This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

Of course, she thought, what couple wouldn't have their private chat in the bedroom?

Rick and Zoey took their sweet time settling down on the bed, legs touching, as Rita lay beneath it, her mind clear and focused. Time to steal!

She executed four consecutive thefts, dropping her health to 16%.

On the bed, the couple's faces turned slightly yellowish, while under the bed, Rita's face had turned ghostly pale, as if she'd been dead for three days.

She downed a healing potion in small sips, fearing the noise might be too loud, restoring her health to 76%.

She kept munching on her dried meat.

Another three attempts.

Rita could barely keep from grinning. She knew it—she must have used up all her luck when she rolled for her divine talent in the game. She had to steal hundreds of times in the game to succeed a few times. But today? She hadn't stolen that many times and had already snagged 2 points of Luck! And now, she'd stolen an item too.

**[Chávez Set: Mask (1/3)] (A-Class):** Upon use, this mask disguises your character panel information. As long as the mask remains in your inventory, it will remain effective. If the mask is removed, the disguise fails. (Cannot be detected by items below A-Class. Note: Each additional piece of the Chávez set increases the concealment level by 1.)

Seeing this item brought Rita immense joy, even more than when she had stolen Luck.

Items and equipment were different. Items had all sorts of effects—some worked simply by being in your inventory, others needed to be equipped, and some required unusual conditions to activate. But they didn't take up equipment slots, and some could even stack with equipment.

After the initial excitement, a wave of caution washed over her. This was a set item. If there was a mask that could disguise her character panel, was there also something like Chávez's Eye or glasses that could reveal it?

Rita calmed her breathing, waiting for the cooldown on her healing potion to finish.

Thankfully, it was broad daylight, and the couple only exchanged kisses without doing anything more. Otherwise, she might have dug through the floor.

Maybe a person's luck is constant throughout the day.

After stealing 2 points of Luck and obtaining an A-Class item, Rita spent an hour lying under the bed, replenishing her health with potions and dried meat, stealing whenever her health was full again.

In that moment, she truly understood what it meant to "love stealing as much as life itself."

Finally, she managed to steal 1 point of Charisma.

Rita wasn't disappointed. Charisma and Luck were attributes that couldn't be boosted with attribute points. The rarer, the better.

She continued stealing until the couple finally left the room. Not long after, the whole family went out, probably for dinner. She didn't know if they'd tried calling her, but she had turned off her phone and stashed it in her game inventory—she'd just act like she was unaware.

When Rita crawled out from under the bed, pale-faced and disheveled, she reckoned she could scare Scarlett to death if her heart wasn't strong enough.

Her health was down to 16%, and she was reluctant to use another potion.

She had spent the entire day stealing from Zoey, consuming more than twenty basic healing potions and finishing off the 20 pounds of dried meat in her inventory. She felt like her face had grown a size bigger.

Rita returned to her room and slept until the happy family of three came back. When she awoke and saw that her **[Disguise!]** skill was ready, she first disguised herself as the burly man from earlier, changed clothes, then drank an invisibility potion before leaving her room, heading downstairs and out of the house.

She left the door slightly ajar to avoid making too much noise, figuring they'd notice it eventually.

After walking down the stairs to the second floor, the invisibility potion wore off, but her disguise remained intact. Rita calmly carried her toolbox out of the complex.

...

Before leaving the neighborhood, Rita used the Chávez Mask to alter her character panel information.

Her real data was:

**[Character] Rita (Level 0, 0.001%)**

**[Divine Talent] Thief God (S-Class)**

**[Divine Talent] Immortal (SS-Class) (Incomplete)**

**[Race] Human**

**[Racial Talent] Undead Will┃Feast**

**[Health] 100/100**

**[Mana] 100/100**

**[Strength] 5**

**[Constitution] 7**

**[Intelligence] 10**

**[Agility] 12**

**[Luck] 10 (Max Value)**

**[Charisma] 10 (Max Value)**

**[Available Attribute Points] 0**

She couldn't be sure whether others could see the specific skills within her talents, but she decided to make some adjustments anyway.

