Deceitful Bloom: Foolishness has gone too far. Ashveil: Exactly. How could you, in the middle of the Divine Game, use some toy skill to force BS-Rita into making two thousand Scratch Cards? Even I couldn’t bear to watch. Deceitful Bloom: Obvious hater behavior. Pure hater. Puppetlord: BS-Rita isn’t being sabotaged by her own teacher. She’s being sabotaged by her number one fan. Ironclaw: Wait, isn’t her number one fan... you? Deceitful Bloom: ...Say that again? Foolishness rubbed his temples, staring at the line of demons all scratching cards with their backs to him. The moment the Scratch Cards had appeared in his hands, they’d all snatched them away. This was the first time he’d ever been mobbed by nearly every demon present—even White Glove and Gourmet were in on it. Stealing the Scratch Cards was bad enough, but the way they were muttering all that fan nonsense while scratching was giving him a pounding headache. Foolishness: ...Then give the cards back. Boiling Orange: They just don’t want you messing with BS-Rita. Even if your skill doesn’t affect her directly, the way we’re all scratching fishing rods over here does mess with her pulls. Foolishness gaped in disbelief: I’m the one messing with her? Me? Me?! I haven’t even pulled a single weapon yet! Ashveil: Trouble! Incoming ambush! Guard up, Captain and Drummer are making a grab! Gourmet: Honestly, Foolishness, couldn’t you have made more of these? Is he stingy, or what? White Glove: Is he stingy, or what? Deceitful Bloom: Is he stingy, or what? During her time-stop, Rita hadn’t just uncovered the hidden logic of the Scratch Cards. She’d done plenty more. Since the current match was a fishing contest in a seaside city, her very first thought was to hunt down the best fishermen in town. Every true master of a craft always had some unique trick, and whether it was fishing technique or the perfect fishing spot, that was what she needed most right now. She scoured two years’ worth of local news, photographs of rare catches, even the purchase ledgers from the seafood restaurants. By the end, she’d locked in on the three top anglers in the city—and then she raided their homes for clues. Half her entire time-stop had gone into gathering information and intel, but the harvest was massive. The fishing journals alone had been priceless. She spent the final hours of her frozen world bent over those notes. And tucked away in the deepest corners of those homes, she’d found seven hidden coordinates. She planned to check them all. After slipping away from the "scratch-card cabbage field" of classmates, Rita headed straight for the nearest point: the very tip of the seventh pier, where the planks were scorched black. That location had been marked in the fishing shop owner’s secret notebook hidden beneath his bed. Each pier stretched more than a hundred meters, with ships passing between them whenever they went out to sea. The resulting commotion should have scared fish away—but according to one note, rare fish were drawn by the noise of ships. And five of the top-ranked rare species, while deep-sea dwellers, liked to wander into shallow waters at dawn. She’d even wondered: if she saw one of those rare fish but it didn’t bite, could she dive in and jam the bait into its mouth? But then she’d flipped the page and seen the next line written in bold, different ink: "Fishing’s joy lies in patience and risk." Other journals had similar flourishes. "The fish of the coast know: the tastiest bait is always a lie." "The rarity of a fish isn’t in its numbers but in how hard it is to tempt, in how picky it is about the bait." "Blue-striped Bluru. To catch one is to become a true fishing master." "I wonder often, what would be the bait I would still bite down on even if I knew it meant death the next second?" "Eleven thousand three hundred sixty-seven sunsets. Eleven thousand three hundred sixty-seven sightings of the Blue-striped Bluru. It never bites. Why does it keep coming here? I don’t know if I’ll live to see anyone catch one." Those words echoed in Rita’s mind as she set her +2% fishing skill chair on the scorched plank and laid out her bucket, net, and bait. Finally, she took out her Epic-tier fishing rod, Reef. Special Attributes: Fishing intuition +20%. Hook escape chance -50%. Bait tastiness +250%. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the Nov3lFɪre.ɴet Epic Skill: [Fishing Master]. When activated, the rod handled itself completely—casting, setting hooks, reeling—all with the skill of a true master. Duration 5 minutes. Cooldown 1 hour. It was a tool best saved for the moment the fish bit, not wasted on a random cast. Rita sat up straight, baited the hook, and flicked her wrist, sending the line arcing out over the water. She gripped the rod tightly with both hands, her eyes fixed on the rippling sea. The only interruptions she allowed herself were making one Scratch Card every minute, and every thirteen minutes, triggering [School Rule No. 801] to churn out thirty at once. Even then, one hand never left the rod. Ten minutes later, her straight-backed posture slumped into the chair. She was rebaiting for the third time, muttering darkly. These fish were too damned smart. Twenty minutes later, she reset the bait again, stone-faced. She cast once more, then glanced left, right, and back. Her eyes met those of every other angler nearby. Mojie. Pomango. Pine Bloom. Frenzied Shark. Mistblade. Windrush. Lulumi. Crab. The air went awkward fast. Everyone’s gaze bounced off each other like rubber balls. Fishing notes didn’t say anything about how to socialize when surrounded by rival anglers. By the thirty-minute mark, Rita’s patience had snapped. Both hands left the rod as she reached for her stack of Scratch Cards. What she didn’t know was that at that very moment, in the spectator stands, even though one of the giant screens was already showing Moonlight Marsh’s Rita, more than thirty percent of the audience had pulled her feed into personal windows again. Half an hour ago, they had sworn they were done watching her. On-screen, Rita scratched ten cards in a row... then packed them away and went back to fishing. She closed her expanded window with a sigh. All around her came groans of disappointment. She turned to Black Cat on her shoulder and muttered, "Feels like things are about to blow up again." Black Cat: ...Protect me, please. I’m a squishy cat.