This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

"Why don’t you ask Lightchaser?"

She didn’t say it outright, but the meaning was obvious. It was about Lynx Duke’s burial location.

Of course Rita had already asked. She wasn’t that rigid.

"For the record, I did," Rita replied. "But Lightchaser was dropped there directly. She doesn’t know the exact time. She only remembers appearing beside a fireplace the moment she entered the game."

Technically, that entry time could be used as a rough reference for when Lynx Duke appears.

But Rita had the pocket watch map now. Nothing was more precise than that.

More importantly, she had already seen Lynx Duke’s appearance at Dustfire’s old dinner table.

The real issue now was the owner of Cat’s Ideal. King.

As she walked out of the castle, Rita pulled the ship’s wheel closer and examined it again and again, searching for clues.

She had noticed how Byme referred to King.

In Vineborne language, it was "it."

Was it a cat? Or something else?

She asked directly, "Are you King’s relic?"

The six cats on the wheel blinked at the same time.

By now, Rita understood. That meant yes.

But when it came to anything more specific, like whether King was actually a cat or whether the burial time matched what Byme said, the six little "vice captains" immediately played dumb again.

Rita didn’t mind.

She already had the key answer.

Once the pocket watch heated up for the first time, she would get Lynx Duke’s burial time. Then she could swap in King’s name and verify Byme’s information.

She opened the battlefield chat and skimmed through it.

Not many people were talking anymore.

Compared to when she first entered the game, it felt almost deserted.

Sometimes only one or two messages appeared in a minute. Most of them were requests to buy invasion sequences or world fragments.

Compared to that, the lively cooperation back in Quiet Mountain felt like a dream.

She had only been in the game for a day, yet she finished scrolling through the entire day’s chat quickly.

She was mainly looking for messages from players who had entered the Graveyard of Bones.

But both Nivalis and B80 could see the tension in her expression.

Every now and then, she would pause, staring at the chat window without typing anything.

At some point, a coin appeared in her hand again.

She had gotten used to spinning it whenever she was thinking. Most of the time, it was to access the memories inside it.

But not this time.

The coin spun between her fingers.

Skill: Brief Departure.

As long as the coin spins for more than two seconds, she becomes undetectable, unseen, unheard, and untraceable until it stops.

Against players who had already begun to break free from divine grace, item effects were weakened significantly.

Still better than nothing.

Nivalis couldn’t hold back.

"What are you thinking about?"

B80 spoke first, offering its analysis.

"You’re hesitating about whether to tell everyone that the fourth bell will come immediately after the game ends, right?"

Nivalis added, "Are you worried that revealing that will cause even more frequent and intense wars?"

Rita snapped out of her thoughts. She put the coin away and kept walking.

"No. That information won’t stay secret anyway. If it’s real and unavoidable, anyone who enters a burial time will eventually get hints from Starsea gods."

She had done all this, but she never saw other worlds as her responsibility.

No matter how brutal the wars got, she wouldn’t feel guilty.

She wouldn’t step forward to judge or pity anyone either.

If nothing can be changed, then keep quiet.

One of the few principles she actually followed.

"I’m thinking about the timing of the fourth pendulum strike..."

Each bell had only ever come with a vague timeframe.

Only when the pendulum entered Starsea did players get a real warning.

Was it because Starsea or the gods didn’t want to give an exact time?

She dismissed that immediately.

This wasn’t about personality or morality. Their interests were aligned.

If Starsea could provide an exact time, it would.

In fact, judging from how eager it seemed to merge worlds before, it would probably welcome the chaos.

More likely, it didn’t know either.

Maybe the pendulum itself didn’t follow any fixed pattern.

The first three strikes had come at similar points, just a few days before the next Divine Game.

Quiet Mountain, Divine Instruction, and Graveyard of Bones all had similar durations.

Anyone who had survived three strikes, no matter how cautious, wouldn’t expect the fourth to come so soon.

She stopped walking.

Through the castle gates, she could hear distant explosions of skills echoing through the fog.

Fragments of thought surfaced in her mind.

They were standing on the hands of a clock.

The soul flames buried here had become part of Order.

The pendulum existed to destroy the soul flames lit by Starsea.

Soul flames... again. Always circling back to that.

This game only allowed players who had begun breaking free from divine grace.

And even if they died here, they would respawn at the entrance.

A thought slowly took shape.

Could the players here, standing on the hands of time, actually be influencing the speed of the fourth strike?

Maybe the first three strikes were also affected, just too slightly to notice.

Or maybe before the pendulum started moving, even Starsea couldn’t predict anything.

None of it had solid proof.

If... if what happened inside Graveyard of Bones really could affect the pendulum...

Then it would have been better if the fourth strike happened in Quiet Mountain.

The thought flashed by.

And just as quickly, it unsettled her.

Starsea was already in ruins.

Every player here had blood on their hands.

Quiet Mountain didn’t.

But then again...

Wasn’t Starsea’s suffering caused by Quiet Mountain in the first place?

Other worlds weren’t her responsibility.

Quiet Mountain even less so.

She walked into the cold fog.

Moisture clung to her hair, her lashes, her eyes.

Rita said nothing.

She simply moved forward, focused, her expression almost gentle.

But Nivalis and B80 both knew.

She had run into another problem.

Flower Crown Murder drifted behind her again, scattering loosely in the air, unwilling to wrap around her.

Even the surrounding fog seemed to avoid her. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

As she walked along the path, the street lamps lit up one by one.

Each flame flickered violently inside its glass casing.

And as she passed...

They went dark again.