This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 1126 Divine Game: Quiet Mountain 9

——"Do you have anything else you want to say?"

Other than the dagger’s sharp point, Maple Syrup didn’t touch her at all, yet Rita could clearly feel the heavy, stifling rejection and hatred pressing in from behind.

And still, at this exact moment, she asked if Rita had anything left to say.

What did she want to hear? Begging? Weakness? An explanation? An apology?

Rita couldn’t give her any of that.

Uncharted Star Sea was a lawless place where only winning and losing mattered, not right and wrong.

Every being she’d ever known charged toward their own ideals with absolute conviction. She was no different.

Rita stopped leaning away from the dagger. Her eyes slid sideways to the edge of her vision, landing on that streak of red wing.

"Looks like that blessing we made at fifteen only reached me."

If she could do it again, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times, she would still make the same choice.

She regretted it, but she didn’t repent.

After she said it, the person bound to the rack leaned into the dagger on her own.

A fatal strike.

The moment her health hit zero, the metal rings locking her wrists released automatically, and her body slowly tipped forward.

A hand reached out, then pulled back, letting BS Rita collapse into the carpet of Flower Crown Murder petals.

Blue arrays lit up across all six sides of the cell. Maple Syrup simply stood there, expressionless, looking down at BS Rita’s body as it dissolved into light and faded away.

Verdant Verdant Whisper · Windrush, who had been watching this whole time, couldn’t read Maple Syrup at all. The commotion outside finally made her shout, "Run already!"

Maple Syrup’s fingers moved. A few strands of flame fell onto the remaining bloodstains and burned them clean. Only then did she lift her gaze toward the two figures outside the cell. Her eyes paused for a split second on one of them, and then she turned into a shadow and vanished.

Verdant Verdant Whisper · Windrush’s attention was also grabbed by the figure beside BeaconCicada.

She’d brushed off what BS SmokeTune said earlier. Differences between copies were probably about the same as the difference between the mountain Cicada and the Star Sea Cicada, right? Just another version of yourself with a different personality.

But now she finally understood what SmokeTune meant. If anything, SmokeTune had understated it.

The moment that figure, hands folded over the sword planted in front of her, turned her head and looked over through the barrier between the two cells, Verdant Verdant Whisper · Windrush had one thought.

This was a creature with no warmth at all.

If she had to describe the difference between Quiet Mountain Rita and Star Sea Rita, she would say this: QM Rita felt like Uncharted Star Sea itself. Looking at her made you think of chaos, lawlessness, and destruction, of shattered world docks along the time river and moons gone dim.

And SS Rita felt more like Quiet Mountain.

Under that dark, bottomless gaze, Verdant Verdant Whisper · Windrush instinctively turned her head away.

QM Rita’s eyes settled on BeaconCicada without the slightest ripple of emotion. Behind her mask, her lips curved faintly as she mocked, "I thought you’d kill Another Me to vent your anger. Looks like I overestimated you. You’re too scared to lay a hand on her, aren’t you?"

A stamen-forged spike appeared out of nowhere and stabbed toward QM Rita’s face. The mountain Cicada answered with action.

QM Rita didn’t retreat even a fraction. Sword light flashed. The long sword she’d been using like a scepter swept across the spike, scattering the bloom into fragments. In the rain of petals, the blade spun once and cut toward the mountain Cicada.

...

[Yet oranige Pomango]: Where’s Verdant Verdant Whisper · Windrush? Why aren’t we getting live updates anymore?

[Isolated Isle Lightchaser]: Her name turned gray, then lit up again.

[BS Mistblade]: Her Divine Game key is solid, at least six stars. Probably has a revive skill.

[Verdant Verdant Whisper · Windrush]: She died by Maple Syrup’s hand. Strictly speaking, she walked into Maple Syrup’s dagger on purpose. The second she died, QM Rita showed up... How is this "only a small difference"? I can’t even imagine how hard the mountain Cicada had to work not to laugh when SS Rita pretended to be QM Rita in front of her.

[BS Rita]: What do you mean by that?

[Verdant Verdant Whisper · Windrush]: Exactly what it sounds like. Like Uncharted Star Sea and Quiet Mountain. If you’d died even a few seconds later, you would’ve seen her. She’s fighting the mountain Cicada now. QM Rita is really only Tier 18? My skills are sealed so I can’t check, but I swear their strength isn’t just that. I can’t even see their movements. It’s all afterimages. I’ve only seen that on our side’s Tier 19 players.

[Isolated Isle Ash Cinders]: Who scanned her? BS SmokeTune?

[BS SmokeTune]: SSS-tier detection skill. It shouldn’t be wrong. And QM Rita doesn’t seem like the type to bother faking it.

[Isolated Isle Ash Cinders]: Yeah, you probably didn’t scan wrong. But the combat power grading here isn’t the same as Star Sea. There are no war skills or world skills here. I ran into a copy and used a skill to temporarily hook out a thread of soul-fire and asked about it.

After sending that, Ash Cinders squeezed a straw doll, only about a dozen centimeters tall, into a perfect treasure shaped like a honey jar. It could help her evade any pursuers. The moment she entered, the jar warped and slipped into the void.

When Ash Cinders opened the battlefield chat again, there were already 999 new messages.

Players she’d seen before and players she hadn’t all surfaced, all asking who it was.

Compared to the combat power grading, everyone cared far more about the copies’ identities.

So far only QM Rita and the mountain Cicada had appeared, but the fact that the world had apparently chosen to copy beings suspected to be Uncharted Star Sea’s lifelong enemies made every player tense.

Just look at the two who got copied.

One was the Star Sea’s only Adjudicator, who hit Tier 15 in under ten games and helped BS fully break away from the Invasion Sequence.

The other was the Vineborne ruler who held the most war skills in Divine Game so far.

If you had to be that outstanding to qualify for copying, then the reverse was also true. Being copied was a kind of endorsement.

A "I sit at the same table as BS Rita and DawnCicada" endorsement.

Forget whether Star Sea lived or died for now. A lot of strong players had just had their pride poked hard.

Inside the honey jar was a small room. Moonbear lifted a paw and patted the straw doll in front of her, labeled: [Forest Sea Maple Syrup] (Mountains).

[Isolated Isle Ash Cinders]: Forest Sea Maple Syrup

The chat went quiet for a long moment.

Unexpected, but also somehow not.

So what was the standard for copying, exactly?

[Isolated Isle Lightchaser]: I found records of the apostles of the gods who still exist. Ash Cinders, explain the combat rating standard first.

The moment Lightchaser sent that, the chat that had just calmed down exploded into another 999 plus messages, everyone shouting for the list first.

Lightchaser was more interested in the list too. She’d barely cared about Ash Cinders’ combat rating note earlier. Her attention was glued to the document in front of her. Only after she finished reading it all did she even think about the rating system.

[Isolated Isle Lightchaser]: Other than the two you already know, the apostles of the gods who still exist are...