After saying that, Rita paused. After all, it was difficult to define what made a good or bad hand.
While a completed set of World Tomb tiles could unlock powerful skills, even scattered ones each had their own function. If she wasn't chasing a specific key outco, breaking up the tomb set could actually be more beneficial in practice.
Besides, if it was a mahjong ga—well, there had to be wins and losses.
If she completed a winning hand, what would the reward be?
If soone else did it first, what would happen to her?
Nivalis was still stunned by Rita's suggestion: "Huh?"
B8017913, who had been observing as Rita opened loot, understood: "Does balancing luck like this actually work?"
Thinking about the [Plush Collar] she had drawn, her experience using [I Just Want to Improve So Badly], and the World Battlefield's Law of Lucky Conservation, Rita answered, "I think it works pretty well."
B8017913 replied, "Alright. I'll start tracking and analyzing this theory's validity."
Rita let it go at that, keeping her internal tir running. They had now stayed in Moonlake City for ten minutes. "Let's go," she said. "Ti to switch cities."
Nivalis sighed, "You really have a talent for cri. No wonder Holy Cup said I've gotten more mature."
Rita glanced sideways. "You didn't say anything you shouldn't have, did you?"
This ti, Nivalis didn't deny it right away. After a few seconds of silence, she blurted, "...Don't worry! With your current power, you can definitely escape from Holy Cup if needed. I'll buy you ti!"
Rita: "?????????"
With her plush bean-eyes widened to full capacity, Nivalis quickly changed the topic: "Oh right, Lidian said, can you try talking to Pine Bloom more in the battlefield chat? If you can get her to say ten ssages in a single ga, she'll give you one of her shed dragon scales."
Rita's lips twitched. "...So I'm her hype girl now?"
Nivalis understood the terrible joke instantly, her cartoonishly large eyes curving into two oversized > and < signs.
B8017913 was one second behind, but its squinty eyes followed suit. Its internal system flagged the emotion: joy.
…
After switching to another capital, Nivalis picked up the earlier thread: "What if you hit Tier 10 in the next Divine Ga?"
It wasn't baseless speculation.
Over the past days, Rita had completed and absorbed all her courses, and her stats had risen dramatically.
With stolen attributes and the 100 stat points acquired in her trade with Eclipse Vanguard, her current core attributes were:
Strength 331, Constitution 317, Intelligence 381, Agility 2303.
Add in 30 skewers of buffs she'd eaten—and another 30 before the 31st—it wasn't impossible she'd break through the Pain threshold and enter the Nightmare tier at Tier 10.
But Rita flatly rejected the idea. "Absolutely not," she said—one of the rare tis she spoke with such certainty.
She had jumped from Tier 2 to Tier 6 by obtaining the top-tier SSS talent [Midnight Exile].
Then she'd reached the peak of Tier 7 after acquiring B8017913. Back in the initial room, she had seen her na just one rank below a Tier 8 player, aning she had nearly crossed the threshold already.
From there, to reach Tier 8, she had gained the top-tier healing skill [Fourfold Spring], the elite support skill [Spring Scenery & Flowers], and had comprehended two more SSS skills: [Unchanged Fate] and [Phoenix Seat].
To reach Tier 9, what had she done?
She'd acquired 34 SSS-tier skills and 15 SS-tier ones. She'd completed nearly 20 Rabbit Ear courses, two of which had instructors who were likely gods.
So no, there was no way a few hundred stat points and 60 light buffs would push her to Tier 10.
After hearing Rita's analysis, Nivalis flopped backward. "No wonder Lidian laughed so hard when I told her you were only six tiers below Pine Bloom and would catch up soon."
Rita calmly replied, "Then next ti, ask her how many years it took Pine Bloom to climb from Tier 1 to Tier 9."
She didn't know what it would take to cross from Pain to Nightmare, or Nightmare to Abyss. But she knew exactly how fast she had grown.
Otherwise, she wouldn't have shaken loose so many veteran players from the battlefield chat.
In the days that followed, Rita and Nivalis spent at least half of each day in Lania Kaia stealing attributes. The rest of the ti was dedicated to leveling or pursuing their respective professions.
They never stayed in one city for a fixed ti—sotis ten minutes, sotis twelve, sotis just five.
Eventually, they even moved on to towns and floating isles near the main capitals.
By the morning of the 31st, Rita's Strength and Constitution had both exceeded 350, and her Intelligence had passed 400.
She had been eyeing the World Tomb tiles in her bag throughout her ti in Lania Kaia, but none had shown any signs of activity—though even if they had, she likely wouldn't have chased them down.
She laid out all her current World Tombs on the table:
[3-Character], [3-Character], [4-Character], [5-Character], [1-Dot], [5-Dot], [6-Dot], [7-Dot], [Seven-Wan], [Seven-Wan], [Seven-Wan], [Red Dragon], [East Wind], [West Wind], [White Dragon], [1-Bamboo], [Green Dragon].
Seventeen tiles in total.
She rearranged them again and again.
Opening the Honor Shop, she saw only five more available for purchase.
As she learned more about the World Battlefield, she'd begun to overturn so earlier theories.
Take the World Tombs, for instance. She'd originally believed only core-origin tombs could serve as tickets—but later found that other worlds' tombs worked too.
Sure, if you died, you would lose your own core World Tomb. But for top-tier players like Maple Syrup, Mistblade, and Pine Bloom, they didn't die every round. And the lazy royal fish at the bottom rarely entered the ga at all...
Add it all up, and these tombs should be rarer. Yet she kept acquiring more.
That left only one possibility: there were other thods of recovering core World Tombs beyond tickets and death.
Or maybe, in later stages, both tickets and death still reclaid tombs—tickets only accepting core tombs, while death dropped multiple at once.
Or maybe...
Rita quieted the theories swirling in her mind and looked again at the line of World's Grave Forest.
She thought of the Forest Sea. Of Mistblade.
In the historical records she'd found in Lania Kaia's library, the earliest version of the world only housed the Undead.
She asked B8017913, "Do you know the Moonfoxes' holand?"
B8017913: "Snowland."
A familiar na. So the Moonfoxes were indeed linked to the Moon Goddess.
Rita ran her fingers over the World Tombs, over the rows of glyphs from all the races.
Among them—could one of these be Snowland or the Forest Sea?
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