After leaving the backyard, Rita gave the gaming duo a quick knock on the table.
"Come on. Dragon Island."
Nivalis: "Huh? What for?"
Rita: "...That's your home. Don't you want to report back after finishing a game?"
Nivalis kept mashing buttons, completely distracted. "I mean… not really."
Teenage rebellion, web-addict edition. Didn't want to talk to Mom. Didn't want to go out with Mom either.
Rita: "...Pine Bloom has spoken more than 10 times in the battlefield chat. I'm going to Lidian to collect what's owed."
Nivalis instantly paused the game and grabbed her console. "Let's go!"
B8017913: "...Can we wait 8 minutes? I just need 8 more minutes to claim today's first event reward."
Rita immediately softened. "Oh! Yeah, okay. That's important."
Nivalis plopped back down too. She'd woken up at the same time as B8017913, so she was probably close to her own reward window.
Eight minutes later, Rita sat there sipping a hot coffee, frowning at two very different-looking apples on the table.
What the hell are these?
The item descriptions were absurdly basic: just apples.
She took a bite—no buffs, no special effects—just… incredibly tasty. Probably the best apple she'd ever had.
Would probably be great in cooking.
Sure. Fine. Into the gacha machine they went, along with the two consoles.
She told Nivalis and B8017913 to grab on to her. No need to summon Deep Blue Helm—the platinum cat-themed ship's wheel flew in front of her on its own.
It spun—and they arrived directly at Dragon Island.
As usual, Rita first stopped by to greet Holy Cup, North Year, and Snow Pile, bringing gifts.
Remembering her promise to Nivalis, she hyped her up to Holy Cup like crazy—praising her so much it bordered on satire.
But weirdly… from the moment they arrived, Holy Cup had been giving Rita this very strange look.
Nivalis squirmed too, shifting her weight like she was sitting on needles.
Leaving the dragon nest, Rita finally remembered a particular moment from when she'd gone to Lania Kaia in doll form:
That time Nivalis had told her, "At your current level, you could probably survive an escape from Holy Cup."
She narrowed her eyes.
"You didn't say something you shouldn't have… right?"
Nivalis: …Does sharing fangirl behavior with Lidian count?
She widened her eyes, putting on her most innocent dragon face. "Did I? I don't think so?"
Rita squinted suspiciously.
Nivalis quickly bolted into the air. "I'll go find Lidian!"
Still perched quietly on Rita's shoulder, B8017913 finally spoke up:
"Can I play now? My fruit's ripe."
Without a word, she handed over the console.
Following Nivalis's directions, she found Lidian at their usual spot.
Lidian had their eyes closed, tail twitching in visible irritation.
Nivalis was already going off:
"Eleven times. Eleven times Pine Bloom posted in chat! Hand over the dragon scales!"
Lidian scoffed: "Does a '?' and a '1' even count?"
Nivalis: "Why wouldn't it count?! And let's be real—he only spoke because my BS-Rita was involved!"
This back-and-forth was getting nowhere.
So Rita flew over and dropped the bomb:
"What, don't tell me you've unfollowed me?"
Lidian's eyes snapped open. They glared at her like she'd just committed treason.
"What the hell makes you say that?!"
Rita sighed, tragic. "It's fine. Totally normal. I mean, she has changed..."
Before she could even finish the sentence, a bright red dragon scale smacked down in front of her.
Lidian: "Take it back."
Rita smiled sweetly: "Taken back."
She looked at Lidian like she was the most adorable stalker fan ever.
Nivalis: "…Learning so much right now."
But they weren't done.
Next came the blackmail photos.
Rita pulled out her phone and opened the gallery. She held it up to Lidian, revealing a slideshow of Blocks-form Pine Bloom tumbling around near a Ferris wheel.
Lidian immediately shrank and snatched the phone from her hands.
Rita stayed calm—this was exactly why she had transferred the footage to her phone. She'd expected Lidian to snatch it. These were just previews.
Nivalis chimed in proudly:
"Look! If you want to buy these blackmail pics, you better offer a price we like."
Lidian stared in disbelief:
"Blackmail? These aren't blackmail! These are divine art! How dare you call them blackmail?!"
Right. They forgot there's a special breed of fan who treats any picture—good or bad—as precious.
And now Lidian wasn't even trying to hide it anymore.
Rita coughed. "Yeah… divine art. So what's your price?"
After a bit of haggling, they traded 37 regular prints and 17 animated photos for five more dragon scales.
Lidian, absolutely delighted, even asked Rita to bring her more next time.
Rita: "...Absolutely."
I mean… who else would spend good money on this stuff?
She still had a lot of photos of Mistblade.
Rita immediately borrowed Nivalis's polaroid camera and printed a snapshot of Mistblade looking hilariously serious in a stupid situation.
She opened the trade hub and listed it:
[Photo: Joyful Lania Kaia Mistblade] – Price: 500 gold
The marketplace allowed for flexible pricing—specific materials, items, or just currency.
If it was currency, the system would convert it into the seller's world standard and take a 1% fee (paid by the buyer).
Rita had only flipped a few pages of the trade listings when a notification popped up in the top right corner:
She immediately listed five more—but the system only allowed five items per seller at a time.
[Lania Kaia·Mistblade]: "BS-Rita, are you here? Come out and die."
[Lania Kaia·Maple Syrup]: "I got one!"
[Lania Kaia·Fat Goose]: "I got one too!"
[Lania Kaia·Wither Monarch]: "Same."
[Lania Kaia·Pine Bloom]: "Didn't get a single one. Sigh."
[Lania Kaia·Mistblade]: "You think she has your pics too? You think she sold them? You sure about that?"
[Lania Kaia·Pine Bloom]: "…"
Rita quietly pocketed her gold and pretended not to exist.
She had no plans to linger on Dragon Island. She still had class.
There was a huge stack of Event Gift Boxes waiting to be opened. She planned to go through those first, then attend the Course Chests classes she unlocked.
As for the rare Deceitful Bloom Course, she wasn't ready to use it just yet. She'd hold onto it for later.
After her classes, she still needed to test Cat's Ideal's core skill—
And she needed to carefully examine and allocate the 2000 stat points sent by Eclipse Vanguard.
Most importantly, she had to toss Nivalis into a game and test the limits of Reality Bleeds Into Game.
If a player could learn skills inside the game and bring them out—then this skill's value wasn't just tenfold.
It would be a hundred times greater.
Whether skills could be exported would directly define her minimum acceptable price for access.