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ArabicGenshin Impacti: This Priest is Cringe, But She's Also Unbeatable — Chapter 30
Chapter 30: Dark Horse, The Commotion in the Admissions Office
Inside the Foundation Hall, the rhythmic clang of the Earth Spirit’s forging hammer was the sole heartbeat in this subterranean world—a steady, resonant pulse that pushed back against the endless, deathly silence. The air, thick with the scorching scent of smelted ore and superheated stone, was surprisingly calming.
Continuous, high-intensity exploration and combat had pushed the fatigue accumulated by Celeste and her sister to its absolute limit. The mental strain, stretched taut like a bowstring for days, was far more draining than any physical toll.
They had endured a heart-stopping infiltration, the desperate scramble of being surrounded by a tide of Slimes, and… that one transformation, a moment of social death so deep it deserved to be recorded in the annals of history.
“Sister, we really… we really made it to 16th place.” Selene leaned against a warm stone wall, refreshing the ranking on her bracelet again and again. The light of pure, unadulterated excitement practically overflowed from her bright eyes. She felt like she was dreaming.
Celeste rested beside her, eyes closed, her long eyelashes casting quiet shadows on her cheeks in the flickering firelight. She offered only a soft “Mm,” her voice heavy with weariness.
The massive jump in their ranking was a welcome surprise, but the mental shockwave from the system’s answer about the “whole of the world” had completely overshadowed it. That single revelation had made Celeste realize, for the very first time, that every choice they made here, every breath they took, could ripple outwards and stir up monstrous, unpredictable waves in the “real” world.
This was no simple exam. It was something far more significant.
“Sister, my eyelids are fighting… I can’t stay awake anymore…” Selene let out a huge yawn, her head starting to nod. While her Paladin armor offered incredible defense, wearing it constantly was a considerable burden.
“Just a little longer,” Celeste murmured, retrieving several alchemy items from her inventory space.
A few palm-sized Glimmer Warning Rune Stones.
A small vial of Tranquility Dust, its contents as fine as mist.
These were all precautionary items she had prepared for the Domain. They were expensive, but for the promise of a sound, uninterrupted sleep, they were worth their weight in gold.
The two found a relatively dry corner on the edge of the stone hall, far from the echoing forge. Celeste moved with a quiet efficiency, placing the rune stones around their resting spot at specific angles. A simple warning ward shimmered into existence, invisible to the naked eye. Should any hostile creature step within its bounds, the runes would trigger a silent mental alarm that only they could perceive.
Next, she sprinkled a thin layer of the Tranquility Dust at the entrance to the passage leading deeper into the Earth Spirit’s core area. The fine powder would absorb sound and mask their scents, cloaking them from any wandering creatures.
Only after completing her preparations did she finally allow her shoulders to slump, a wave of relief washing over her.
“Alright, you can sleep now,” she said softly. “With the warning circle up, we can both get some proper rest.”
Watching her sister’s smooth, practiced movements, Selene’s eyes filled with admiration. She nodded, and the moment her head tilted to rest against the stone, she was pulled into the depths of dreamland.
Surrounded by the small pocket of security she had built with her own hands, Celeste closed her eyes as well, letting the deep exhaustion claim her.
They were simply too tired.
…
Meanwhile, outside the Domain.
Jiangnan Prefecture, Joint Monitoring Center for the Points Competition.
A low hum filled the air as, on the massive light-screen leaderboard, a single line of data suddenly flared a blinding, urgent red. It shot upwards, a crimson meteor streaking past the names of hundreds of other teams before locking defiantly into place.
【16. Qingyue Xiyue – Points: 17455】
“Hm?”
The head of the Jinghua University admissions team, Professor Zhou Wenhai—a man known throughout academic circles as the “Old Fox”—pushed the gold-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose. His sharp gaze swept over the new entry, as if he could pierce through the screen and see the individuals behind the name.