Her disguised character panel now read:

**[Character] Rita (Level 0, 0.001%)**

**[Divine Talent] Broker (A-Class)**

**[Race] Human**

**[Racial Talent] Undead Will┃Feast**

**[Health] 100/100**

**[Mana] 100/100**

**[Strength] 5**

**[Constitution] 7**

**[Intelligence] 7**

**[Agility] 7**

**[Luck] 5**

**[Charisma] 9**

**[Available Attribute Points] 0**

The attributes became much more average, but she didn't alter Charisma too drastically. Looking back, she realized that even when she disguised herself as a beggar during her time on the run, she seemed to receive more money than others. A person's charm was hard to hide! A charismatic person would attract attention no matter where they went.

So, she decided not to make Charisma too low. For now, she disguised her talent as **[Broker]**, an A-Class talent that was good but not alarming.

If the Thief God talent were ever revealed, she would become the enemy of all players. No one would tolerate someone who could steal their attributes.

Later, when she obtained a more suitable divine talent through **[Death Mimicry]**, she would modify her panel again.

She placed the mask deep in one of her storage boxes. This would be her most precious item for a long time.

...

On her way home, Rita kept mentally reviewing whether she had left any loose ends, thinking back to every detail since the day she was reborn on the 22nd.

The time of her rebirth was so close to the game's beta test that she hadn't had time to plan or scheme. Just getting home in time had been difficult enough. What if Rick discovered the significance of the game? Would he resent her?

Rita didn't care about Rick's resentment, but it would affect her ability to continue hiding within the protagonists' camp. Many opportunities could only be discovered by the main characters. Even if she couldn't sabotage them outright, she could at least stay close, drink some of the soup, and lull them into a false sense of security.

In her previous life, during the first two years of the game's invasion, Rick occasionally took her to secret realms and dungeons fully controlled by the Lopez, Taylor, and White families. She had genuinely obtained many good items through Rick. Even though she now knew the locations of those dungeons, and could use potions and skills to sneak in, many valuable items couldn't be obtained solo.

Especially the bosses that required dozens or even hundreds of people to take down...

She had to think... think about how Samuel and Rick had gained her trust over the years.

Yes, every time they gained something from her, they would give a little back, like buying her a 30-million-yuan villa with the money she had given the family. Or after discovering the dungeon in the villa she had given Rick, he had taken her there, claiming that the White family had taken control of it and that he had only managed to secure visitation rights, allowing him to take her occasionally.

Even when the Lopez, Taylor, and White families were hunting her, Rick had risked his life several times to tip her off, helping her avoid minor crises.

Each time she avoided danger thanks to Rick's warnings, her trust in him deepened.

But now, thinking back, she realized that she had come close to death every time she narrowly escaped a minor crisis...

So what about her? Should she give Rick a little taste, some bait? If she wanted to participate in the Lopez family's large-scale operations after the game's invasion, gain their trust, and cause trouble from within, she would need Rick's help.

There were still two more beta tests. This was the perfect opportunity to tell Rick the secret, then secretly sabotage him. By only saying a few words, she could earn his maximum trust while ensuring he gained nothing.

But would this risk Rick turning the tables on her?

She knew the safest course of action was to kill Rick immediately, but she couldn't bear it!

She used to laugh at protagonists in novels who didn't immediately kill their enemies after being reborn. But now that she was in that position, she understood—one clean cut wasn't enough. The raging hatred in her heart couldn't be quenched just by killing Rick!

Sometimes, a quick death was a mercy to one's enemies.

She could leave Amelia to sink in her pit of despair for now, but Rick was different.

She didn't want to

look ahead; she wanted to look down. She wanted to trample Rick beneath her feet, making him see nothing but her soles, watching him suffer until her hatred was satisfied!

And then there were his three women and those five idiot brothers!

Rick could die, but she would hunt down each and every one of them!

More importantly, killing Rick was easy, but she couldn't fight the Lopez, Taylor, and White families alone. The best way was to infiltrate them and make them tear each other apart.

But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that letting Rick participate in the beta tests was too risky.

There had to be a way... Rita closed her eyes, trying to recall every skill, item, piece of equipment, and potion she had ever known.