Chapter 80: The Unique Aesthetic of the Undead

The next morning, long before the first rays of dawn touched the sky, the assembly point in the western district of the city was already a hive of activity. A cacophony of voices, the stamping of hooves, and the creak of wagon wheels filled the chilly air.

A long convoy of over thirty four-wheeled carriages, their cargo hidden beneath heavy tarpaulins, snaked through the city gates. Each wagon was manned by two drivers and flanked by four grim-faced guards.

Selene, Celeste, Xia Lian, and Su Wan found themselves assigned to the seventh carriage in the line. They were not alone; the cramped space was shared with two other adventurer squads—a trio of hardened mercenaries and a boisterous team of five—each group keeping to their own side, a clear and unspoken boundary drawn between them.

The carriage rumbled out of Lion City, its wheels sinking into the deep ruts of the dirt road that led north.

The journey began in relative peace. Aside from the violent, bone-jarring jolts that threatened to rattle their teeth loose with every bump, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

That tranquility lasted until their noon break, when an unexpected visitor decided to shatter the silence.

The captain of the five-person squad, a man with a fleshy face and a build as sturdy as a bear, lumbered over to them.

“Hey, ladies,” he began, his words slightly muffled as he chewed on a piece of dry, tough jerky. “Heading to the front lines to make a fortune, are we?” he asked, a fine spray of spittle escaping his lips.

Celeste offered a polite nod but made no move to engage further.

The burly man let out a hearty chuckle, then deliberately lowered his voice and leaned in, his eyes glinting with the promise of a juicy secret.

“So, have you heard? The real reason this war… the reason it actually started?”

‘Aaaand here we go,’Celeste thought, her internal monologue kicking in. She maintained a perfectly measured smile, her heart utterly untroubled.’The first outrageous theory of the day is about to go live.’

“I’m all ears,” Su Wan said, her tone as frigid as ever, not a single word wasted.

The burly man’s eyes lit up. He shot a furtive glance around, as if checking for spies, before leaning in even closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

“I have a cousin who works in the royal palace kitchen, and he heard it with his own two ears—it’s got nothing to do with the Elf Race trying to snatch the prince and princess!”

“Then what is it?” Xia Lian, her curiosity successfully snared, leaned forward eagerly.

The burly man slapped his thigh with a resounding smack. “It’s our King! He’s taken a fancy to the Elf Queen!”

He declared it with the booming confidence of a town crier announcing a royal decree.

“His Majesty wanted to take the Elf Queen as his ninth concubine, but she turned him down flat!”

“So, His Majesty, humiliated and enraged, just fabricated a reason to start a war! He’s really just trying to snatch the Queen and bring her back by force!”

“Pffft—cough, cough, cough!”

Selene, who had just taken a sip of water, sprayed it everywhere in a spectacular, composure-shattering spit-take.

Xia Lian’s jaw dropped. The ration bar in her hand fell to the dusty ground with a soft thud, completely unnoticed. She just stood there, frozen in utter disbelief.

A visible crack appeared on Su Wan’s eternally icy facade. It was an expression of deep bewilderment, a chaotic blend of ‘Where am I?’, ‘Who am I?’, and ‘Has the entire world lost its goddamn mind?’.

Celeste silently bowed her head, her shoulders trembling violently as she fought a desperate, losing battle against the gale of laughter threatening to erupt from her.

[Ding! Detected that the Host feels absurd joy due to the continuous collapse of her worldview. Elation Coins +233!]

[Current Version: E – The ‘Overbearing King’s Spurned Proposal’Theory. Does the Host wish to establish an’Outrageous Rumors’database?]’Hard pass! Are you trying to give my brain meme poisoning?!’

She managed to wrestle her laughter under control. By the time she looked up, her expression was once again serene. She even managed to ask with genuine-sounding curiosity, “Then… what about the Elven army pressing on our border?”

“It’s just an act!” the burly man proclaimed, giving them a look that clearly said, ‘You amateurs just don’t get it.’ He stated it as if it were the most obvious fact in the world. “The Elf Queen doesn’t want a real war either, but she has to save face, right? So she sent a few troops over to put on a show. Once our King backs down and sends a few nice gifts her way, this whole thing will blow over!”

“…That makes sense,” Celeste nodded with the utmost sincerity.

It made a terrifying amount of sense. The logic was a perfect, self-contained loop, utterly impeccable in its absurdity. She was beginning to suspect that the core rule of this entire Domain was simply ‘everyone spouts complete nonsense with a straight face while wholeheartedly believing it.’

