This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

Rita looked down at the scattered materials at her feet and began returning each one to its place.

Then she placed every capsule she'd crafted in the last half hour into her display case and casually picked up one material to place into the Magician's Wisdom Tooth.

In an instant, she was ejected from the crafting space—and the material vanished without a trace. It hadn't been taken out with her.

Which meant that this run through the crafting space earned her absolutely nothing. No loot, no materials—zero gain.

With a snap, she flipped open the cylinder of Dull Game. The golden bullet had reappeared.

Denying her own greed was the quickest way to reactivate "Stupidity."

Of course, it only worked when "Stupidity" was the bullet fired while the gun was pointed at herself. That was the only way her ejection from the space would successfully trigger the bullet's reactivation.

If she fired "Stupidity" while aiming at a Renovated object, things would get a lot trickier.

But Rita had another idea.

The second most counter-instinctive act she could think of was... returning the Blocks she had earned from other players.

Without Dull Game, she would never in her life consider doing something like that.

She didn't have any time-stop skills left—both of her Owl Got Lost cards were on cooldown—so she couldn't return anything she'd stolen through stealth.

But the Blocks she'd won through fair competition? Those she could give back.

And so, with all eyes on her—players stunned and sharp-eyed—Rita picked up three Blocks and tossed them onto the game tile of a nearby player.

"Here. I'm returning these."

Even saying it made her heart bleed.

She thumped her chest. It hurt. No matter how many times she did it, giving back loot felt like ripping out a piece of her soul.

The player responded, livid: "Are you trying to insult me with this?!"

Rita's eyes lit up. She flipped open the cylinder of Dull Game—the golden bullet was there.

"Great," she said brightly. "Then give it back."

The player bent down silently, picked up the Blocks, and pocketed them. "I'll remember this! Just you wait!"

Rita muttered under her breath: "Maybe you could blow up some pity balloons for me while you're at it."

She pulled Dull Game back out, her words dripping with annoyance: "Tch, you're so much trouble."

But her tone carried laughter, and her face practically glowed with joy. She spun the revolver in her hand a few times before slipping it back into the capsule machine. Her gaze, her every motion, radiated affection.

"What a fascinating game," she murmured.

Breaking her instincts didn't frustrate her—instead, she began to sense the deeper philosophy hidden in the rules.

"If the choices you make by instinct define your fate..."

"Then choosing to defy those instincts—again and again—isn't that just playing with fate?"

The game field was still, and her low voice carried clearly.

Far ahead at the finish line, Stupidity stood like a statue. But it heard her words, and its gaze dropped to the ground.

It silently counted: five.

In less than an hour, she had triggered "Stupidity" five times.

When Dull Game had belonged to TingoAutumn Deer, his personal best was only three activations in a seventy-two-hour Divine Game.

And this was just Rita's first day with it.

No—technically, it was her fifth hour with the weapon.

To be fair, the difference wasn't entirely due to lack of skill on TingoAutumn Deer's part. He was a veteran player, with multiple ways to rewind time—three separate skills, to be exact.

To him, Dull Game had always been the most annoying of the bunch. If he hadn't sensed that it was special, he probably would have avoided using it entirely.

But for BS-Rita?

Aside from her half-hearted pseudo-rewind skill Stubborn Mule, Dull Game was the only real rewind ability she had.

Yet... understanding the reasons doesn't always erase anger. Or regret.

Stupidity could feel the joy emanating from the weapon.

[Gods & Devils Main Chat]

"She's pulled how many materials now? Should we be tweaking the rules?"

"She's entered the crafting space 68 times and extracted 3,701 materials."

"Yeah, it's too much. Otherwise she's going to go for round three."

"This isn't easy to adjust though."

"True, it's already restricted. She's only managing this because of her capsule machine."

"What if we cap crafting space entry at 10 times per game, after the initial build phase?"

"I'm in favor."

"Seconded."

"Let's vote."

"Vote! Vote!"

Rita, meanwhile, was using Wasteland Manual to organize her ever-growing pile of Blocks and materials.

There were nearly 4,000 of them now. They couldn't be stacked, and a capsule machine could only hold 1,000 at a time. She didn't trust leaving them all in the Magician's Wisdom Tooth, so she had to start sorting.

She loaded everything into the Game Addict's Console, slotting them into available game spaces.

[Massive Storage]: Each game slot can hold 999 different items. Each grid holds a single unit. Stacking not supported.

She had eight blank slots left—more than enough.

And since the console itself could be stored in the capsule machine, she didn't have to worry about losing it.

New materials and unused homemade capsules were packed neatly inside, freeing up space in the machine again.

Capsule Machine #1 now held all Divine Relics and unlocked divine artifacts, plus rare utility items like the console itself and Illegal Construction. Marked and unmarked pity balloons were stored there too.

This capsule machine was miniaturized and hidden inside her Block-body.

Retrieving it wasn't difficult. Her hand hovered over the marble-sized device, and a white capsule, no bigger than a grain of rice, popped into her palm.

As the owner, all she had to do was touch the capsule machine with her Block to extract any item she wanted.

Capsule Machine #2, the visible one strapped to her back, was her mobile inventory—filled with extra Blocks and miscellaneous item fragments.

Important tools she needed on hand—like Lonely Antenna Baby, Dull Game, and Where's the Owl Already—were stored here too.

Whenever another player wanted to play the gacha game, this was the one she opened.

After everything was sorted, Rita didn't end the time-stop immediately.

Instead, she took a break, wasting the rest of the duration in total calm before reentering the game field.

The moment she exited Wasteland Manual, before she could even check her buff updates, a familiar notification rang out:

[Anomalies detected. All "It's Not the Craft That Sucks" games across Month Theme Park are being rebalanced.]

[New Rule 1: Players are limited to a maximum of 10 crafting space entries per game.]

[New Rule 2: If a player runs out of professional items before reaching the finish line, they will randomly lose 3 game item Blocks and be ejected from the game.]

All players turned simultaneously to look at the "anomaly."

Anomaly: BS-Rita: ......

She felt completely stable, actually.

It was the Divine Game that was unstable.