Outworld Liberators-Chapter 186: When Mortals Dared to Dream

"Ninety seven. Ninety eight. Ninety nine. One hundred. Time is up."

A million people exhaled at once. Relief rolled through the stands like a wave.

They had made their choices. They had thrown their coin into the hollow and sealed their little bargains with luck.

A large pillar with three sides rose into view and began to rotate, its surface alive with names. Names of the bet on.

Names that meant hope or ruin depending on whose hands had paid.

Curses and cheers tangled together, half celebration, half threat.

On one side of the pillar, the first ten names displayed in a betting rank.

[Bet Ranking]

(1) [Ropefist]

(2) [Irongrit]

(3) [Whiteblade]

(4) [Nightskin]

(5) [Hatcheteer]

(6) [Youngbanners]

(7) [Sackmace]

(8) [Reelfisher]

(9) [Almsgiver]

(10) [Lonequiver]

The flag ranks stayed blank. Then another one showed scenes.

It had multiple screens displaying the top ten participants, with a label that told what it was.

[Tournament Highlights]

Then the whole Radeon Terraces trembled.

The earth shook, hard enough to think another Aberrant arrived. Cups bounced in laps.

A few people screamed before they could stop themselves.

From the edges of the terraces, walls erupted upward, slabs of packed earth rising like giants pushing themselves out of a grave.

Each wall climbed higher and higher until it stood nearly two hundred meters tall.

The highlight screens followed the growth, showing the purpose plain as day.

On the wall displays, armies revealed themselves, getting out of the newly erected earth walls.

Hundreds of thousands of skeletons stood in ranks, dry bones gleaming pale under borrowed light.

Some carried swords. Some spears. Some bows pulled back by hands.

A few had flags jammed through their rib cages, cloth fluttering where lungs used to be.

The audience went quiet in awe, then loud again, like fear needed noise to breathe.

The contestants on the floor could not see any of it. They were wrapped in their black fog, blind to the spectacle and the threat.

Eldric’s voice carried down to them anyway, and it carried with the weight of a warning you could not pretend you missed.

"Make no mistake, one may perish in this tourney, by my skeletons out in the dark," he said.

"And those who choose to withdraw are no cowards for it. Life does not have a retry."

"I would sooner call them men of self-command, men who know the measure of their own limits."

You could hear the swallows even from the stands.

Some participants backed away at once, the ones who had never held a blade with intent, the ones whose courage lasted only as long as the rules sounded simple.

The small square betting boards at the audience’s feet dimmed one by one, and faces twisted with anger.

"My money. All gone. Snailforge, I hate you. Why back out now?"

"Brown Chew, you dare back down? I’ll skin you alive if I see you back in town."

Anger rose because fear had nowhere else to go.

Eldric lifted a hand again, calm as a priest. He opened the betting one last time.

"One last time," he said. "Ten breaths. I won’t count."

People stared at the rankings, weighing names that were still lit against names that had gone dark.

With a second chance in their hands, they chose again, quick and greedy.

Then the screens shifted, and the next image took the crowd by the throat.

[2048 Participants will qualify for the next round.]

This time everyone could see how many participants remained.

Too few, some muttered. Too many, others corrected.

Hundreds of thousands still stood on the arena floor, swallowed in that black fog.

No one waited for them to finish thinking.

Gates began to appear around the arena. Contestants nearest them stumbled closer, drawn like moths, then stopped short.

Almsgiver reached out and touched the nearest gate. A barrier caught him and held him there, invisible but absolute.

His hand flattened against nothing. The fog hid most of his face, but the screens did not.

The fat young man was calm, not frightened as he looked around.

In the stands, Goldman had purchased the best seats, his nails digging into his palms, his voice already hoarse from cheering.

"You can do it, Almsgiver, my son. I believe you," Goldman roared again, unaware that Almsgiver was right beside him, the darkness obscuring the exact location of the participants.

At another gate, Tabulae stared, a feral light in her once young eyes.

Good Chip. Spice Cure. Gauge Point. That was not what they called themselves now.

Now they had names that sounded like promises. They had even taken a surname, awarded by God Eldric nonetheless.

Tabulae’s throat tightened. Bitter enough to taste it, her tongue had held it all day. Tears gathered and slid down her cheeks, hot with fury.

Never again. She swore it, silent and fierce. From this day on she would grab every opportunity with both hands.

Even death did not scare her young heart anymore. Death was just another door, and she had lived behind too many locked ones.

Her grandfather Biscuit stared at Tabulae’s portrait while one of the Ironbuck Miners pointed at her small image.

Yet they did not bet on her. They followed the crowd instead, taking the safe path.

Radiant numbers appeared above the gates. Then Eldric’s voice boomed across the arena.

"Let us count for our participants."

The audience roared back, delighted to be invited into the ritual, delighted to have a god ask them to do anything at all.

On every ghostly screen the numbers swelled, huge enough to read from the highest seats.

"Five."

"Four."

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

Two hundred fifty-six gates opened throughout the arena.

A great gust of wind tore through the floor, grabbing at bodies like a fist.

Contestants cried out. Cloaks snapped. Loose hair flew wild.

In an instant, people lifted from where they stood and scattered, flung through the gates into random zones, swallowed one by one.

The mortals who believed they could form teams paled. Their strategy of ganging up on other participants melted away.

Then, as if slapping Biscuit’s face, Eldric withdrew, and a spotlight found the announcer, Shears and Thimbles.

"Crowd, make some noise! Let the hunt begin!" the young and the older boomed as one.