It was obvious.

Everyone was furious.

Rita could more or less understand how they felt.

Not a single person in that group was ordinary. Every one of them was a genius who had fought through countless hardships to reach the top.

And yet their Adjudicator, the person who had repeatedly said they would face disaster together and had personally brought them here, had made the decision for everyone at the most critical moment.

By force.

As if she had decided that everyone needed her protection.

Or perhaps because she was simply too accustomed to fighting alone.

That old habit of hers, handling every battle by herself, had somehow become common knowledge throughout Starsea.

After venting their frustrations, the people in the group chat had even begun seriously analyzing her behavior.

Many concluded that BS Rita had probably been thinking something along the lines of "lone wolf" or "one-person party" before kicking everyone else out of the team and soloing the boss herself.

The players who had participated in the Quiet Mountain Game all claimed to be experts on the subject.

Was that really what happened?

Rita felt wronged.

She honestly hadn’t been thinking anything at all at the time.

She also knew that the people in the group hadn’t simply wanted to rush out recklessly.

The players who had been constructing harbors outside had been instantly killed, yes.

But those players weren’t the leaders or gods.

The leaders and gods understood perfectly well that they couldn’t fight the Overseer’s Eye directly.

Still, if they had been allowed out, they could have helped her somehow.

Even if only a little.

Silently, Rita continued working while secretly spying on everyone’s private discussions.

The first person to forgive her was, unsurprisingly, Nivalis.

She had never been able to stay angry at BS Rita for long.

And after seeing that everyone else was angry at her, Nivalis quietly slipped through the Pet Space and appeared on Rita’s shoulder.

Perhaps worried that Rita might feel hurt, Nivalis spoke softly.

"Don’t you need a weapon?"

Rita gently rubbed her head.

"Next time."

Nivalis stared at her.

Wasn’t that basically a polite rejection?

Her eyes immediately began watering.

Rita quickly added,

"No, really. Definitely next time."

When all the prisons transformed into worlds, the Overseer’s Eye would inevitably open once more.

And she had a feeling.

A very strong feeling.

The owner of that Eye would personally descend.

Something this significant could not possibly go unnoticed.

If she were the one who designed the exile zone, then besides establishing automatic resets and creating the Overseer’s Eye as a second layer of defense, she certainly wouldn’t have done all that just for the Eye to open and take a look.

Otherwise, why had the Eye immediately launched an attack during its second awakening?

Opening the now slowly recovering group chat, Rita typed an explanation and a promise.

[Rita (Starsea)]: Next time, we’ll do it together. I promise.

[Rita (Starsea)]: I couldn’t confirm whether I would still be able to load people who died to the Overseer’s Eye.

The atmosphere that had only just started improving instantly froze again.

Rita was genuinely confused.

Were everyone’s emotions really this delicate?

She almost wanted to call them stubborn.

Nivalis seemed to understand her confusion.

In a solemn voice, she explained:

"When they wanted to rush out and help you, nobody was thinking about that."

Then she recalled what B80 had once said.

With surprising clarity, she put everyone’s feelings into words.

"Everyone spends every moment living for their ideals."

"But if they could die fighting beside you..."

"...that would also be an honor."

Rita wasn’t sure if she was allergic to romance or simply disliked the idea.

Without missing a beat, she responded:

"What if they died and I didn’t?"

"..."

Nivalis bit her ear hard.

Then she immediately flew away from the prison.

Before leaving, she tossed back a single sentence.

"I should’ve stayed home!"

Silence returned to the prison.

Then the ever-present Ash Inspector reappeared.

Ash Inspector: [I am increasingly curious about the story between you and B80.]

StarseaPrisoner: "You experience things like curiosity?"

Ash Inspector: [Knowing that my current information is insufficient to calculate the future story between us, yet continuing to calculate it regardless.]

[Does that count as curiosity?]

StarseaPrisoner: "...No."

"That’s stubbornness."

Ash Inspector fell silent.

Now even her final conversation partner had disappeared.

So Rita accelerated the pace of her prison reconstruction.

Before long, she had completely caught up with the speed at which the players were conquering prisons through Game Invasion.

Day Twenty-Eight.

Every prison had been unlocked.

God-tier players.

World leaders.

Every player summoned from the Twelfth Epoch.

All of them gathered in Abandoned Zone No. 1.

Waiting for Rita to transform the remaining prisons into worlds.

Across Starsea floated countless strange glowing objects.

Each one had a small harbor behind it.

Every time a prison transformed into a world, all the soul fire stored within that prison became Rita’s to command.

She gazed at the unimaginable amount of soul fire accumulating around her.

Yet instead of excitement, she only felt pressure.

What kind of nightmare boss required this much preparation?

Then came the moment that filled her with the most complicated emotions.

Every cube prison except Abandoned Zone No. 1 vanished.

Leaving only one final world.

The most special world.

BS.

The homeland of BS Rita.

The first world of the Twelfth Epoch to escape the Invasion Sequence.

And the only world in the Third Epoch assembled from fragments gathered from countless other prisons.

The sigh of BS was different.

Unlike most worlds, it did not come from the BS of Rita’s current timeline.

It came from Undead Wildfire’s timeline.

What did it truly mean to lose your homeland?

To never again find a single member of your own people anywhere in existence?

Only after completing her revenge did Undead Wildfire finally understand.

That delayed realization changed her personality itself.

She possessed the divine relic called Carve Error.

She carved new errors upon old ones.

She helped Dawn.

She used war to deliver long-overdue vengeance.

She covered old tragedies with new tragedies.

Back when she learned that BS Rita could hear the sighs of worlds, she had once asked: 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

"Am I in BS’s sigh?"

But before Rita could answer, Undead Wildfire laughed and shook her head.

"What a stupid question."

"I was so weak back then..."

The truth was—

BS’s sigh did contain her.

Not only her.

It contained countless people.

Avery.

Shadow.Q.

Rick.

Zoey.

Sanchez.

And countless ambitious legion commanders.

BS’s regret was never that it lacked talent.

Its regret was that it had entered the game too late.

Its enemies were already too powerful.

If BS had logged in earlier...

If it had simply been given a little more time to develop...

Would those geniuses have grown into great worlds like Dawn, Fury, or Lania Kaia?

Within BS’s sigh existed a vision.

A vision of an Undead arriving at the ruins of BS and taking away a special deceased soul.

If anyone in existence was capable of hating their own people...

It would probably be that person.

And unfortunately, her talent was extraordinary.

After dying once, she had become even more terrifying.

Almost impossible to kill.

At that moment, BS understood something.

The BS players stranded within Lania Kaia would never have a future again.

Rita remembered the answer she had once given.

"BS’s sigh contains you."

"It saw Apache revive you and take you away."

She paused.

Then smiled.

"And BS’s final thought was..."

"’Well, we’re completely screwed now.’"

"..."

Undead Wildfire had been speechless.