Lightchaser had once said something to her:
"But... your constant second-guessing isn’t entirely a flaw. Even when you’re on the right path, you keep running simulations of how it could go wrong—and you prepare for them."
"That’s good. Pessimists never trust fate. And fate, in turn, tends to favor them."
Besides, she’d already seen the answer from her future self who had gone back in time.
Rita pulled out an item—a keepsake she’d taken from a fellow student.
[Time is Ticking] (Curio): When used, reduces the cooldown of a chosen item or piece of equipment by 20%; can only be used once per hour.
Her right hand cradled the clock as she reduced the cooldown of [Cat’s Ideal].
The world dimmed, and in the dark, a bell chimed. A lantern swayed gently in the gloom.
Rita jumped back nine seconds—precisely to the moment when she’d been about to leave.
Crossing the river of time and landing in the past, [Waste Guide] activated once more.
Time slammed to a halt. The world around her froze.
Only then did she fly to the nearest shop window and glance at the reflection above her head.
No numbers. Someone had stolen every crystal she had.
Rita turned and headed for the sewers.
Back on the battlefield, she couldn’t see herself, but she knew she was still there. In the center, she spotted those fiery lightwings drifting in the air.
Carefully weaving past skills and traps, she found the target she was looking for—a student with 168,145 floating above his head.
He was hanging in the air, half-turned, clearly having succeeded and ready to leave the fight.
His clothing was minimal—an angled gold chain across his bare torso, loose deep-blue trousers on his lower half. This was the male uniform of Deep Sea Mine, the chain serving as the school’s "backpack."
Black seaweed-like curls framed his face, green catlike eyes glinted, and two white mushroom-like antennae sprouted from his head.
Deep Sea Mine’s Mojie.
Rita didn’t immediately snatch her wealth back. Instead, she used [Evidence Sorting] to probe his Godgift skills.
An impressive S-grade set—balanced offense and defense, plus a skill that awarded extra stat points.
But she saw nothing that could directly steal someone’s wealth.
Patiently, Rita scanned every player on the field, comparing their Godgift skills with their identities, memorizing all of it.
Some were good, but she still preferred her own [Summer Snowman].
At least for now, she hadn’t found anything worth giving up all five of its skills for.
Only one thing gave her pause—Pine Bloom from Little Dog Ranch. She had a skill called [Dream Skill], which could steal—no, seize—another person’s Godgift.
Unfortunately, it could only be used once in a lifetime, and Pine Bloom had already burned it.
So someone else had been the unlucky victim.
That alone made Rita drop the idea of ever trading for that Godgift. It also erased the murderous impulse she’d felt to kill Pine Bloom at any cost when she first saw it.
Two Godgifts... and one of them was SSS-grade. Jealous.
With a quiet sigh, she strolled back to Mojie, arms crossed, deep in thought.
A curio? An item? Or equipment?
Had Mojie stolen her wealth because that was all he could steal? Or had he chosen to take it solely to win the fun match’s championship?
The difference was huge.
If it was the first... then if he could take her crystals today, tomorrow he could just as easily take her divine relics or even her Godgift itself.
The thought left her deeply uneasy.
Getting nowhere, she turned to another player—Pomango—one of those who had kept attacking her until the very end.
His Godgift was called [Great Detective], with a skill named [Crime Simulation].
It could reconstruct every skill used in a given location based on available evidence, then copy one of them. Only one could be copied at a time, but it could be used three times.
And there, at the end of the skill’s log, was an entry: [Moment of Reversal: 3].
So when she had swapped her wealth during her negotiation with the locals, these players had been watching from the shadows.
Pomango’s ace in the hole had been this [Moment of Reversal]—but Mojie had gotten to her first.
Rita moved like a shadow through the crowd, scanning every player again and again.
From the scraps of information she gathered, she slipped into their perspective, simulating how they would deal with her.
It was... a very entertaining game.
She took the battlefield as her center point, with a hundred-meter radius, and studied every player in that zone—those in plain sight and those lurking unseen.
Over a thousand. More than a thousand students had gathered—some to gang up on her, some just to watch or gather intel.
It felt like browsing a high-end import shop.
Not that it was all top-tier—Moonlight Marsh didn’t admit anyone with less than an A-grade Godgift—but every one of these was new to her.
In the end, they all boiled down to offense, defense, healing, and special effects, but she’d learned a lot.
When she finally returned to Mojie, more than ten hours had passed.
She sat cross-legged, thinking about how she would counter these opponents in the future, and which skills might be special enough to make her give up [Summer Snowman].
Twenty-three hours, fifty minutes.
Her mental storm had to end.
She rose, walked to Mojie, and memorized his face.
Deep Sea Mine. Mojie.
If she couldn’t figure out the skill, then killing a hundred Deep Sea Mine students before killing Mojie himself would probably set her mind at ease.
Skills might live, but people could die.
She swept her gaze over the field, nearly drowning in the bitter regret of not being able to claim every prize here.
So many god-tier abilities... she wanted to take them all.
[Congratulations, Player ■■ Rita has unlocked SSS-grade skill—Send Me the Link]
[Send Me the Link] (SSS): "What’s the harm in looking? Adding it to the cart doesn’t cost a thing!" When a skill hits you, you can copy it and store it in your cart. The copied skill’s cooldown resets to zero, but it can only be used once. Cart limit: 50 (0/50).