Chapter 518 - 459: Brianna: The Reason a Protagonist Was Written Out

Chapter 518: Chapter 459: Brianna: The Reason a Protagonist Was Written Out

...What’s going on?

’Kai Luonan...?’

’Isn’t Kai Luonan Chaisi’s adoptive father?’

Brianna read the notification message again carefully.

As a semi-resident now, she could understand most of the Nest’s script. She didn’t have to pick out just the human characters to read the entire message.

The message was direct: Kai Luonan had been invited by the host, Damian, to become his teammate—just as Brianna had once invited Westley.

After she had killed Westley with her own hands, the "Westley Team" naturally ceased to exist. The team formed by Damian and Kai Luonan was now the only player team left in the game.

’But... why didn’t Kai Luonan team up with Chaisi?’

’Does this mean Kai Luonan and Chaisi will be competitors?’

Chaisi was so staggeringly foolish and blind, he’d actually given all his target Illusions to Kai Luonan. Now, Kai Luonan’s team had vaulted into the lead with the most target Illusions in the entire game, and they’d even gotten their hands on the ???.

’So Mai Mingle failed after all.’

’With the most powerful Illusions all held by one person, how am I supposed to fight this battle now?’

’I only have a single Word Illusion left, and in a body like this... How can I possibly be a match for Kai Luonan and the host?’

Brianna bit her lip, lost in thought for a moment, and didn’t notice Jin Xueli taking another step back.

"That... Is that my phone?"

She snapped back to reality and glanced at Jin Xueli.

The two locked eyes for a few seconds before Brianna asked, "Your phone?"

"’Jin Xueli’s’ phone," Jin Xueli corrected. "Why do you have it?"

"Then who are you?"

Jin Xueli seemed to choke on her words. After a pause, she said, "I’m also Jin Xueli."

Brianna raised her eyebrows. "Are you Vulture? Or is another Jin Xueli Vulture?"

"No... I’m not Vulture." Jin Xueli glanced at the phone in her hand and said, "I know, that’s something Vulture would say too. But I—no, I should say, basically every one of us has one distinct difference that sets us apart from Vulture."

Brianna considered this.

’Since there’s no notification about the radio changing hands, it must still be in Jin Xueli’s possession.’

’A Jin Xueli with the radio is like a branch heavy with ripe fruit. All I have to do is reach out and pluck it. It won’t be difficult.’

’Starting with the easiest target is naturally better than a direct confrontation with Kai Luonan.’

She curbed her impatience and softened her tone. "The difference you mentioned, are you talking about how a Jin Xueli can disappear? I was in danger with another Jin Xueli. She took a hit from a resident and vanished, but her phone dropped. I never could figure out why she disappeared."

A lie mixed with a bit of truth is the easiest to pass off. Jin Xueli was taken aback for a second, but then, just as expected, she visibly relaxed.

"Disappear? No, that’s not what I meant... So we can disappear, huh."

"Aren’t you afraid?" Brianna studied her expression. "Aren’t you afraid you’ll disappear too?"

"No... it’s different. To you, it looks like disappearing, but it might just be... Ugh, I don’t know how to explain it." Jin Xueli hesitated for a moment, then said decisively, "Let me start from the beginning."

’The more she talks, the more trust there’ll be. The more trust, the more she’ll talk.’ Brianna was more than happy for her to open up.

"Around six or seven this evening, I was having dinner with some friends."

Jin Xueli’s expression grew distant. She slowly sat down on a step in the main hall and said in a low voice, "We were eating, drinking, laughing... Chaisi had just settled a big payment with me. I’d never had so much money at once. I was so happy, I even said I’d treat everyone to see Magic Mike..."

Brianna raised an eyebrow.

’That can’t be right.’

’How could she have been out to dinner with friends tonight?’

"Wait, just let me finish."

Jin Xueli seemed to notice her expression and held up a hand. "We were halfway through our meal when suddenly, a few robbers burst in with guns, fired a volley into the ceiling, and told us all to get down..."

’What on earth is this? It sounds like something from another world entirely.’

"I had a bad feeling, so I crawled under the table, felt for the weapons bag behind one of the robbers, and quietly pulled out a machine gun... I don’t need to tell you what happened after that." Jin Xueli’s brow furrowed tightly. "When I was done shooting and came to my senses, I found myself standing on a road in the middle of a rainstorm. The thing I had just shot at had turned into a tanker truck."

Brianna thought that one of the two of them was definitely not sane.

"It was like the dinner, the robbery, the counterattack... it was all a dream. I walked around in a daze for a while, holding the gun, and guess what?"

Jin Xueli smiled. "I met another Jin Xueli."

If Brianna had suddenly met another Brianna, it’s likely only one of them would have survived.

But when a Jin Xueli met another Jin Xueli—no, when she met a whole group of Jin Xuelis, the result was completely different.

Not only did they start talking, but they quickly banded together, sought out all the nearby Jin Xuelis, and with everyone talking at once, they became a hive of Jin Xuelis.

"We quickly realized that so many Jin Xuelis had suddenly appeared—oh, and for some reason, several Tian Xis too. Anyway, we all shared what we knew and compared our experiences."

Brianna was stunned speechless.

