Plundering Worlds: I Have a Shotgun in a Fantasy World-Chapter 61: Gamble

Kael’s hand rested on his sword hilt. He looked down at Wei, kneeling on the floor, sobbing.

The room was silent except for Wei’s broken breathing.

Kael’s hand moved away from the sword.

"Baihe gave me a choice."

Wei’s sobs stopped. He looked up, his face streaked with tears.

"You die," Kael’s voice was flat, "or the villagers die."

"I chose a third option."

Lianghong moved down the stairs slowly, his eyes fixed on Kael.

Wei’s hands trembled. "You... you killed them to save—"

"I killed them because I made a judgment," Kael turned toward Baihe, "that he would break his promise."

The room went still.

Baihe’s smile widened. He pushed off from the railing and walked forward, his footsteps echoing on the wooden floor.

"Oh?" His blue eyes gleamed. "And what made you think that?"

Kael met his gaze. "Your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"When you gave me the choice—the playfulness in them, the anticipation." Kael’s voice remained level. "I’ve seen that look before."

Baihe tilted his head. "Have you now?"

"Yes."

The air grew heavy. Lianghong gripped the stair railing. The innkeeper’s hand went to her mouth.

Baihe’s smile stretched wider. "Go on."

"The game was never about the choice." Kael’s eyes stayed locked on those blue-red rings. "You were going to kill everyone regardless—Wei, the villagers, me. You were waiting to see which one I’d choose, so you could watch me realize afterward that it meant nothing."

Wei’s breath caught.

"That’s what you do," Kael’s hand moved back to his sword hilt, "you give people hope, let them struggle, let them make impossible decisions—then you take everything anyway."

Baihe laughed—a genuine sound of delight that filled the room. "Clever! Very clever!" He clapped his hands together. "So you decided to... what? Entertain me instead?"

"I decided to make you satisfied enough to keep your word."

"By killing for me?"

"By making you think I was like you."

The laughter stopped. Baihe’s eyes narrowed, but his smile remained. "Making me think?"

Kael remained silent.

"You weren’t ’following your true nature’ at all." Baihe walked closer, circling Kael like a predator. "You were performing. Acting out what you thought I wanted to see. A kindred spirit. Someone who kills without hesitation, without remorse."

He stopped in front of Kael. "You gambled that if I believed you were like me—if I thought I’d found something interesting—I’d actually honor my little game." His voice dropped. "You gambled fifty-four lives on your ability to fool a Xiantian cultivator."

"Yes."

The word hung in the air.

Wei made a strangled sound. His mouth opened and closed. "You... you weren’t... you gambled..."

"That old man..." Wei’s voice cracked. "He taught me... when I was ten... he taught me to fish..."

His hands pressed against the floor. "And that woman... my mother... during the famine... she gave us rice..."

Wei’s words came out in fragments, barely coherent.

"They’re dead..." His voice rose, cracking. "They’re dead because you... because you judged... because you..."

He couldn’t finish. The words tangled in his throat. Wei covered his face with both hands.

"Maybe... maybe they didn’t have to die... maybe Baihe would have... maybe..."

His shoulders shook violently.

Baihe laughed—loud and delighted. He walked over to Wei and crouched down beside him.

"Oh, you want to know?" Baihe’s voice was cheerful. "You want to know if I would have kept my promise?"

Wei looked up through his tears, his face twisted with desperate hope and fear.

Baihe’s smile was radiant. "I’ll tell you the truth—"

He leaned in close. "No matter what choice he made, I would have killed everyone."

Wei’s face went white.

"You. The villagers. Him. Every single person." Baihe’s blue eyes sparkled. "That’s the game!"

He laughed, spreading his arms. "Watch people struggle, watch them choose, watch them suffer—then take everything anyway!"

He patted Wei’s cheek gently, almost affectionately. "The beautiful part is the moment they realize their choice meant nothing. The despair. The realization that all their agonizing was pointless."

Baihe stood. "But this boy—" He pointed at Kael. "He saw through it. He understood me."

"So he chose a third path. He gave me a better show. He made me laugh. He entertained me." Baihe spread his arms. "So I kept my word."

He looked down at Wei. "You should thank him. If he’d simply picked one of my options, you’d be a corpse by now."

Wei stared up at him, his face blank with shock. Then he turned to look at Kael. His expression twisted—gratitude, horror, rage, confusion, all bleeding together into something incomprehensible.

"I..." Wei’s voice was barely a whisper. "I should... thank..."

He started laughing—a broken, wrong sound that came out like sobbing. His body shook with it.