“Qingyue Xiyue?” he mused, sipping his strong tea, his tone flat and unconcerned. “Never heard of them. Which school is this team from?” He had seen plenty of dark horses emerge from the pack; most were just teams that had been hiding their strength, only now beginning to exert themselves.
His assistant immediately pulled up the team’s information. After a single glance, the young man froze.
“P-Professor Zhou… this team… they only have two members.”
“What?”
Zhou Wenhai choked, spewing a mouthful of hot tea. His carefully maintained composure shattered in an instant. He lunged towards the screen, his eyes locking onto the small text beneath the team name: “Team Members: 2/4”. The muscles in his perpetually calm face clenched tight.
“Two people? Two people fought their way into the top sixteen of the entire prefecture?”
Beside him, his fiercest competitor from Imperial Capital University, a burly man named Chen Mo, had also seen the information. His voice was thick with disbelief.
“Investigate! I want all their information investigated immediately! Pull up their real-time monitoring, get me everything you can!” Zhou Wenhai’s voice boomed, all traces of his earlier calm gone.
His roar drew the attention of every university admissions head in the monitoring hall.
A two-person team had charged into the top twenty? What did that even mean? It meant that the value generated by these two individuals surpassed that of countless full four-person teams, each composed of elite students from the top high schools.
This wasn’t a dark horse. This was a monster.
In moments, the sisters’ information was displayed for all to see.
【Celeste, 18 years old, Yi City No. 7 High School, Lv.20, Class: Priest (Support/Healer).】
【Selene, 18 years old, Yi City No. 7 High School, Lv.22, Class: Paladin (Defense).】
Chen Mo sucked in a sharp breath. “Good heavens, the Holy Light twins! Yi City No. 7 High School was hiding a pair of aces like this?”
“Something’s not right,” Zhou Wenhai countered, his brows knitting into a tight knot. “Look at their classes. One is a healer, the other a tank. It’s a pure survival composition. Their explosive damage output should be an innate weakness. How could they possibly grind out such terrifying points this early in the competition?”
“Their points saw a cliff-like surge just half an hour ago!” the assistant reported, his fingers flying across his console. “They gained 15,000 points in one go! The source… the source is ‘Gathering Rare Strategic Resource: Mithril’!”
“Mithril!” Another professor, Wang Meng, slammed his fist on the table, his eyes burning with intensity. “They found a Mithril mine! And they have the means to mine it efficiently!”
Soon, snippets of combat footage featuring team “Qingyue Xiyue” were pulled up on the main screen.
After a few minutes of watching, the atmosphere in the monitoring center turned decidedly strange.
“This Priest… is she really a Priest? That pink staff… why is she so damn proficient at clocking monsters on the back of the head and stabbing them in the kidneys?!”
“And that Paladin! The force of that shield bash, the precision of her swordsmanship… her fundamentals are unreasonably solid!”
“They actually found the Earth Spirit ruins and worked together to repel a Slime tide? That combination of luck and strength is… wait, what is that? How can the Priest transform?! What kind of Heroic Spirit Summoning is that? There’s no such character in the database!”
“The point,” Zhou Wenhai said, enunciating every word, his voice now laced with a fanatical fervor, “is that there are only two of them!”
He swept his gaze across the room. “No dedicated damage dealer! They achieved this result relying solely on a Priest and a Paladin! The tactical execution, the deep understanding of their classes… and the potential to completely change their combat style on a dime!”
A brief, stunned silence fell over the hall. It was followed by absolute madness.
What these two girls displayed was a level of combat wisdom that far exceeded their age and rank, and an infinite potential to shatter the conventional limits of their classes.
“We must sign them!”
“Draft an S-Class special recruitment plan immediately! Triple the scholarship! Open the A-Class resource library to them! As long as they agree, all conditions are negotiable!”
In an instant, a fierce undercurrent surged through the admissions departments of every major university. Special recruitment plans for the “Qingyue Xiyue” sisters were drafted with lightning speed.
Every admissions head in the room silently pinned the sisters’ profiles to the top of their priority lists, marking them with a new, unanimous designation:
【S-Class · Highest Priority Target】