"Falling Starry Sky."

The instant she named the painting, a storm of You Are Being Watched prompts exploded in her mind.

But it still was not over.

Rita glanced at the remaining time for the first phase of the game.

Eighteen minutes.

More than enough.

What came next would not be any easier than the painting itself.

She took out a glass of Wrong Season, but halfway through raising it she suddenly thought of something better. Her gaze shifted to Cat's Ideal, which had crawled out on its own as soon as she started painting.

"Can you move on your own," she asked, "use your skills without me controlling you?"

The helm rocked from side to side.

"No."

Rita tried again. "Then can I summon my vice captain?"

The helm nodded.

"That you can."

"I remember Calico saying that as long as it has my authorization, it can use your skills. Tell her she has my permission to use Absolute Freedom a few times. Can she go to the River of Time and scoop me a cup of river water? It does not need to be much."

She had stayed on the River of Time for a full year. Of course she had tried to touch the water.

The river was special.

Once removed from its current, no matter how you tried to store it, the water would last only six minutes.

After six minutes, it would turn into star-smoke and dissipate.

Ash Cinders had tried countless methods and failed all the same.

Golden patterns lit up along the rim of the helm.

Half a minute later, it began to turn slowly.

Rita forced herself to be patient.

While she waited, she kept rehearsing the rule patterns she wanted to draw.

Another five minutes passed before the helm spun sharply.

Deep-blue waves surged out in a spiral from its center, growing quickly.

Calico leaped out of the vortex, bib tied neatly at her neck.

She landed, reached a paw into the new bib Rita had bought her, and rummaged around.

Then she pulled out a glass jar filled to the brim with river water and held it up.

"For you."

Rita could not help liking Calico's crisp efficiency.

She realized all her pets were like this.

No matter how they acted day to day, the moment something truly mattered, they followed her orders without complaint or nonsense.

She took the jar with a soft word of thanks, then dove into the final step.

She would use the River of Time's waters to trace rule-etched sigils across the painting.

Even after studying under Deceitful Bloom and the Drummer for thirty Starsea years, she was still a long way from being able to create a capsule machine on her own.

But she had learned plenty of ways to bend rules.

Even if she could not grant the Player Relic an extra skill, just weaving a "rule-ignoring" sigil into it would raise its quality.

As the river water touched the surface of the painting, soft violet star-smoke began to rise wherever it passed, glittering faintly.

Twelve minutes.

Ten minutes.

Eight.

Seven.

Rita did not even have time to wipe the sweat from her brow and neck.

She raced the clock, and at the exact moment the river water vanished, she pulled her brush across the canvas and completed the last stroke of the sigil.

She dropped the brush and the jar.

Golden motes descended from above and drifted toward the lower right corner of the painting.

In midair, the motes braided themselves into BS' sigil, the very rune that always shone in a foreign sky whenever she descended into another world.

The rune's golden power fell gently onto the painting.

And behind BS' symbol, the light poured down and wrapped around Rita herself.

Only then was the work truly finished.

The painting began to glow with the aura unique to gear and relics, but its details remained a mess of unreadable characters.

This was the best end product Rita was capable of creating.

She still had no idea why this game was called Player Relic or why players were being told to craft their own "relic" at all.

But she thought, if she were to die here and now, if she were allowed to leave only one item to prove she had existed, it would be this painting.

She knew it clearly.

Even if she ate another Dustfire-tier dish, even if she used Talent Perception one more time, she would not be able to recreate this piece.

Every time her hand faltered, every time her skill failed to keep up with what she saw in her heart, it felt like an invisible hand reached out from the void, gently closing over the one holding the brush.

A prompt appeared in her mind, urging her to store the skills she had chosen before the Player Relic's shape stabilized completely.

Rita lifted a slightly trembling hand toward the light spilling from the painting.

Warning.

Skills stored within the Player Relic will be removed from the player's skill list.

If the Player Relic is lost, those skills will be permanently lost as well.

Her hand paused.

The rule made her fully grasp just how cruel this Divine Game really was.

The skills you sealed in had to match your nature, give the proxy enough to win, and still be something you could afford to lose.

But her hesitation lasted only a heartbeat.

Then she followed the plan she had decided on from the very beginning.

There was no retreat.

Unchanged Fate.

Sin of Arrogance.

Mystic Force.

Romantic Tourist.

Lightchaser Moment.

Her stubbornness and pride.

Her caution and restraint.

And the legacies of teachers with wildly different tempers and philosophies.

Taken together, these skills were enough to summarize her life since rebirth.

More importantly, they were complete.

Defense, mobility, offense—everything she needed was there.

Lightchaser would open the way, and the proxy would follow in the beam.

As soon as all five skills sank into the painting, Cat's Ideal and Wrathful Moon lit up at the same time.

The helm's golden patterns, the lantern's caged moon—they poured sun and moonlight across the entire canvas.

For a fleeting moment, every figure in the painting seemed to blink.

Then the light faded, and the Player Relic was done.

But it refused the name Rita had given it.

Instead, a new name surfaced.

Aria of the Setting Sun.

If Falling Starry Sky was the name Rita herself had given the work, then Aria of the Setting Sun felt like a title chosen by the subjects of the painting after they awakened—

all of them, together.

And the Player Relic itself chose that one.

[Aria of the Setting Sun] (???)

"They rose and fell in your sky, day after day.

You treated each sunrise and sunset as a brief aria along your path.

You hurried past them, always moving forward.

But after you left, some of those songs were set on single repeat, looping again and again."

Skill 1: Unchanged Fate.

Skill 2: Sin of Arrogance.

Skill 3: Mystic Force.

Skill 4: Romantic Tourist.

Skill 5: Lightchaser Moment.

And one more—

Skill 6: On Repeat.

[On Repeat] (???): When you use this skill, you may ignore all rules and temporarily turn any skill into a zero-cost passive. Each activation randomly consumes 2 attribute points. The effect lasts 12 hours. Cooldown: 1 Starsea day.

Rita finished reading the description and suddenly did not want to submit it to the game at all.

Even better, when she rolled the canvas up, it transformed on its own into a gemstone ring.

A shadow would occasionally flicker through the gem, like something alive looking back at her.

She slid the ring onto her left hand, where it would not interfere with combat.

Above her, the voice of the Divine Game announced the end of the first phase.

"Any player who has failed to complete a Player Relic will be deemed to have failed this game."

"Phase Two, begin.

Remaining players, proceed to the various trading zones to search for your game agents and sign a temporary agent contract with them."

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