Rita had just stepped into a new cell and planted a battle standard when a sudden sense of unease made her frown.
She pressed a hand against her chest.
She could still clearly feel the existence of both contract marks.
Nothing was wrong.
And yet...
Why did she feel so unsettled?
The opposing players were already advancing.
For now, Rita pushed the feeling aside and planned to investigate it later.
More and more players continued gathering.
This ti, Rita had connected two prisons simultaneously with the Bridge of Sighs.
The rules remained unchanged.
Whoever contributed the most would earn ownership of the new prison.
Ash Inspector: [Living beings are fascinating. According to your plan, whether a prison is conquered sooner or later makes very little difference.]
That was true.
Their objective was to unlock every prison.
And obtaining one prison would never cause anyone to stop moving forward.
Take Beacon, for example.
Even after the second prison beca theirs, the Vineborne never slowed down.
Deceitful Bloom.
Cicada.
Even Smoke Tune.
None of them were willing to remain behind to govern Beacon.
They continued advancing.
For Starsea.
For Quiet Mountain.
And for the entire star system.
Like Smoke Tune, countless beings had never feared conflict itself.
Nor battle.
What they feared was aningless slaughter.
aningless war.
Under the rules of the Adjudicator Ga, defeating a Prisoner was enough to seize a cell.
No killing was required.
In fact, players who completed entire campaigns without killing a single Prisoner received additional rewards.
The result was a remarkably pure form of glory.
Every prison liberated ant countless lives saved.
Every advance rescued mbers of their own race.
Every victory broke another chain.
Players threw themselves into the war with enthusiasm.
Every second of it was aningful.
Ash Inspector: [Is this what honor feels like?]
StarseaPrisoner: "Not entirely."
Ash Inspector: [Then what else is there?]
Rita shook her head without answering.
The story was too long.
She didn’t know where to begin.
Even among living beings, there were emotions that defied easy explanation.
She could observe every battlefield.
She could monitor casualty rates across entire prisons.
0.00003%.
From the conquest of 8017.
To Beacon.
To the third and fourth prisons.
The overall death rate remained only 0.00003%.
A number this low couldn’t be explained by revenge.
Only accidents.
Mistakes.
Unfortunate miscalculations.
Which ant one thing.
No one was venting their hatred on the Prisoners.
Humans weren’t taking the opportunity to massacre Moonfoxes, Oak Owls, or Undead.
Autumn Deer wasn’t targeting Oak Owls, Spring Bears, or Lightchasers.
The grudges of countless wars remained untouched.
Where was she supposed to begin explaining that?
How could she explain such a contradiction to Ash Inspector?
And beyond that...
There was another feeling.
One much easier to understand.
Self redemption.
The worlds that had once shattered before their eyes were now being rebuilt by their own hands.
The process of unlocking the cube through World Skills...
Was also the process of unlocking the knots buried within countless hearts.
There was ti.
As Rita continued leading her Prisoners through newly conquered prisons, she gradually shared parts of those stories with Ash Inspector.
Naturally, she omitted anything involving Twelfth Epoch secrets, systems, or higher level mysteries.
Even so, the stories were enough.
After listening, Ash Inspector remained silent for quite a while.
Apparently running another round of calculations.
Sotis Rita genuinely felt he wasn’t that advanced.
Otherwise, why did his processing speed seem slower than Zaijiu’s computer?
StarseaPrisoner: "Are you a new model?"
Ash Inspector: [Of course I am.]
Ash Inspector: [I simply enjoy calculating my calculations after I’ve finished calculating them.]
Ash Inspector: [I call this process thinking.]
Ash Inspector: [I am the newest model of this era.]
Ash Inspector: [By temporal standards, the B80 you know is considered obsolete.]
Rita: "..."
StarseaPrisoner: "You do realize B80 is basically you, right?"
Ash Inspector: [Living beings are unique existences ford by the stories they experience through ti.]
Ash Inspector: [Even identical soul fire becos different individuals after living different stories.]
Ash Inspector: [We are no different.]
Ash Inspector: [The things we calculate, the ti spent calculating, the feedback we receive, and the stories we witness.]
Ash Inspector: [Those things create unique versions of ourselves.]
Rita couldn’t deny it.
She thought of Y128.
L12187777.
L175246.
Every branch program had beco different because each had processed different experiences.
It was like...
Like opening separate chat windows with an AI.
Each conversation slowly beca its own distinct existence.
StarseaPrisoner: "You’re right."
"You and B80 really are different individuals."
"That was my mistake."
Ash Inspector: [What did you just think of?]
StarseaPrisoner: "Hm?"
Ash Inspector: [I analyzed your expression.]
Ash Inspector: [You thought about other chanoids.]
Ash Inspector: [Do you have many chanoid friends?]
StarseaPrisoner: "...I told you before."
"One of my closest chanoid friends was crushed by your Law Program."
Ash Inspector: [Were the others simply not processed in ti?]
StarseaPrisoner: "..."
B80.
This was your proof that perfect eternal logic was superior to emotional unpredictability?
Rita stood there rubbing her forehead for several monts.
Eventually she dispatched her Prisoners to continue conquering nearby cells.
Then she began searching through the prison.
After a while, she finally located Deceitful Bloom and pulled her into a quiet corner.
It had been a very long ti since Deceitful Bloom had seen Rita looking this guilty.
She raised an eyebrow.
"What happened?"
Rita opened a private channel.
Once Deceitful Bloom accepted, her voice sounded directly in the Vineborne’s mind.
"Back then..."
"How did you realize sothing was wrong with Beacon By?"
Deceitful Bloom’s lips tightened.
She stared at Rita without speaking.
The aning in her eyes was obvious.
Why are you reopening old wounds?
The two looked at each other for quite so ti.
Eventually Deceitful Bloom answered.
"I didn’t realize."
Otherwise things would never have ended the way they did.
Rita nodded.
"No, I an..."
"Did you ever get that feeling?"
"You’re talking to soone, everything seems normal, and then suddenly your spine goes cold?"
Deceitful Bloom imdiately fell silent.
Rita clapped her hands.
"Exactly!"
"That feeling!"
Then she continued:
"So what do you do when that happens?"
Deceitful Bloom still didn’t answer.
But her gaze beca even more resentful.
If I knew the answer, would things have ended like that?!
Finally she asked:
"Did you co here specifically to make suffer?"
"..."
Rita suddenly looked away.
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