Chapter 412: Stelle Loses Her Spark Once Again
"A gentleman's word!" Stelle declared loudly, puffing out her chest.
"Is his bond!" Paimon shot back, refusing to be outdone by the taller girl's theatrics.
"Then prepare to witness the discerning eye and bountiful harvest of a true master!" Stelle brimmed with absolute pride. She carried herself like a veteran collector about to unveil a priceless, world-shaking artifact, striding confidently toward a newly available recycling station.
The sheer weight of her confidence drew an audience. Everyone subconsciously gathered around the terminal. Even Wise and Hu Tao, who were busy sorting materials at adjacent recycling stations, paused their work to cast observant glances her way.
Dan Heng stood slightly on the periphery. He kept his arms crossed, his handsome face perfectly stoic, though a faint, knowing flicker danced in his eyes.
March 7th, on the other hand, quietly buried her face in her hands, already unable to watch the impending trainwreck.
Stelle planted her feet firmly in front of the recycling station. She took a deep, theatrical breath, treating the moment like a sacred ritual. With a dramatic flourish, she reached out her right hand and traced a phantom stroke through the air. The Chat Group event's exclusive virtual inventory interface materialized instantly. A sleek list window, glowing with a soft, ethereal blue light visible only to her and the other Chat Group members, hovered in the space between them.
A supremely confident smirk tugged at the corners of her lips. With a simple mental command, she opened the inventory.
The holographic list refreshed with a soft chime, presenting its contents for all to see.
A few non-discardable slots defaulted by the system, holding her ID card and a meager handful of basic supplies, sat grayed out and locked at the top. However, every single slot designated to store the precious loot she had scoured from the Hollow was completely, utterly blank. The interface was so immaculately clean it practically reflected the sudden, horrifying stiffness taking over her features.
"..." Stelle's triumphant smile froze solid.
She blinked rapidly. Surely, she was just too excited and had misread the screen. She squeezed her eyes shut, took another breath, and snapped them open.
The list remained a desolate wasteland of empty slots.
Panic set in. She frantically swiped her fingers up and down the virtual interface, scrolling through the pages. Nothing. There was absolutely nothing anywhere. The glorious treasures she had painstakingly scavenged, those jagged metal shards that had glowed with that intoxicating rare light, those heavy Ether Fuel Canisters she had lugged around... they were all gone. Vanished without a single trace, as if the universe itself had erased them from existence.
"No... impossible!" Stelle muttered, her voice hollow and lost. Her fingers trembled violently as she tapped the screen a few more times. She completely exited the inventory interface, waited a torturous second, and rebooted it.
Still, nothing but empty space mocked her.
A crushing weight slammed into her soul. She felt as though she had taken a direct, point-blank hit from Zhongli's Planet Befall. A cold, heavy petrification started at her trembling fingertips and rapidly calcified her entire body. The high-spirited, arrogant Trailblazer from mere seconds ago was completely gone, replaced by a statue with violently shaking pupils. Her entire worldview shattered into a million irreparable pieces.
Her neck creaked as she turned her head stiffly toward the floating companion beside her. Her lips quivered uncontrollably.
"D-Damn Paimon..." she stammered, her voice thick with absolute disbelief. "Did you... did you put some kind of dark curse on me? Or... did you secretly hack my inventory?!"
Paimon had been thoroughly enjoying the show, a smug grin plastered across his face as he watched Stelle turn to stone. But the moment the accusation left her mouth, he stomped his little boots in the air, completely outraged.
"Hey! Stelle! How can you just wrongly accuse Paimon like that! And who are you calling 'damn'?! You were the one who insisted on using the Time of Judgment as the wager! Paimon couldn't even stop you when he tried to change the rules!"
"Besides, how could Paimon possibly hack your inventory! Do you really think the Chat Group system is something I can just break into?!" His voice grew increasingly aggrieved, his little face puffing up indignantly until he resembled an angry, floating steamed bun.
March 7th, who had been hiding her face while her shoulders shook with suppressed giggles, finally lowered her hands. She walked over to the utterly petrified Trailblazer. Stelle looked so defeated that invisible, dreary gray lines practically rained down in the background behind her. With eyes brimming with genuine sympathy, and a dangerous hint of laughter she struggled to contain, March delivered the fatal blow of logic Stelle had completely forgotten in her previous battle frenzy.
"Stelle... you dummy." March sighed softly. "Did you completely forget what happened at the end of the Hollow? In order to use that Heaven and Earth Eternal move, you forcibly shattered the balance restrictions the Chat Group event had loaded onto the Bangboo."
