This Life, I Will Be the Protagonist

All S-Class talents are unique and extremely rare. In her previous life, during the second year of the game's invasion, various ranking lists were released. On the Top 100 Combatants list, almost 80% of the players had their information exposed through items or talents, while the remaining 20% managed to hide their details somehow.

Among those nearly 80 people, only two had S-Class talents, both of whom were in the top ten of the list.

And both were connected to the male lead—one was his brother, the other his second wife.

It was as if S-Class divine talents were exclusively reserved for the male lead's team.

Even if she couldn't develop herself for the next year, she had to secure this talent! This talent would allow her to rise rapidly and suppress her enemies. More importantly, she had an extremely bold idea regarding the second skill.

By the time Rita chose the talent and entered the game, it was already 4:00 AM. Ever since she drew the S-Class talent, her heart hadn't stopped racing.

Her character spawned in a bustling yet gloomy city, surrounded by pale-faced Undead, suggesting this was the main city of the Undead race.

**[Character]**: I don't care (Level 0, 0%)

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

**[Race]**: Undead (?)

**[Racial Talents]**: Undead Will | Feast

**[Health]**: 100/100

**[Mana]**: 100/100

**[Strength]**: 5

**[Constitution]**: 6

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**[Intelligence]**: 10

**[Agility]**: 11

**[Luck]**: 8

**[Charisma]**: 9

In addition to these basic attributes, there were also more detailed stats like critical hit rate, critical damage, hit rate, cooldown reduction, and other advanced attributes.

She was penniless at the moment, so her top priority was to figure out how to make money and learn skills.

Rita approached the nearest NPC with a question mark above its head. After a brief conversation, she received a quest to clear out the city's rats, with a reward of 10 copper coins.

Though Rita rarely played games, she always liked to work efficiently. She first scouted the entire city, accepting every quest she could—from killing rats to delivering messages, to running errands like buying corpse worm bread. Once her quest list was full, she began to complete them.

On the way to deliver messages, she killed rats; on her way to buy corpse worm bread, she picked up a drink for the blacksmith, and so on. In one hour, she completed 17 quests, earning 2 silver coins and a worn-out bag, which turned out to be a spatial pouch with six slots that could hold up to 99 of the same item per slot.

But these weren't her most important gains. Over the past hour, instead of just focusing on completing quests, Rita had been using her Thief God talent on every NPC she encountered while roaming the streets.

The 20% and 10% probabilities were quite low. It didn't mean that stealing from 100 people would guarantee 20 successes. Probability could be as unpredictable as luck—sometimes, you hit the mark every time; other times, the success rate was so low it made you question your existence.

Whether it was due to the luck of drawing the Thief God talent earlier, Rita wasn't sure, but despite using the skill on at least a hundred NPCs, she only succeeded three times. With a Luck stat of 8, she managed just three successes!

However, the rewards were substantial:

**[Runic Pouch]**, **[Bag of Money]**, **[1 Agility Point]**

The Runic Pouch was a palm-sized, finely crafted bag with 24 slots, which Rita immediately equipped. Every character had an equipment slot on their waist and two pouch slots. She equipped both pouches, planning to bring them into the real world later.

The Bag of Money contained 18 gold coins! The exchange rate between gold, silver, and copper coins was 1:100. In her previous life, even after three years of doing all sorts of nefarious deeds with her talent, her account had barely over 300 gold coins at the time of her death. This showed just how valuable gold was.

After turning in all her quests, Rita didn't accept any new ones. Instead, she headed straight to learn skills.

With only seven hours of game time, leveling up wouldn't get her far. In her past life, those who had started early and made it to the Top 100, even with B-Class or C-Class talents, did so by learning skills from the other races during the beta.

These racial skills became impossible to learn from other races after the game's invasion. It's not that humans didn't have professional skills, but they required time and effort to learn. However, during the beta test, things were different. When a world drops an anchor into another world in the form of a game, many things become brutally simplified.

While it usually took time, money, and effort for the other races to learn these professional skills, in this brief seven-hour window, learning them in the game world only required completing a progress bar.

