[CONGRATULATIONS!

  Your party ‘Peijin’s World Dominion’ placed in second at the conclusion of ARC #2—DUNGEONS OF GREAT TURMOIL. You will be competing against ‘Major Arcana’ and ‘Bohemian Grove.’

  Your party will be marked with blue indicators. ‘Major Arcana’ will be marked with red indicators. ‘Bohemian Grove’ will be marked with yellow indicators.

  Please meet party leaders Song Ruoming and Owl outside the East exit of Platform 1 to briefly introduce yourself before the commencement of the Ascension Citadel. Arc #3 will begin in half an hour.]

  [Party Chat]

  Peijin: All of you get together. I’ll be meeting Song Ruoming and Owl for the next half hour. Take whatever elixirs you need to be healthy and well rested. I can cover the bill if needed.

  I scurried toward the meetup location, and I found Ruoming already there. He was standing tall, his hands folded neatly in front of him. He didn’t bother looking up at me when I arrived.

  “I hope you aren’t trying to tear my clothes off again,” Ruoming said flatly. The sleeve of his shirt was still missing.

  “W-What?!” I exclaimed, lifting a finger to point at him. “That’s because I was skeptical of you, so don’t make it sound so strange. I’m not some pervert or something, okay?”

  Ruoming lifted his head. Those pale, dead eyees seemed to stare right into my soul, and I froze. If there was just the tiniest sliver of warmth in them, I would’ve accused him of being Rui all over again.

  “Don’t stand in my way,” Ruoming said coldly.

  My nails dug into my fist in annoyance. Who did this guy think he was? To think I got so worked up seeing him earlier. Even with Feiyu being a patient saint, I couldn’t understand in the slightest how Feiyu could bear being in the same room as Ruoming for longer than five minutes.

  “Your knowledge won’t get you anywhere if you don’t have the skill to match it,” I shot back.

  Ruoming lowered his head and glared up at me. His platinum bangs fell over his eyes, but it couldn’t mask their intensity.

  Owl finally appeared, a pleasant smile on his face and his eyes squinted shut. “Ruoming. Peijin. I’m glad we’ll be the ones together in this arc. What a truly brilliant trio we have in the making.”

  I crossed my arms, fed up with Owl. “There’s no use in kissing my ass. I already decided I don’t like you, so piss off.”

  Owl’s eyes opened a sliver. “That attitude won’t get you very far with the gods, Peijin. I hope you can find the generosity in your heart.”

  I bristled at his words. “While you rely on getting votes, I’ll be relying on skill and strategy.”

  At that moment, Owl decided to ignore me. He turned toward Ruoming. “I think it’s safe to say that between the three of us, we all care deeply about our parties. So, even if we’re competing, how far are we going to be pushing the fight between one another?”

  Ruoming looked up, his expression giving away nothing. “I do not care about the lives of your party members. The only thing that matters is that I win.”

  Owl gave out a loud, overcompensating laugh. “Of course, of course. I would say the same. But there are women and children in both of our parties.”

  “So should I expect you to not stab me in the back when you get the chance?” I asked Owl.

  Owl merely responded with a light hum. “You can expect me to treat that young girl of yours kindly.”

  “Don’t you dare—”

  “There is no reason for any of us to kill incessantly,” Ruoming jutted in. “After all, we aren’t the enemy. But I have no plans on going lightly on any of you, and you should hold no expectations of surviving off of my mercy.”

  Ruoming the pushed past both of us, shoving each of us away with his shoulders. It was hard for me to fathom that a man with such a beautiful, delicate face was filled with an astounding amount of bitterness and resentment, as if he had already been worn down by decades of betrayal and cruelty.

  I looked up at Owl with venom, on edge ever since he mentioned Amelia in our conversation. “This is between Ruoming and me. You are leagues below both of us.”

  Owl tensed before letting out a sigh. “Don’t all three of us have the same advantage, Peijin?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, I think you know exactly what I mean. Ruoming, you, and I all possess the same knowledge about the future arcs. Isn’t it such a strange coincidence?” Owl asked, flashing me a large smile. “In fact, I think everybody in my party does.”

  That meant Owl had come to the same conclusion as I had about Ruoming, and Owl’s entire party was certifiably made up of people who read Surviving My First Run in some capacity. My theory was spot on.

  Good thing I was such a massive bitch before. Most people dropped Surviving My First Run because of my poor attitude, which meant that their knowledge was incredibly limited.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The gods’ perception of me was one of my biggest advantages. Marketing myself as the god of fate and fortune was half of my success, and if Owl started threatening that or revealed the truth about Surviving My First Run, it would be a massive hit to my reputation.

  But, it must have also been a large part of Owl’s success.

  I took a step closer to Owl, tilting my head up to face him. “Oh yeah? How about you spell it out for me, then? I’m not quite following.”

  Owl stared at me for a moment before he let out a single, uncomfortable laugh. “We’ll see how this arc plays out.”

  At that, Owl turned around, leaving me alone at the exit. I waited until he was fully out of my sight before I kicked the wall furiously, watching it crumble apart with a loud boom. These people games were really getting on my nerves.

  [Divinity Supreme Commander of the Heavenly Hosts says not to let this get to Disciple Peijin.]

