Honkai Star Rail: I must live a peaceful life

"I see." Ms. Jessica began putting away the chessboard. "But for me, constantly losing makes it easy to give up."

"It's not really any different," Milo smiled and shook his head, his tone neutral.

Milo's chess style was extremely competitive, yet he himself didn't care whether he won or lost. Jessica cared about winning and losing, but would choose to leave if she found it boring.

Whether out of basic respect for their work, or from their competitive spirit and pursuit of achievement, they took every chess game seriously.

But the chessboard itself held no meaning for either of them.

"Since neither of us must play chess, why don't we try a different game?" Ms. Jessica tilted her head inquiringly.

"Which one?" Milo asked without turning his head. Beside him, floating cloudy metallic liquid separated into pure, fine threads, weaving complex alchemical arrays in mid-air before being imprinted directly onto the reforged components.

Whether etched or merged, they fell at the joints of the two components, fusing together as one.

Milo spent far more energy on repairing this old piece than focusing on the game, but since this level of distraction wouldn't affect his efficiency, he didn't mind being a gaming companion for this competitive neighbor.

He was quite familiar with being a gaming companion, after all.

"Hmm hmm~ A game with dice, of course." Ms. Jessica laughed smugly, clearly revealing her intention to use some tricks.

[We astrologers are just like that.jpg]

[How can luck be considered cheating.jpg]

"However," Milo heard Ms. Jessica's somewhat mischievous voice and showed a gentle smile. "I have some confidence in my control and basic abilities."

Mr. Ferdinand Kapaz, who once achieved his initial capital accumulation in casinos, proved through personal experience just how fragile the so-called randomness of dice could be.

Even without mentioning how supernatural abilities could turn the dice-rolling process from random to specific numbers at will, even ordinary people executing such non-linear gambling projects could achieve considerable prediction accuracy through mathematical models and statistical analysis. The only thing that needed testing was the predictor's intelligence...

Milo, once one of the two intellectual prodigies at the Empire's First Academy of Grahst, naturally wouldn't be challenged by this level of complexity.

"That's why we'll need to use special equipment," Ms. Jessica flipped over the chessboard directly, chess pieces tinkling as they fell into the storage box, and began to unfold the entire board.

The reverse side of the board was pulled apart from the intersection of two diagonal lines and extended outward, repeating twice until the edges spread out again at the border, making the board's area thirty-two times its original size, with edges hanging slightly off the table.

Using the last unfolded border as a boundary, two electronic screens lit up displaying the game's start interface.

"Using virtual dice works just fine," Ms. Jessica smiled proudly. "This is completely in the realm of luck."

"Not necessarily," Milo shook his head, maintaining a calm and gentle smile. "I know a bit about manual information hacking too."

"But you'll be caught, you know," Ms. Jessica tilted her head proudly. "It has double supernatural protection above, including both mystical formulas and classical mystical formulas. The information-level defense itself isn't simple either. Feel free to try if you think you won't trigger the alarm."

"Is the protection difficult to break?" Milo asked curiously.

"Not really," Ms. Jessica shook her head with a smile. "It's just extremely fragile and will trigger a warning at the slightest touch."

"The alarm sensitivity of this thing is ridiculously high. I've had people test it before - even simple energy contact without intrusion intent will trigger the alarm. It's truly an anti-cheating device."

"Ah... you trust the security of this thing that much?" Milo frowned. Perhaps due to his previous part-time work, his instinctive reaction to this information was that high sensitivity protection made it impossible to examine the internal structure and judge its safety.

"It's fine, I had it go through two rounds of security verification when I got it. Even if something could slip past my verification, dismantling it might not help anyway," Ms. Jessica said casually.

She clapped her hands and smiled, "Alright, let's start the game. This is the official collector's edition game from the Fourteenth Era, I don't need to introduce it, right?"

"Fourteenth Era..." Milo's tone was somewhat complicated, but not confused. "I suppose not."

...Understands but not very well? Ms. Jessica silently calculated that Mr. Tom must have left the Chaos Zone about two years ago.

After all, the Fourteenth Era series was a phenomenon in the Chaos Zone. This level of understanding but not too much knowledge could only come from when the Fourteenth Era had just been released.

"Alright, since everyone has some understanding, I won't explain. The activation slot on the other side hasn't been used yet, you can just register as a new user."

"Mm." Milo nodded, quickly going through the relevant treaties and rulebooks before clicking on the game start interface.

As for the nickname, Milo initially planned to use an old friend's title out of suspicion, but after entering "Lester," it showed the nickname was unavailable.

After trying nicknames like "Aleister," "Alistair," "Alistar," "Alesta," and finding them all unavailable, Milo's initial 20-30% suspicion turned into 80-90% certainty.

If it were just the name "Fourteenth Era" that he personally coined, it could have been a coincidence, but with so many unavailable nicknames, it was clearly something created by one of his unreliable friends.

In the end, Milo still filled in his surname Woodworth - barely anyone knew this name, so using it wouldn't risk exposing his identity.

That guy really did organize and complete those ideas, Milo thought as he used the newcomer's character card draw.

In the quiet, light music, the full moon reflected in the water's surface shattered into chaotic ripples, through which brilliant orange light shone.

"Though I don't know what time it is now, I wish you good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. May I stay here?"

Accompanied by a melodious female voice, a bright light swept away the dust accumulated on the card's surface from bottom to top, revealing the true appearance beneath the previously gray and dim card surface.

End of Chapter