All the skills had undergone changes—usage conditions, duration, and cooldowns were different now.
The only comforting part was that none of the abilities had been replaced.
"Eight Vice-Captains off wandering," Rita muttered as she rotated the platinum ship's helm, examining the eight cat-shaped levers on it. That must be it.
But with so many worlds out there… how was she supposed to find them?
The helm gently tapped her head.
A thought rose in her mind.
—You'll know when you arrive in the world they're currently in.
So she'd have to make time to visit each world.
Now that Cat's Ideal had finished downgrading, Rita turned her attention to Wrathful Moon, which should be nearing completion of its upgrade. She gave the helm a little spin and appeared in the backyard.
Wrathful Moon was still there.
The crushed starstones within the lantern had completely disappeared—it had finished its evolution.
At the moment, it sat perched on the top of a cat tower in the backyard. When Rita appeared, it turned halfway to show its back to her.
Fighting the urge to laugh, Rita floated toward it. Even she could admit she was being petty—getting into a silent standoff with a lamp.
But when she checked the updated skills, her feelings turned even more complicated.
[Divine Relic: Wrathful Moon] (SS)
A piece of the moon was stolen and locked away. The moon belongs to no one.
Skill 1: Sleepless Tonight
Sleep? What sleep? Target one entity. For the next ten minutes, they will share all the damage you receive. Consumes 1 point of Luck per use. Luck recovers after one natural day. Cooldown: 2 hours.
Skill 2: Temporal Stroll
Take a brief step into the past or the future. The time range (in days) cannot exceed your level, and your stay (in seconds) cannot exceed your Intelligence stat. Cooldown: 12 hours.
Skill 3: Dark Side of the Moon
What's on the other side of the moon? Choose a target. They will be teleported to the place they fear the most. Costs 2% MP. Cooldown: 2 hours.
Skill 4: Nebula Bubble
Target an entity and create a nebula bubble. During its 8-minute incubation, it absorbs all damage applied to it. Afterward, the absorbed value becomes its defense stat. The bubble lasts until its defense is depleted. Cast time: 1 second. No cooldown. Max 10 per day. (0/10)
Skill 5: Wrathful Moon
This lantern only shines when it's in a good mood. It likes fairy tales.
Upgrade Requirement: A complete full moon (0/1)
Every skill had improved—even the most ordinary one, Planetary Orbit, was gone entirely.
She had been right. Wrathful Moon may not like parts of her—her decisions, her restraint—but it hated obedience even more.
She picked up the lantern and gently poured back in the moon sand she'd taken out earlier. Lifting it to eye level, the soft silver glow of the moon reflected in her pupils.
"You don't belong to anyone," she whispered. "And you don't need anyone to belong to you… right?"
Wrathful Moon didn't answer. But when she released it, the lantern floated once more to her side, casting its gentle light ahead of her path.
The soft glow of the moonlight did not get drowned out by the fiery blaze of her wings—they stood side by side, refusing to yield, like the sun and the moon.
Her platinum mage robe shifted slightly as she walked, and her voice rang out across the backyard with a lighthearted tone.
"Nice to meet you again. I'm BS-Rita."
Rita hadn't forgotten her promise to help Eclipse Vanguard summon the old blacksmith.
But after remembering how the old blacksmith had looked at her last time—like he was facing a demon—she decided to give him a few more days of rest before summoning him again.
Her alchemy workshop was finally complete, and the Eclipse Vanguard staff stationed there hadn't left yet. Rita told them to take a break for now. Once Shadow.Q returned, she'd summon the blacksmith for them.
Once they'd clocked out, Rita began inspecting her alchemy workshop.
Every part of the layout balanced aesthetic with function.
That said, alchemy was no longer her strongest subject.
Now, it was gacha theory.
A field formed from the merger of multiple disciplines—and the specialties of two gods, Deceitful Bloom and Drummer—qualified as a subject in its own right.
Rita activated [Renovation], just as she had when checking Nivalis's engineering workshop. The skill scanned each room, each detail, each corner of the facility.
Finally, she sat at her workbench and took out the 2,000 stat-boosting items Eclipse Vanguard had delivered. She inspected each one carefully.
Around 900 of them could be used immediately. The rest had unique requirements—some needed a few minutes, others a full day.
She activated a time-stop.
While the world was frozen, time continued flowing for her and any object she was using—including the gacha console and these stat boosters.
When the time-stop ended, Rita had gained over 4,000 assignable stat points.
She distributed them evenly across her four main attributes.
[Rita] Lv. 19 (Tier 11: Nightmare)
HP: 407,875 / 407,875
MP: 477,075 / 477,075
This also meant she could now support up to 400,000 players in the game console.
But there was no need to give Eclipse Vanguard all the slots—she would keep some in reserve.
Most of her tasks were finished. The only thing left was completing a few remaining courses, which she could handle during spare moments.
What really mattered now was something else—clearing the seabed of foreign species.
BS wasn't exactly in a good state right now. But it wasn't at its worst yet.
While most dungeon portals had been retrieved and sealed off by various factions using all kinds of means, large stretches of the BS world remained unexplored.
Some portals at the bottom of the sea had been found and neutralized with Rita's help, but many were still unaccounted for.
That meant foreign invaders frequently emerged from the ocean, making landfall and launching attacks on BS's human players.
Several coastal nations had already fallen, converted into bases for alien species.
Yet those invaders weren't rushing to expand. They were waiting—for something.
The sharpest players had already noticed: the ones landing and building these outposts were cannon fodder. Their purpose was purely to distract.
No one knew what kinds of elite forces were still lurking in the deep sea.
And Rita had a very bad feeling about it.
It felt like they were all waiting for the exact moment she couldn't be there to stop them.