Baihe clapped his hands. "Wonderful! Look at him! Look at him! Curse you or worship you—he can’t decide!" He laughed along with Wei’s broken sounds. "This is delicious!"

Kael turned toward the door.

"Wait!" Wei’s voice cut through, suddenly sharp. He tried to stand, but his legs wouldn’t support him. He stayed on his knees. "You... you had no right..."

His voice cracked again. "You decided... you chose who lived and who died... those people were scared... they just wanted to survive... they said cruel things but they..."

Wei’s hands clenched into fists. "They didn’t deserve to die! You played god! You gambled with their lives!"

Kael stopped. His back was to Wei.

"What would you have had me do?"

Wei froze.

"Choose to die myself?" Kael’s voice was quiet. "Let Baihe kill everyone? Do nothing and hope he’d show mercy?" He looked back over his shoulder. "Tell me what choice I should have made."

Wei’s mouth opened. Closed. His face contorted as he tried to form words. "I... you could have... maybe if you’d..."

Nothing coherent came out.

"I made a judgment." Kael turned back toward the door. "Satisfying his desire for entertainment was the only way anyone survived."

"But you don’t know—"

"I know that you’re still alive." Kael’s hand rested on the doorframe. "I know the children are alive. The elders who stayed silent. The ones who watched but didn’t demand blood." He paused. "That’s more than would have survived otherwise."

"You think that makes it right?"

"I think I made the best choice I could with what I knew." Kael looked at Wei one last time. "And I’ll live with the consequences of being wrong, if I was wrong."

He walked out into the sunlight.

Wei knelt on the floor. His breath came in ragged gasps. Tears streamed down his face, but he made no sound now. Just stared at the empty doorway.

Lianghong descended the rest of the stairs slowly. He looked at Wei, then at the door where Kael had disappeared.

The innkeeper spoke quietly from behind her counter, more to herself than anyone else. "Dongfang Baihe... I’ve heard that name..." Her hand trembled as she wiped down the counter. "My cousin’s village... three years ago..." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

She stopped, shaking her head. The words died in her throat. But the fear on her face spoke volumes.

Wei stayed on his knees. Minutes passed. The other patrons slowly filtered out, casting nervous glances at the sobbing man and the blood-stained floor.

Finally, only Wei, Lianghong, and the innkeeper remained.

The innkeeper brought Wei a bowl of water. He took it but didn’t drink. Just held it, staring at his reflection on the surface.

"Those people... they’re dead..." Wei’s voice was hollow now, emptied of everything. "And the ones who survived... they’re in the village... confused... scared... they lost family..."

He looked up at Lianghong. "What... what am I supposed to do?"

Lianghong met his eyes. "That’s for you to decide."

Wei’s gaze dropped back to the bowl. "My wife is dead. My neighbors are dead. My village is broken." His hands tightened around the bowl. "And I’m alive because... because someone gambled. Because someone guessed right."

He set the bowl down carefully. Slowly, painfully, he got to his feet. His legs shook, but he stayed upright.

"I have to go back." The words came out flat. "Those people who survived—they need someone. They lost their families. They’re grieving. They’re afraid."

Wei walked toward the door, each step uncertain. He paused in the doorway, looking out at the morning sun. "I don’t know if what he did was right or wrong. I don’t... I can’t..."

His voice broke. He took a breath and steadied himself. "But those people are still there. Still alive. And someone has to help them."

He stepped out into the street and started walking east, back the way he’d come. Back toward the ruins of his village and the broken people who remained.

Lianghong watched him go. Then he turned to look at the western road, where Kael and Baihe had disappeared.

His mind churned through everything he’d heard. The impossible choice. The calculated gamble. The fifty-four dead and the forty-some living. The monster who gave false choices and the boy who’d learned to read monsters.

Lianghong thought of the stories that would spread. "A swordsman murdered fifty-four people in cold blood." "A demonic cultivator slaughtered innocents." Simple stories. Clear villains.

But the truth was messier. Uglier. More complicated.

If no one witnessed it, if no one recorded what actually happened—the choice that wasn’t a choice, the gamble that saved most of them, the monster who would have killed everyone—then only the simple story would survive.

And maybe that was fair. Maybe Kael was a murderer who’d found a convenient excuse. Maybe those fifty-four people died for nothing.

Or maybe he’d saved everyone with a desperate, brilliant gamble.

He grabbed his pack from upstairs and walked out into the sunlight. The western road stretched before him.

He was afraid. His hands shook as he adjusted his pack. Dongfang Baihe could kill him on a whim. Kael was clearly dangerous in ways Lianghong still didn’t fully understand.

But someone had to watch. Someone had to know. Someone had to write it down.

