This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 1261: Prologue and Epilogue
There were only two announcements, but Rita knew more were on the way.
When she looked up, she realized all the leaders sitting around the table were quietly watching her.
Rita forced a small smile, though even without a mirror she could feel how stiff it was. She let it fade and said softly, "Let’s continue."
By shrinking a world and bringing it into another, it was possible to let multiple worlds share their world skills. This ability could consolidate worlds that possessed world skills, allowing them to cooperate and share powers to deal with the Bell.
The last time the Bell rang, the experiments of BS had already proven this approach worked.
The problem was, not every world on the invasion sequence had world skills. Those that didn’t were surviving only by borrowing from other worlds.
Rita couldn’t simply drag away the worlds with skills and leave the others to die.
No matter how focused she was on BS, she just couldn’t do it.
She feared that if she wrote a World Sigh in the future, she would see herself in the ending, watching as a world perished early because of her.
Due to the rule limiting how many beings each world could hold, she couldn’t let BS take in all the beings from these worlds to shelter them.
Even if that limit didn’t exist, letting BS take in alien races was still impossible.
She was a BS Adjudicator, not the Starsea Buddha.
But now, there was another solution: Maple Syrup’s cookies.
Their plan was simple: find a few worlds willing to cooperate with the experiment.
Worlds that agreed to let BS Rita pull them out of the invasion sequence and carry them to Lania Kaia were easy to find. The last experiment had already drawn many volunteers.
But agreeing to let BS Rita shatter their worlds and turn their people into tiny cookies—that was another matter entirely.
It sounded like a ghost story.
It felt like just mentioning it would get them thrown out.
Even if these worlds without skills were surviving only by sharing powers from other worlds and were unlikely to last until the next Bell, turning their entire population into cookies was extreme.
Smoke Tune fell silent for a long moment before asking, "Can I stay in BS?"
Rita glared at her with a look that said she was disappointed in her inability to understand, then turned her hopeful gaze toward Pine Bloom.
Pine Bloom’s expression was complicated, like someone trying to stop something necessary but struggling to find the words.
Rita didn’t recognize this expression, but Mistblade, sitting across from Pine Bloom, did. Pine Bloom often looked at Maple Syrup this way, and she sometimes even let Maple Syrup hold a piece of Forest Sea shard to sleep with for a night.
After a long silence, the first to speak up was Crab.
"I don’t believe you didn’t think about this. It’s an act that tramples a species’ dignity," it said, bewildered. "Maybe we’re not close, but from what I know, you’re not the type to willingly do this. You’re always busy, but mostly with your own matters..."
It was a hard question to answer.
As Crab said, this was a thankless task: bringing disaster to a world and its people before the larger catastrophe arrived.
Why do it?
Shouldn’t it be like Quiet Mountain, treating each world like a massive One-Person Party?
Pine Bloom sighed. "After Quiet Mountain returned, you said your time was precious, even pushing most of BS’s duties aside."
Mistblade’s tone was calm, but Rita couldn’t help feeling she was in a good mood. The Moon Emperor said, "During Quiet Mountain, even in a crisis, you insisted, ’Today will still be a One-Person Party.’"
She paused, as if not wanting BS Rita to misinterpret her words as mockery, then added, "What I mean is... that’s just who you are. Your acts of great kindness don’t seek praise, and from what I know, you don’t care about it anyway."
Smoke Tune, who had initially refused, joined the "interrogation" in a gentle voice. "It sounds like your Vine shouldn’t be Flower Crown Murder, but more like Birdsong of Cause."
One question after another, and for a moment, Rita felt like she was sitting in the defendant’s chair.
And these were questions she had asked herself countless times, sitting alone in her study the night before.
Hadn’t she already found that self who only wanted power?
Coins rolled between her fingers.
After a long moment, she gave her answer. "I don’t like this story."
She placed a middle finger on the coin’s edge to balance it on the table, flicked it with her index, and it began spinning.
Watching the light and shadow dance across the spinning coin reminded her of that moment standing on the golden thunder steps, looking back at the warship as she wrote the prologue of World Sigh.
Her voice hoarse, she repeated, "I don’t like this game story."
Whether it was Lania Kaia Wither’s Sinblood, Black SpringMud Bears’ The Waste, Mistblade’s Prisoner, NightFury’s Hollow, Cicada’s Beacon, JE’s Oasis, or Maple Syrup’s Four Seasons... she hated them all. She loathed the invaders and the stories themselves.
She didn’t want the wind whale’s story to survive only as a cosmic legend. That was a lie. After the next era, everything would start over. No one would remember this one.
Who would remember that Deceitful Bloom was the last Vineborne of that era? Where had Foolishness’s eyes gone? Lynx Duke’s fairy tale could only tell the future, never the present...
That day, she wrote the prologue of World Sigh.
"Before the sighs begin, I will make BS deviate from its destined course. – Prologue"
And at sunrise today, she flipped to the last page of World Sigh and wrote the epilogue in advance.
"Before the final Bell rings, I will make Starsea deviate from its destined course. – Epilogue"
"I don’t like this game story."
You are being watched... You are being watched... You are being watched...
As BS Rita said this while staring at the golden light from the spinning coin, the fire of her soul flared to life, its flame tail seeming almost tangible.
Half of the soul fire had already advanced.
Ever since she had begun to think about the ending she truly wanted, her soul talent words had been advancing.
Sovereign.
If she was the Sovereign of all this, if she could decide and influence everything, then she needed to fight for an ending she could accept, not be pushed along by the story.
This was the only way to truly grasp Sovereign—Sovereign over everything.
She knew turning people into tiny cookies was a blow to their dignity, but what if some species valued survival more?
She was just giving them a choice. That was her favorite thing to do.
Even though Starsea had given no warning for the third Bell, after the second, all worlds of three-star rank and below had already shattered. At the third, even four-star worlds might not survive.
Even Lania Kaia, a six-star, only had two world skills. If these worlds remained four-star, it meant their wars had not been long enough.
Except for exceptions like BS, four-star worlds couldn’t have world skills. Their survival depended on sharing powers with other worlds.
There would still be a fourth Bell, a fifth...
Every long-term leader knew they couldn’t afford to slack off. This was why Fury and Tingo were rushing back to start their wars. After the game ended, the Bell could ring at any time. The most important Divine Instruction rewards were already obtained. Rankings were in the top hundred.
They had fought Divine Games for years and earned countless rewards. Winning or losing one match barely mattered. Strengthening their worlds was far more urgent than a slight difference in ultimate rewards.
Besides those likely to die to the Bell, there were beings destined to perish in war.
Every world had a limit on how many beings it could hold. Even if leaders hated killing, merging worlds meant some defeated beings had to die.
In short, countless beings faced certain death during this forced server merge.
And she wasn’t without her own plan.
