Player’s Guide to Raising a BUG Angel-Chapter 41 : Players’ Wit! A Talent Show?

Chapter 41: Players’ Wit! A Talent Show?
“‘The wager is for you to set?’”
Ignis smiled.
It was a queenlike smile, full of delight and teasing play.
She had lived for millennia, and yet it was the first time she had seen such a “arrogant” creature.
An ant in her eyes that wasn’t even worthy of being an “appetizer” dared, in front of her, to say it would redefine the rules of the wager?
On any ordinary day, any being bold enough to so openly challenge her majesty would already have been reduced to charcoal.
But today, she felt not an ounce of anger.
Only an ever-deepening… interest.
How amusing!
This “specimen” was ten thousand times more interesting than she had imagined!
Not only did it possess a hard “shell” and a powerful “mind,” it also displayed such astonishing “guts”!
It was practically a perfect, one-of-a-kind work of art!
Ignis even found herself grateful that, after awakening, her first target had been this secluded corner. Otherwise she would have missed this “treasure” capable of stirring a heart that had been silent for a thousand years.
“Very well.”
To everyone’s surprise, Ignis nodded without hesitation.
She watched Mophis with keen interest, golden eyes flashing like a cat playing with a mouse.
“I’m curious—what does this interesting ‘little thing’ of yours want to wager with me?”
“Speak. I’m listening.”
She wanted to see what tricks this guardian, who dared to challenge her dignity, could possibly play.
Her calling the other a “little thing” once more set the players’ public channel ablaze.
“‘Little thing’! She called my wife ‘little thing’!”
“Ahhh, that tone of indulgence and teasing is illegal! My blood bar emptied!”
“The ship has sailed off the screen! I declare myself the leader of the ‘Dragon Concubine Faction’ from today!”
“Get lost! Our wife is the striker! She’s a holy deity reforming a fallen dragon! It should be the ‘Concubine-Dragon Faction’!”
“You CP stans, enough! This is the tense confrontation phase! Don’t you see wife is taking the initiative? This is turning the guest into the host! This is a battle of wits!”
“Ahhh… I feel so overwhelmed by how awesome this is, I think I’m healed.”
Mophis, of course, didn’t know what strange factional disputes the players were having.
She only knew that her earlier reckless “bold proclamation” had… worked!
The other had agreed!
She had successfully seized the initiative over whether there would be a wager.
But…
A new problem arose.
Wager on what?
She looked at Ignis’s playful, “let me see you perform” expression and felt her scalp tingle again.
She had only spoken out on a reckless impulse.
She had not thought through what exactly she would wager!
What to do? What to do?
Mophis screamed inside, while her face kept an inscrutable calm.
She slowly lowered the hand that had pointed at Ignis, then performed an action that surprised everyone.
She… closed her eyes.
Under the gaze of Ignis and tens of thousands of players, she stood quietly, as if lost in deep thought, as if communicating with some unknown presence.
Ignis’s brow tightened slightly, but she did not interrupt.
To her, this “little thing” must be conceiving an earth-shattering wager to prove its worth.
She was looking forward to it.
The players, meanwhile, were again dazzled by their wife’s theatrics.
“See that? This is called ‘using stillness to control motion’!”
“In absolute spotlight, closing one’s eyes to meditate—what confidence and composure!”
“Wife must be contemplating a philosophy that will upend the Dragon King’s worldview!”
But the truth was…
Mophis was frantically scanning, with the corner of her eye, the virtual forum screen that only she could see.
【Emergency help! Wife’s about to set a wager with the Dragon King! What can she bet to win?! Waiting online! Urgent!】
At the moment she had closed her eyes, she had anonymously posted that message at breakneck speed.
As soon as the post went up, hundreds and thousands of replies flooded in.
“Holy—did wife herself post this?”
“The sapiens logged on again. Wife is an NPC—how is she posting on the players’ forum?”
“Regardless, answer first! This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to strategize for wife! Maybe the devs are adjusting the plot in real time!”
