Artifact Report

Chapter 199 Brianna: Accidentally Entered Character Commands

Brianna spun the black cube in her hand a few times.

She slowly ran her thumb over each face of the cube, pausing on each for a second or two, just long enough for her to whisper, "Enter command, check countdown."

When she touched the fifth side and the instruction was repeated for the fifth time, the black player finally responded.

On the other side, parallel to the touched surface, a line of dark, mist-like words suddenly spread out; it floated in the dim alley, almost like an illusion.

"Countdown: 4470 days, 12 hours, and 34 minutes"

Brianna pressed her finger firmly on the fifth side and waited patiently for a few seconds. The words were sucked back into the black square and disappeared.

She actually knew very well how long the countdown for Black was left.

The reason for asking again is just to find this side - it is also the only side in the black side that will give information-type results to the input command.

This concept is not easy to understand at first. Back then, Vesile spent half a day explaining it to Brianna in the dock warehouse before she finally understood it.

"For example, I have a command that says 'I want to eat an apple.'"

Holding the black square, Vesile explained to Brianna, who was only six or seven years old at the time, "Only by inputting the command to eat an apple on this side will the opposite side give you an informational result."

As he spoke, he demonstrated once, and indeed, a line of black mist-like words appeared on the corresponding surface:
Apple, also known as apple, is a plant of the genus Malus in the subfamily Apple family of the Rosaceae family. It is highly nutritious, edible, and widely consumed.

It may have mystical connotations in major religions, or even be considered forbidden fruit. Consider your surroundings (are you surrounded by only a naked male named Adam?) before consuming it.

There are several long paragraphs below, perhaps because there is a lot of information to say about Apple.

Brianna was young at the time and only partially understood what she heard. She didn't have the patience to read all the text - not to mention that there were many words she didn't know - but under her father's eyes fixed on her, she felt that she had to nod and say "I understand."

"Very good, you're not stupid," said Weisilai. "Now I'll teach you how to find the side that can output information results."

The black side has a total of six faces, three instruction input faces and three result output faces, two of which correspond to each other in a group.

Each side is exactly the same and cannot be marked. If they are moved slightly, it will be impossible to tell which is which.

To find a specific face, you can only use the "countdown query command" and try each face one by one; only the face that outputs the information result will give a countdown.

"Remember this positioning method. Press the information command input surface with your left thumb and the information result output surface with your left index finger, palm up, with your thumb facing you."

Vesile didn't give Black to Brianna—in fact, she didn't touch Black all night—so much because she was worried about Black's safety as she was about her daughter.

He held up the black square in his left hand and asked Brianna to stand next to him. He pointed at the black square and said, "The side to the left of your thumb is the integrated command input surface. Now let me ask you, what will appear on the other side opposite it?"

Brianna's hair stood on end—when she was with her father, she was tested unexpectedly, and even if she knew the answer, she would still feel panicked, like a young animal suddenly caught in a trap.

She stuttered for several seconds before finally uttering her guess: "Is it, is it the comprehensive result output surface?"

It was hard to tell whether Vesile's expression showed disappointment or satisfaction.

"That's right," he said. "If you say to the input side of the integrated instruction, 'I want to eat an apple,' what do you expect to appear on the output side?"

"……apple?"

Not using any tricks, but just making an apple appear out of thin air, Brianna thought this was already an incredible guess; illusions were that incredible.

"Then let's give it a try."

...What happened in the next twenty or thirty minutes gave Brianna nightmares every night for several years; she always woke up screaming, covered in cold sweat, and retched at the head of the bed.

Her mother secretly took her to see a child psychologist, but she knew that she could not tell any psychologist about crawling out of the black square, otherwise the matter would turn from an ordinary nightmare into a serious problem that would require her to be sent to a mental hospital - and then she would not be able to hide it from her father.

Vesile never knew she would suffer nightmares for years to come, but even if he had known, Brianna could have guessed his answer.

After all, having to deal with artifacts and nests, this is nothing.
If you don't even have this much psychological endurance, aren't you a waste?

That illusion—no, every illusion—should never have entered the world.

Hunters who bring them into the world for money are all sinners. In this respect, my former self and Morando are no exception.

Nests shouldn't even exist in this world.

If there were no nest, no false image, Wei Xilai might just be a department manager of an ordinary company now? He wouldn't have become this half-human, half-ghost appearance.

But that’s another life, another fantasy.

…We have to take it away to shut it down completely.

Brianna used her left thumb to press the "information command input surface", with her thumb facing her and her palm facing up.

