Rita did not linger. She took advantage of the break and left the classroom to explore Foolishness’s palace, a place that felt like a hidden treasure vault made of toys.
Walking through the palace, her thoughts kept drifting.
What Foolishness was trying to teach them was a thod of breaking a complete magic rune into individual components, then selecting key nodes from different skills and reassembling them into sothing entirely new.
But those runes were already complete works of art.
Which nodes could be removed, and how were they ant to be recombined?
The difficulty of it felt like carving pieces out of finished jigsaw puzzles and forcing them together into a new picture.
It demanded a kind of imagination and creativity that bordered on the absurd.
She stopped in front of one workshop.
It was suspended in midair. A massive rune disk floated at the center, covered with tools, tables, chairs, and shelves. Beyond the disk were points of blue light drifting in the void, occasionally linking together with thin lines of glow.
Beneath the disk was nothing at all. It seed to open directly into the outside of the island. Or perhaps this place had always been hollow and was simply turned into a workshop.
Rita stopped not because it was beautiful or dreamlike, but because she saw a revolver resting on one of the shelves.
Foolishness Ga.
When she had first entered the palace, Foolishness had been tuning a platinum colored revolver.
Rita had not been able to see its details back then. Even though its design and color sche were nearly identical to Foolishness Ga, she had known instinctively that it was not the sa one she once possessed.
But the revolver before her now was different.
The molten gold patterns on its surface were no longer fixed. They flowed like a living river.
The golden butterfly perched on the barrel had changed as well. On its head was a tiny red petal, so small it was easy to miss, casually tilted to one side.
So much had changed, yet Rita was absolutely certain this was Foolishness Ga.
Rather than calling it intuition, she preferred to think that every toy Foolishness created carried a unique presence. Subtle, elusive, and unmistakable once recognized.
Her golden eyes darkened. Lightning stretched forward, forming a staircase that led to the rune disk.
She stepped onto it and walked toward Foolishness Ga.
She had no intention of taking it without permission. She only wanted to look.
It was a strange line she drew for herself.
She could sneak under Foolishness’s bed tonight and steal her attributes if she wanted. Yet she would never casually take this toy that had once belonged to her.
Foolishness Ga was different.
Back in the Chaotic Blocks ga, she had earned it through effort and confrontation. Foolishness had not wanted her to use it, but Rita had won. The revolver had been her trophy.
A reclaid trophy could only be won back through battle, conflict, and direct confrontation.
She stood before the revolver and picked it up. Its information appeared instantly.
Foolishness Ga, toy.
"Foolishness lost to arrogance."
Six chambers, six bullets. Spin the cylinder at will, aim at your head, and pull the trigger. Sothing magical will happen.
Cannot fire without special bullets.
Players acknowledged by the Arrogant Butterfly may craft one temporary special bullet per Starsea day based on the previous day’s mood.
Current bullets: none.
The toy was more refined than before, more beautiful, and far stronger.
Even without special bullets, or when those bullets were dormant, it could still generate temporary ammunition for use.
The description had changed too.
"Foolishness lost to arrogance."
Rita’s fingers brushed lightly over the patterns on the revolver. The golden butterfly suddenly lifted off the barrel, fluttered around the gun with joy, then settled gently on the back of her hand.
Ignoring the butterfly that clearly still rembered her, Rita calmly set the revolver back in place.
She turned to examine the other toys in the workshop.
At the sa ti, she called out to Nivalis and B80, asking them to introduce the most interesting and strangest toys in the palace. Especially those built from wildly mismatched components.
If Foolishness’s philosophy was to assemble skills the way toys were assembled, then perhaps these creations held clues.
Perhaps this was Foolishness’s intention as well.
Half an hour later, Rita returned to the workshop being used as a classroom.
She nearly collided head on with Maple Syrup, who was walking out at the sa ti.
Their eyes t.
The effect of Nesis activated.
Both of them looked away at the sa ti, awkward yet instinctive, and passed each other in silence.
Even though they had indirectly exchanged words in class, once alone and face to face, neither of them could truly et the other’s gaze.
Rita entered the classroom with practiced calm.
Dawn Cicada and Fury Prayer were still drawing runes. Kessa was nowhere to be seen. It looked like she had already succeeded and been sent to rest by Foolishness, just like Maple Syrup earlier.
Rita sat down and began drawing the strangest toy she had seen during her exploration.
It was a bagpipe assembled from five wildly different materials: blocks, tal, flowers, fruit, and gemstones.
Its na was Rain in the Wind.
Its function was strange and fascinating.
By playing a tune on the bagpipe, the user could hear the voice of soone they once knew, exactly as that person sounded at the present mont. It did not matter who they were talking to or where they were.
Rita had tested it earlier with a simple lody.
The sound that ca through was a stern female voice, familiar yet distant, speaking in Oak Owl language. From the content, it sounded like military training.
It took her a mont to realize the voice belonged to Zoey, who was currently in Lania Kaia.
In simple terms, the toy functioned as a listening skill that ignored distance and space.
Its only flaw was that it could not hear the voices of others in the conversation. One had to infer the context solely from the target’s words.
It was incredibly fun.
When the sound faded, Rita could not help but try again.
This ti, she heard Sea Pony’s voice.
"What do you an I should learn the art of speaking from BS Rita? You call that art? That is called flirting. Look at how crowded her place is right now..."
Rita’s pen moved to the upper right corner of the paper.
She added a note for herself.
After work, rember to discipline Sea Pony.
User Comments
0 comments from readers