“Bet on chess! Our wife is the Librarian; she’s learned—she’ll win!”
“Chess my foot! The dragon lived a thousand years and has seen every kind of game. You’re handing her a win!”
“Bet on riddles! Use our Blue Planet brainteasers; we can definitely stump her!”
“That’s sensible! Ask her, ‘What walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?’ She definitely can’t answer that!”
“You upstairs are an idiot. The Sphinx riddle is cliché in fantasy worlds! If you ask that, the Dragon King will be rolling on the floor laughing!”
Mophis watched these unreliable replies and felt her blood pressure spike.
These LSPs—how were they so useless at a critical moment?
Just as she was about to despair, a reply that had been upvoted to the top caught her attention.
Poster: 【LaceSupremacy】.
【Sisters, gentlemen! Don’t use mortal thinking to guess at a deity’s game! This wager isn’t about winning or losing—it’s about scale! About realm!】
【Dragon King Ignis represents ‘force’ and ‘greed.’ The value she understands is possession, plunder.】
【Our wife represents ‘beauty’ and ‘protection.’ The value she embodies is creation, influence.】
【So this wager cannot compare any concrete thing. We mustn’t compete with the Dragon King over who is stronger, richer, or smarter. Once we enter her logic, we’ve already lost.】
【What we must do is present to her something she has never seen—something that cannot be measured by ‘value.’】
【I propose—a talent show!】
“Pft—”
When Mophis saw the words “talent show,” she nearly spat blood.
A talent show?
You wanted her to perform a talent in front of a dragon that might eat her at any moment, and in front of tens of thousands of LSPs?
You might as well tell her to go die!
She was about to swipe past this preposterous suggestion without a second thought.
But then LaceSupremacy’s follow-up analysis made her pause.
【Don’t laugh! Hear me out!】
【What is our wife’s greatest ‘talent’? Her very existence! The beauty of her ‘divinity’!】
【We don’t need her to sing or dance. We only need to create a stage where she can quietly do what she loves most—say, read.】
【Imagine the scene: on a silent wasteland, to epic music, under sacred lights, our goddess softly recites a passage about ‘life’ and ‘beauty’ to an ancient dragon that knows only destruction and plunder.】
【What a dimensionality-smashing blow that would be!】
【This performance would show not skill but mood! Not technique but realm! Not scale but vision!】
【The Dragon King may not understand the poem’s content, but she will feel a kind of tranquility and beauty she never experienced.】
【By then, does win or lose even matter? When she is enveloped by a beauty she cannot comprehend but deeply yearns for, her so-called ‘bet’ will become a joke.】
【That, is true victory! Conquer ‘force’ completely with ‘beauty’!】
This “god-tier interpretation” left Mophis dumbfounded.
Although the idea sounded mortifying, …there seemed to be a sliver of reason to it.
Attack the opponent’s blind spot with something wholly outside her comprehension.
This… fit her programmer’s logic.
Moreover, this plan placed the least demand on her.
She only needed to… sit there and read.
The rest could be handled by those LSPs.
Feasible!
This was the only proposal so far that seemed remotely doable!
“Fine. Let it be so.”
Mophis made up her mind.
She slowly opened her eyes.
Those silver pupils, as if having wandered through the heavens, became clearer and deeper, carrying a calm that read all things.
She looked at Ignis and spoke slowly. Her voice was soft but clear enough for everyone to hear.
“‘My wager is simple.’”
“‘I will show you something.’”
“‘Something you have never seen, and can never ‘possess.’’”
“‘If, after seeing it, you still believe the ‘meal’ you speak of is more valuable—’”
“‘Then I and this library will be at your disposal.’”
“‘But if you find my “display” moves you…’”
Mophis paused, and the corner of her mouth lifted into a breathtaking curve that made even Ignis’s heart stir.
“‘Then from this day forward, you, Ignis, shall become the… guardian of my library.’”