"I was bluffing."
After saying that, Rita quietly added another thought to herself.
Just like B80.
How could it possibly fail to calculate that the most likely explanation was that she was trying to trick it?
And yet it still chose to answer.
All for the sake of that tiny, almost nonexistent possibility.
Was it because she was one of the very few beings capable of speaking with it?
Or was it because of the contract known as [Unique Key], the connection that seed to exist between B80 and herself?
The thought lingered for only a mont before Rita pushed it aside.
There were more important things to deal with.
She turned her full attention back to the Adjudicator Ga.
Once she had used World Sigh to remotely alter every Adjudicator player’s na and sever the shackles binding them to the prison system, the entire situation changed.
When she opened World Sigh again, the difference was imdiately obvious.
Before, every player’s location had appeared as a chaotic mass of overlapping points, impossible to distinguish or track accurately.
Now she could see them clearly.
Every position.
Every movent.
Every player.
The disorder was gone.
At the sa ti, nearly a hundred requests for "Adjudicator Descent" flooded in.
Holding World Sigh in both hands, Rita lightly pressed the spine of the book against her forehead.
Through the authority granted by her power, she searched for every being who followed her order.
One after another, she descended beside them.
Then she brought the newly arrived Prisoners into World Sigh.
From the perspective of an observer, her actions were difficult to understand.
Saving Nuclear Flash JinX made sense.
JinX had spent a long ti in this prison. She was experienced, relatively capable, and useful for testing thods of escaping the Prisoner system.
But these newcors?
They were different.
They had just arrived.
They knew nothing.
Had no skills.
No experience.
No understanding of how the prison worked.
Most of them were little more than level 0 beginners.
Ash Inspector: [What purpose do they serve? Will they contribute to your plan?]
Starsea Prisoner: "No."
Ash Inspector: [Then why save them?]
Starsea Prisoner: "Because killing them accomplishes nothing."
The answer seed to freeze the Inspector’s thought process.
It was like asking soone:
"What is the aning of your life?"
And receiving the reply:
"Because I haven’t died yet."
For several monts, Ash Inspector remained silent.
Starsea Prisoner: "What?"
Ash Inspector: [Your response does not correspond to the question. My processing encountered delays.]
Rita: "..."
That settled it.
Ash Inspector truly possessed a remarkable talent for passive-aggressive remarks.
The prison cube rotated every six hours.
Four gas per day.
By the second day after Rita had liberated the Adjudicator players from the prison system, every Adjudicator participant had successfully advanced to the rank of Guard.
From that mont onward, they could move freely throughout the cube.
Rita gained the sa privileges.
The instant she beca a Guard, she began traveling between cells.
Everywhere she went, she recruited Prisoners.
One after another.
Cell after cell.
Faction after faction.
World Sigh floated quietly in front of her.
When they had first entered the prison, the pages of the book displayed nothing more than countless red dots representing Adjudicator players.
Those dots had been chaotic and difficult to interpret.
Now things were different.
The red dots had transford into distinct blue flas.
Each fla represented a player who belonged to her.
They were spread throughout the prison like stars scattered across a night sky.
Even more importantly, Rita could now vaguely perceive the overall shape of the cube prison itself.
It still wasn’t clear.
The rotating cube projected above the pages flickered from ti to ti, as if suffering from interference.
The internal structure remained blurry.
Individual cells could not yet be distinguished.
But that didn’t matter.
This was progress.
Significant progress.
The appearance of Guards was itself an act of theft.
Every Prisoner she converted was another piece of authority stolen from the prison.
Bit by bit.
Layer by layer.
She was taking control of the cube.
The more authority she accumulated, the more freedom she gained to alter the prison’s rules.
Originally, according to the rules she had carefully crafted while probing the prison’s limits, a player needed to complete fifty gas before becoming a Warden capable of directly manipulating prison cells.
But things were changing.
As her authority expanded, that requirent would inevitably decrease.
Eventually, it might disappear entirely.
Rita never concealed these plans from the other players.
There was no reason to.
Secrecy only created misunderstandings.
And players capable of fully igniting their soul fire were never fools.
More importantly, everyone she had brought back to the First Epoch was part of this destiny.
Part of this cycle.
Part of the Möbius strip itself.
Soon, discussion erupted in the public channel.
[Rita (Quiet Mountain)]: Are you planning to unlock the entire prison cube the sa way you unlocked our shackles?
[Rita (Starsea)]: Rita, you’re really smart.
[Prayer]: What if all of our soul fire combined still isn’t enough to ignite this entire prison??
[Rita (Starsea)]: That’s why I brought the entire Tenth Epoch playerbase with .
Smoke Tune (Starsea): Suppose we change the First Epoch. Then what? Do we return to the Tenth Epoch only to continue living inside a prison? We haven’t actually destroyed this system, have we?
[Rita (Starsea)]: Then we find flaws in the rulers of the prison.
[Rita (Starsea)]: We find flaws in the prison’s order.
[Rita (Starsea)]: And then we fight our way back.
[Rita (Starsea)]: First we’ll write the past of the Tenth Epoch.
[Rita (Starsea)]: Then we’ll write its future.
[Rita (Starsea)]: So don’t lose heart, Smoke Tune.
Cicada (Starsea): How old are you compared to her...?
Cicada (Starsea): Can you stop calling her that so affectionately?!
[Rita (Starsea)]: Don’t lose heart, Big Sister Smoke Tune.
Cicada (Quiet Mountain): Happy now?
[Smoke Tune (Quiet Mountain)]: Mm. I won’t lose heart~
Cicada (Quiet Mountain): ??? Have you gone insane?
[Smoke Tune (Quiet Mountain)]: Adjudicator has never called big sister before.
Without another word, Rita closed the chat channel.
She had just realized sothing important.
Smoke Tune was not nearly as honest as she pretended to be.
Turning toward Nivalis, Rita said thoughtfully,
"I think every ti I deliberately got Smoke Tune to help provoke Cicada, she was secretly enjoying it."
Nivalis nodded imdiately.
"Definitely."
"When Smoke Tune took flying around before, she secretly told sothing."
"What?"
"She said Cicada is cutest when she’s angry."
"Apparently her vines explode when she gets mad."
Rita: ...
Then Nivalis continued completely innocently.
"And she also said that before eting you, no matter how much she teased Cicada, nothing happened."
"But after eting you, all anyone has to do is ntion your na."
"And Cicada imdiately explodes into flowers."
Rita: ...
This was bad.
Very bad.
She had sohow beco an essential component of the sisters’ favorite pasti.
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