Curious, Rita asked, "Does a game contract recognize official seals?"
Shadow.Q chuckled, "Of course it does."
She had returned to her composed and elegant demeanor, and Rita couldn't help but wonder if all the lighthearted banter earlier was just another one of Shadow.Q's negotiation tactics.
Once the contract was signed, Rita checked her character interface, which now displayed the contract details. After reviewing it thoroughly, she finally felt at ease.
Shadow.Q added, "We'll have the gold delivered within three days. Wherever you go in that time, just let the local outpost staff know. Your information and rank have been entered into our system, and currently, you're the highest-ranking external member."
Rita glanced at the time—it was already 3 p.m. If she didn't hurry, her revenge might have to wait until tomorrow. "Alright, I'll stay nearby for the next few days. I've got to go now. I still have unfinished business this afternoon."
Shadow.Q and Meow.Q escorted her to the outpost entrance, drawing the attention of other players as they watched them leave.
Once outside, Rita hurried into the forest, pulling on a black cloak that covered her entire body. Using her **Phantom Cloak**, she quietly made her way to the cave she had tracked Levi to earlier in the morning. She positioned herself in a corner and waited patiently.
While she waited, she played alchemy tutorials in her mind and planned her next moves. With five days left until New Year's, she intended to focus on leveling up in the meantime. Once the gold arrived, she would start exchanging it for game currency. Any downtime could be used to practice alchemy.
The cooldown time for using her **Thief God Disguise** skill was 5 hours, with each work session lasting an hour. During the cooldown, it wouldn't make sense to fight monsters, as traveling back and forth to different regions outside of the major cities would be inefficient. Instead, she could use that time to train her professional skills in places like the sewer system.
Besides, with her ability to turn into animals and **Phantom Shift**, she wasn't worried about escaping if things went south.
As night began to fall, Rita heard familiar voices approaching—Levi and his group, now eight strong.
Rita had counted earlier. Levi's group had 21 members in total. She had killed 10 in the morning, but why were there only eight now?
"Do you think she suspects something?"
"Unlikely. She's turned down invitations from other teams before without raising any alarms."
"Maybe she went to a different outpost. Doesn't she move around a lot?"
"Probably. Let's stake out her usual spots tomorrow while we grind."
"You guys notice the monsters felt stronger today? I couldn't block their hits like I usually do. No way Little Four and the others should've died."
Rita had heard enough. She pulled out her grenades. One after another, she tossed five into the cave before using **Phantom Shift** to teleport outside.
Just as she shifted to the cave entrance, a series of explosions echoed from inside.
She waited patiently for five minutes before reactivating her **Phantom Cloak** and heading back inside. The cave floor was littered with the bloody remains of eight mangled bodies. She didn't move closer, opting instead to pull out her gun and shoot Levi in the head three times. Next, she did the same to the muscular man and the rest of the group, making sure to fire three shots at each head.
Satisfied, she pulled out a long knife and methodically decapitated each body before dousing them with gasoline and setting them ablaze, all while maintaining her invisibility.
Once the bodies were charred beyond recognition, Rita finally left the cave using **Phantom Shift** and headed to Outpost 0003, which was at least a two-hour distance from the scene of the crime.
True to Shadow.Q's word, within three days and before New Year's Eve, Rita had repaid all the skill stones she owed. She had also received 100 blank skill stones and 40,000 pounds of gold—enough to exchange for 100,000 gold coins.
This amount of gold was astronomical to her, and even for the Lopez, White, or Taylor families, it was a huge sum. But for the nation's reserves, it wasn't a big deal. Rita could imagine the internal debates this transaction must have sparked.
She left the outpost, carrying the gold deep into the forest. After circling around an area of Level 8 monsters to ensure she wasn't being followed, she transformed into a goblin and **Phantom Shifted** to the teleportation array in Undercity. Her next stop was to visit her goblin friends in various capital cities.
With 40,000 pounds of gold, she could potentially exchange it for 111,111 gold coins. If she took the time to negotiate with the goblins, she might even secure a better rate—or so she thought.
"180 grams for one gold coin? My friend, are you kidding? Have you heard of the rich goblin Bill in Undercity? He trades at 170 grams."
"Then go trade with him."
"But I want to be friends with you. Fine, 180 grams it is."
Rita left the goblin district, thinking she should take some lessons from Shadow.Q on negotiation skills.
"200 grams for one coin?! You might as well rob me!"
"I don't even want to trade with you. You're the one begging. Do you know about the rich goblin Bill in Undercity?"
"I heard he spent all his savings on gold and couldn't even afford to eat."
"...I heard that too. But he earns 60 grams of gold profit with every coin he mints, which means he's making a free gold coin every two days. That's 182 gold coins a year."
"…Right, 182 gold and 50 silver. Over ten years, that's 1,825 gold coins. So, are you trading or not? 180 grams per coin. No one else will give you this kind of deal."
"Fine. I've only got 1,000 coins, though."
Some capital city goblins were poor, while others were wealthy, but their bottom line was always 180 grams per coin. Anything lower, and they'd get angry. Bill, as it turned out, was the wealthiest of them all, and she hadn't come across any goblin willing to trade 20,000 coins in one go like he did, which slowed her progress considerably.
With **Disguise**, she could only trade twice a day, for one hour each time. Originally, she thought an hour would be enough to trade and explore the capital cities, but Bill was an exception—few goblins were willing to trade large sums. Rita had to negotiate with them one by one, sometimes trading just 800 or 1,000 coins at a time.
Each capital had hundreds of goblins, and she went from one to another, slowly gathering her haul.
Every day, she could only visit one capital city and had to split it into two sessions. The rest of her time was barely enough to explore local restaurants and learn new recipes from the chefs of various races.
Rita fully committed to the grind, working while her skill cooled down and sleeping in between. The moment her cooldown ended, she'd **Disguise** herself and head back into the cities to chat with goblins and exchange coins. Thankfully, the time zones of different cities worked in her favor, allowing her to trade for 30,000 to 40,000 gold coins a day during her four-hour work sessions.
After several days, Rita realized she probably knew more goblins than she did people in the entertainment industry.
One day, she returned to Undercity, this time disguised as a cow-patterned cat she had encountered in Ironforge, one of the dwarven cities. It looked nearly identical to the form she had used when she first arrived on Lania Kaiya.
In her cat form, she strolled into Outpost 0003, jumped onto the counter, and asked to see Shadow.Q.
Shadow.Q arrived quickly, possibly because she had been expecting Rita.
When Shadow.Q saw the 100,000 gold coins, she finally relaxed. There had been some internal doubts that Rita might abscond with the gold and stay in Lania Kaiya permanently.
Rita, unaware or uncaring of these suspicions, took another 40,000 pounds of gold from Shadow.Q and continued her business as a gold coin exchange broker.