"Tonight, some Jin Xuelis were on a date, some were at home sleeping. Some had already sold their radios, and some had quit the game long ago. And even more Jin Xuelis were looking for Original Liquid, trying to figure out how to cash in their shares."

She didn’t seem to realize she’d let slip a piece of information about the radio—and Brianna pretended not to notice.

After all, with so many Jin Xuelis and so many timelines to keep straight, knowing what should and shouldn’t be said was a task that could easily confuse anyone.

"Didn’t I just say we have one crucial difference from Vulture? This is it."

Jin Xueli tapped her chest. "Once Vulture takes on the form of the original person, their memories and experiences are a continuation of the original’s, without a single mistake. But we’re different. We’re all Jin Xueli, and our lives are broadly similar, but we each have our own different details. It’s like... it’s like..."

"Like parallel worlds," Brianna couldn’t help but finish for her.

"Right." Jin Xueli nodded, then seemed dazed for a few seconds. "Do parallel worlds really exist?"

’...How could there be parallel worlds?’

’If there were other timelines, with other Briannas on them living happy, successful lives—then what does that make me?’

’Is the way my life turned out because I’m stupid, because I deserve it, or am I just unlucky?’

"In any case," Jin Xueli took a deep breath and continued, "we soon discovered that although our experiences and memories are slightly different, we are all consistent when it comes to the decisive, key events. We... every single Jin Xueli, we’re all Hunters, and we’re all cursed."

"What curse?" Brianna asked.

’She had assumed this Jin Xueli wouldn’t tell her, since the last one refused to reveal the truth. But this is a different person, and it can’t hurt to ask.’

This Jin Xueli thought for a moment, then sighed softly and said, "It’s fine to tell you now. Because I think the curse has already been broken. Besides, revealing the curse itself isn’t dangerous for me."

"A curse from the Nest?"

"Yes," Jin Xueli said. "The curse turned me into a ’novel character.’ If a ’reader’ discovers a certain secret from my past, I die."

"...Huh?"

’What in the world?’

’Parallel worlds, now novel characters... Has she gone mad?’ Brianna felt like her brain had turned into a ball of yarn, being batted around by an invisible cat.

Jin Xueli, however, didn’t seem to think her words were hard to understand at all.

"Every one of us Jin Xuelis has been carrying this time bomb, not knowing when it would go off. We’ve lived in constant fear to this day, so naturally, we’ve analyzed the curse countless times.

"First, the ’novel’ I’m in definitely isn’t told from an omniscient perspective, or I would have died long ago. Modern novels rarely use that point of view anymore, right? So if a ’reader’ sees my secret, it must be because I brought it to light myself while the story was unfolding from the ’Jin Xueli’ perspective... or it was discovered by another ’character’."

Brianna couldn’t help but look around.

The university at night was deserted. Aside from the face in the floor tiles, there were no "readers" to be seen.

"So each of us normally just acts like nothing is wrong, and no one has ever tried to dig into our pasts. That’s how we’ve survived until today."

Jin Xueli wrung her hands, her fingertips turning white.

Clearly, even though she felt the danger had passed, she couldn’t stop the lingering fear.

"When a whole crowd of Jin Xuelis suddenly appeared in this world," she glanced at Brianna, "it was like a character in a novel suddenly multiplying infinitely... becoming a huge group of identical characters."

Brianna paused, a glimmer of understanding dawning on her.

"You’re saying that even if there is a ’reader,’ they wouldn’t know which Jin Xueli to watch?"

"That’s one part of it," Jin Xueli said softly. "The curse operates on the logic of a novel... When one character becomes a large group of identical characters, the novel can no longer be written about us."

Brianna sucked in a sharp breath.

"For example, say I and three other Jin Xuelis decide to go home, one by one. How would you write that in a novel? Would it say Jin Xueli 1 went home, then Jin Xueli 2 went home, then Jin Xueli 3 went home, and then Jin Xueli 4 went home?

"Leaving aside everything else, how would the narrative even clarify which Jin Xueli is which? We’re not going to take numbers ourselves, and we certainly don’t think of ourselves as Jin Xueli 1, 2, 3, 4. It would just look like the same event was written four times, right?"

Jin Xueli gave a slight smile. "There are twenty-six of us in total. If we all only do a few similar things, it’s even more impossible for this novel to repeatedly write about our actions a dozen or two dozen times. No novel is written like that, and no reader would want to read it."

"I see... So you’ve become invisible to the ’novel’," Brianna murmured.

’By talking with Jin Xueli, have I also become a character in the novel because of her curse?’

"But what if the novel only follows the Jin Xueli from ’this original world’..."

"But she can’t be found."

Jin Xueli smiled. "Originally, there was only one thing that could identify the Jin Xueli ’from this original world’: her phone. Apart from her, none of the other Jin Xuelis had a phone on them when they woke up. But even that single piece of evidence has become useless... because that phone was found in the car by Tian Xi, and he doesn’t know which Jin Xueli was the one originally sitting in his car."

"The one in my hand?"

"That’s right."

Jin Xueli shrugged. "We played a game of hot potato with it. Whoever the phone landed on, kept it. That way, neither we ourselves nor the outside world has any idea which one is the original Jin Xueli from this world.

"So tell me, how can the novel continue to unfold from the ’Jin Xueli’ perspective now?"