This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

After stealing from Ezra, Rita decided to investigate the leveling group. She was genuinely curious about how Samuel and Scarlett got involved with the White family. Using her connection as Rick's sister, she quickly found the location. The instance mirror was situated in a residential area, though Rita didn't know who owned it.

It was lunchtime, and from a distance, Rita spotted Samuel and Scarlett sitting outside the instance mirror, having lunch and chatting with two elderly folks. Thanks to her sharp hearing, she could clearly hear Samuel's voice calling one of them "Brother Liang," a clear indication that they were connected to the White family.

After some investigation, Rita discovered the truth. This leveling group was a joint venture between several powerful forces in Los Angeles, a form of alternative socializing. Even though there were conflicts between the Lopez and White families, it didn't matter—there were plenty of conflicts between the various factions involved, yet they still participated in this leveling group.

In private, they would still fight if necessary.

Josephine's Divine Gift was no secret in their wealthy circles. He wasn't short on partners. People would lose attribute points after sleeping with him a few times, but no one was stupid. They noticed something was wrong. However, Josephine wouldn't go around killing everyone he slept with, right? He could, but it wasn't necessary—why create such a big liability?

His sister's temper got her in trouble back then when she killed Sanchez's father, forcing her to hide overseas even now. So, Josephine stuck to voluntary encounters, compensating his partners afterward with a few items in exchange for an attribute point or two. Both sides were satisfied. After all, this was the kind of thing that would eventually leak, so he never bothered hiding it too deeply.

Instead of letting it become a liability, he was upfront about it.

That being said, this was only known to a small circle. Josephine wasn't bothered if people found out, but he wasn't going to broadcast it either.

Sanchez, after becoming enemies with Zoey, came up with a sinister plan: she proposed that Josephine marry Rita. Once he drained Rita of her attribute points, they could make her use the **Wheel of Fate** skill to deal the final blow to monsters and gather loot.

This way, she could be exploited for the White family's benefit, and they could hurt Rick in the process, as it was rumored that he was very close to his sister.

Josephine didn't care either way. When he saw Rita's profile on the ranking board and noticed she was quite beautiful, he agreed to the plan.

Of course, Rita didn't uncover Sanchez's scheming—she only learned that Josephine's situation wasn't exactly a secret. However, she didn't plan to repeat the strategy she had used against Zoey by making White family elders die at Samuel's hands. One coincidence might be dismissed as an accident, but two would seem deliberate to suspicious minds.

Besides, a direct confrontation between the Wilson and White families could easily affect her, and she preferred staying hidden in the background. It was a pity the Taylor family hadn't arrived yet; otherwise, she could have shifted the blame onto them.

She came up with an excuse to have dinner with Rick and then used the **"Hey? Friend, look, there's a pot here"** skill on him. Once it succeeded, she noticed that next to Rick's ID, a new metric appeared—**Trust Score: 89**.

A trust score below 60 meant the skill couldn't be used on the target, but Rick's trust in her was a whopping 89.

Rita felt gratified. All her "kindness" toward Rick hadn't been in vain.

Whatever negative feelings Samuel and the White family had toward her, they could take it out on Rick instead.

Additionally, she paid someone unrelated to send a message to Samuel and Scarlett, informing them about Rick's disease. Given their selfish and self-preserving personalities, any hint of disgust toward Rick would likely trigger Rick's ruthless nature to teach them a lesson.

Lastly, she anonymously put the White family's statue up for auction at a starting price of 66,666 gold and a buyout price of 99,999 gold. There was no way anyone could afford it at the moment, but humiliating the White family was enough. However, auctions could only run for seven days, and if it didn't sell, it would automatically be delisted.

She would also have to pay a 0.1% fee on the buyout price, capped at 1 gold, but Rita could afford it. One gold coin was a small price for such entertainment.

After finishing all this, she returned to Rania Kaiya for her classes. She was only gone for two hours, but by the time she returned, the game forums were filled with people mocking the White family for their stolen statue. Skimming through the posts, she saw mostly ridicule. The few users who criticized the seller were either anonymous or had IDs starting with "Liang."

"Virtue -1, but honestly, this is hilarious. Who's despicable enough to steal a statue?"

"White family, are you there?? When are you buying it back?"

"They can't afford it, right? The combined wealth of the top five on the wealth list is just about the buyout price."

"Who knows if other statues have this kind of function..."

"Not sure, but ever since this post came out, people have been rushing to check out statues everywhere. Check out this thread [link]; it lists famous statues across the country along with their locations."

Rita chuckled at the chaos, then casually posted details about Josephine's Divine Gift on the forum, adding fuel to the fire engulfing the White family. With this brewing controversy, Samuel and Scarlett would no longer dare bring up a marriage alliance with the White family in front of her.

Instead of waiting for things to escalate and then dealing with it, she preferred to stamp out any sparks before they turned into a blaze.

…

At the White family's residence.

Sanchez was furious. To her, the people on the game forum were beneath her—people who usually weren't even qualified to meet her were now ridiculing the White family anonymously.

Josephine, on the other hand, remained calm. In his younger years, his temper had been similar to Sanchez's, but over time, he had learned to rein it in. If you lost your cool over every little thing, how could you keep a clear head for the big issues?

Besides, compared to her mother, Sanchez's temper could be considered mild…

While ordering an investigation into the surveillance footage surrounding the statue's disappearance, Josephine issued a public statement, clarifying that he had never concealed his Divine Gift from his partners. In his view, this matter was easy to handle—what was there to argue about when both parties were willing?

Unfortunately, it seemed that bringing Rita into the White family was no longer an option.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

Josephine was intrigued by Rita's looks, connections, and Divine Gift. So far, neither the White family nor any other faction had found a second person with the ability to modify luck.

Many suspected that Rita's rapid leveling was due to her extraordinary luck. Good luck naturally led to finding better instances and better loot, which created a virtuous cycle.

Currently, anyone with a high luck stat was in high demand for teams, but those with luck stats above 8 were rare, let alone a maxed-out 10. Plus, not everyone had an Insight skill, so many people—despite their terrible luck—would claim they had a luck stat of 9, leading to frequent disputes.

Meanwhile, Samuel was also lamenting. Now that Josephine's matter had come to light, there was no way he could pretend ignorance and try to match Rita with Josephine.

He had been hoping to align his son with the Lopez family and his daughter with the White family, hedging his bets on both sides…

But even if none of this had been exposed, he wouldn't have pursued it any further.

Because both he and Scarlett had received shocking news about Rick: **Your son has AIDS**.

All the past suspicions now came flooding back. For example, when Rick first asked him to go to the Lopez house to retrieve his blood, the topic was quickly diverted, and it ended up being about testing a colleague's blood. Then there was Rick's disbelief and despair when the results came in, and the time Scarlett brushed Rick's cup aside during dinner, leaving him visibly unsettled.

All these little details practically confirmed the truth of this message.

**This son is ruined.**