This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 631 - : Divine Game – Chaotic Blocks22

Even though [Game Machine That Loves Games] had only one visible skill — and even that skill had incomplete data — the potential alone was worth the steep Block cost.

Stats were easy to come by. But top-tier relics and unique gear? Those were priceless.

More importantly, the price right now was actually low.

The two fragments Rita bought had been listed at 480gBlock and 490gBlock, likely underpriced due to the new Stamina system. Players were eager to convert items into currency, so prices had dipped a little. Nine-piece item fragments were valuable but notoriously hard to sell.

But that price drop was only temporary.

Very few players knew that incomplete item fragments could be freely pieced together into functional relics. And even fewer were willing to spend a massive number of Blocks on something they weren't sure they'd ever complete.

In fact, 99% of item fragments were eventually bought back by their original owners.

This was still the early stage of the game. Once players started racking up more in-game time and accumulating surplus Blocks — after setting aside money for game entries and food — their desire to collect would naturally follow.

And once that kicked in, these things would skyrocket in price.

Rita couldn't sit still. Once B8017913 finished examining the game machine, she took it back, removed a Block from her waist, and attached the console to her body — then reinserted the Block to hold it in place.

"Let's go play. You two are covering the tickets."

Nivalis wanted to help Rita complete this new artifact — after all, if she had asked to play, Rita definitely would've let her.

It was already 3:20 PM, and they hadn't done much. Another few minutes and it'd be time to pay the next round of amusement fees.

Rita led her two companions toward a game she'd already scouted earlier — bumper cars.

Each Divine Game attraction had its own complex rules, but they were all based loosely on their real-world equivalents:

Star pirate ship? A loot battle.

Claw machine? Literally grabbing things.

So naturally, she leaned toward rides she'd already played back in the BS system.

From the moment she saw bumper cars, she'd been planning to try it.

Nivalis could drive. And this game charged entry per car, not per player — so all three of them could ride together.

There were about 100 bumper cars in the arena, each seating one to three players.

The arena was large, but not massive. Big enough for everyone to drive creatively, even pull off a drift or two — but small enough that avoiding collisions was impossible. Dodge one car, crash into another. There just wasn't room to avoid everything, no matter how skilled you were.

Cars varied in size — scaled automatically to fit the largest passenger inside.

Speed varied slightly too. It might be tied to the car's size, or to kills — Rita noticed one car speed up a bit after KO'ing a player.

Other than that, no obvious patterns stood out. The cars chased and smashed into one another. Players flung skills back and forth.

Occasionally, a car would just… stall, like it glitched.

Overall? It looked like a game of driver skill and controlled chaos.

Nivalis began adjusting the shape and length of her claws and feet.

B8017913 was busy modifying its dagger — using some stick-shaped Blocks borrowed from Nivalis to turn it into a spear, more suitable for stabbing from inside the car.

Bumper car games ran 30 minutes per round, but each could fit at least 200 players. By the time Rita queued up, the current game was almost done. At exactly 3:40 PM, it was their turn.

Nivalis paid for the car, but they all wordlessly handed the ticket money to B8017913 to process.

The little gingerbread ticket vendor took their Blocks, yawned lazily, then raised its right hand in a loose fist — only the pinky stuck out, pointing toward a lone white bumper car at the 7 o'clock position.

Rita and Nivalis both turned toward B8017913.

B8017913 also paused, then confirmed:

"It's a good one."

They didn't know why yet — but they trusted the sign.

So they picked the car that the little gingerbread man had silently blessed.

Nivalis took the driver's seat. Rita sat shotgun. B8017913 squatted in the dip between the two seats, on the backrest ridge.

Nivalis: "You think your kind would scam us?"

B8017913: "Unlikely. V-series likes to deceive. L-series doesn't. That one's an L."

Rita was inspecting the bumper car. At first glance, nothing stood out — it even looked kind of… old.

Nivalis agreed. She asked the group chat:

"Is there anything special about this car?"

Rita: "Yeah, I was wondering the same."

Truth be told, even B8017913 was wondering.

B8017913: "What's special about this car?"

L3217: "Does being super old count?"

B8017913 glitched for a moment. It didn't understand. It had no beef with L3217. In fact, most mechanicals didn't really hold grudges at all.

"Why?"

L3217: "Your contractor, BS-Rita, broke the heart of my junior."

B8017913: "???"

L3217: "Ask her if she remembers L12767777."

B8017913 turned to look at Rita, who had been waiting patiently for an answer, and asked in the chat:

"Do you remember L12767777?"

The number sounded familiar. Was it this one?

Rita frowned, then immediately pouted in an aggrieved tone:

"Of course I remember! How could I forget?!"

The two of them stared at each other in silence for several long seconds.

B8017913: …Well, so much for arguing with L3217.

Nivalis: "What's going on? Did that mechanical have history with her?"

Nivalis had missed a lot during the Gem Miner game, when she'd been asleep recovering dragon blood from Hatred Thorns.

B8017913: "L3217 says BS-Rita broke their junior's heart."

Nivalis: "…Why am I not even slightly surprised?"

Rita: "What?! When did this happen?! I don't even remember doing anything!"

She did remember hugging that little robot, flying around with it. How was that… heartbreak?

…

L3217: "So? Does she remember?"

B8017913: "She remembers! How could she not?!"

L3217: "Actually, their number was L4327777."

B8017913: "......"

Awkward.

No wonder it couldn't find any record earlier.

It had assumed this was someone Rita met before contracting with it.

And now it just wanted to uninstall its emotion module.