The ball rolled a lazy circle around the rabbit-headed inspector’s feet and said airily:

“Oh come on~~ I think it’s impossible, you know, showing favoritism to players — what’s in it for any of us? Everyone is so tense~~ Favoritism toward players, that’s just not something that would happen~~”

“It would still be better to explain clearly.” The rabbit-headed inspector calmly swept the room with its gaze. “The functional items within the game were severely damaged following an attack, and some of the broken components were placed by a player into an item she possessed, thus creating a hazard to the game’s stability.

Therefore, I made a temporary correction: I cancelled that player’s reward and substituted the broken components she had taken away in its place, to prevent the imbalance from worsening further.

While this deviated from standard procedure, I believe that under emergency circumstances, such a remedial action constitutes a reasonable operation.”

“Right, right, I think that’s perfectly fine too~” The ball quickly chimed in, drifting along in lazy circles. “We can hardly have a player take away components and then give her a reward on top of it, can we? That would be even worse.”

The manga man frowned. “The rewards we prepare for players come with usage conditions and restrictions. But those functional items — even if only components — once they leave the game instance they originated from, no one can predict what impact they’ll have. That kind of hazard is far greater, and may even be irreparable! Why didn’t you simply recover those components?”

The rabbit-headed inspector gave a small laugh. “She put the components into her dollhouse. How was I supposed to retrieve them?”

It turned its gaze to the ball. “One of the dollhouse’s rules: no one may enter without the owner’s permission. That includes inspectors.”

The ball immediately leapt up and shouted, “So it’s MY fault?! — I said it from the start! My dollhouse hadn’t finished calibration! Hadn’t finished calibration! HADN’T FINISHED CALIBRATION! When the game triggered suddenly, I had absolutely no time to make adjustments!”

High-difficulty games had to be matched with rewards of a corresponding level — but rewards like that were very liable to disrupt game balance! Trying to account for every angle at once was genuinely difficult!

The ball tumbled to the ground in aggrieved protest, landing with a thud to demonstrate its indignation.

“If you want to blame someone, blame that thing! It was the one that gave away the gold coins!”

The ball grumbled and gestured at the grey-robed elder.

The grey robe’s mask was concealed beneath the hood of its cloak; hunched over, bent at the waist, it stood in motionless silence like an enormous mushroom.

Under the collective scrutiny of the inspectors, its back hunched even further; the body beneath the wide robes shrank smaller and smaller, becoming a wizened, gnarled little dried mushroom.

“A player has entered the game. I need to go…” the grey-robed elder said in a hoarse voice.

The ball bounced three meters into the air, its voice bright and clear: “You’re running from your responsibilities!!!”

“Running from… responsibilities?” The grey robe went still. The shrunken body beneath its robes began to swell, like a wind had gotten in under the clothes — puffing out dramatically.

“When I distributed the reward, the system did not penalize me!” it declared with emphatic force. “Since I committed no violation, why should I be held responsible?! The reward I distributed was matched to the game’s difficulty! Even without having finished calibration, in the system’s framework, the dollhouse meets the reward requirements!”

The ball: “Wow… the way you’re putting that is a little too…”

The words shameless never quite made it out before the rabbit-headed inspector smiled slightly. “Every time a selection progresses to the later stages, there will always be a handful of players who step out of line. This time, they’ve simply appeared a little earlier than usual. Everyone, there is no need to be overly concerned.”

“That’s true,” the ball murmured. “Players who stick their heads out too early usually tend to die early. I wonder which player will survive to the very end this time…”

“The doctor.” The puppet master’s voice came out with a clicking, mechanical quality.

“That one, huh…” the ball mused. “The probability is genuinely quite high.”

It asked the manga man: “What about you — who are you betting on?”

The manga man furrowed his brow slightly. “…Jefferson. Or the doctor.”

“And you?” the ball asked the rabbit-headed inspector.

The rabbit-headed inspector smiled. “I’m betting on Bai Youwei.”