This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist-Chapter 538 - : Divine Game: Chaotic Restaurant 58

With just 2 minutes left until closing time, Rita noticed that players in the battle chat were speculating whether time had stopped just now.

She immediately checked her skill icons and the contents of her inventory, relieved to find nothing missing.

After finishing her last drink, which restored her health, she checked the random teleportation rabbit fur in the corner of her bag once more, and then began waiting for the opening time.

Rita glanced at the two rabbit customers from restaurant 232. The rabbit customers from restaurant 234 had already left, but the two from 232 had been sitting in the neighboring restaurant since the closing time. They hadn’t changed restaurants to play, nor had they, like Rabbit 4, tried to get a job in another restaurant.

From their behavior, it didn’t seem like they were there for a particular player in the neighboring restaurant. They hadn’t interacted much with the others toward the end.

Rita analyzed the information she could gather.

Rabbit 4 hopped up onto her boot and stepped around. When Rita looked at it, Rabbit 4 asked, "You seem a bit nervous."

Rita responded, "I’m fine."

It wasn’t so much nervousness as exhaustion. After attending 9 classes, she hadn’t had a break for 18 star-sea years, and considering the amount of time she had spent earlier in Octopus Bucket’s space, even though she had eaten fatigue-relieving food, mentally, she hadn’t stopped thinking or learning.

Just as she finished speaking, the rule scroll at the entrance began to crumble into dust inch by inch. At the same time, a new notification came in.

[Closing Time Ended.]

[Restaurants ranked in the top 1000 for revenue during closing hours will be rewarded with one opportunity to adjust one skill icon.]

[The food street will reopen in 10 minutes and will be welcoming a large number of cosmic customers.]

[Business hours: 07:10 AM - 07:00 PM.]

[The food street has detected a large number of black-market players and unsatisfactory revenue from yesterday. A special event "Food Street Reform: Culinary Adventure" has been activated.]

["Culinary Adventure": Every hour on the dot, there will be an elimination.]

[Current number of restaurants on the food street: 12,745.]

["Chef": Players with a culinary rating below 7999 will be forcibly killed by the game.]

["Cleanliness": Players with a cleanliness rating below 7999 will be forcibly killed by the game. Killing any player/customer/event gift pack increases cleanliness by 1000.]

["Cashier": Players with a cashier ranking below 7999 will be forcibly killed by the game.]

["Stock Clerk": Players with a stock ranking below 7999 will be forcibly killed by the game. If a player is made into ingredients and transported back to the restaurant, the goods’ value increases by 10%.]

[Employees within the food street cannot attack each other.]

[When an employee is killed, their position marker will randomly drop somewhere on the food street. It can be picked up by anyone, and the picker will immediately be able to assume that position.]

[Players without a position marker will become black-market players, unable to enter restaurants, and can be killed by any player.]

[If a black-market player is not picked up within 2 hours, they will randomly lose 3 of the most recently used skills from the past star-sea month and be sent to the Dark Food Street.]

[Surprise Blind Box: Among the cosmic customers, 1000 Inspectors are hidden. If your restaurant fails to meet their standards, all employees in the restaurant will be forcibly killed by the game.]

[Surprise Egg 1: Every round of elimination will randomly select 800 lucky employees from the top 8000 employees in each position list to forcibly kill. This elimination has a 30% chance of awarding an intermediate gift box and a 70% chance of randomly losing a skill icon.]

[Surprise Egg 2: Every round of elimination will randomly select 10 lucky employees from the top 1000 employees in each position list to forcibly kill. This elimination has a 10% chance of awarding a high-level gift box and a 90% chance of randomly losing a skill icon.]

[If no skill icon can be lost, one of the most recently used skills from that employee will be randomly lost.]

(Surprise Egg 2 has a higher priority than Surprise Egg 1.)

(Random selection is not affected by luck or luck-based skills.)

The game mode for the next day sounded long, but it was quite simple when summed up: die, die, and die again.

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Rita read through the rules, and all that echoed in her mind were four words: "Forced kills."

Especially with the last two surprise eggs, when they were announced, every restaurant in the food street erupted in curses.

Different languages, different voices, but the commonality was their brevity and sharpness. Since they all rang out at the same time, it gave a peculiar sense of synchronicity.

"Die once you hit 7999, and if you’re in the top 7999, you’ll still face the surprise eggs."

"Every list draws 800 lucky players, so no position is safe. Everyone has a 10% chance of being killed."

The fact that there was a priority on the draws meant that if you were in the top 1000, you’d first be drawn for Surprise Egg 2. If that 1% chance didn’t hit, you’d be drawn again for Surprise Egg 1…

Plus, this elimination event would happen 12 times. The chances of getting hit by a surprise egg were not low.

Once hit, you could lose a skill icon, and if all your icons were gone, you would start losing your recently used skills.

Becoming a black-market player wasn’t even safe. Even though the Dark Food Street was still a mystery, losing 3 recent skills from not getting a job would be suffocating.

The random loss of recently used skills made Rita suspect the game mechanics were simply copying her previous Ancient Curse!

Naturally, Rita cursed as well. But after venting, she quickly began adjusting her skill icons.

Thanks to the two rabbit customers, restaurant 233 was ranked in the top 1000 for revenue.

Though she had confidence in her cooking skills, with both Surprise Blind Box and Surprise Eggs in play, she couldn’t be 100% sure that she wouldn’t die in this round.

Currently, she had 10 skill icons on her arm: [Bedtime Tale] [I Just Want to Improve So Badly] [Mysterious Power] [Fourfold Spring] [Dandelion Wind] [Match-3] [Behind the Scenes] [Snap, Lock] [Spring Scenery & Flowers] [Signal Issues].

Though many of these were high-tier skills, at this moment, she realized what she couldn’t afford to lose.

She hesitated between [I Just Want to Improve So Badly] and [Mysterious Power]. Both were life-or-death skills for her, and losing either would break her.

She knew her situation was much better than many other players who didn’t unlock as many skill icons at the start and didn’t get new ones later. If they were hit by the surprise eggs, the loss of critical skills was highly likely.

She crouched down, running her fingers through her disheveled medium-length hair, and when she looked up to rub her face and clear her mind, she noticed Marmang-Crab and Octopus Bucket had also crouched down.

Marmang-Crab was lying on the ground with his pincers clutching his head, and Octopus Bucket had four of his tentacles pressed against his head.

For a moment, it seemed like everyone was suffering from a headache.