This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

This "big brother" went by the name CooperLost.

CooperLost's malice toward Rita had nothing to do with romance or treating her as a scapegoat. In fact, Rita couldn't even discern whether his actions stemmed from Rick's influence or if CooperLost was simply unhinged to begin with.

CooperLost had a younger brother he grew up with, a boy named Fang Xiangnan, who had died during the first year of the game invasion in November due to a curse.

Later, CooperLost ended up in City S, joining Rick's team. Upon learning that Rita's Divine Gift was a role-playing ability, he became obsessed with having her play the part of his deceased brother.

Rita refused countless times, but CooperLost never gave up. It was as if seeing Rita pretend to be Fang Xiangnan would bring his brother back to life.

When she refused, CooperLost even went as far as bringing his brother's preserved corpse to her house. Somehow, the body had not decomposed. Back then, Rita couldn't overpower the protagonist party, so CooperLost tied her up, placing her face-to-face with the corpse while he sat beside her, narrating stories about his brother's habits, hobbies, and life.

Rita, desperate, made a sarcastic suggestion: "Why don't you find a puppeteering skill and control your brother yourself? What if I start running around town in a dress and full makeup as your brother?"

CooperLost calmly replied that he wouldn't mind as long as he could see his brother alive and active, but puppeteering wasn't enough.

The worst thing CooperLost ever did was tying Rita up and making her sleep between him and his brother's corpse.

It was deranged and psychotic, yet Rita couldn't summon the hatred needed to eliminate CooperLost entirely. His madness was eerily calm, and he never physically harmed her or even insulted her. He was, in many ways, a disturbingly polite patient.

---

Fang Xiangnan and Rick had been gaming friends for years. According to CooperLost, they had met when they each got their first phone in middle school. Though they never met in person, Fang Xiangnan had always considered Rick his closest friend.

After Fang Xiangnan's death, it was inevitable that CooperLost would carry the coffin to Rick.

Even so, Rita never considered saving Fang Xiangnan.

For one, she couldn't. Fang Xiangnan died from a curse, and even CooperLost hadn't found the culprit. His condition for joining Rick's team was Rick's promise to find the murderer. What could Rita do?

Second, she was no saint. While CooperLost hadn't hurt her physically, the mental scars he inflicted were not small. Not killing him was already an act of mercy. She had no obligation to expend her energy saving the relative of someone who caused her trauma.

Her reason for coming to the grasslands was to take the opportunity CooperLost had. The item would give Rick too much leverage, and she couldn't let that happen.

According to CooperLost, he and his brother discovered their neighbor's family dead after the game invasion. They took all the sheep from the neighbor's yard back to their home. When they slaughtered an old ewe to make soup, they found a strange-shaped stone in its stomach.

Initially, they thought nothing of the stone. But in October, while practicing his skills, Fang Xiangnan accidentally shattered the stone, revealing a token inside.

This token turned out to be Blue Star's first Legion Token—what players referred to as a Guild Token.

CooperLost later used this token to trade with Rick, exchanging it for all the chat logs and gifts Fang Xiangnan had ever sent Rick.

Rick had kept every gift Fang Xiangnan sent, meticulously stored in a box. Even the cheapest rocks from the grasslands were carefully preserved.

CooperLost, a rugged man of the grasslands, was stunned by this level of care.

"So meticulous! Too meticulous!"

He almost asked Rick: "What exactly is your relationship with my brother?!"

But he held back. His brother was gone, and asking such questions served no purpose. Let the memory remain pure and untainted.

The box of gifts, along with Rick's promise to find the murderer, convinced CooperLost, a Divine Gift-level player, to join Rick's team without hesitation.

When CooperLost mentioned the gift box to Rita, she couldn't stand the injustice and told him she was the one who had organized it. But he didn't believe her.

---

Both siblings were actually quite sociable.

Rita often remembered Eleanor's advice: "Never show your hand first." It was sound advice, but it also fostered an air of politeness and cold fairness, making her seem unapproachable and distant, shutting emotions out.

Rick, on the other hand, had a natural talent for making friends. He had "brothers" everywhere—north, south, east, and west. Gifts arrived weekly, and while he appreciated them, he wasn't particularly attached.

The Wilson Family wasn't extravagantly wealthy but was well-off enough to lack nothing. From childhood, Rick handed all his gifts to Rita to sort out. He only kept particularly valuable ones. Rita's pastime for a while had been categorizing his gifts into boxes: this box is from the grasslands, this one from the mountains, this one from the seaside, this one from the fields…

That particular box from the grasslands, she had already retrieved from the Wilson Family villa earlier that morning. It now sat in her game inventory, stacked among other storage boxes in the miscellaneous tab. She had no plans to let Rick hand it over to CooperLost.

---

Finding CooperLost's home didn't require any effort. He'd repeated the address to her countless times: "City X, District X, Village X, Building C3."

A truly unique graveyard.

After confirming the route on her map, Rita took Nivalis shopping, buying over a thousand pounds of fresh lamb meat with mobile payment. Once she found a secluded spot, she used disguise and illusion spells to mark Nivalis as a star, then flew directly to CooperLost's house.

Hovering above the location, Rita told Nivalis to wait in the air while she descended. Scanning the Fang family yard, she quickly spotted the peculiar dark-green stone CooperLost had described, sitting in a basket filled with walnuts on the stone table.

She didn't waste time marveling at her smooth operation. After a swift danger scan to rule out traps, she dropped down, grabbed the stone, and ascended again in one fluid motion. Enjoy exclusive content from My Virtual Library Empire

Nivalis didn't slack off either. The moment she sensed Rita flying back, she flapped her wings and bolted, warily scanning the surroundings as they escaped.

Her stance, her gait, her "thief's aura"—the more Rita watched, the more familiar it seemed.

Nivalis had once invited her to visit her dragon nest. Rita silently decided she would never go, no matter what.

If this universally protected creature and team mascot kept acting like this, Rita doubted she'd leave that nest alive.