Chapter 74: The Higher the Beauty, the Stickier the Aggro!

The moment her feet touched solid ground, the dizzying sensation of teleportation receded like a tide.

Celeste opened her eyes.

What met her gaze was a vast and silent primeval forest. Towering, ancient trees formed a dense canopy that blotted out the sky, allowing only dappled spots of sunlight to filter through the gaps and dance upon the forest floor. The air was thick with the damp fragrance of rich soil and the verdant scent of thriving flora.

High above the celestial vault, two suns of varying sizes hung side by side, casting a slightly scorching radiance that bathed the strange land in a peculiar golden hue.

“Another wilderness zone.”

Selene gripped the heavy shield, Immovable Mountain, her muscles tensed as she vigilantly scanned their surroundings.

Su Wan’s hand was already resting on the crystal atop her staff, her ice-blue eyes calmly analyzing the environment. “The elemental concentration here is very high,” she said, her low voice tinged with solemnity, “but… it’s extremely volatile.”

Xia Lian crouched low, her fingers gently brushing against the earth. “There are tracks from beasts,” she whispered. “They’re fresh, and whatever made them was large. We need to be careful.”

Just then, several lines of glowing text materialized silently beneath each of their class panels.

[Entered Domain: The Shattered Covenant]

[Rule 1: Knightly Spirit]

[Description: Even in battle, one must maintain the spirit of a knight. Combat methods that do not conform to this spirit, such as sneak attacks or assassinations, will have their effectiveness reduced by 50%.]

Celeste raised an eyebrow. She was just about to quip, ‘Good thing we don’t have an assassin in the party,’ when the second rule appeared, slapping her squarely in the face.

[Rule 2: Beauty is Justice]

[Description: Your charm will become the most dazzling beacon on the battlefield. The higher your beauty, the more likely you are to attract the enemy’s priority attacks.]

After reading the second rule, the relaxed expression on Celeste’s face froze solid.

She turned her head, the motion stiff and mechanical, to look at her three teammates.

Her younger sister, Selene, the heroic Paladin, had raven hair that glistened under the forest’s dappled light. Her large eyes blinked playfully at Celeste, seeming to say, ‘Big sister, you’re obviously the most beautiful.’

Their new teammate, Su Wan, the cold and aloof ice mage, possessed stunning curves that even her voluminous robes couldn’t conceal. Her ice-blue eyes swept over Celeste with a cool, detached glance, yet they lingered on her face for half a second longer than necessary.

Their other new teammate, Xia Lian, the shy and reserved Ranger, was currently avoiding eye contact, her cheeks flushing a faint pink. That rule felt like a public execution notice, making her so awkward that her toes were curling inside her boots, trying to dig a three-bedroom apartment out of the soil.

The four of them looked at each other.

The air fell into an eerie, deep silence.

‘Fine,’Celeste thought.’Everyone here is a top-tier beauty. No one gets to laugh at anyone else.’

A debuff shared by the entire party is basically not a debuff at all.

Theoretically, anyway.

‘Besides,’she tried to reassure herself,’the aesthetic standards of the creatures in this Domain might not be the same as humans…’

An image of a few particularly hideous goblins flashed through her mind, and her expression darkened instantly.

“Let’s… let’s find a path first,” Xia Lian said, forcing herself to ignore the mortifying rule. She pointed in a specific direction. “There are trampled tracks over there. It looks like it’s formed a small path, which should lead to a settlement or a nest.”

“Let’s go,” Celeste said, her voice clipped.

Xia Lian’s professional skills were impeccable. She was like the most precise humanoid radar, constantly feeding them accurate information and leading the team efficiently through the rugged mountain terrain.

“Thirty meters ahead to the left. Footprints, twelve of them. Less than half an hour old.”

“The shrubs here have been trampled. They went in that direction.”

Half an hour later, Xia Lian stopped abruptly, dropping into a low crouch and pointing toward a cave entrance concealed by thick shrubs.

“We’re here. It’s a Kobold nest. Two sentries at the entrance.”

“Leave them to me,” Su Wan stepped forward, her voice as crisp and cold as winter air.

She raised a hand, her fair fingertips tracing a sigil in the air. The moisture in the atmosphere instantly answered her call, condensing into deadly points of frost.

“Ice Shard.”

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Two sharp, diamond-hard shards of ice tore through the air, trailing a lethal chill as they precisely pierced the throats of the two Kobold sentries. The creatures couldn’t even manage a grunt before their bodies stiffened and toppled over, the wounds instantly frozen solid, preventing even a single drop of blood from spilling.

“Let’s move.”

The four of them ducked low and entered the cave one by one.

The light inside was dim, and a foul, fishy stench assaulted their senses—a nauseating mixture of dampness, rot, and excrement. Ahead, the tunnel opened into a relatively wide limestone cavern where about twenty Kobolds, armed with bone clubs and rusted knives, were gathered.

