Demonic Po*nstar System Chapter 717: A Strange Feeling

The Ironscale Charger slammed into the earth with a soggy crunch and never rose again.

Brittany yanked her blade loose, whipped the ichor from its edge in one smooth expert flick, and released a breath. Fire raced through her arms while her mana dipped so low she sensed it throbbing in her teeth, marking the finest sensation she'd experienced in months.

Across the clearing, Trisha dropped her hands. Her final barrage of ranged shots faded away, the atmosphere still rippling where the projectiles had torn into the Charger’s side, holding it steady for Brittany’s fatal strike. She panted heavily, perspiration carving paths through the grime on her cheeks, a grin lighting her face.

"Clean," Trisha said.

"Clean," Brittany agreed.

Three days straight of hunting lay behind them.

Three days free from comms blaring in their ears, free from Ash dictating farm zones, camera drone angles, or fight choices driven by content appeal over experience gains.

Three days purely as warriors.

Brutal yet stunning mountains sprawled around them, terrain that slaughtered the careless yet favored the vigilant. At this height, the air thinned to demand deliberate breaths, and the beasts prowling these peaks outmatched anything lurking in the lower basin with raw power and ferocity.

Brittany adored it.

She wiped her blade clean on some moss before sliding it into its sheath, shrugging her shoulders to ease the knots. A satisfying soreness gripped her frame, that profound muscular throb from three days of fulfilling her true purpose.

"You know what’s weird?" she said.

Trisha scanned her mana stats via her interface, gaze gliding over figures with the casual skill of a ranged specialist whose survival hinged on resource control. "What?"

"Nobody’s watching."

Trisha glanced up.

"I don’t mean stream viewers," Brittany said. She plopped onto the slain Charger’s side—likely rude to the beast, but level ground called and exhaustion won. "I mean nobody’s watching us. Like, watching-watching. Ash used to have us on camera feeds twenty hours a day. Content review meetings. Performance evaluations based on viewer engagement. Remember when he told you to switch to a tighter chest piece because the analytics showed your viewer retention went up when you showed more skin?"

Trisha’s lips tightened into a line. "I remember."

"Kaiden didn’t even look at our gear. He looked at our levels, asked about our abilities, and told us that he believes we know what to do." Brittany leaned back on her hands. "That was it. Three sentences and he moved on."

"He has a lot on his plate."

"It’s not that." Brittany shook her head. "It’s that he genuinely doesn’t care. It’s an ’it’s irrelevant’ kind of not caring. We could be ugly as sin and he’d have said the same three sentences."

Trisha settled cross-legged opposite her and gazed at the heavens. "We’re not ugly as sin, though."

"No," Brittany said. "We’re not."

They weren’t. Every stunning woman carried that awareness like knowing her eye color. Brittany possessed the physique algorithms boosted for maximum appeal, while Trisha’s looks had starred in promo spreads enough to cover a guild hall. Beauty had unlocked paths for them, only for those paths to seal shut and trap them inside.

"His girls didn’t even blink," Trisha said. "When we showed up. Luna looked through us like furniture. Calypso didn’t acknowledge we existed. Aria gave us a nod that was basically a receipt."

"Because they’re not threatened."

"Because they have no reason to be." Trisha laughed. "Have you seen them, Brit? Luna is the most adorable woman alive. She’s petite and her face is so pretty it’s almost unfair, the kind of cute that makes you want to put her in your pocket and protect her forever. At least until she opens her mouth... Aria is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in person, and I’ve met hundreds of top models. Nyx looks harmless until she turns around and you realize she has the body of a succubus, curves that don’t make sense on a real person, the kind of figure that makes men walk into walls. And the monster girls..." She shook her head. "Calypso and Bastet aren’t even competing on the same scale as us. They’re the two most exotic beings on the planet. Hundreds of millions of men would lose their minds just being in the same room as them. We walked into a camp full of women like that, and two more pretty faces didn’t even register."

"And it feels..." Brittany hunted for the word.

"Amazing."

"Yeah." She exhaled it. "It feels amazing. For the first time in my awakened life, my face is irrelevant. My body is irrelevant. The only thing anyone in that camp cares about is whether I can fight." She eyed her blade. "And I can fight."

Trisha nodded sharply. "Yes, you can."

In the mountain’s hush, they lingered briefly, two A-tier warriors encircled by sparse air, slain beasts, and the strange thrill of true merit-based respect.

Trisha’s interface then flickered.

Her gaze shifted to the competition leaderboard, a routine formed on day one even as a non-contestant. She enjoyed monitoring Kaiden’s squad, eyeing the rising scores, calculating their Iron Halo surpass time.

"Brit." Trisha’s tone shifted. "Brit, look at the standings."

Brittany summoned her interface. The competition scoreboard appeared before her eyes, revelation striking instantly.

1st — Runewoven: 127,130

"We’re first," Brittany breathed. "When did that happen? Last time I checked we were two thousand behind Iron Halo."

"Just now. I’ve been refreshing every few minutes and we jumped. But Brit..." Trisha’s smile faded. "Look at the others."

Brittany looked.

2nd — Iron Halo: 98,390

"Iron Halo dropped thirty thousand points." Brittany’s gut twisted. "That’s... They were at one twenty-eight this morning."

"Keep going," Trisha said. Her voice was flat now.

3rd — Silver Talon: 57,730

"Forty thousand from Silver Talon." Brittany stared at the numbers. "Ashbound?"

"Stable."

Simple yet horrifying math: no deductions for botched hunts or tactical retreats. Competition points vanished solely through death, each teammate’s demise costing ten thousand.

Brittany rose. "Something’s wrong."

Trisha stood ready. They hurried to the ridge and peered below.