CHAPTER 811: 811: DIVINE GAME- CARD SWAP 60

When Rita opened her door, she froze.

There was a notebook on her desk.

The cover was familiar—it was the kind you could get at that crazy rabbit bookstore next to Rock Locust, fifteen for a gold coin during clearance sales.

Lightchaser had been here?

She’d actually managed to get onto the Academy’s ship-house? With all its layers of protection?

Rita couldn’t help but admire that kind of strength. She made a mental note to learn the trick from Lightchaser later, then sprinted to grab the notebook.

Its pages were crammed with intricate magic arrays and sigils.

Another skill she’d have to practice herself—[Flash Step].

A short-range movement technique. At S-rank, it could be cast instantly, with only a two-second cooldown.

At the end of the notes was a single line: "If you can push it to SSS-rank, you’ll be unstoppable like me."

She got it. Pass through before any barrier or defense skill even had time to react.

...

On the third day, the second event of the Divine Game began. This time, the gleaming golden card revealed the Team Match.

You needed a five-person squad to even qualify.

Rita stayed on the ship-house to watch.

Once the match began, she finally understood what the Citizen’s Pass was for.

The battlefield was Demon City. Each team was scattered and dropped in randomly, with the role of divine believers.

Their task—find five identical demon statues hidden across the city, and destroy them all within three minutes of each other. If even one statue remained standing past that window, the others would resurrect it.

Destroy all five, and the city’s protective barrier would vanish. The first team to do it won.

The Citizen’s Pass allowed competitors to move freely without being hunted by the city guards—making the hunt for energy sources much easier.

And just as Rita had suspected, the team match was a brutal test of loyalty. Was there really any bond that couldn’t be broken?

It seemed even the Divine Game knew the answer. Every team match came with a hidden task.

If completed before any other team finished the main objective, your team would win instantly.

This year’s hidden task—kill the Lord of Demon City.

No one knew who the Lord was, where they were, or what level they might be. But if a teammate betrayed you or if you lost a member before completing the statues, this hidden task was the only way to victory.

Rita thought of the old championship photos of Lightchaser and GodDraw77. Four years of team match wins. The lineups changed every year, except for Lightchaser, Cinders, and one constant—a black cat.

Sometimes it sat neatly on Lightchaser’s boot, sometimes on Cinders’, sometimes running circles around the group. But it was the only teammate who’d been there every single year.

The team match had another peculiarity—it could end with no champion at all.

Once the number of players dropped to a tenth of the starting count, the game would enter purge mode, regardless of whether any complete teams were still on track to win.

In purge mode, all remaining players were marked. Natives would get their coordinates and info, and would hunt them down until every last competitor was eliminated.

This year’s match lasted three days before ending in purge mode.

A handful of players were still scrambling to finish the objective when it began, but no miracles came.

Watching from start to finish, Rita saw many strong fighters she hadn’t met during the fun match. But the ones who stood out most were those she’d already crossed paths with—Windrush, Mojie, Pine Bloom, Pomango, Gale, Sangbei, Wither Monarch, Yulu... rivals her own age.

From her time in Moonlight Marsh and everything she knew about true prodigies, she understood this—miracles were rare. Most real geniuses began to shine early.

Even though Moonlight Marsh reshuffled classes every lesson, the SSS-class roster rarely changed.

Aside from herself, the other four spots rotated among the same few—Mistblade, Maple Syrup, Fat Goose, the Bike, Bear Mud, Cookie, Echo Years, and Jade Rift.

She had [I Just Want to Improve So Badly]. They had their own mysterious ways of stacking stats.

While she had to sneak into the arena during breaks to boost her attributes, these guys grew faster even during the term—and none of them had been confronted by the faculty for it.

Some older competitors were a bit stronger, but that was just the weight of time, not talent or effort.

It was her peers who would be the real threat in the next four years of Divine Game. They’d meet again and again, clashing over and over.

She’d have to run, every second, just like Lightchaser said—not stroll.

The game ended, the golden gate descended.

No champion in this year’s team match.

Another year without GodDraw77. People were used to it—most had even forgotten it was a thing at all.

The crowd wasn’t furious or disappointed the way Rita imagined.

They cared about whether the match was exciting. The result? If there was a winner, they’d cheer. If not, it didn’t change their lives.

It had always been this way. Annual events lost their fire when nothing happened worth talking about years later.

They said that over thirty years ago, when the Divine Game began each year, the world practically stopped—everyone who could still breathe watched.

Rita turned from the deck and went back to her quarters.

She spread a roll of parchment, cut it into dozens of pieces, and began sketching every demon statue she’d seen on the top 100 screens.

Piece by piece, she reassembled them—each drawing so detailed it was nearly a one-to-one replica.

She’d started learning art from Reyhana just to make her Summer Snowmen more lifelike. Lightchaser had also suggested trying art or music.

Her plan had been to quit once her snowmen could give her ten re-rolls, but she’d discovered that [Summer Snowman] wasn’t that simple.

She thought her snowmen were perfect—she’d even spent two days sculpting one in her own likeness. But the re-rolls were still stuck at seven.

She asked Reyhana, who had no clear answer.

"If I tell you now, you’ll say I’m brushing you off. But it’s the truth—if I just hand you the answer, it loses its meaning."

Fine. Since Reyhana always gave her extra coaching after class, she’d accept that.