But if Ash Inspector was going into the painting, how could the mysterious Watcher’s Eye be left out?

Rita did not ask Ash Inspector what the Watcher’s Eye looked like.

Instead, she lifted her brush and sketched the silhouette of a colossal Order Clock across the starry sky.

It occupied the entire lower half of the composition.

As though every prison cube existed within the Clock Arena itself.

As though time watched over everything.

Below, another prison was unlocked through the connection established by a World Skill.

Countless cells slowly separated from one another.

For the first time, the Prisoners inside could see the world beyond their cages.

They could finally glimpse the truth.

Deceitful Bloom stood with her arms folded, leaning against the transparent wall of her cell as she gazed outward.

Years ago, when she participated in Divine Game, she had often done the same thing.

During the waiting period before a game began, she enjoyed observing the other cells.

She liked studying the expressions of other players.

Were they excited about gaining new power?

Worried that the game’s rules might not suit them?

Or trapped in the endless hatred between worlds?

Everyone had called these places starter rooms.

No one had ever imagined they were prison cells.

As the gaps between her cell and the others widened, her gaze drifted upward.

There, she spotted a familiar figure painting among the stars.

Painting again.

Why did she paint everywhere she went?

Then another thought surfaced.

Perhaps World Sigh was deeply connected to the future Starsea and Quiet Mountain.

After all, what else could transform into countless worlds where life could grow and flourish?

Aside from World Sigh, a record of the civilizations and sorrows of countless races, Deceitful Bloom could think of no other answer.

What could be more suitable than pages filled with the stories of worlds and their inhabitants?

If she could reach that conclusion, then the owner of World Sigh certainly could as well.

Would she really be willing to do it?

With that thought in mind, Deceitful Bloom appeared beside BS Rita.

The moment she arrived, Foolishness appeared as well, taking position beside her.

A vine suddenly shot up from Deceitful Bloom’s shoulder.

It climbed onto her head and stood upright like a tiny antenna.

The extra height raised her several centimeters, making her look noticeably taller than Foolishness.

Foolishness and Rita stared at the vine in complete silence.

For a very long time.

Finally, Deceitful Bloom grabbed the vine, ripped it down, clenched it in her fist, and said coldly,

"Let’s talk about something important."

Rita’s eyes lingered on the vine, which was desperately wriggling and struggling inside Deceitful Bloom’s hand.

She cleared her throat and looked away.

After adding a few strokes to the canvas and making sure she had suppressed her laughter, she replied,

"Aren’t you two the ones who came looking for me?"

Foolishness politely avoided looking at the vine as well.

Then she asked,

"Are you planning to give World Sigh to these prisons?"

Rita was not surprised they had figured it out.

In fact, they were probably not the only ones.

She tilted her head to the side, peeking around the enormous easel.

In the distance, she spotted Mistblade, Maple Syrup, Lightchaser, Cinders, and several others watching from nearby cells.

The instant they saw her head pop out from behind the easel, they all turned away and lowered their heads, pretending they had not been spying.

Everyone except Lightchaser.

Lightchaser showed absolutely no guilt whatsoever.

She casually tapped her dagger against the transparent wall of her cell.

Rita could not help smiling.

She straightened up again and said,

"Yes."

"What else would I do?"

Neither Deceitful Bloom nor Foolishness answered.

They simply watched her.

As longtime spectators of Divine Game, and as people who had spent years observing her, they understood BS Rita better than most.

Even Lightchaser could not compare.

After all, Lightchaser had raised the young Rita who pursued power because she longed to become stronger.

Not BS Rita, who viewed power as the answer to every problem and placed it above all else.

World Sigh represented her Order.

Her power.

Would she really allow herself to lose part of that power?

Now that she stood at the pinnacle of Starsea and Quiet Mountain, could she truly accept stepping down from that height?

Rita laughed at their serious expressions.

Yet after a moment, the laughter faded.

Because she understood what they were actually worried about.

They were not concerned that she could not let go of World Sigh.

They were worried about what would remain after she did.

Beacon.

Brilliance.

Snowland.

Forest Sea.

For everyone who had made it this far, what mattered more than their world?

If the World Sigh written by BS Rita would become the foundation and blueprint for every world’s rebirth in future ages, then neither Deceitful Bloom nor Foolishness could reject it.

Mistblade would not reject it.

Maple Syrup would not reject it.

Cicada and Smoke Tune would not reject it.

NightFury, JE, Crab, Fat Goose...

None of the world leaders would reject it.

Even Lightchaser and Cinders, who had grown up during peaceful times, could not possibly ask BS Rita to put herself first when faced with something of this scale.

No one in all of Starsea could refuse such a sacrifice.

Once things reached this point, silence itself became pressure.

Right now, even Deceitful Bloom, who excelled at manipulating hearts, and Foolishness, who could argue circles around almost anyone, had no idea what to say.

Thank her?

Would that make it seem as though they were pressuring her?

Feel guilty?

Would that merely sound hollow?

World Sigh, which BS Rita had personally written all those years ago...

Now she was preparing to give it away with her own hands.

She had dragged all living beings into her game.

She had personally led every god and every leader back into the past to rewrite history.

And in the end, she would be the one paying the highest price.

She would surrender the power and authority she treasured most.

She was the boldest stroke in the history of the future.

And even after returning to the past, she remained exactly that.

The history of Divine Game reserved an entire page for her alone.

She had written a game that belonged solely to herself.

Every being in Starsea and Quiet Mountain believed with absolute certainty that BS Rita would eventually offer up the world’s sighs.

Not merely because they had come from the future and already knew how the story ended.

But because among all of Starsea and Quiet Mountain, only BS Rita would ever do such a thing.

The innocent one outside the Invasion Sequence.

The writer who recorded the laments of countless races.

The Cookie King who remained silent amid endless war.

Who else could possibly do it?

Rita held her brush and turned her gaze back to the painting.

Avoiding eye contact with both Deceitful Bloom and Foolishness, she spoke gently.

"Go finish the invasion."

"Don’t interrupt my painting."

Deceitful Bloom and Foolishness quietly departed.

The brush that had been moving constantly only moments ago froze above the canvas.

Rita sat silently, staring at the painting before her.

She remembered something B80 had said a long time ago.

"Everyone around you is loyal to themselves!"

"They’re loyal to responsibility, loyal to their homeland, loyal to their ideals, loyal to knowledge, loyal to power."

"You matter to them."

"But they will never give up everything for you."

"Only me."

"Every time I analyze you, I become a little more loyal to you."

Ash Inspector: [So that is what you meant by bringing things to a proper conclusion.]

Ash Inspector: [They need you to sacrifice something extremely important to you, correct?]

StarseaPrisoner: "No."

"They don’t need it."

"I’m choosing to do this."

"They never asked me to."

Ash Inspector: [From my perspective, there is no difference.]

Ash Inspector: [They are loyal to themselves, not to you.]

StarseaPrisoner: "They don’t need to be loyal to me."

"Thinking otherwise is an insult to them."

Rita looked at the dismantling cube within the painting.

With a few strokes, she added blurred figures of her friends inside the tiny prisons.

Then she spoke softly.

"It’s enough that they’re loyal to themselves."

"If they abandoned their ideals and convictions for my sake..."

"I’d look down on them."