Now that her character was seen as a fellow race member by the NPCs, Rita could easily use money to quickly learn various skills from them. Even if she could only learn basic skills, it would still be a huge fortune.

With money in hand, Rita headed straight to her destination.

The character panel showed only two professional skill slots, meaning she could only learn two professions, but there were no limits on life skills.

While making her way, she learned every life skill she could find: **[Cooking] (Basic)**, **[Fishing] (Basic)**, **[First Aid] (Basic)**.

In an instant, Rita went from someone who couldn't cook to a great chef. The food she could now prepare with the Cooking skill even provided attribute boosts, albeit small ones. She didn't hesitate to spend 1 gold coin to learn all the available recipes.

**[First Aid]** allowed her to craft bandages, though after the game's invasion, modern medicine on Earth was more advanced than this. Still, learning it was better than nothing.

There were many professional skills in the game world, roughly divided into three categories: gathering (herbalism, mining), crafting (alchemy, tailoring, engineering, jewelcrafting, leatherworking, blacksmithing), and service (enchanting, inscription).

Rita didn't consider gathering or service professions—the former was easily replaced since many materials could be looted from monsters, and the latter didn't have high earning potential.

Rita entered the alchemy shop and spent 5 gold coins to learn Basic Alchemy. This unlocked eight potions: **[Basic Healing Potion]**, **[Basic Mana Potion]**, **[Water Breathing Potion]**, **[Basic Invisibility Potion]**, **[Basic Strength Potion]**, **[Basic Agility Potion]**, **[Basic Constitution Potion]**, **[Basic Intelligence Potion]**.

In her previous life, a single alchemy recipe could sell for over 500 gold. Among the Top 100 wealthiest players, apart from guild leaders and those who were already wealthy before the game's invasion, the richest individuals had only amassed just over 700 gold coins.

With 13 gold coins left, Rita spent the rest learning every alchemy recipe she could at the basic level.

After learning 37 alchemy recipes, her account balance dropped to 6 gold coins.

She then went to the herbalist shop to buy ingredients for **[Basic Healing Potion]**. In a large city like this, the herbs needed for the most basic potions weren't expensive. A single **[Basic Healing Potion]** sold for 1 silver coin, while the herbs to make it cost 50 copper coins. Rita spent 4 gold coins to buy 400 sets of herbs for Basic Healing Potion and 400 sets for Basic Mana Potion.

With the remaining money, she bought ingredients for three Basic Invisibility Potions.

By then, it was already 5:32 AM.

She was broke again.

With the game shutting down at 9:22 AM, she had less than four hours left.

In her past life, she had learned a recipe for a very niche potion. After learning a recipe in the game, it would be ingrained in the player's mind, as if a master alchemist was playing a video tutorial in their head, guiding them step by step. Players could then follow the instructions just like learning to cook from an online video.

But now that her character was still in the game, Rita just had to click a button to craft the potion. The progress bar moved quickly, and in less than a second, she could make a bottle.

Rita sprinted to a cauldron in the corner of the alchemy shop and began crafting.

6:00 AM.

Rita had already used up all 800 sets of herbs. Initially, due to low proficiency, she occasionally failed to craft the potions, but as she became more skilled, the failures stopped.

Now, she had 397 bottles of **[Basic Healing Potion]**, 392 bottles of **[Basic Mana Potion]**, and 3 bottles of **[Basic Invisibility Potion]** in her bag.

She hadn't stopped for a moment, only pausing briefly when unfamiliar customers entered the shop, at which point she would steal from them.

803 successful crafts had leveled up her alchemy skill to Intermediate. She could now upgrade her alchemy skill and learn new recipes.

But there was a

problem—she was broke again and needed to "borrow" some more from the NPCs.

She could sell the 700+ potions to the alchemy shop owner, but while they sold for 1 silver coin each, the buyback price was only 80 copper coins! Even if she sold everything, she'd only get a little over 6 gold coins, while upgrading her alchemy skill to Intermediate cost 100 gold.

A drop in the bucket.

Looks like she had to be a street thief again—or rather, the Thief God.