When Celeste stepped into the adventurer supply store named "Wilderness Survival," a heavy scent mixed with tanned leather, knife maintenance oil, and dried herbs rushed toward her.
She was looking down, checking her list, carefully comparing the nutritional ingredient tables of different brands in front of a row of energy bars and compressed biscuits.
A clear male voice sounded beside her, carrying a hint of uncertainty.
"Celeste?"
She turned her head.
A young man wearing a sharp combat suit with a longbow on his back was looking at her, his eyes full of surprise.
It was Ragathar from the class next door, a somewhat famous genius archer in the school.
"What a coincidence." Ragathar smiled, his gaze sliding naturally over the basic survival supplies piled into a small mountain in her shopping basket, his eyebrows twitching almost imperceptibly.
"Buying supplies for the upcoming battle? Coming alone must be tough."
Celeste maintained her composure, her voice devoid of any ripples.
"Yeah, time is tight. My teammates are acting separately for higher efficiency."
"Indeed." Ragathar nodded, then, as if remembering something, his eyes ignited with intense curiosity and inquiry.
"Speaking of which, that 'Heroic Spirit Summoning' move of yours in the arena match was truly too strong!"
"Our team replayed the footage several times, especially that glasses-adjusting gesture of yours, and that line..."
Celeste felt her blood flow slow down by half a beat instantly.
Don't! Please don't mention the glasses-adjusting! And definitely don't mention that line!
"...Our captain said that the gesture combined with the line carried a kind of absolute oppression of controlling the whole situation; it's simply the mark of a strong person."
"Is your Heroic Spirit the God of Knowledge or the God of wisdom? Or perhaps the God of Intelligence? It was so cool."
A scorching heat suddenly surged from the back of her neck to the top of her head, instantly igniting her earlobes.
She clenched her fists, her fingernails almost embedding into her palms, before she barely managed to suppress the urge to cover her face, squeezing a few words out from between her teeth.
"You could say... it's the embodiment of knowledge is power."
"Too strong!" Ragathar praised sincerely, then he leaned forward slightly, lowering his voice as if sharing inside information.
"Right, one word of warning."
"In this Domain, be careful of 'Plunder Teams,' the teams that specialize in ranking up by stealing points from other candidates."
"Your team is just The two sisters, right?... Hmm, this configuration might easily be targeted."
The subtext of his words was obvious—in the eyes of others, your tank-and-healer combo is just a mobile point-giving baby.
"Thanks for the warning, we will be careful." Celeste thanked him sincerely.
Ragathar waved his hand, exchanged a few more polite words, and then left carrying a bundle of special armor-piercing arrows he had selected.
Celeste watched his back, her whole body quietly relaxing.
Fortunately, he didn't continue to probe into the details of the "Heroic Spirit."
She turned around, just about to grab a waterproof sleeping bag from the shelf, when she discovered that at the corner of the shelf, an auntie with a smiling face had been standing there, who knows since when.
The auntie was looking her up and down with an "I know everything" gaze.
It was the owner of the shop.
She slowly leaned over and bumped Celeste with her elbow in a very familiar manner.
"Little girl, that archer boy just now, he's quite spirited."
"A potential stock, right? Is he interested in you?"
The corners of Celeste's mouth twitched uncontrollably.
"Auntie, you've misunderstood, we are just classmates."
"Oh my, the classmate relationship is the purest, the best for developing!"
The auntie's enthusiasm didn't wane; her gaze wandered back and forth between her and the direction Ragathar had left, as if she were pulling a red thread out of thin air with her eyes.
"Didn't he just praise you as 'cool'? And he even specially warned you to be careful of danger, tsk tsk, isn't this just a signal that he likes you!"
Celeste felt the veins on her forehead twitching.
"No, he was talking about my... combat technique."
"I understand! Auntie understands everything!"
The auntie showed an expression of "young people are just thin-skinned, I've seen plenty of them."
Then, with an agility completely inconsistent with her build, she pulled a small, pink-packaged bottle from the bottom shelf and lightning-fast stuffed it into Celeste's hand.
"Take it! Auntie thinks we hit it off, I'll give you an internal discount of 20% off!"
"Domain Tryst Exclusive · Powerful Insect Repellent Love-Inducing Fragrance!"
"Guaranteed that even if you sleep in the wild for three days, you will definitely smell like sweet strawberries, not adding any olfactory burden to your little boyfriend!"
Celeste looked down at the spray in her hand, which was covered in hearts, glowing pink, and even had a bow on the cap, and she felt like she had been frozen.
"Auntie, I really don't need..."
"Don't be polite! Girls need to learn to take the initiative!"
The auntie warned her in the tone of someone with experience, then turned to greet other customers, leaving her only with a "Go for it" look.
Celeste froze in place.
She looked at that out-of-place pink in her hand.
Compared to the military compressed biscuits, multi-functional engineer shovel, and tactical tourniquet in her shopping cart, it looked so strange and so glaring.
It was like a muscular, tough guy being forced to wear a lacy Hello Kitty princess dress.
She felt that the steely ambition she had just established to deal with the Domain crisis had been smashed by this bottle of strawberry-scented spray, leaving a clear crack.
She hadn't even entered the Domain yet, and the crisis of social death had already arrived early in another form?
[Ding! Detected that the Host has fallen into a subtle predicament of 'being forcibly paired up' and 'being forced to buy a social-death-level product,' internal snarky energy has exploded intensely, joy value +15!]
Celeste: "..."
Shut up! She didn't want this joy value at all!
However, insect repellent... she really had overlooked this aspect!
Then...
She expressionlessly took that bottle of "Powerful Insect Repellent Love-Inducing Fragrance" to the counter, meeting the cashier boy's firm gaze, and gritted her teeth, saying: "Checkout."
"This... is for my sister."
The cashier boy looked at the pink spray, then at her dignified and solemn priest robe, and revealed an understanding and extremely professional smile.
"Understood."
"For the sister."
"That will be 258 credit points."
Celeste: "..." She felt even more heartbroken.
She carried her big and small bags out of the store, looking up at the sky cut into pieces by high-rise buildings, only feeling that the road ahead was long.
Besides the monsters and plunderers in the Domain, it seemed to be full of all kinds of unexpected social death traps.
"Selene," she thought silently.
"Big sister has really endured too much for this family."