As Maple Syrup had said, the process of becoming a cookie was painless.
Flas of fire feathers danced in the air, spiraling around the battlefield. The beings waiting tensely began to emit a faint, sweet aroma as their bodies grew thinner and smaller, until each one beca a thumb-sized, brown cookie.
For the ocean-series cookies, fear and unease were replaced with wonder. Though transford into objects, these beings would have struggled to survive if the war continued.
The cookie items were remarkable. They could revert to their original form to fight—though only at one-tenth of their original strength—and if their health reached zero, they would return to cookie form.
While still vulnerable to destruction, in this state they could be carried and protected by stronger kin within ga inventories.
For beings who hated war and feared death, turning into a cookie in the heat of battle was perhaps the best choice.
Tens of thousands of cookies ran toward their trusted kin, waiting to be taken to Nuclear Flash. A small number remained behind, collected by Marmang Lulumi and sent to BS Rita. Leaders tended to be cautious and preferred multiple contingencies.
Once part of the beings had beco cookies, the tension on the battlefield eased significantly.
Rita scanned the faces of the various beings. So showed visible relief, while others carried subtle traces of regret.
Everything was proceeding as planned. Since they began making the cookies, aside from the constant "You are being watched" notifications, the news spread across Starsea at lightning speed.
It was indeed an effective thod to reduce casualties—for both sides.
Even though Nuclear Flash was far stronger than Marmang, it couldn’t obliterate Marmang without any losses.
So leaders still hesitated, observing from a distance, while others began contacting BS Adjudicators and leaders. Mistblade, Smoke Tune, and Crab took charge of these negotiations.
Rita planned to first return Mistblade, Crab, and the others to BS. She would then stay on Marmang, finishing her history work while baking cookies with Maple Syrup to prevent the latter from growing frustrated and abandoning the task.
The ship hovered above BS as Rita cheerfully waved for the passengers to disembark.
Crab and Sea Pony complained about her tossing them off as soon as the ship was used, but Smoke Tune, standing at the edge, didn’t move. Instead, she looked back at BS Rita.
Rita was about to turn the helm to leave, but when she noticed Smoke Tune’s gaze, she paused. Her hand lazily rested on the wheel as she sent a questioning look, silently asking if there was more.
After a mont of hesitation, Smoke Tune voiced the question she had been mulling over for so ti: "If Nuclear Flash is willing to spare Marmang for the sake of future cooperation, if Marmang asks you to save them, would you drag Marmang into Lania Kaia to share world skills?"
BS Rita didn’t answer verbally. Beneath the golden rain curtain, she simply looked at her. A few seconds later, a small smile appeared on her lips. She turned the helm gently, and she, her ship, and the scattered dragon and six cats on board vanished from view.
Both Smoke Tune and Mistblade understood her silent answer.
She wouldn’t.
Every world that shattered broke into ten fragnts. Most scattered throughout Starsea, while only one to three pieces went to the victor. This gave players a chance to reconstruct worlds and forced those seeking world skills to invade repeatedly.
If there were ten thousand worlds, each shattering into ten fragnts, and fifty fragnts were needed to assemble a world skill, theoretically Starsea could produce a maximum of 2,000 world skills.
The rank of these world skills wasn’t guaranteed. Creating higher-rank world skills required more fragnts.
This was exactly what Nuclear Flash was doing: collecting 100 world fragnts to upgrade the world skill held by Nuclear Flash Guava.
The previous two Bells had already proven that attacks on worlds were growing increasingly fierce. During the last Bell, Unordered Starsea prioritized protecting worlds above three-star rank in the invasion sequence, demonstrating that many worlds lacked sufficient world skills to safeguard all worlds on the sequence.
To obtain a high-level world skill capable of surviving the Bell, 150 fragnts were required.
In theory, even if all of Starsea were destroyed, the number of five-star or higher world skills that could be assembled would be only 666.
And that was just theoretical.
The Divine Ga had lasted so long—how many players who once possessed world skills had died in wars? How many worlds had been destroyed during the first two Bells, taking fragnts with them?
Rita doubted that Unordered Starsea could collect all of these scattered fragnts. If it could, Quiet Mountain’s rewards should not have been so few. Those fragnts were probably all that Unordered Starsea had managed to gather.
The choices she made while writing World Sigh... how many of them contained the legacies and gifts of other worlds?
In the next couple of days, she could repay all the borrowed sighs used in "Before the Sigh Sounds." She didn’t yet know what choices would face her the next ti she entered that mysterious space, or whether she could acquire a world skill better than the five-star Doomsday Party.
Smoke Tune’s question was sharp, but Rita didn’t want to deceive her.
Currently, only a little over 200 worlds had world skills, so assembled after previous Bells. She would not drag Marmang or any world without world skills into the [BS–Lania Kaia–Dawn] sequence.
This was the story of a ga forced to rge servers.
Not only did Nuclear Flash need Marmang’s world fragnts to upgrade its world skill, Rita also wanted Nuclear Flash to upgrade the world skills they already held.
More importantly, she wanted the worlds to integrate as much as possible.
Only by rapidly consolidating these worlds could she gather all the high-level world skill worlds together, increasing the chances of survival for everyone when the Bell rang.
World skills were a path previously discovered by players. Rita’s goal wasn’t to override that path or dismiss the role of world skills, but to expand it.
Maple Syrup’s cookies were the only, best solution she could find for these worlds.
If Marmang refused, she would simply move on to the next world.
The ship hovered above the Marmang battlefield. Rita exhaled softly, smiling at Nivalis, who had been watching her anxiously.
"Good thing I’m not doing this for Starsea... only to fulfill myself."
Nivalis didn’t fully understand, but she could feel the complex emotions in Rita’s heart, as if a pendulum swung within it, echoing in waves.
It didn’t matter if she understood the words. Whatever Rita said, Nivalis simply nodded: "Mm!"
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