The archer's words struck like a physical bolt of lightning, violently splitting open Stelle's chaotic, denial-filled mind.
"You were way too busy venting your anger at the time, weren't you?" March continued, her tone adopting a patient, almost maternal quality. "In the Chat Group's event rules, to prevent anyone from exploiting loopholes or causing uncontrollable multiversal damage, it was clearly stated from the very beginning. If a participant forcibly breaks the event's balance mechanism through unconventional means, the system will automatically clear all non-quest reward items obtained by the Bangboo during that event, provided they have not yet been settled and bound."
"In other words," March spread her hands helplessly, "all those shiny things in your inventory that you picked up in the Hollow were already scrubbed clean by the system. The exact moment you unleashed your ultimate attack, and Uncle Yang got caught in that forced teleportation, your loot went poof."
"So..." March cast one final, lingering look at the bowl of the Time of Judgment still bubbling ominously in Stelle's rigid grip. Her voice dripped with twelve-thousand points of pure pity. "This bet... you were destined to lose it from the very start. And you were the one who insisted on raising the stakes so high."
Stelle remained rooted to the spot. Her brain, currently functioning like a set of rusted, unlubricated gears, finally began to grind and turn under the weight of March's crystal-clear explanation.
Cleared. Breaking limits. Event rules. The fragmented memories violently pieced themselves back together. Yes, during that chaotic climax, sheer anger had completely clouded her judgment. She had only cared about thoroughly purifying those disgusting bugs right alongside Bringer. Balance mechanisms and event rules had been unceremoniously chucked out the nearest window.
Following that world-shaking, apocalyptic blow, she had experienced the sudden sensation of her power being drained, followed immediately by the nauseating dizziness of the forced teleportation. It turned out that in that precise fraction of a second, the precious treasures she had worked so tirelessly to scavenge within the Hollow had been ruthlessly flagged by the system as illegal gains. They had been wiped out with a single, merciless click.
She had carefully dug her own grave and happily swan-dived right into it. In the end, when Paimon had actually tried to show mercy and alter the wager, she had stubbornly grabbed the shovel and buried herself under the toxic dirt of the Time of Judgment.
The full realization crashed down upon her. Stelle completely wilted, drooping like a pathetic, frost-bitten blade of grass. Even the bowl of strange, bubbling purple liquid in her hand suddenly felt ten times heavier.
Seeing her friend's pitiful state, watching the mighty Trailblazer suddenly plummet to the tragic level of a penniless loser, March's heart finally softened. She simply couldn't bear to watch her remain so utterly dejected. Stepping forward, she gently patted Stelle's slumping shoulder, her tone shifting to offer warm comfort.
"Alright, alright, don't be like this." March smiled reassuringly. "Although those... uh, souvenirs you hoarded in your inventory are gone, you can't forget the main goal of our mission. Bringer was directly crippled and forced to flee for his life because of your strike. The system definitely considers the mission complete."
"Just look at the Heart of the Feral Ghost we recovered from the mission rewards! That item alone has a Chat Group evaluation price of twenty million Gear Coins! We all get a share of that payout. You are definitely still walking away with a massive profit!"
"Tw-Twenty million?!" Stelle gasped.
She snapped her head up, her spine straightening with the speed of a released spring. Her previously ashen face instantly glowed with a new, blindingly brilliant light. She triumphantly thrust her chin into the air, aiming a haughty glare directly at Paimon.
"Hahahaha! I knew it!" she crowed, her signature arrogance returning in full force. "As the great Stelle, destined to save the universe and the undisputed future King of the Lordly Trashcans, how could my luck ever be bad?! Twenty million! Paimon, how can your pathetic little fuel canisters even begin to compare to my wealth?! Hahahaha!"
She laughed heartily, throwing her head back as if she had already won the bet outright. Her eyes darted around as she rapidly began mentally calculating exactly how she was going to spend her cut of those twenty million Gear Coins.
Paimon merely crossed his arms. He floated steadily in the air, watching Stelle's dramatic, whiplash-inducing emotional shift with a deeply unimpressed, 'as expected' expression plastered across his small face.
He slowly raised a single index finger, shaking it knowingly back and forth in front of the gloating Trailblazer. When he spoke, his words were slow, deliberate, and laced with absolute triumph.
"Stelle. Pay attention to the prompt!" He intentionally dragged out the syllables, perfectly mimicking the deadpan, serious tone Stelle always used whenever she was condescendingly explaining a terrible pun to him.
"The exact content of our bet, from the very beginning to the bitter end, was comparing the two of us. We were judging whose specific event inventory items brought out of the Hollow were more valuable."
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