Even if it cost him his life.

Lianghong started walking west.

[Town Street - Morning]

Kael walked down the main street. His wounds ached with each step, but his pace was steady.

Baihe walked beside him, hands clasped behind his back. "You’re good at watching people."

Kael kept walking.

"The ability to understand what someone wants, what drives them, what satisfies them—that’s a valuable skill. Especially for someone powerless." Baihe glanced at him.

Kael’s hand tightened on his sword hilt.

"And now you’ve applied those skills to me. How delightful!" Baihe laughed. "You treated me like just another master to manage. Another unpredictable force to navigate around."

"You are."

Baihe stopped walking. His smile vanished for a moment, then returned wider than before. "Oh, I like you more and more! Yes, I suppose I am, aren’t I? Just another powerful monster you have to appease to survive."

He resumed walking. "But here’s what makes this interesting—you can’t actually control me. You can only guess. Gamble. Hope you’ve read me correctly." His blue eyes gleamed. "And every time you guess wrong, people die."

Kael kept walking.

"That’s the game now," Baihe continued. "I’m going to keep putting you in situations where you have to judge, to gamble, to choose who lives and dies based on your understanding of human nature. And we’ll see..." He spread his arms wide. "How often you’re right."

Behind them, running footsteps. Lianghong appeared, slightly out of breath.

"Wait!"

Kael glanced back but kept walking.

Lianghong caught up, panting. "I’m... I’m coming with you."

Baihe raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And why would you do that?"

"Because..." Lianghong swallowed, trying to catch his breath. "Because someone needs to see what happens. Someone needs to record it."

"Record what? His heroic sacrifices?" Baihe’s voice dripped with mockery. "Or his calculated murders?"

"Whatever it is." Lianghong straightened despite his heaving chest and trembling hands. "The truth. All of it. Not just ’a swordsman killed fifty-four people.’ But why. How. What the choices were."

His voice grew steadier. "When stories spread, they get simplified. Good versus evil. Hero versus villain. But what happened back there—" He gestured toward the village. "It’s not that simple."

"If no one witnesses it, if no one records what actually happens, then only the simple version survives. And maybe that’s not fair. Maybe people deserve to know the whole truth before they judge."

Baihe studied him for a long moment, then laughed. "A chronicler! How perfect! Yes, yes, come along. Document everything. Write it all down." He leaned close to Lianghong, those blue eyes boring into him. "Write down every choice he makes. Every life he gambles with. Every time he plays god and decides who deserves to live."

Lianghong’s hands shook, but he held his ground. "I will."

"Good!" Baihe stepped back, grinning. "I want to see what story you write. Will he be the xia who saved everyone? Or the murderer who found an excuse?"

He spun away, laughing. "Even you won’t know for certain!"

Kael continued walking. After a moment, Lianghong followed, his legs unsteady.

Baihe brought up the rear, humming a cheerful tune.

---

They reached the edge of town. The road stretched westward, winding into hills and forests.

Kael paused, looking at the road ahead. His hand moved to his chest where bandages wrapped around his ribs. The wounds throbbed with each breath.

Lianghong stopped beside him. "Are you... should you be traveling? Those wounds—"

"I’ll manage."

"But—"

"I’ve walked with worse."

Lianghong fell silent. There was a story there, but he sensed this wasn’t the time to ask.

Baihe walked past them both, stepping onto the western road. "Come along! I’m eager to see what happens next!" He turned, walking backward, that white hair catching the sunlight. "Maybe we’ll find another village! Another impossible situation! Another chance for our xia to make his calculations!"

Kael started walking.

Lianghong hesitated, looking back at the town one last time. Somewhere behind them, Wei was walking east to a broken village. Somewhere in that village, forty-some people were burying their dead and trying to understand what had happened.

And ahead... ahead was uncertainty. More choices. More gambles. More chances for Kael’s judgments to be right or catastrophically wrong.

Lianghong took a deep breath. His hands were still shaking, but he forced his feet to move. He followed Kael onto the western road.

The three figures walked west—a silent swordsman with a dark blade, a white-haired monster with blue and red eyes, and a young man who’d chosen to bear witness to whatever came next.

The sun climbed higher. The road stretched on.

Kael walked with his eyes forward. The wounds ached.

Fifty-four faces. Fifty-four questions.

What makes your judgment correct?

Who gave you that right?

No answers. Only the road ahead.

Wei was alive. The children were alive. That had to mean something.

Or maybe it meant nothing.

Kael kept walking.

Behind him, Lianghong followed.

Behind them both, Baihe hummed his cheerful tune.

The road stretched west.