“I’ll initiate!” Selene shouted in a low voice, no longer suppressing her aura. Hoisting the thick shield, Immovable Mountain, she charged forward like a humanoid heavy tank. “Su Wan, cover me!”

“Understood.” Su Wan stood at the rear of the team, her staff held in both hands. She tapped it lightly on the ground, and a ring of ice-blue light suddenly expanded outward from her position.

“Frost Nova!”

Huuuum—!

A bone-chilling cold current swept through the entire cavern. The movements of most of the Kobolds instantly became sluggish as a thick layer of white frost condensed on their bodies.

In that same instant, Selene crashed into the pack of monsters.

Shield Bash!

The first few Kobolds were sent stumbling back, their formation broken. Selene had secured the perfect chokepoint, her shield steadily blocking all the monsters’ paths of attack.

Xia Lian’s response was just as swift. She drew the shortbow from her back and let loose a flurry of arrows. Each shot was a pinpoint strike, aimed at the knees of the Kobolds who had resisted the slow and were attempting to flank.

Celeste, meanwhile, calmly cast a shield on her sister at the front, her hands glowing with healing light, ready to intervene at a moment’s notice.

It was a textbook Warrior-Mage-Healer-Ranger team in action. Perfectly coordinated, with both offense and defense covered.

However, in the next second, the battle slid into an beyond understanding abyss.

The Kobolds, who should have been tightly controlled by Selene’s shield and Su Wan’s frost magic, suddenly froze. As their chaotic, beady eyes swept across the four women, they all locked onto a single direction.

It was a gaze thick with greed, fanaticism, and a sickening, pathological desire.

They ignored the Paladin standing right in front of them, slamming a heavy shield into their faces.

They ignored the Ranger at the back, peppering them with stinging arrows.

They even ignored the Mage who was blanketing the area in debilitating frost.

Their target was one, and one only.

Celeste.

Her soft, pink hair, even in the dim light of the cave, became the most eye-catching, most alluring color in the entire cavern.

“Gah!”

“Roar—!”

The Kobolds closest to her, as if injected with the most potent stimulant imaginable, completely disregarded Selene, who was frantically swinging her shield to keep them at bay. They paid no mind to the frost spreading beneath their feet, a cold so deep it could freeze the marrow in their bones.

Low roars rumbled in their throats, their murky eyes burning with a strange fanaticism as they desperately squeezed and pushed, clawing their way toward Celeste.

“Hmm?” Celeste raised an eyebrow.

“You’re not getting past me!” Selene reacted first. She slammed her shield diagonally into the ground, her long, powerful legs braced firmly against its back, turning her entire body into an impossible floodgate. She bashed left and right, trying to physically force the Kobolds attempting to bypass her back into the kill zone.

Xia Lian’s fingers were a blur, the thrum of her bowstring a constant, rapid hum. Arrow after arrow struck the ankles and knee joints of the charging Kobolds, doing everything she could to impede their advance.

The ice-blue crystal on Su Wan’s staff flared. Without hesitation, she channeled her magic again.

“Frost Ring: Expansion!”

A second, more biting wave of frost power erupted from her in a ring, spreading farther to catch more monsters in its slowing field. The ice layer on the ground thickened, attempting to lock their crazed claws in place.

The trio’s cooperation was lightning-fast, their experience and cooperation on full display as they forcibly held most of the Kobolds behind the defensive line.

But the Kobolds, their eyes reflecting only the lustrous pink of Celeste’s hair, showed an extraordinary persistence and brute force. They would rather have their bones cracked by the shield, their limbs stiffened by the frost, or their flesh pierced by arrows, just to roar and push and crawl forward toward that one, singular target.

Inevitably, this fanaticism, which ignored all pain and tactics, tore open the defensive line.

Three exceptionally strong Kobolds, with arrows sticking out of their hides and shards of ice still clinging to their fur, finally broke through the gaps. Howling, their eyes burning with a twisted desire, they waved their rusted knives and clubs as they lunged straight for Celeste.

“Celeste, watch out!” Xia Lian’s face paled. She instantly stowed her bow, drew her blade, and turned to intercept.

Su Wan’s brow furrowed. She had just finished casting a large-area spell, and channeling the next skill required a brief, critical moment. But as her ice-blue eyes scanned the battlefield, the truth clicked into place.

Rule 2: Beauty is Justice.

In the eyes of these Kobolds, whose aesthetics were clearly and utterly warped, that pink hair, still dazzling in the dim cave, was the ultimate signal flare of “peerless beauty.”

She finally understood what “the higher the beauty, the more likely you are to attract the enemy’s priority attacks” truly meant.

This wasn’t just ‘likely to attract.’

This was a forced, absolute taunt.

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]