This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

Mistblade looked over at Maple Syrup not far away. "Did Maple Cang tell you that a Fogtail Moon Fox stole a World Graveyard from her store? I know who that Fogtail is now!"

Maple Syrup glanced at her. "Who?"

Mistblade smiled brightly. "Dark City Apache's alchemy apprentice, Nivalis's owner, High Tower climber, holder of orange-red wings, the one who cast that curse just now, and a new player in The Game of Gods — BS-Rita."

Maple Syrup was taken aback for a moment by the list of titles, then raised an eyebrow. "…Are you guys familiar with each other?"

Mistblade's smile grew even wider. "Not at all. So when your daughter comes crying to you saying I bullied her, just remember to look for BS-Rita."

Maple Syrup stared at Mistblade for a few seconds, sensing that Mistblade wasn't being completely truthful. She grinned even more widely. "That's my fourth daughter. If I don't look for her, I'll look for you."

Mistblade: "…"

She had dealt with Maple Syrup for years and knew when the other was making things up. It was like she'd been drinking fake wine, talking nonsense.

Rita, after leaving her note in the past, began preparing for the next The Game of Gods.
Experience tales at My Virtual Library Empire

After exiting World Battleground, a new status appeared beneath her character info: BS · The Game of Gods Player (57 days 15 hours 27 minutes).

This meant that if she wanted to retain her game qualification, she would have to participate in the Game of Gods on March 15 at the latest. Otherwise, she would lose her entry privileges to World Battleground forever.

She had less than two months to grow stronger, but there was another option — enter on March 15 and immediately commit suicide to gain another 60 days of development time.

However, after obtaining Midnight Exile, she truly had the capital to play the game on the battlefield. She couldn't bring herself to be that cowardly.

Step by step, she decided to first familiarize herself with the Midnight Exile skill, then work on igniting the orange-red wings as much as possible, and finally learn Cheers.

She opened the chat interface with Shadow.Q, intending to exchange more of the "Whatever weather I want, I'll make it myself" skill stones.

It was straightforward, simply exchanging dragon-shaped coins, since the equipment in Blue Star was no longer enough to meet her needs. Her former plans and ideas, once fitting, now seemed crude as her strength and perspective had skyrocketed.

Shadow.Q didn't make things difficult either. For two dragon-shaped coins, she could exchange for one "Whatever weather I want, I'll make it myself" skill stone.

Looking back, Rita realized that despite whatever plans Eclipse Vanguard had behind the scenes, every time they actually traded, they had never tried to make things hard for her.

She calculated that one skill stone could ignite 10 feathers of light with lightning power. She still needed 300 more, so just to be safe, Rita exchanged for 305.

The next task was to increase her stats, which would follow the same rhythm as before. Every morning, she would practice Cheers, in the afternoons, she would stock up in Lania Kaia's main city, and during lunch, she would find time to solo a dungeon.

The third task was to find more World Graveyards.

Ideally, she wanted to find a combination of World Graveyards that carried more godly gifted skills.

When she returned, she found that aside from her godly punishments, she had also dropped a World Graveyard. Fortunately, it wasn't a key-type World Graveyard, but rather a red one that allowed her to enter one minute earlier than usual.

To her surprise, it didn't deduct 10,000 honor points.

She could only tentatively speculate that using or dying with this World Graveyard in World Battleground wouldn't cost her honor points, but stealing other players' World Graveyards would. What she didn't know was where those honor points would be used...

One way or another, she figured that after killing Caleb, she had also obtained one, so she took out the small red plane from the World Battleground.

World Graveyard·Red Plane ①: Belongs to the Black Spring Civilization. Players from other civilizations can only use it as an entry ticket.

She no longer needed to worry about the ticket for the next World Battleground. She toyed with the small plane in her hand. Mahjong... small planes... all of these World Graveyards seemed to have a game-like feel to them.

Could this be a small plane from a flying chess game?

But in Blue Star, flying chess could only accommodate up to four players, with four planes per player, making a total of 16 planes. This seemed like a far cry from Mahjong. Was the flying chess game of the Black Spring Civilization different?

Or was it another game, or perhaps a different kind of playstyle?

If it were just flying chess, then no matter how many World Graveyards these races gathered, they probably wouldn't be able to gain as much benefit as Lania Kaia...

Wait, Lania Kaia — the Lania Kaia that had 12 Holy Races.

The Forest Sea Oak Owl, who had chosen to join Lania Kaia.

And one of the tips in World Battleground's newbie guide — "When a new world enters the battlefield, the world will be awarded three World Graveyards as a reward."

The World Graveyard she had gotten in BS was Mahjong, and now BS was being invaded by Lania Kaia.

One clue after another flashed in Rita's mind, eventually leading her to a single point: perhaps Lania Kaia had once been as weak as the Black Spring Civilization, and it had grown stronger by continuously invading new worlds and developing.

That's why the 12 races were constantly at war — because of old grudges that could never be resolved, just like the current BS and Lania Kaia.

But when the 12 races invaded new worlds, they would cooperate, because they needed to grow — not just their own races, but Lania Kaia too...

Rita organized her thoughts and went to Dark City. While returning the book she had stolen from Moonfox City's library, she bought many nutritional potions for pets from Apache.

Apache had told her long ago that these potions were just placebos with no real effect.

However, now that Rita wanted to buy them, Apache didn't question why, nor did she criticize the potions as useless. She simply handed over the potions and gave Rita a few recipes to make them herself.

Rita: "Thank you, Teacher."

Apache waved her hand and continued brewing potions.

After looking around, Rita found Kayden in the small kitchen. She handed him 200 gold coins.

"If you come across anything like you sold me last time, save it for me. No matter the price, I'll buy it. This is a deposit, and I'll offer you another price when the time comes. The previous promise still stands."

Kayden accepted the 200 gold coins and smiled at her. "Sure!"

After giving Apache a few bags of rice produced by the Rice Frame, Rita was about to leave the alchemy shop.

Just as she was about to step out, Apache suddenly asked, "If Mistblade Empress comes back and asks you whether you still want to go, what should I say?"

Rita paused, turned around to look at the necromancer, who was still focused on brewing potions. Rita replied, "I'll go."

Apache finally raised her head and gave her a long, thoughtful look before speaking. "I heard there are a lot of games there. Are they fun?"

Such awkward concern. Rita smiled faintly. "Not fun."

The apprentice stood at the doorway, facing away from the street. The midday sun in Dark City was glaring, and the apprentice stood against the light, almost like a scythe made of wind. Rita couldn't help but notice something — the little black eyes under Apache's dark circles looked wet.

This discovery made Apache feel a bit lost. She had always thought Rita was tough, the one who played others, not the one to be moved. But unexpectedly, one simple question had brought out Rita's tears. Apache pressed her lips together, unsure how to comfort her.

Finally, she awkwardly blurted out, "…Come here, I'll give you a few more notes and recipes."

Rita genuinely smiled. "I thought you were going to say you'd give me more lessons."

Seeing Rita smile, Apache finally relaxed. "Notes. You don't need to come by for now. Mistblade seems really angry at you and is looking for you."

In that instant, any sadness Rita had felt vanished. "What's wrong now, my lady?"