GodDraw77 shifted her posture, moving her chin from resting on the back of her left hand to the back of her right. She asked Wail, "What do you think my odds are of stealing her as my apprentice?" Wail was silent. Why did this question come up every year? GodDraw77 wasn’t discouraged by the lack of response. She continued, "Last time, Lightchaser even offered me ten SSS-ranked skills as payment just to have me teach Rita a few specialties. I told her I could even teach her Druid’s Heart, the only condition being that I also become her official mentor. Everyone has only one mentor, sure, but there’s no rule against having two, right?" At last Wail responded, curiosity pricking through her usual coldness. "And what did she say?" GodDraw77 sighed with regret. "We were right in the middle of talking when a message came that Rita and her lot had blown up the Drunken Bug Tavern. I said that meant Rita owed thirty thousand on her own. Lightchaser immediately said, ’Then she’s your apprentice.’ Tell me, does that still count?" "If you can beat Lightchaser, then it counts," Wail replied flatly. GodDraw77 fell silent. The old woman loved her useless quips. Her gaze drifted to the Blue-striped Bluru diving deep in search of Soulfire, but her thoughts wandered further. With a heart so heavy with loyalty and gratitude... what would happen if someone that close betrayed her? How would that faith shatter? The moment the mosasaur plunged into the sea, the water temperature dropped by at least twenty degrees. Rita didn’t immediately slip into the shadow world. She needed multiple escape routes prepared, so that if one was countered, she could switch to another instantly. If only she still had Cat’s Ideal. She wouldn’t need all this nonsense—just stop time and be done with it. But even without it, she still had enough methods to wrestle survival from a level 100 mosasaur. The real shame was not having I Just Want to Improve So Badly. If she had it, who knew what kind of treasure she could steal from such a monster? Blue-striped Bluru tore across the seafloor, moving at full speed, even splitting herself with Another Me to help search. Last game, she’d considered diving to search for herself, but the ocean was far too vast. To find one tiny moving fish? She guessed she’d swim 240 hours straight and still not finish. Newest update provided by ⓝovelFire.net But Wager Everything was different. A Soulfire, with a manifested body no shorter than ten meters, cut the difficulty down immensely. And when the mosasaur came... she could go even faster. She hadn’t even finished sweeping the waters near the port when she felt a freezing chill slam into her. The mosasaur was here. A fresh sphere of shimmering protection formed around her, the surface rippling with layers of nebula. And that was just its presence. Not even an attack yet. But this was what she had been waiting for. Sin of Arrogance! Her stats skyrocketed. Triple digits to quadruple in the blink of an eye, until every major stat pushed past seven thousand. Now, every attribute she had matched half the mosasaur’s. This wasn’t a normal level 100 creature. Lightchaser’s old lectures made that clear—this was at least Abyss-class. Her agility spike turned her into a blur, nothing but afterimages in the water. And where the afterimages went, a massive shadow followed. Just the waves and freezing aura in its wake were enough to erase unprepared apprentices outright. Anyone who didn’t dodge far enough ahead simply dropped dead. The shadow enveloped Rita. The mosasaur loomed to swallow her whole. Blue-striped Bluru flickered above its head, so small she was dwarfed by its pupil. She didn’t linger. She shot away instantly. Moments earlier she’d tried climbing onto its head like it was some oversized dragon ride. Then it had unleashed something like a hundred-thousand-volt surge in the sea. Her bubble had popped instantly. She’d been blasted upward dozens of meters, thrown out of the ocean entirely. She’d even glimpsed dead fish bobbing across the waves before tumbling back down. Rita laughed wild and loud, rolled midair, and splashed back into the water. She was certain now. She could handle this mosasaur. Every time it nearly swallowed her, she’d slip into the shadow world, hide, then slip back out. And along the way, she intentionally steered it toward other apprentices. Clear the competition, no one left to cut her off when she finally found the Soulfire. At one point, the mysterious anglers kicked off another minigame. Rita couldn’t join, forced to watch, and couldn’t even drag the mosasaur there—those bastards had thrown up a barrier around the zone. They even stood on the shore, pointing at her like spectators mocking a show. Infuriating. Always targeting her. But she had no time to brood. Before their minigame even ended, she spotted something remarkable on the seafloor. Could this be Lightchaser’s Soulfire? She had expected something blazing, like a miniature sun. She didn’t rush closer. The rules only said apprentices couldn’t destroy or move Soulfire. It hadn’t said a mosasaur couldn’t. And if the rules emphasized that, didn’t that mean Soulfire was, in fact, destructible? She summoned her lantern. Under the moonlight, she slipped into the shadow world with Shadow of the Moon. The world drained to black, white, and gray. Now she approached. At this speed—over seven thousand agility—she was at the iceberg in a blink. Glowing aquatic plants carpeted the seabed, still shining dutifully even in the shadow world. Their light revealed what she was looking at. Not really an iceberg. More like an enormous sphere of ice. And inside... was something. A crown, frozen in the thick shell. Its material was familiar. She had seen it before. As she tried to recall where, the crown pulsed with a soft white glow. Ah. Like the shard of moonlight inside Wrathful Moon. But this crown was scarred, streaked with rust and overgrown with moss, so much so that she couldn’t immediately place it. Unconsciously, she swam closer. She wanted to see this work of art more clearly. And that was when she noticed the truth. That icy shell was cracked. Enormous fractures scored its surface. Was this... Lightchaser?