Wail: "You guys never told her about the time you spent an entire Divine Game running for your lives?"
GodDraw77 corrected calmly, "That wasn’t running for our lives. That was tactical repositioning. Every retreat is for a better counterattack."
Wail stared at her. "..."
Yeah. Becoming a teacher really did come with a built-in generator for nonsense.
In the audience seats, the spectators sitting beside Lightchaser all turned to look at her. Blood Elf and the black cat were the boldest of them, openly staring at her face, waiting to see if there would be any hint of embarrassment.
Lightchaser’s expression stayed perfectly neutral. "What? She’s right. That’s my reputation."
The black cat blinked. "You know, my grandma recorded my whole match back in the day."
Lightchaser immediately handed over the expensive snack she hadn’t even opened yet. "Give your grandmother my regards."
That successfully killed the subject.
She exhaled quietly and said, "A foe like that... even I wouldn’t retreat."
Well, that was true enough.
Lightchaser watched the screen—the image of her student clashing with Maple Syrup. Her voice dropped, half a whisper, half a declaration to someone only she could see beyond the screen.
"She’s worth fighting."
Forty minutes remained before the game would end.
The moment Rita rolled the pumpkin die, she canceled Mystic Force.
If she hadn’t, the damage Maple Syrup dealt her would have stayed at a fixed value—and Lucky Number’s deadly double-reflect would never trigger.
Even with such a terrifying skill, Rita still couldn’t finish Maple Syrup within the time limit.
Just like Wail back in her day—using the same skill only barely managed to suppress Lightchaser for a few minutes.
To veterans with real combat experience, no ability was invincible. Maple Syrup wasn’t stupid; the instant she realized some of her attacks not only failed to hurt BS-Rita but were actually bouncing back double, she adapted fast.
She used a cooldown reset and then activated Self-Exile again.
The skill’s effect, "Any attack that deals damage related to your Lucky Number becomes null and instantly reflects twice its value," spun back like a boomerang—straight at Rita.
Her own shadow struck her with damage tied to the number six. The double reflection hit the shadow... and drained Rita’s actual HP.
Maple Syrup smiled faintly. "Nice skill."
Rita almost coughed blood from frustration. But imitating Lightchaser’s infuriating calm, she nodded with icy composure. "Good response. Promising future."
She was critiquing her mid-fight?!
Maple Syrup went silent. The younger BS-Rita and the older BS-Rita were equally, but differently, infuriating.
From somewhere behind them, the rabbit burst out laughing.
Once Maple Syrup found a counter to Lucky Number, Rita didn’t sit idle. She switched to her backup plan—a move she’d been saving for the final stretch.
Amid the rustle of shadowed trees and faint chime of wind bells, the sound of ocean waves began to echo. ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ 𝓷𝓸𝓿𝓮𝓵⚑𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮⚑𝓷𝓮𝓽
The deep blue ship’s helm weaved between the shadows, following its fast-moving master.
Rita spoke in Chinese, her tone level. "In this fun match, the winning condition is: the player with the fewest numbers and the closest result to the target wins."
She had activated a skill that twisted perception itself—No Logic.
If she couldn’t change the outcome, she’d change the rules.
The skill only lasted five minutes and had a two-hour cooldown.
But her passive, Murder Time, gave every critical hit a 15 percent chance to reduce the cooldown of her bound items.
Combined with I’m Just That Idle’s attack speed boost, she could easily refresh No Logic’s cooldown within five minutes.
Her goal was to twist reality just long enough to make the rabbit switch targets.
The instant the distortion took effect, Maple Syrup’s movements hesitated.
After all this time fighting, even she had begun to doubt whether she could kill BS-Rita quickly enough.
Those snowmen of hers could rewind time.
The deep blue helm could pull her out of any trap.
That infuriating nebula bubble could absorb entire combos and reflect them. She couldn’t rely on Pine Bloom forever either—her so-called ally wasn’t fully obedient.
Then there was Absurd Story, with its backlash and pain feedback effects. Just fighting through that was like sparring inside a lightning storm.
If she were still her pre-awakening self, she would’ve already lost rhythm to the constant pain.
From Maple Syrup’s perspective, even without knowing all of BS-Rita’s skills, the few she did know were enough to make her scalp tingle.
And then there was that one mysterious, unkillable ability—thankfully sealed for now, but surely ready to be used again.
BS-Rita admired Maple Syrup’s power; Maple Syrup, in turn, couldn’t help but respect BS-Rita’s sheer survivability.
In raw attributes, they weren’t that far apart. Maple Syrup could suppress her but not finish her.
It was enough to make her believe a rumor circulating among players:
that divine-grade skills which slipped out of the gods’ chosen pool had a will of their own, gravitating toward the players most compatible with them—just like divine relics.
For a moment, she lost focus.
Her original plan had been to secure the Fun Match victory first, then worry about killing BS-Rita.
After all, the whole reason she wanted BS-Rita dead was to stop her from growing further. Winning the match outright was the safer, cleaner path.
But the two goals didn’t really conflict. She could do both at once.
She drove BS-Rita toward the stairwell, shadows coiling to attack as she began to climb up and down between floors, burning through her numbers with every step.
"..." Rita watched her running up and down the stairs over and over, then kindly stayed inside the shadow ring, not getting in her way.
But then hundreds of other students joined in, stampeding like a migrating herd, all mimicking Maple Syrup—running up and down to burn their numbers too.
Rita almost got trampled off the stairwell.
The chaos spread through every floor. Players were literally playing climb the stairs to adjust their totals.
At that moment, Rita suddenly felt more affectionate toward her divine relic. Sure, flashy ultimates were nice, but hers had its perks.
If she used that skill properly, her enemies would wake up in the middle of the night just to curse her name.
Some players couldn’t climb, but felt their number count was too high, so they simply ran up to the Librarians and offered themselves up to be whipped—manual fine-tuning.
Foolishness stood silently in the center of a mob of overenthusiastic students, surrounded by volunteers begging for punishment.
Why, the god thought bitterly, why was the one person I actually wanted to whip not here?