Outworld Liberators-Chapter 187: How Mortals Survive Supernatural Ordeals

Biscuit saw the announcer’s face bloom across the ghostly screens and something in him cracked clean through.

Too familiar. Too close to a life he had buried.

He opened his mouth like he meant to breathe, then his eyes rolled back and he folded, heartache taking him faster than any blade.

Shears and Thimbles, living the life that was supposed to have been promised to them.

The small drama did not slow the floor.

In the dark, participants were already moving, shadows pushing through shadows, feet scuffing grit, breath loud in their own ears.

Ropefist. Twenty three, with a small house to his name, and no woman willing to chain herself to a mortal when cultivators walked around like living answers.

He carried two bundles of rope at his hips the way other men carried swords.

He unfurled them as he jogged, quick hands feeding cord through cord until he had gloves wrapped thick around his fists, though it used only a quarter of what he owned.

Ropefist lifted his gaze. He knew people could see him. He knew God Eldric was watching every muscle twitch and every mistake.

This rope art was his. Built from bruised knuckles and stubborn nights, mortal work in a world that worshipped miracles.

He was here to do his best. Not only to win, but to be noticed.

Then, a skeleton lunged out of the fog.

Ropefist slammed a punch into its chest and the impact shivered up his arm into his teeth.

His face twisted. Pain, sharp and immediate.

"That right there, fellas, is a stone skeleton," Shears said, voice steady, crowd-trained.

"Slow, sure... But if you’re thinking it’s hard, you’re damn right."

Thimbles chimed in, bright and honest.

"Grandpa. Wouldn’t that hurt if you punch it?"

Laughter rippled through the stands, warm as soup, while Ropefist sucked air through his teeth and shook his hand like it might forgive him.

Ropefist did not relent. He dodged the skeleton’s swing and fed more rope over his knuckles, wrapping fast, building thicker padding with every breath he could steal.

The cord bit into a tighter knot in his hands.

In the stands, people marveled at the ghostly screens.

The images moved so vividly it felt like the crowd was down there in the dark, fighting bone and stone with their own fists, borrowing courage from a man they had never met.

Elsewhere, Almsgiver wandered into a knot of skeletons with his hands raised like a man greeting neighbors at a market.

"Skeleton friends. I am looking for a flag. Do you know where that is?"

They did not answer. They only clacked their jaws and leaned in, poking at his fat with bony fingers, curious about the softness, curious about the warmth.

Almsgiver stood there and smiled, blinking slow, trying to stay polite and respectful despite the creatures around him were walking dead.

"Senior skeleton. It seems you aren’t able to articulate himself."

As people were baffled at how a young boy was talking to skeletons like the tournament was a lie.

A skirmish rolled on through the black. Eyes barely adjusted. Shapes came late.

A sword hissed. A bowstring twanged. A body hitting the ground with a scream.

Then the big one appeared. A skeleton over ten meters tall, moving with the patience of a landslide.

It carried a hammer made of bone. Each time it brought that weight down, the impact boomed through the ground.

Dust jumped. The earth cratered a foot deep.

To the stands it looked like a spectacle. To the participants, it was towering horror made of white.

"I forfeit, God Eldric, I forfeit."

"Absolute bonkers. I’m going to die here."

"My arrow bounced right fucking off."

People ran, stumbling over each other, throwing away pride and plans in exchange for a few more breaths.

Tabulae did not. She stood behind a stone structure, too thin for a regular man to stand behind, and waited for the opportunity.

The giant’s steps came like a cadence, heavy and spaced, a beat her ears could count even when her eyes failed her.

"One. Two. Three. Four."

"One. Two. Three. Four."

On the ribs of the monster she saw a crack, a thin dark seam where something moved.

A flap, faint, like cloth catching a trapped wind.

More risk, more reward. The lesson was engraved in her bones too deep for her to let this chance pass.

She tied her cheap thin rope to the handle of her knife, and spun it above her head until the rope sang.

Then she threw, hard and high. The blade vanished into the into the ribs with a scrape, spun, and caught. The rope jerked tight.

"Yes," Tabulae breathed, fist clenching.

The giant took one long step and the rope snapped her off the ground. Her stomach dropped.

Her body swung wide around the towering frame like bait on a line.

A yelp rose in her throat. She swallowed it down, bit her tongue, tasted copper.

’Quiet. Stay quiet.’

She wrapped her legs around the rope, palms burning, and started to climb, hand over hand, fiber biting into her skin as the monster kept walking.

"Folks, look there. One of our contestants, Tabulae."

"She’s managed to latch herself onto that giant skeleton warrior!"

People in the stands gasped at the audacity of the young lady swinging up the giant like it was a ladder to salvation.

Some laughed. Some prayed. Some leaned forward so hard they nearly fell out of their seats.

Biscuit roused back to consciousness with a wet blink, like the world had slapped him awake.

The highlights screen caught his eye at once.

Tabulae, a small figure against a towering skeleton, rope taut, knife buried in bone.

His eyes watered, and for a heartbeat it looked like the tears meant something decent.

Then something uglier slid in behind them.

Greed. Not for the prize. Not even for the glory. Greed for timing. For leverage.

For the chance to take advantage of a girl making a name for herself while she was still paying for it in blood.

He watched with a smug little calm, as if planning was the same as owning.

Down in the darkness, Tabulae heard the world differently. The giant’s steps tolled through the ground.

The rope creaked. Her own breath rasped in her ears. She reached the ribs and clung to them, fingers searching for purchase in old bone.

The skeleton noticed. A huge hand came around, fingers splaying to pluck her free.

The air moved with it, a gust made by dead strength.

Tabulae did not freeze. She did not scream. She thought fast and moved faster.

She dove into the ribcage. Bone scraped her shoulders.

For an instant she was inside the monster’s hollow chest, clinging to a spine where a heart should have been.

Below, the other participants kept running. They did not look up. They did not look back.

In that fog like darkness, thick as ink and shifting like smoke, most of them could barely see their own hands, much less a girl climbing into a giant’s ribs.