After Rita restored her HP to full, she used Disguise to take on Zoey's appearance.
She did not expect such a crude frame-up to work, but it was still better than using her own face.
She put on a baseball cap to cover her swim cap, took out a heavy axe, then drank a Beginner Invisibility Potion.
Carefully, she crawled out from under the bed and walked to the bedside.
She had planned to chop off Sanchez's head, but stopped when she noticed the black metal collar around Sanchez's neck.
Sanchez had worn this collar in her previous life too.
There was an equipment slot at the neck. With Sanchez's ability, she could not possibly fail to get necklace-type gear. That left only one explanation. The collar was equipment, and likely high-grade.
Why hadn't Rita stolen it?
Even if it was not a collar, with only 7 Strength, Rita was not confident she could cut through such high-quality metal and Sanchez's neck in one swing.
She did not hesitate for long.
She aimed at Sanchez's right arm, jumped high, and brought the axe down with all her strength.
God of Assassins, huh?
The axe severed Sanchez's right forearm in an instant. The whole thing took less than a second.
Blood sprayed across Rita's face, revealing the eyes she had disguised as Zoey's.
They met Sanchez's terrified, hate-filled gaze.
In the next instant, Sanchez activated her skill and merged into the blood on the bed. Only a severed forearm remained.
That was exactly why Rita had given up on killing Sanchez after realizing she could not behead her with certainty.
She was too hard to kill.
Whether she turned into water, merged with water, or stayed in water, she would slowly recover HP. It was practically a bug.
Would fear make someone freeze? No. For someone with battle instincts, fear and pain only made them flee faster.
Not only that, several water cups sat in Sanchez's room. There were even bowls of water under the bed. Even if Rita stabbed her heart or stunned her first, Sanchez would still have a few seconds to escape.
Once a Divine Gift reached S-tier, none of them were weak.
Still, leaving behind one arm, and the right forearm at that, meant Rita did not lose out.
After the world became datafied, even severe wounds could heal through HP recovery. But missing body parts could not be created from nothing. If an arm or leg was severed, the limb had to be recovered and reattached before healing could work. Otherwise, the person remained disabled.
Sanchez had lost one forearm.
This was only interest.
Rita stored the severed limb in her game bag. Before the people outside could rush in, she put on the Chávez Glasses.
The Beginner Invisibility Potion was still on cooldown, so she exploited the system and drank an Intermediate Invisibility Potion instead. The two potions had separate cooldowns. The parts of her body made visible by blood vanished again.
She downed a Fade Potion and calmly passed through the wall, leaving the room.
Through the Chávez Glasses, she saw the information of everyone moving through the villa.
No players.
Even Sanchez's brothers were not players yet.
Most likely, they would only enter the game during the second beta with Sanchez's help.
Rita ran out of the manor before the Invisibility Potion expired.
With Agility as high as 18, she was faster than the fastest sprinters. She sprinted all the way. Before one Invisibility Potion ran out, she had already left the villa district.
She did not return to her own villa. Instead, she ran to the nearest lake while maintaining Zoey's appearance. She washed off the blood in the water, stripped off her clothes, burned them to ash by the lakeside, then shoveled the top layer of soil into the lake too.
After turning invisible again, she ran toward the city.
Sanchez's blood had touched her. Rita did not know whether Sanchez could sense anything through it.
Divine Gifts were too unreasonable. Some effects were not limited to what appeared on the skill panel.
Take Rita herself. Her initial Agility last life had been 5, but after gaining Thief God in this life, it was 11. Even without using a skill, she could brush past someone and steal their phone without being noticed. Her hands had also become extremely nimble and soft.
Those were all changes brought by the skill.
And the more she stole, the smoother using the skill felt.
Since [Water God] could control water, Rita did not dare gamble on whether Sanchez could sense her own blood.
Rita did not go home all day.
After Disguise expired, she wandered around with a hat, mask, and Chávez Glasses, once again becoming a street roamer. Wherever there were crowds, she went there.
When Disguise came off cooldown, she changed clothes and disguised herself as a man. Then she checked into a cheap hotel that did not require ID and took a shower.
In the end, she took an unlicensed car straight to the neighboring city.
On the way, her new manager called and said he wanted to discuss her upcoming work schedule.
Rita said she was traveling and told him to wait three days.
She was not sure whether she was outsmarting empty air, but she would not take the chance.