Not the slender fingers she had been looking at for twenty years; the joints were thick and the hair was clear.

She tried not to look at her hands.

Just as Vesile had taught her years ago, she found the "Comprehensive Command Input Surface" and followed it to the "Character Command Input Surface." She placed her thumb on the "Character Command Input Surface" and walked gently to the side of the bar, pointing the black "Character Command Input Surface" at the back door of the bar.

Input commands must be concise, precise, and rigorous, leaving no room for misinterpretation. Back then, the command "I want to eat an apple" could be interpreted in countless absurd ways.

This is a big challenge for the user; after inputting the instructions that he thinks are correct into the black side, he may not know what the result will be when it comes out again.

Fortunately, Vesile left behind an instruction book that she had compiled after some trial and error - by following the instructions, she could get the results she wanted.

"Enter the command,"

Brianna stood in the alley and felt as if fine, phantom raindrops were falling faintly under the night sky.

“…a ‘character disassembly space’ is formed here.”

The black square disappeared from her hand—Brianna took a few steps back hastily.

Except for the people who use it, no one can detect with the naked eye that there is anything unusual in this alley; an induction light on the back door stretches palely in the dim shadows, and in the corner of the wet alley, there are a few cigarette butts soaking and a crushed can thrown there.

Only Brianna could see that the black square had expanded and grown, becoming a three-meter-high black cube; the "character command input surface" on the black square was tightly attached to the back door of the bar.

Anyone who pushes open the back door of the bar and takes a step forward will walk into the black side and become a "character command" input into the black side.

The next step was to call the driver to come into the bar and ask the waiter to pass a message to Chase Monroe, asking him to meet someone at the back door.

He used himself as bait to lure Brianna over, so she would never come to the back door without being invited...

Brianna lowered her head and took out her cell phone from her trouser pocket, but her fingers were shaking slightly, and the phone slipped and fell to the ground.

It's so useless, she cursed herself inwardly and bent down to pick up the phone.

Since that night at the dock warehouse, tonight was the first time she had magnified the black square and used character commands. The moment she saw the black square grow bigger, memories from many years ago suddenly revived, flooded into her mind again, and burned every neuron.

Even this male body, which had never felt the inside of the black square, couldn't help but tremble slightly.

She had personally experienced the feeling of going from a living person to an "input character command" - although not in this body at the moment.

That night, there was a very strange light in Vesile's eyes.

He stretched his neck forward and stared at the enlarged black square.

Perhaps because he was holding his daughter's hand, Brianna also saw the black side and the "character command input surface" facing the father and daughter.

"Dad," she tried to take a step back, but her wrist was held, unable to move. "What... is this for? ... Dad?"

Her clothes were still soaked, the fear left by the command "I want to eat apples" and the smell of black blood still hung thickly in the air; Brianna used all her strength to not scream and run away.

"Don't be afraid, no one will die," said Vesile. "I've already tried this function once."

Brianna didn't say anything. She didn't dare to speak, and she didn't know what to say.

"You can disassemble people into... resources, or reassemble them into new forms. It seems you can also modify them as you wish... but I didn't succeed last time. Oh, right."

The word "right" was said stiffly, as if he was pretending to have just remembered it.

Vesile slowly bent down, and his slightly yellowish face became as big as the moon, pressing in the corner of Brianna's vision.

She didn't dare turn around to look at her father.

"Brie, go in and let Dad see if he can change anything."

…Black rain soaked her hair and shoulders; when Brianna came to her senses, she found herself holding her knees and gasping for breath.

The phone was soaked with sweat. This man's body was prone to sweating.

She was delayed for a moment by her childhood memories and did not call the driver immediately, but in just a minute or two, someone had already pushed open the back door and walked into the black square.

...Neither of them is Chai Si.

　Sure enough, I’m getting later and later as I write. Okay, okay.

　　I don’t write cool stories, so both male and female characters will encounter setbacks.

　　However, whenever I write about a female character encountering setbacks, some people might put themselves in her shoes and feel unhappy, and I’ll easily be accused of not loving women (it’s true, the original words were even harsher, I won’t give examples, it’s annoying).

　　The female character encounters difficulties = the author does not love her. I still don’t understand where this logic comes from.

　　But I think, as I said before, writing and reading articles are all about finding a soulmate. People who truly understand the stories I write will never have this kind of misunderstanding.

　　PS: Allow me to brag a little more. I think I switched smoothly between memories and reality in this chapter. Let me put my hands on my hips for a moment.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)