The carriage continued its rattling journey forward.

Over the next two days, they were treated to no fewer than five brand-new, completely unhinged versions of the truth from various people in the convoy:

Version F: The Elven sacred tree was actually a giant, sentient brewing device that required human royal blood as a ‘yeast’ to create a wine that granted immortality.

Version G: The human prince was a secret cross-dresser who, after disguising himself as a princess to dance at an Elven festival, was exposed by the Elf Queen. His subsequent rage-fueled tantrum triggered a major diplomatic crisis.

Version H: The Elf princess had fallen madly in love with the human prince, but the prince’s heart belonged to the Elf Queen. This devastating love triangle eventually ignited a war between the two nations.

Version I: There was no Elven army. The entire war was a massive lie fabricated by the King to levy war taxes. The front lines were actually a peaceful paradise where everyone was having a picnic.

Version J: The Elf Race and the humans were secretly cooperating. The war was a sham to distract the other continental powers while they jointly excavated an ancient, world-changing treasure.

By the end of it all, even Xia Lian was completely numb to the madness.

She leaned close to Selene’s ear and whispered in a tone of someone who had seen the end of the world and found it merely tedious, “Sister Selene… I’m starting to think that the Kobold attacking Sister Celeste just because of her pink hair was… actually quite reasonable.”

Selene nodded, her expression deeply serious. “At least that rule was simple and direct. It didn’t waste brainpower.”

Su Wan hadn’t spoken another word throughout the entire ordeal. But Celeste noticed her fingers tapping a light, unconscious rhythm on her staff. A rhythm that grew progressively faster and more chaotic with each new theory.

It was the telltale sign that her logic systems were on the verge of a catastrophic crash. The ice-cold mage’s worldview was suffering a comminuted fracture.

…

On the afternoon of the third day, the convoy entered a stretch of road known as the Ash Canyon.

On either side, steep cliff walls rose up, their faces so sheer they looked as if they had been carved by a giant’s blade. They squeezed the sky into a narrow, oppressive gray line far above. The road narrowed, and the light dimmed abruptly, plunging the convoy into shadow.

The drivers’ expressions tightened, and the sharp cracks of their whips became short and agitated. The guards all had their hands on the hilts of their weapons, their gazes sweeping nervously through the deep shadows clinging to the canyon walls.

“Stay alert! This stretch of road hasn’t been peaceful lately!” one of the guards in their carriage warned, his voice low and laced with tension. “Three transport teams have already gone missing here. No survivors, no bodies… nothing.”

A soft warning bell chimed in Celeste’s mind.

She shot a glance at Su Wan, who understood immediately. A fingertip tapped lightly on her staff, and a ring of ice-blue light pulsed outwards before vanishing in an instant.

Xia Lian had already scrambled silently onto the carriage roof. Crouching low, her sharp eyes scanned the cliff faces on both sides. A few seconds later, her voice drifted down, pressed low and heavy by the wind.

“Front left, on top of the cliff… something’s moving.”

“It’s not a living creature… its movements are very stiff.”

The words had barely left her lips.

Boom!

The road a hundred meters ahead exploded without warning!

A wave of dirt and gravel geysered into the sky, accompanied by a scalp-numbing sound of grinding bones. From the shattered earth, dozens of pale skeletons clawed their way out.

Two points of ghostly green soulfire flickered within their hollow eye sockets. They brandished rusted swords and chipped blades, their jawbones clicking open and shut in a frantic, silent roar at the sky.

Undead!

“Enemy attack—!”

A guard’s shrill cry was instantly drowned out by a series of denser, more violent explosions that erupted all around them. The convoy’s escape route was blown apart in a shower of rock and soil.

More [Skeleton Soldier Lv.21] swarmed down from the cliff walls on both sides, converging into a white tide of death that swallowed the entire convoy in a heartbeat.

“Form up! Protect the carriages!”

The well-trained guards shouted, quickly forming a circular defensive line, their shields locking together with a series of heavy thuds. But the sheer number of undead was overwhelming. Fearless and relentless, they slammed their bony bodies against the shield wall, trying to bash open a gap through brute force.

The two adventurer squads from their carriage had already leaped down, their blades flashing as they engaged the skeletal horde.

“Selene, hold the front! Xia Lian, find a high point, snipe the soulfires! Su Wan, prepare for crowd control!” Celeste’s orders were rapid-fire, her priest staff already gripped tight in her hands.