She would rather look like an idiot than return to her base after doing something bad. That was the instinct she had gained from years on the run.
More importantly, her Luck was now maxed. Sometimes, instinct was luck guiding her.
Facts proved Rita had made the right bet.
After Rita left, Sanchez switched forms. After drinking a Beginner Healing Potion, she was flown to the hospital by helicopter. This injury was beyond a family doctor.
On the helicopter, she kept sensing her own blood.
She could feel its presence leave the manor and stop by the lake. But her sensing range was too small. After the pain and bleeding in her arm were controlled, she took the helicopter and began chasing the scent of her own blood.
By the time Rita left Los Angeles, the White family had already traced the scent into the city.
The helicopter flew openly above the downtown area. With the White family's power, they did not need to apply for flight clearance.
But the traces were too messy.
Sanchez had gained her talent less than a week ago. Tracking it into the city was already her limit.
She gripped her wound so hard that it started bleeding again, yet it still could not suppress the agony in her heart.
Half of her right arm was gone.
She was crippled.
Sanchez's eyes turned red with hatred.
She remembered those eyes.
She would find her.
Definitely.
Rita did not stay idle in Aiken City. If her body had not been datafied, she would have worried about dying from exhaustion.
She had come to Aiken City for a famous item.
After the game invasion, some objects on Blue Star had a chance to mutate. She had even heard of a starch factory machine mutating into an S-tier item. It mass-produced starch sausages that gave plus 2 Strength for five minutes after eating.
Rita did not plan to touch something like that.
She was selfish and would not warn everyone about the invasion in advance. But items clearly more useful to the battlefield in official hands were not things she would take.
What she wanted was a cat bed from a pet hospital.
This cat bed had been there since the hospital opened. Any stray cat passing by could rest in it, and the doctors cleaned it regularly. Such a cat bed, rich with history, triggered mutation after the game invasion and became an S-tier item.
[Meow Meow Inn] (S-tier): Place it at your front door for a chance to attract stray animals. If an animal stays overnight and you host it sincerely, it will leave behind one of its recent favorite collections as thanks.
Although "one of its recent favorite collections" sounded vague, its S-tier rating made one thing clear.
The collection would not be ordinary trash like dead mice or stones.
In her previous life, that pet hospital rose rapidly because of this cat bed. But too many people came and went there, and the bed's existence had never been a secret. It was soon revealed by Insight.
Overnight, every person, cat, and dog in the pet hospital was wiped out. Even the hamsters were killed.
That was why she came early to take the cat bed.
She really still had a conscience.
Rita patted herself.
"You steal, rob, and like crawling under beds, but you're still such a good girl."
Fine. She admitted it.
Even if the pet hospital had not been wiped out because of this cat bed, she still wanted it.
She wanted it, so she would get it.
She had not been reborn to become a moral role model.
The cat bed was placed outside the pet hospital. Unless it was windy or raining, even after the hospital closed at night, the shabby gray cat bed stayed outside.
After nightfall, Rita used Disguise and carried over two luxury cat tents. She placed one on each side of the pet hospital entrance. Then she tucked the old cat bed under her arm and returned to her rented car.
She tossed the cat bed into the passenger seat, then moved the ten boxes of premium cat food she had brought to the hospital entrance. She attached an A4 sheet.
Please treat all nearby stray animals to a meal.
She opened ten cans on the spot and lined them up in front of the hospital.
The next day, she disguised herself as someone else and walked into the hospital to donate two million.
Her method was simple: force the trade through.
As she walked out of the hospital, she could still hear employees sighing that there had been so many kind people lately, but sadly, the old cat bed had disappeared. They had grown attached to it.
That was exactly what Rita feared.
She could have waited until after the game invasion to take the cat bed, but once people developed feelings for an item, and that item mutated into equipment or a prop, it became very easy for it to bind.
Once bound, only that person could use it. Even killing them would not unbind it.
After getting the cat bed, she bought materials for homemade bandages, then purchased ingredients needed for cooking recipes.
Then she returned to her small villa, planning to max out [First Aid] (Beginner) and [Cooking] (Beginner) over the next week. During the second beta, she could learn the intermediate versions directly.
On the morning Rita returned from Aiken City to Los Angeles, Zoey went to the Wilson family home again.
Apparently, she had been visiting almost every day recently.
When Rita was still in Aiken City, Scarlett had already urged her to come back, saying Zoey had asked about her.