"...this is deranged." "Holy hell, it’s Nightmare of Food Street 2.0. I got hired as BS-Rita’s muscle." "Deceitful Bloom needs to pay my emotional damages." "I hereby declare this the darkest day for the demon faction." "I don’t know, Deceitful Bloom and Foolishness look like they’re having a blast fighting..." "Shut up and kill her. Somebody go kill her!" "Stop crying. Maybe you are next. Pack your bags." Avery looked up at the rabbit and the Coerl Duck. She pinged Shadow.Q in a private channel, gave a quick rundown, then asked, "Wasn’t she a ranged player? When did she switch to melee plus summoning?" Shadow.Q said, "One sec. I’ll ask B8." She requested battlefield photos from other officers, then sent them along with her question to B8. "If your boss switched to summoner, Eclipse Vanguard will start collecting top tier summoning skills for her. She deserves the finest summons in the world." If it could, it would like to fire a rocket at that chat log and vaporize it. [For 2 hours, your critical damage is halved] [For one Starsea day, all cooldowns increased by 20 percent] [You permanently lose 100 Agility] [Your flight speed is reduced by 20 percent for 2 hours] [For one Starsea day, you cannot use any movement skills] Curse after curse, some mild, some vicious. Each new curse meant another two hours had passed, one more Lania Kaia leader had returned, and a new one had arrived. Six of her clones had already died. She replaced each one immediately, and split off shadows with Shadow Control to reinforce the ground war. At the start, whenever a rabbit descended, she still had the breath to crack a line. Slowly, even that faded. Her voice was gone. The rabbits let her keep the aerial fight at two opponents at most, and the leaders were trending weaker. But the price of Shabby Road kept stacking and shaving down her power. She could not use Waste Guide to rest. The future her would not arrive. Dragon Thief could not roll back her state. All three time skills were locked. As the hours ground on, she knew the truth. Things were not getting better. They were getting worse. The leaders appearing were fresh and full of energy. She was fraying, curse by curse. It made her miss the special chenor worm she had hunted on the Starfrost Glacier. At least that thing did not hit back. With every leader who left the battlefield, both armies sagged a little more. For Lania Kaia, three on one and they still could not kill BS-Rita. It crushed morale. For BS, this looked like a tunnel with no light at the end. For every leader who failed out, another took their place. The sun rose and fell. She gripped Her Dragon and drew ragged breaths. A newly summoned rabbit said, "This really isn’t like you. Lania Kaia Rita isn’t a bad option. Fewer people on BS would die, right?" The Moon Emperor Tufeng stepped from the scarlet gate just in time to hear that. Everyone returning from BS wore that same heavy complicated look. Ask them anything and they said nothing. Push harder and you got the same question thrown back in your face. Who was it that chose BS in the first place? Tufeng stared at BS-Rita, already too exhausted to speak, then glanced at the blood elf queen and the orc chieftain nearby, and at the three rabbits. They were all waiting for her answer. Tufeng did not move either. He wanted to hear it. Even if it gave BS-Rita a few precious minutes of rest. Twenty four hours. For the first time in almost twenty four hours, she stopped. Her platinum robes had long since gone crimson. From the dagger, from the hem, from the tips of her flight boots, blood pattered in a steady drip. She could not tell if it was hers or theirs. Cat’s Ideal floated to her side and propped her up. Wrathful Moon drifted to the other side and braced her body. Yes. This really was not something she would normally do. Rabbit, blood elf, orc, moon fox. They all watched her, waiting. Did the answer matter? To the rabbit, probably yes. He wanted one. "Your world asks you almost every hour. Leader of BS or Master of BS. You never answer." The new rabbit’s words turned sharper. "So you are not the leader, and you refuse to be its master. You do not want to lose your freedom. You do not want your life tied to anyone or anything. What are you still holding on to?" The three Lania Kaia leaders turned their heads at that, surprised, staring at BS-Rita. Rita had nothing left in the tank. She tilted her head a fraction, rolled her gaze to the corner of her eye and stared at the rabbit standing by her right leg for several seconds, then said with absolute certainty, "You are not one of the event drops I killed on Food Street." The rabbit said, "Answer me honestly, and I will tell you who I am." Rita looked down to the ground, to the crowd that had gone still because the aerial fight had paused. The players seemed to think negotiations were happening. So they waited, together, for a result. "You are right," Rita said. "I do not want to carry a world as my lifelong ideal. I will not bind my life and death to any being. That is who I am. I have struggled with it, but I cannot convince myself otherwise. "I know what Avery is waiting for. The moment she hopes for will never come." "But that does not contradict this moment. Here and now, I will fight to the last breath for BS." "I hate shackles. I loathe betrayal. I will not allow anything to become my weakness. But I have never feared failure or death." "That is my answer. Are you satisfied, Captain?" It was a hell of a contradiction. She was sentimental enough to die for that instant when the people of BS believed in her with their whole hearts. Official source is novel⚑fire.net She was rational enough to refuse to let responsibility, rank, power or fame chain her. She only did what she was willing to do. The rabbit said nothing for a time. He did not know how she recognized him, but she had guessed right. In that beat, he understood why Wrathful Moon liked her. They both belonged to no one. BlueStar wanted to bind her to itself. Naive. Even now, she refused to pledge her ideals and her future to BlueStar. Those responsibilities and hopes, the faith and the expectations, were lantern glass and prison bars by another name. BS-Rita and Wrathful Moon were not incompatible. They were too compatible. The result bordered on repulsion. Seeing the rabbit concede, Rita looked up again. "That is my answer. Are you satisfied, BlueStar?"