She didn’t want to trigger Overtones just yet. Now was not the time for a flashy, social-death-inducing transformation.

“Hah!”

Selene let out a sharp cry, slamming her heavy shield, Immovable Mountain, into the ground. With a heavy thud, a circle of pale golden holy light swirled outwards, turning the area before her into an impenetrable barrier.

Celeste lowered her center of gravity, holding her staff horizontally with the tip pointed forward, adopting the opening stance of a spear wielder.

“Sister, why don’t you…” Selene started to say, but her words were cut short.

A skeleton had nimbly bypassed her shield wall, darting toward Celeste like a bolt of white lightning. The rusted blade in its hand swung down in a vicious arc aimed straight for her head.

Celeste moved.

Her staff shot out like a striking viper, precisely connecting with the wrist joint of the skeleton’s sword arm.

Crack!

A crisp snap of bone echoed in the chaos. The rusted blade flew from the skeleton’s grasp, spinning through the air. With fluid momentum, Celeste swung the body of her staff around. It whistled sharply as it tore through the air and slammed heavily into the skeleton’s cervical spine.

Snap!

The skull flew from its shoulders, the soulfire in its eyes extinguishing instantly. The headless skeleton clattered to the ground in a heap of loose bones.

It was clean, efficient, and utterly brutal, without a single wasted movement.

The guard fighting nearby stared, his mouth hanging open in an ‘O’ shape, his eyes nearly popping from their sockets. “You… aren’t you a priest?”

“Who says a priest can’t handle melee?” Celeste didn’t even turn her head. She stabbed out with her staff again, the tip punching through the eye socket of another skeleton and crushing the soulfire within. “By the Holy Light, that enemy looks like it needs a good smiting. A literal one.”

Her form was a blur as she wove through the horde of skeletons. One moment, her staff was a spear, thrusting with deadly precision; the next, it was a club, sweeping through bone and rust. Every single strike landed on the undead’s most fragile joints or the skull that housed their soulfire.

There were no flashy skill effects, no brilliant bursts of magic.

There was only the most primitive, cold, and violent dismantling of her enemies.

Su Wan’s ice ring exploded at the perfect moment, freezing a large swath of skeletons that had been attempting to surround them. Xia Lian’s arrows, as if guided by an unseen hand, streaked through the air, piercing the eye sockets of skeleton after skeleton, extinguishing their soulfires with pinpoint accuracy. Selene stood like a bastion before them, each swing of her heavy shield capable of smashing two or three skeletons into a pile of bone dust.

The four of them coordinated smoothly, clearing the undead around their carriage in a matter of seconds.

But a new, more disturbing problem arose.

There were simply too many of these undead, and their targets were suspiciously specific.

A significant portion of the skeletons completely ignored the other adventurers and guards. They split into three distinct groups, surging forward like a relentless tide in three different directions.

One group hammered against Selene’s shield, their attacks relentless.

Another group bypassed her at all costs, their empty eye sockets fixed solely on Celeste in the rear.

And the most bizarre group of all completely ignored the four of them, charging straight toward the back of the convoy.

“Protect the priest!” terrified shouts erupted from further down the line. “These ghostly things are specifically targeting the army priests!”

“Again?!” Selene roared, smashing another skeleton to pieces. The force of the impact vibrated up her arm. “What is it this time? Does pink hair have a taunt effect on the undead, too?!”

“No, it’s not the hair,” Su Wan’s calm voice cut through the chaos of battle with exceptional clarity. “It’s the aura of the Holy Light. It is said that the undead cannot distinguish colors, but they are extremely sensitive to the Holy Light’s presence.”

She paused, her gaze sweeping over the battlefield. “You, Celeste, and that army priest further back in the convoy. In their perception, the three of you are the brightest torches in a world of darkness.”

Celeste backhanded her staff, the butt of it crushing the skull of a skeleton that lunged at her. She let out a long-suffering sigh.

“So, that second rule of this Domain, ‘Beauty is Justice,’is meant in the general sense?”‘So in the undead’s aesthetic system, the Holy Light is considered ‘peak beauty,’ which means they have to attack it first? What kind of utterly twisted, messed-up value system is that?!'[Ding! The Host has developed a deep resonance with the absurdity of the Domain’s rules. Elation Coins +233!]’Resonance my foot! I just want to dismantle these bone racks and use them for firewood!’

[Elysian’s Note:

Having a good time with the story?

Every single bit helps immensely:

Thanks a ton for making this journey possible!]