  [Divinity Supreme Commander of the Heavenly Hosts says Disciple Peijin has extremely bad luck, but her grit makes up for it!]

  That didn’t exactly make me feel better, but I knew Archangel Michael was only trying his best.

  I clapped my hands together in front of me. “Thanks, Archangel Michael. I sure hope you’re right.”

  [Divinity Supreme Commander of the Heavenly Hosts enthusiastically stands up from his desk and begins cheering before Divinity Great Sage Equaling Heaven slams his fist down on the table in annoyance.]

  [Divinity Supreme Commander of the Heavenly Hosts slumps back down in his seat and whispers his cheers.]

  [Party Chat]

  Yang: It looks like Owl and Ruoming returned. We’re standing outside the JA line if you want to join us.

  Not wanting to waste any more of my valuable messages, I didn’t bother responding, but I quickly made my way over. When I finally spotted them, I gave a big wave, not waiting before I instantly started spewing orders at them.

  “Since voting and popularity is a pretty big factor in this next arc, I want Yang, Wei, and Amelia to focus on getting the observers and gods on our side. You three are less divisive than Yue and I. On the other hand, all of us need to focus on conquering the citadel.

  “Are you going to go for the throne?” Wei asked. “I can guard you along the way from the other parties.”

  “None of us should sit on the throne,” I said firmly to his surprise.

  In Surviving My First Run, Feiyu had discovered that whoever sat on the throne would in fact gain incredible power over disciples in their respective country, but that power came at a crippling expense.

  The throne was the pet of an outer god. Thus, whoever sat on it would indirectly also come under the control of the outer gods, and their life expecntacy would be reduced to a mere five additional years after sitting on the throne.

  So instead, Feiyu destroyed the throne. However, the murder of a beloved pet did not go unnoticed, and Feiyu would have to survive the targeted hatred of outer gods for the rest of Surviving My First Run.

  But, if both Ruoming and Owl were readers of Surviving My First Run, it was too easy for them to avoid the consequence of sitting on the throne. Instead, one of their parties would destroy the throne first, and then deal with the wrath later on with similar methods that Feiyu had used.

  So, I had to create a brand new plan. That was nothing for a writer like me. Unlike Yang’s dungeon room, I had fully fleshed out the concept of citadels late into Surviving My First Run, and this arc gave me a distinct knowledge advantage.

  “If we sit on the throne, Karma mandates that we need to give something up in exchange for that overwhelerming power, which means there will be some caveat to sitting on the throne. However, if we destroy the throne, we’ll piss off the system again.”

  I twirled Zhige in my hand until it was comfortably pointed right at the ground. I dug the blade into the concrete floor and began to create a diagram.

  “This line represents the floor. This structure here is the citadel. It has multiple floors, and the top one will contain the throne. The other parties are going to work their way all the way up, until they either sit on the throne or destroy it,” I said, tapping Zhige at the very top of the diagram.

  “However,” I continued, now drawing a structure beneath the line representing the ground. “The citadel must be getting power from somewhere, right? The theoretical ‘heart’ of the citadel will be located beneath it. It keeps the citadel, the monsters inside, blah blah blah alive. The most important thing is that it controls the throne, too. If we can ‘turn off’ the citadel by destroying the heart, then we can win the arc without having to kill the throne and piss everyone off again.

  “The way we access the heart is through nodes. Of course, the citadel is doing its best to guard its heart. There are nodes hidden all throughout the citadel, and if we can take control of them, then we’re able to control the citadel’s size, danger, etc. Most importantly, once we collect all the nodes, it’ll form the heart, which we can reveal beneath the citadel.”

  I let out an exhausted sigh the moment I finished running through all of that. “All that making senese?” I asked.

  “Wow,” Wei said, staring at the diagram before looking up at me with a wide grin. “We’ve got a really good chance, huh? Do you think anyone else knows about the heart and nodes?”

  “Nope. That’s from my magical god powers,” I said cockily, nodding my head vigorously.

  Wei pointed at the top where the throne was. “We should still find the throne room, right? In case there are nodes up there.”

  “Yes. It’ll be a good distraction, too, since the other parties are going to think that we’re also trying to sit on the throne. They might have figured out that they shouldn’t sit on the throne, but that doesn’t change any of our plans.”

  “How much should we factor in the observers and gods?” Yang asked, his head tilted slightly. “If we’re going through this alternative path, then we won’t be going head-to-head much with the other parties. In that case, the buffs or debuffs won’t have a big impact on us.”

  “That’s the one variable I’m not sure about yet. We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out once we get into the citadel.”

  Yue nodded, her brow furrowed in concentration as she stared intently at the map, like her small brain was struggling to absorb all the information. “Are our opponents ghosts or demons? I want to know how to make Magician’s Hand more effective.”

  “Could be both. I trust you can go off of vibes once we get there.”

  “I could also make it look like you exploded or something in there. You know. Just to throw off the other parties.”

  “That’s really twisted, but whatever. Are we all on the same page?”

  I checked the arc status and saw there were only a few seconds until the arc would begin. I looked around to make sure they all nodded, especially Amelia, who I was worried might not have caught every detail. I flashed them the biggest smile I could.

  “Then let’s win this.”