CHAPTER 818: 818: DIVINE GAME – CARD SWAP 67

Before the solo match began, Rita had already dug up Mojie’s game records and read through multiple analyses about him.

He had the ability to steal one category of a target’s gains from the past six hours—whether it was stats, skills, wealth, or gear. If he wanted it, he could take it.

The only weakness of such a frightening skill was that it could be used only once per day, and only on one category at a time. Would he take wealth or skills? Stats or equipment?

When Rita saw Mojie again, her first thought wasn’t about killing him—it was about how she could get her hands on that skill.

Ever since she learned about it, she had been turning over the problem in her head.

If it was a god-granted innate ability, she could swap it with \[Moment of Reversal].

Could \[No Logic], the cognition-twisting skill, work somehow? Among the thousand-plus god-granted abilities she’d seen in the sewers, was there one she could use to acquire it?

Of course, it could also be from some special item. But an item of that caliber would be bound, without a doubt.

Mojie’s expression wasn’t much better than hers—in fact, his was graver.

His ability might be fearsome, but Moonlight Marsh’s Rita had time stop.

Even if she couldn’t affect other players during the stop, freezing time alone was enough to handle most crises.

All his advantages could vanish in a blink—literally.

If he tracked down the god, he could still end up facing a time stop mid-fight.

And this was someone who’d gone one-against-seventeen with only a sliver of HP. He wasn’t about to take her lightly.

At the very least, until Moonlight Marsh Rita set her sights on him, he had no intention of picking a fight.

They stood there, locked in a silent standoff, both hyper-alert.

Rita worried that any skill or hint she’d learned might be stolen in an instant.

Mojie worried that one blink later, he’d open his eyes to find a dagger buried in his chest.

Both glanced upward at the same moment, toward the right-hand rooftop—where another uninvited guest stood. Pine Bloom.

The three formed a triangle on the field.

Of the three, Mojie was the most tense. He knew exactly what Pine Bloom could do.

Rita wasn’t nearly as concerned. Her god-granted talents, aside from \[Brief Hibernation], all required casting materials. And \[Brief Hibernation] was a form of mental control—it ended the moment HP dropped below 20%.

Which meant that at her current 0.724% HP, the skill wouldn’t affect her at all, even if Pine Bloom borrowed it.

If \[Borrow It for a Bit]—Pine Bloom’s god-granted Skill 5—hadn’t been locked to pair with her \[Wrong Season], she’d have tried to swap for it on the spot.

The tension between the three slowed the fighting among the spectators just a little.

The first to move was Rita.

She blurred forward toward Mojie, and as she dashed, her form split—one body striking straight at him, the other, a shadow, peeling away and heading back to loot corpses.

Every contestant could carry three magical items. When they died, anything not soulbound would drop into the game.

The spatial storage items issued by the schools weren’t soulbound—they just had basic info locks, like the door lock on a treetop tower. Someone skilled could break them open.

Soulbinding was harder—only the true owner could undo it. It was almost as if the schools were warning students: think carefully before binding.

The moment Rita’s cold, unreadable eyes locked on him and she charged without a shred of hesitation, Mojie knew there was no avoiding the fight.

He couldn’t use \[Low-Risk Investment]—his deprive skill—to strip away her god hints. Doing so would only paint a target on him for Pine Bloom as well.

He shouted to Pine Bloom instead, "Team up with me. I’ll give you the last hit!"

Pine Bloom only gave him a gentle smile... then turned and bolted.

No way she was staying—she’d been here a while and had already seen it. Rita was clearly using some HP lock skill. She couldn’t be scratched.

Mojie knew it too—he’d been backing off even as he shouted.

But he quickly realized there was no escaping. Rita’s skill was impossible to counter, and she wasn’t letting him go.

If that was the case...

He topped off his HP, threw up a shield, and used \[Low-Risk Investment] on her.

The instant it succeeded, he crushed the golden pickaxe in his hand—the standard-issue spatial gear from Deep Sea Mine.

As his consciousness faded, he gave Rita a sharp, mocking smile.

He wanted her to think she’d failed, losing her god hints for nothing.

But what he saw instead was a calm, unreadable face.

Rita was calm because this was exactly what she’d wanted.

There would be no better chance. Mojie wouldn’t know she’d learned a skill in the game, so if he used his deprive skill, he’d definitely choose god hints.

It might be another whole year before she saw him again in the Divine Game. She needed to plant a seed of \[Low-Risk Investment] on herself now.

Maybe she’d find a way to claim it entirely. Or maybe an opportunity would arise where she needed it.

As for the god hints?

She couldn’t recall them anymore—but she remembered the conclusions she’d drawn:

"The hints contradict each other."

"The so-called god isn’t just one single target."

"It’s very likely they’re us, the contestants."

"One of the hints pointed directly at her."

And if not, she could still use the snowman.

Even if that failed—

The shadow that had gone looting returned, carrying a trench coat knotted into a bundle stuffed with magical items, and in its hand, a blood-stained white robe.

On the robe were god hints, written in blood with a pen made from dried leaves. The shadow had been jotting them down during her fight with Mojie.

Rita took the robe, scanned the hints quickly, then used \[Calm Down a Second] to burn it.

One hint read: "They hosted a ball game in the Old District."

A vague clue—but as the one involved, she knew it likely referred to herself.

That was when the suspicion formed—that the "god" might be the contestants themselves.

If that were the case, the contradictions between the hints made perfect sense.

Just like not every holder of a \[Demon’s Pass] was truly a demon, maybe nothing said the god had to match the image people had of one.

It was only a hypothesis, but once the thought took root, it wouldn’t go away.

She needed to test it.

If "god" really meant the contestants, then why hadn’t she completed the task after killing so many?

Was it because killing them didn’t count as "finding them"?

Or was it that the so-called god was any contestant holding a Demon’s Pass?