This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 1079 Divine Game: My World 24

Beacon. What an unpleasant world. What an awful name.

Dawn Cicada stood there for a long time, staring at the receding world dock where only the outline of vines remained. She had once believed she no longer cared about that world at all.

She always seized every opportunity to emphasize why she would never rebuild Beacon.

"Beacon is a failure I can never forgive myself for. Why would I rebuild proof of my own failure?"

"Dawn is the spoils of the Vineborne. I do not want to interrupt their celebration."

She had given answers like these to BS Rita, and to every player who ever asked why she refused to rebuild Beacon.

Only when answering the former did she add an extra note of feigned surprise and satisfaction. She had assumed Deceitful Bloom would object, but instead, Deceitful Bloom had tacitly accepted her choice.

Yet none of those were the real answer.

She said those things simply because they sounded strong. Because they sounded reasonable.

The true answer was far more cowardly.

She hated the name Beacon.

That was all.

Every time she heard the word Beacon, every time she remembered that a world once bore that name, her mind returned to the moment before its destruction, when it was lit up by the corpses of her own kin.

The pain left her unable to sleep.

She would never rebuild Beacon.

But she desperately wanted to know what Beacon’s sigh and regret had been.

Did it regret that she failed to protect it?

Or did it resent her for growing so strong, yet never once considering rebuilding the world of the Vineborne?

...

It had to be said that having a salary really did change things.

At first, Rita only planned to leave something behind for these worlds while searching for world docks. She would pick out a few important and interesting things to record. If something happened to her, she would leave the records to Calico, who loved traveling, and let it carry them away.

Pure volunteer work. Having something was better than nothing.

But once she realized that recording world civilizations was tied to some unknown benefit, she naturally invested far more time and effort.

Perhaps the World Sighs had anticipated this. That was why, at the very beginning, they kept guiding her with their sighs.

The journey itself was tightly scheduled. Rita’s primary goal was still to collect World Sighs, so she only recorded civilizations while traveling between ruined world docks.

Under those conditions, she naturally prioritized worlds with lighter, more interesting stories. Quick to write. Easy to process.

She did not worry about forgetting the rest. Her body and mind were already fully gamified. With her intelligence bonuses, her thinking speed and memory were nothing like before. And even if she truly forgot something, she could always revisit the memories stored within the World Sighs she possessed.

Her days became monotonous and quiet.

Eat an apple. Sleep. Wake up and write civilization.

She had assumed she would occasionally run into the war cruise ship again, but half a month passed without encountering a single living being.

She never even saw the small white ship she had repeatedly reminded Calico and B80 to watch for.

Every time she woke from a sigh, her world consisted only of the sound of waves in the River of Time, and the sound of B80 or Calico playing games.

Sometimes, she even felt as if she were the only remaining player in the universe.

Sometimes, a sigh would jolt her awake, and she could never be sure whether it had come from those worlds, or from herself as she wrote one story after another.

As she was thinking, a notification from 1 Bamboo appeared on her interface.

Player BS Mistblade is calling you.

Ah. Mistblade had found this clever loophole to contact her.

Rita accepted the call. She did not bother to hide the notebook on her desk, nor did she stop writing. These records were meant to be seen by other beings in the first place.

A screen was projected in front of her. She still had a few words left to finish her last sentence. As she rapidly wrote in Vineborne script, she asked, "What is it?"

No one answered for a long moment.

It seemed that whoever called had temporarily forgotten what they wanted to say.

In the brightly lit Captain’s cabin, BS Rita sat behind her desk, focused on her writing. Her long hair was loosely tied up, she wore a loose, comfortable shirt, and a steaming drink sat at her side.

"So you have already started your vacation?"

Mistblade’s sarcastic teasing made Rita laugh. She drew a period, looked up at the screen, and then her smile froze.

So many people.

Lightchaser, Ash Cinders, Maple Syrup, Pine Bloom, Fat Goose, Crab, Dawn Cicada, Wither. Everyone who should be there and everyone who should not be there was present. The screen was packed with players. She even spotted Fury Prayer and Dawn Spring Guest in the back.

Rita’s gaze paused on Dawn Cicada for a single second before she looked to Lightchaser and Ash Cinders. "Good morning, teachers."

Could she read anything from their expressions? Nothing at all.

But if there had been anything inconvenient to show, BS Rita would not have answered the call.

And the one who truly wanted to make this call was clearly not Mistblade.

Dawn Cicada tossed an item to Mistblade, stepped to the front of the screen, and asked in an awkward tone, "I want to ask you something. What is in Beacon’s sigh?"

She skipped meaningless questions like whether Rita had already eaten Beacon’s moon.

Even while seeking an answer, Dawn Cicada’s forceful nature was impossible to hide. Her brows carried a wariness and tension, as if she were bracing for rejection or mockery.

Rita withdrew the look she had given Mistblade that clearly said, You used my call to trade items. She noticed that the moment this question was asked, every gaze on the screen sharpened. Clearly, this was why they were all here.

Snowfield. Forest Sea. Brilliance. Hippie. Beacon. No Light.

She now possessed thirty one World Sighs.

She did not know which of those worlds the war cruise ship had passed, but it was certainly more than one. Yet the first to ask this question was Dawn Cicada.

Vineborne were always like this. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

This was Vineborne.

They hated ambiguity. They wanted clear answers and clear endings. And once they wanted something, they wanted it immediately.

If this had been half a month ago, before she had obtained World Sighs, no. Even three days ago, before she heard Beacon’s sigh, she would not have bothered answering Dawn Cicada at all.

But now, she had just finished writing a story about Beacon and the Vineborne.

She hesitated for only a few seconds. And even that hesitation was not about whether to tell her, but about the fact that so many other players were standing beside her.

Then she dismissed the thought entirely. Why was she being considerate toward a Vineborne at all?

Her gaze turned cold as she looked at the notebook on her desk. She gave her answer in a flat, distant voice.

"Beacon’s sigh does contain you. It was worried about you, because when you led the Vineborne away from Beacon, you were still so young."