Outworld Liberators-Chapter 189: Discreet Advertising Amid Killing

Whiteblade and Nightskin looked at each other. Even through the ghostly screens, the pause read loud.

The crowd swallowed as one, a sound like a tide pulling back.

Nightskin moved first. He closed the distance and slid in near Whiteblade’s shoulder, too close for comfort, too close for clean sword work.

Whiteblade cursed and raised his estoc to block, blade angled across his body.

Nightskin did not give him space. He stepped into the line of the sword as if pain was just another price, then drove a punch straight into the steel.

The gauntlet hit with a soft clang. Whiteblade’s eyes widened when he did not get pushed back.

Nightskin had meant it that way. He did not make Whiteblade recoil. He changed the form of his hand.

Metal fingers spread and hooked. The punch became a claw, clamping down on the blade and locking it in place like a vice.

Whiteblade gasped, mind racing for what to do next.

Shears roared through the microphone array.

"Whiteblade can’t even react. Gentlemen. Is Whiteblade done for?"

In the stands, men who had bet on Whiteblade clenched their teeth until their jaws ached.

"Bugger off, Whiteblade wastrel, go home, and don’t show your face here again!"

"Seven hells. You dare lose like my coin is yours to spill? I’ll have your killed for this!"

"Should’ve stayed a merchant, like your grandfather. You’ve no stomach for cultivation, none at all."

Somewhere higher up, Whiteblade’s grandfather, a business rival of Goldman, only smirked, knowing his boy had a trick up his sleeve, readied in advance.

Nightskin grinned the way madmen did when they thought the world had finally agreed to their cruelty.

His right hand drew back, ready to pummel Whiteblade’s skull until the fight stopped being a fight.

Whiteblade let the sword go.

Steel slipped from his hand and stayed trapped in Nightskin’s clawed grip.

Whiteblade’s other hand slid out of his sleeve with a compact weapon already seated in his palm.

A hand cannon, something the Radeon Terraces had auctioned years back, meant for men who could not afford hesitation.

He aimed into the darkness and fired.

Light flashed. Thunder boomed. The mortals in the stands barely saw anything beyond the sudden glare and the way the ghostly screen shook with it.

A gasp ran through the arena like wind through dry grass.

"Grandpa Shears, what happened. Where is Big Brother Nightskin?" Thimbles asked, small voice cutting through the roar.

Shears blinked hard, face slack with honest uncertainty.

"I. I didn’t see clearly what that was."

Calyx stepped in beside them, the calm in his posture forced.

"That was a hand-cannon." Calyx lifted his voice, firm and precise. "Everyone, if you please. I shall show you the exact scene, by divinizing reconstruction."

The crowd swallowed. Most did not understand the words, but they understood what followed when the screen shimmered and the moment returned, slowed down until each breath became an event.

There was Nightskin, almost still, fingers clamped on the sword as if he could crush it by will alone.

Then Whiteblade, hand cannon leveled.

A bloom of flame roared from the muzzle. Inside that flame, small bright shimmers rode the heat like sparks that had learned to hunt.

In the slowed vision, those shimmers struck Whiteblade’s own blade first.

Mortal steel softened, sagged, then melted where the heat kissed it. It gave way like butter.

The shimmers punched on. They tore into Nightskin’s chest and opened him in a burst of light and ruin, a hole as wide as a man’s head.

Not one shimmer, but dozens, then more, a storm of glowing beeds that did not stop to ask permission.

Some mortals looked away when the scene dragged on in detail. It was too much gore that they couldn’t look.

Another shimmer hit his gauntlet. Steel sizzled. Skin beneath it blistered in the same heartbeat.

The glove did not protect him. It simply gave the heat something else to eat.

The metal thinned, then vanished, and what was left of the hand went with it.

Then, the last shimmers reached his head. His grin warped. His face distorted, and the top of his skull flung away.

Lastly, the rest of his body followed, stripped down in bright bites until there was almost nothing left to fall.

When the reconstruction ended, only his calves and feet remained standing on the arena floor in the dark, a cruel joke of posture without life.

In Calyx’s mind, Radeon suddenly spoke through the system he had inside him.

