Cat's Ideal came to a gentle stop. Through Rita's extended senses, she could feel that this section of the sea was stacked with layer upon layer of dungeon veils—easily over a hundred. As for the alien forces stationed on the ocean floor, their numbers were in the hundreds of thousands.
She sent Sanchez a party invite. "Let's go. Time for me to fulfill a contract."
As she spoke, the ship beneath their feet vanished, and they plunged straight into the water.
That strange lantern hovered at Rita's hip, and the helm she had been tweaking earlier floated beside her head.
She cast a few buffs on Sanchez. "Stick close to me. If you die, I'll revive you—but you only get one shot. After that, I'll have Nivalis send you back."
Sanchez chugged a few potions, eyes practically glowing with excitement. She activated an underwater breathing skill and replied, "Got it!"
Rita turned to Nivalis. "You're on clean-up. Don't let a single one get away."
"Understood!" Nivalis returned to her full dragon form. Rita helped her shrink-wrap the three balloons into capsule form and stash them in her mouth—just in case they popped mid-fight.
B8017913 asked, "What about me?"
Rita's shadow drifted over, handing the game console to her. Rita said, "You're on loot duty."
B8017913 beamed. "Yes, master! Leave it to me!"
She immediately logged in to start farming drops.
Rita could barely watch.
She charged downward first. As they burst into the heart of the alien stronghold, she cast [Nebula Bubble] on herself, Nivalis, and Sanchez.
Inside the console, Avery had just wrapped up a solo boss-training session and was sitting on a stone step, scrolling through the chat channel.
Rita's level had skyrocketed over the past three days. She was already level 30.
Sanchez had shot up to second on the rankings, now sitting at level 21.
—"Last satellite footage showed them heading for the deep sea. Seems like they're clearing out the alien armies hiding there. Not sure why Sanchez is tagging along—I thought they had beef."
Avery replied, "Doesn't matter. Have PR push stories about Rita's contributions to BS. Choose your words carefully. We can't let public opinion turn against her."
She tapped her staff against the ground, watching blood drip down the gem at its tip.
Unlike Ariana, who had used logic to guess that Rita might have seen the future and acted preemptively, the leadership of Eclipse Vanguard knew Rita had returned from the future.
They knew because Eclipse Vanguard had recently discovered a player who had traveled back from the future to the early days of the game invasion.
Unfortunately, by the time they found him, his mind had already collapsed.
In his brief moments of lucidity, they'd managed to extract fragments of information and piece together a version of BS's future timeline.
In that timeline, BS fell in year five of the game invasion.
What remained of the shattered BS merged with Lania Kaia. The surviving humans turned into monsters.
He had never heard of a BS-Rita. There had been no announcement about human evolution.
But he had heard of Rita—just not the one they knew.
In his fourth year wandering through Lania Kaia, while fleeing for his life, he encountered the woman who'd once been a celebrity before the invasion.
Undead Wildfire. Apprentice of the alchemy master Apache from the city of shadows.
In just three years, her name became legend across Lania Kaia. She had been brought back by Apache from a ruined BS and hailed as "the perfect student." Even the Wither Monarch had summoned her personally.
Her greatest hobby? Hunting down every last human survivor.
Especially Rick, Zoey, Sanchez—the top players on BS's leaderboard. She killed them all.
This particular player had a unique God-given talent that let him hide for several years. But eventually, Undead Wildfire found him too.
That was when he realized—wait a minute, isn't that...?!
He'd even watched her dramas before the invasion.
In that desperate moment, his divine talent evolved. He used a once-in-a-lifetime rollback skill and rewound time to the very beginning.
But the years he spent as a monster, hunted and broken, had already shredded his mind. When he used the rollback, he tipped into madness.
Had Avery heard it earlier, she wasn't sure what she would've done.
But now? After humanity had evolved several times under Rita's lead?
After hearing the tale in that heavy silence, Avery had calmly driven her staff through that player's throat.
Then, with the corpse still impaled on her staff, she summoned every person who had learned of this revelation.
She made each one sign a binding contract of silence.
Over a thousand signatures later, Avery finally removed the staff from the body.
"Give this soldier… a proper burial."
This story—this timeline—was already far better than the last.
She wouldn't allow anyone to alter it again.
On the third morning, Sanchez finally bit the dust. Rita pulled out [Dull Game], pointed it at her corpse, and fired a blank. With a flash, Sanchez came back online.
Her theory confirmed—blank shots could function as a pseudo-revival skill.
Once Sanchez was back on her feet, Rita told her to head home. She could feel it—the contract she made a year ago had now been fulfilled.
Sanchez clung to a chunk of coral, staring at Rita with wide, fervent eyes. "Are you sure you don't need another pet?"
Nivalis's expression darkened. With a single motion, she scooped Sanchez up and shot out of the water, ferrying her to shore at top speed.
Rita stayed behind with Nivalis and B8, sweeping the ocean floor.
Wherever they found alien strongholds, they erased them.
Thanks to the three balloons she always carried, [I Just Want to Improve So Badly] stayed permanently active.
The nine spare slots in the game console were all stuffed with alien loot drops.
Even her gacha machine was jam-packed with equipment and items.
After five days of nonstop purging, Rita finally called it.
She'd wiped out at least 80% of the deep-sea invaders.
The remaining 20% were small fry, too scattered and underleveled to pose any real threat. All the high-level commanders had been assassinated.
It was now the 12th. Time to finish the last of her classes and prepare for the next Divine Game.
Of the 31 class sessions she'd drawn from the 129 event loot boxes, 7 engineering lessons had already been forced on Nivalis.
That left 16 combat sessions and 8 miscellaneous specialty courses.
On the way back, Cat's Ideal drifted quietly, almost melancholic.
—"Aren't you going to look for our Vice-Captains?"