen something new and interesting, but it was also mixed with angry roars and sharp disapproval.

"Let her go. She's half a resident now," one resident said, speaking louder than the others. "I've never met such a persistent dead person! Let's have some fun watching her."

……what?
Oh yes, she was crawling towards the man's body little by little.

It goes without saying that the action of "climbing" cannot be accomplished by thinking alone.

Brianna was using her body to crawl forward.

She was afraid that the residents would change their minds and stop her, so she climbed very quickly. Fortunately, she had lost feeling in her arms, so she didn't feel any pain when large pieces of skin were scraped off by the ground.

The distance was less than a hundred meters, but it felt like climbing over mountains and crossing rivers, a long journey; she didn't know how long she climbed before she finally touched the man's hairy ankle.

"The timing is perfect,"

The residents who had been following her and watching her all the way sighed and said, "It seems like both of them are about to disintegrate, but they haven't yet."

"Isn't it?" one resident glanced back at Brianna.

...about to decompose?

It’s hard to tell whether it was this sentence or something else that made Brianna’s heart move.

She also turned around and looked behind her.

She saw her upper body and spine, stretching out all the way.

It turned out that when she was climbing, her chest, spine, waist... also followed her head and gradually stretched to nearly a hundred meters long.

Of course, the clothes on the upper body cannot cover a hundred meters of road.

So when she turned around, she saw a long stretch of bare back; the skin was gray and faded, and the spine was slightly sunken, like the indentation left by a snake crawling in the sand, with no end in sight.

The legs are no longer visible.

Even though she was a hundred meters away, she was still connected to her legs.

...Everything in the lair was incredible and contrary to common sense. She only now understood the weight of this.

Perhaps because she had died a long time ago, Brianna was not surprised or disgusted. She just wanted to wail sharply.

She turned her head, grabbed the man's feet, and tried hard to drill into his body - there was clearly no opening, but when she came to her senses, she had already entered the man's body.

It's hard to describe the feeling.

It's not like one's own mind is controlling another's body, nor is it exactly like wearing a piece of flesh-skin clothing.

If I had to describe it, it was as if she had reached between his legs and propped him up like a sock puppet - except the operation was much more complicated and delicate.

In short, she was finally able to blink, breathe, think, speak, stand up and walk again... The joy of rebirth made her dizzy for a while and she didn't care about anything.

So what if it's a man's body? Isn't she still herself?

She poked around in the man's slippery brain, wanting to know who he was, how old he was, and most importantly, what the passage was - and she found out everything.

George Green, 29, a construction cost estimator, was hit on the back by scaffolding.

No wonder my back hurts.

Brianna pressed her—no, George Green's—back with her backhand; only then did she belatedly look down at the ground.

...We must leave the nest immediately.

Brianna seemed to have borrowed some of George Green's brain neurons and his emotions. Suddenly, she felt fear again, even so nauseous that she wanted to cry.

She would leave the nest immediately and never come back in.

Brianna walked many blocks during the two or three days she spent searching for the scaffolding.

Wherever she went, if she turned around, she could see George Green's shoulder blades connected to Brianna's just below his calf and above his ankle.

From the shoulder blades downward, her former upper body was still firmly behind George Green.

Her body lay sprawled in the path she walked, still stretching endlessly with every step.

　Although the image of her upper body dragging longer and longer was already in my mind, it was only when I actually wrote it down that I realized how miserable Brianna was. She didn't even die a good death. Isn't she one of the most miserable characters in my works?

　　To the characters who survive, the lair is a chaotic place of opportunity, and its inhabitants may even be quite lovable at times; but it is still a cruel and terrifying place at heart.

　　Brianna really had died a long time ago, Morando wasn't lying. I don't know what this "walking in the world" thing is.

　　I often write things where I don’t know what personal pronouns to use or what the essence of something is, which is quite technically troublesome.

　　The crystal ball has no sympathy for my difficulties.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)