"Public relation."

Calyx’s throat worked once. He understood.

"This is what the higher-stage cultivators perceived. The moment itself seemed to slow."

"Falsehoods showed their seams. A twitch of fear, a flicker of guilt, a thought crossing the eyes, each became legible, if one had the sight for it."

The mortals did not think about the hand cannon first after that. They thought about themselves.

If cultivators could see like that, then a man’s face could betray him faster than his mouth ever could.

That fear spread quiet through the stands, and it did more work than any speech.

It was exactly what Radeon wanted. Wanting to advertise the hand cannon but not making people fear them.

Soon Eldric appeared at the announcement stand with the others, his presence filling the screens before some people even noticed he had moved.

His voice boomed across all of Radeon Terraces, loud enough to sit inside a man’s ribs.

"We are at the three-hour mark. Participants, take heed, you have but twenty-one hours remaining."

In the stands, the audience sighed, almost wistful. One day of show and already their eyes were hungry for more.

Who would not want to sit here for a week and watch lives gamble themselves into stories.

On the arena floor, expressions changed.

Most still had no flag. Not even a dud. They had only darkness, bones, and the sound of other people dying.

Eldric’s reminder put a clock in their skulls, and clocks made men stupid.

Panic spread. Carelessness followed.

People ran without looking, and some ran straight into sword wielding skeletons.

Others stumbled into the lines of archer fire and were cut down before they even understood where the arrows came from.

The fog hid everything. The urgency made it worse.

Because of a few spoken words, a hundred unlucky contestants died in minutes.

A thousand more went down injured, and the way they fell told the truth.

Their situations were critical, not dramatic. Broken legs. Open bellies. Punctured lungs.

Another three hours bled away.

Almsgiver still had not found the right flag. He had found everything else. His pants looked like a flag shop now, more than two hundred dud flags hanging off him in swaying layers.

Purple. Orange. Ten arms. Four arms. No arms. He carried them anyway like trophies that did not know they were worthless.

The skeletons he had made peers with had grown to a staggering hundred and fifty.

If anyone looked closer on the screens, they would see the boy was sitting on the skull of a giant skeleton as if it were a throne.

Earlier, when Almsgiver first saw the big one, his face lit up.

He trotted right up to it and slapped its leg bone with both hands, delighted by the sound.

"Master skeleton. You are so big. How is the view up your skull? I want to see. It’s too dark down here."

The giant skeleton did not answer with words.

It simply scooped him up and set him on top of its head like he was a hat that had decided to talk.

Now he perched there, legs dangling, while other skeletons clacked around him like an escort.

Nearby, another giant skeleton was tilling the soil in great heavy scoops, moving rubble and dirt by the ton.

It lifted a small flag from the blackness and held it up like an offering.

Almsgiver leaned forward, squinting. His childish face pouted as he started counting.

"One. Two. Seven. Umm. I think that’s wrong. Master skeleton. Show me your hand. I can’t see my hand."

Up in the seating, people did not know whether to laugh or cry.

It looked unfair. It looked ridiculous. It looked like the boy had brought an army of his own.

Questions swarmed the ghost attendants. People pestered them anyway, even though everyone knew that if you bothered a ghost too much it might answer with a curse instead of an explanation.

Tonight the ghosts did not. Not because they had turned gentle, but because someone had leashed them.

Radeon had pressed patience into them the way heat pressed shape into steel.

These spirits fed on ugly feelings. Greed. Fear. Spite. The crowd was a banquet.

Merchants and wagers and the smell of money gave them plenty to chew on without touching a single human.

So the attendants held their tongues and held their hands.

Not all ghosts were clever. Not all were like Calyx. The first batch had included things like tiyanak and wraiths that thought with hunger instead of reason.

If those got loose in a packed arena, the show would turn into a massacre.

So the rule stood, simple and hard. Watch the living. Feed on what they spill. Do not lay a finger on them.

On another side, Goldman had fainted twice, like a cheating mistress caught by the legal wife.

The shock had been too much. His son dared approach the skeleton behemoths as if they were small animals.

Goldman still watched, and cheered. As a father, his feelings were a tangle. His son. He was too peerless.