After returning from Lania Kaia, Rita threw herself back into work.
She knew she would have to enter the next Divine Game again. The wager stated clearly—"win first place in the next three Divine Games." Technically, she could wait until the moment before losing her game eligibility to join again, but she wasn't going to play word games with fate. She couldn't afford that kind of gamble.
Nivalis hadn't come out of the gaming console since the last visit to Dragon Island—either she knew her mother had beaten Rita or she was just lost in a gaming trance. Rita didn't bother to ask which.
The shadow she summoned through Shadow Control had taken over her game console duties—grinding in the "Defend the Capsule" minigame twenty-four hours a day. The goal was to log five hundred hours to unlock a random skill or in-game item, all while secretly collecting combat data from other players.
