This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

Thanks to Rita's shame kicking in, she instinctively protected her backside with her tail as she performed a smooth split in the air.

When she landed, the fur on her tail was blasted apart by the lightning from the thunder gun, and half of her buttocks were tingling.

Just as she stabilized herself, a hammer came flying toward her. Rita quickly sat back and laid down, narrowly dodging the hammer.

Sinful Act! Rita flipped and immediately started running on all fours.

When she used [Twisted Lollipop], there were only about 5 minutes left in this round, and after spending a minute in the initial room, there were only 3 minutes left now.

She just needed to survive for 3 more minutes!

—[If you can kill me]

Her health threshold expanded to -500%.

Rita immediately dashed toward a group of strange creatures, squeezing herself between them.

In these situations, players usually don't refuse, just as Rita didn't mind when creatures like neck-snakes, snails, or event gift packs came near her.

After rounds of gameplay, everyone had become accustomed to eliminating their own kind.

Being near a creature from another type only provided a sense of security.

Rita never thought of eliminating non-similar creatures; whether in attack or defense, she always subconsciously focused on her own kind.

This hidden mechanic might have been discovered by many players, but none of them spoke out about it or eliminated others blatantly. Instead, they waited for the players to let their guard down and quietly capitalized at the right moment.

However, Rita recalled the cautious skills of the neck-snakes and realized this hidden mechanic might not be good for some players.

Especially [Twisted Lollipop] users—her opponents must have known just how powerful that skill could be, but when she copied it last time, the positioning of her enemies was actually quite tricky.

At that moment, the players weren't densely packed, and the most common creatures around were neck-snakes. Most of the other creatures only had one or two. The neck-snake even used its tail to push a few Mangdon-shaped players further away.

Was it because they were afraid of eliminating players from different types?

Like the black household status, in this game, it was easy to violate specialized rules if you accidentally eliminated a painful Nightmare Mode player.

Or was it that eliminating your own kind didn't trigger penalties, but eliminating different types did?

There wasn't enough information, so Rita couldn't be sure.

Behind her, the thunder gun stopped chasing her, but Pine Bloom's hammer seemed to have a tracking feature, relentlessly following her.

Was there no penalty for Pine Bloom killing Painful-level players? Rita herself couldn't kill Fool-level players, so she had no idea what restrictions there were for stronger players above the Abyssal level.

She didn't dare to turn around, though. Being eliminated would mean death, but taking a hit that brought her health to zero also meant death.

She had killed several players using methods other than Match-3, but none of them had granted her a kill reward. She wasn't sure if the revival cost would be required again.

There were only 30 seconds left.

Rita gave up the idea of copying another connection skill to eliminate a non-similar creature and instead copied a healing skill to pull her dangerously low health back up.

27 seconds.

Rita was hit by the hammer, and she immediately clung to the hammer, which was flying toward another raccoon. The raccoon was dragged into the air, and while passing by a neck-snake, Rita grabbed its tail, whipped it a few times on the hammer, and then wrapped it around the hammer a few more times.

The next second, she and the hammer were both sent flying by the tail.

Rita's goal was achieved—since the force was mutual, when the hammer hit the tail, their connection was interrupted.

06:00, the sixth round.

The final round!

When the screen switched, Rita was still recovering from the shock.

The last thing she saw was the hammer flying right at her face. It was so close, only about ten centimeters away, and her vision was filled with the hammer's vibrant green magical runes.

The game restarted, and the number of different creatures remained at 6. Rita was still a Ginger Bear.

Her first action was to take off her ear studs and put them in her mouth, and her second action was to lick her claws and part her fur in the middle, giving herself a new look.

[Notice: The gameplay for rounds 3, 4, and 5 has been abolished.]

[The last hit of an elimination is considered a connection.]

[Players who have been eliminated can only return to the game once.]

[From round 1 onward, players with accumulated eliminations ≥ 10 will be sent to the Dark Food Street as "low-quality ingredients."]

[From round 1 onward, players who complete eliminations ≥ 10 by the end of the game will arrive at the Dark Food Street as "advanced customers."]

[From round 1 onward, players who complete eliminations ≤ 5 by the end of the game will randomly lose 2 skill icons.]

After realizing that the Dark Food Street wasn't a harder map, Rita looked at these penalties and rewards with a neutral attitude.

If the gods were giving players like Pot Plant Pro, who weren't suitable for this game, a way out, becoming low-quality ingredients might not be a bad thing.

If the gods wanted to restrict players who had the advantage from selecting the right skills, then getting the advanced customer status might not be good either.

But what about the middle ground between getting neither the "advanced customer" status nor the "low-quality ingredient" status?

Was there such a thing as "ordinary ingredients" or "premium ingredients"? Or "low-level customers"?

The battle had begun, and Rita was thinking about which path to choose as she ran for her life.

She had gradually adapted to the rules of the Divine Game.

There was no absolute fairness or luck, nor absolute right or wrong.

Every choice had its advantages and disadvantages.

The level of danger in this round was similar to the second round, while the gameplay of the third, fourth, and fifth rounds offered a lot of room to breathe.

Hitting once counts as a connection. If the first attempt fails, players could quickly adjust their attack route and change targets.

But receiving the last hit of an elimination counts as a connection, meaning once the attack begins, it's an investment. No one would willingly hand over a nearly defeated player to someone else. They would chase until they had no hope of eliminating them.

She dodged a skill with a sidestep and, when she landed, Rita had made her decision.

Rather than the unknown, she would aim for "advanced customer" status, and she didn't want to miss out on the elimination rewards.

She counted and realized that even if the last [Twisted Lollipop] elimination counted as two, she still only had 7 eliminations.

It was time to use [Mysterious Power].

If the gameplay for rounds 3, 4, and 5 hadn't been abolished and the connection could still be used to eliminate, [Mysterious Power] might be interrupted, and using it would be wasted.

But since it had been abolished, and eliminated players only had one chance to return to the game, this last round was a full-on battle.

She wasn't sure if [Mysterious Power] would disappear after completing an elimination, but she decided to take the risk.

She quickly used [Reward or Punishment], a skill she had never used before!

—Reward!

The reward that appeared at the time when she wanted punishment felt more like punishment.

A transparent shield appeared around her, with a shield value equivalent to 2000% of her current health.

Attacking the shield didn't equate to attacking her directly, so the attack never reached her, and [Bedtime Tale] couldn't trigger.

She sighed internally—if the "reward" had been transforming her health into 2000%, it would have been the perfect complement to [Bedtime Tale].

Modification... It must be modified!