Outworld Liberators-Chapter 173: Radeon Terraces Letting People Win

The reason behind the copper toll was not only to keep coins circulating and skim steady profit.

It also jogged memory. Ghosts were not all spawned equal. The newer ones needed habits carved into them, routines drilled until they became instinct.

A few had been trained alongside the older attendants, learning how to count, how to record, how to move through crowds without creating panic.

For the Terrace, it was three birds with one stone.

Inside, the first sight stole breath.

Goldman had never seen treasure like this in his life. Spirit stones stacked along the walls, swirling faintly with inner light, tens of thousands at a glance.

Not hidden. Not sealed away. Displayed. Offered to the eye like bait.

Even Tiberius and Gregodor were caught for a heartbeat, awed not only by the amount, but by the way Eldric showed it.

Wanton. Confident. Almost insulting. It was a blatant show of force.

Like saying, come. Here it is. Take it if you can.

Goldman did not fixate on the political weight of it. His mind ran on profit and possibility.

He stared at the piles and saw expansion, connections, new leverage, new markets that could be bought into with the right friends.

So he asked the question everyone else was swallowing.

"Are these treasures all for us to win?"

The ghost attendant only nodded.

People tried to twist words, to wring out loopholes, to make the promise narrower or broader.

They received only nods, patient and absolute.

Then, as they passed the hall filled with glittering piles and ominous artifacts, three paths opened ahead of them.

[Games of Pure Luck]

[Games of Skill]

[Games of Calm and Leisure]

Men drifted toward the games of skill first.

Who in their right mind would admit they lacked skill, especially in public. Pride pulled them like a hook.

Older men chose the calm and leisure halls, where the stakes felt softer and the chairs felt kinder.

Those who had never played much in their lives, or who simply wanted to try, wandered toward the path of pure luck, pretending it was curiosity and not cowardice.

High above, on a surveillance platform, Radeon and his four disciples watched each district like hawks over fields.

Two of them already looked resigned, as if they had been sentenced to miss half their lives.

Fay and Thaddeus. Radeon had warned them never to gamble.

Not because gambling was evil. Because they would win.

Their constitutions made them a few notches luckier than ordinary men.

Radeon said it plainly, without poetry, and he did not hide it like a secret.

Fay and Thaddeus accepted it without argument.

Even so, their eyes kept drifting to the pure luck hall anyway, caught by the same human itch as everyone else.

When the crowd entered the luck hall, the first thing they saw was not a game.

It was piles of black empty sacks, stacked like discarded skins.

"Please take one," a ghost attendant said.

Men grabbed the sacks, confused, turning the cloth over in their hands as if it might bite.

Overhead, the ceiling was studded with small steel marbles, innumerable to count, held in place in neat grids.

Below, transparent pillars rose from the floor like glass trees.

Near the base of each pillar, numbers ran from zero to a thousand.

At the very bottom sat a hollow chamber waiting to be filled.

Attendants stood everywhere, silent and ready, answering with gestures, guiding bodies away from crowding, making sure no one touched another man’s treasure.

Goldman did not waste time. He read the signs, and the rules were simple enough that even a child could grasp the gist.

[Steel Balls of Fate]

[Price to Play: 1 Silver Coin per ball]

[1. Swipe your card into the array.]

[2. Use the lever on where the ball will go.]

[3. Be warned that there are winds inside the pillars.]

[1] [5] [10] [20] [50] [100] [250] [500] [1000]

With that much wealth behind him, Goldman did not pause to second guess.

What was a thousand balls. What was a little loss for a little thrill.

He set his hand on the lever and pulled.

Above, the ceiling released its hoard. Steel marbles began to drop one by one into a narrow tube, then spilled into the long transparent pillars below.

They struck hidden pegs and ridges and bounced so fast one would swear they were rubber, not metal.

The sound came down in a bright rattle, relentless, like hail on glass.

People watched with anticipation before they even dared to play.

They leaned in, mouths half open, eyes tracking the falling glitter as if staring harder might persuade fate.

The first few marbles landed in the slots marked one.

Then a handful found twos. Some slipped into zeros and died there, useless as a bad wager.

It was all luck. Clean and cruel. Soon only a hundred balls remained, clacking their way down toward the hollow chamber at the base.

Men craned their necks. Fingers tightened on sacks.

Goldman glanced at the payout board, and the crowd did the same, suddenly sober, measuring what a lucky fall might become.

[842 Silver]

Goldman was still in deficit, but as if luck chose a critical moment, the balls started hitting, landing on the hundreds.

Five balls even landed on a thousand each. The total payout then flowed out from the bottom of the long pillar.

[171 Gold] [92 Silver]

Newly minted coins dropped slowly, by twos and threes. It was like music that made men salivate with greed.

Goldman made bank. By the time the last coin rattled out, he had multiplied his stake by more than a hundred seventy one times.

The sight of it broke the dam. No words needed to be spoken. One win was all it took.

People surged toward the pillars with sacks in hand. Now they understood why they had been given sacks.

It was to collect their winnings themselves. Hands pulled levers. Eyes tracked marbles.

On the skill side, the mood was different. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Tiberius and Gregodor sat at a table of eight, surrounded by fellow cultivators whose eyes and senses had been honed to the extreme.

Here, high grade spirit stones were the price of sitting down.

A ghost attendant flicked both hands. Two cards shot toward each player.

They did not fly like ordinary paper. Illusion wrapped them. Mysticism bent the path.

The cards became blurs of shifting light, too fast for ordinary sight, too slippery for even trained focus.

Tiberius almost pulled a sour face, but forced it down, refusing to give the table that pleasure.

Gregodor’s eye twitched once, sharp with irritation.

The players here were not meant to stare at cards. They understood the game quickly.

Poker was not about what you held. It was about reading the enemy, reading breath, posture, pulse, the tiny betrayals that even cultivators could not fully hide.

The Terrace had stripped the game down, replacing jacks, queens, kings, and aces with profession levels.

Master, Grandmaster, Premier, and Saint. Radeon might be in a parallel universe, but it was better to be safe than to be discovered while he regained his strength.

On the calm and leisure side, the air softened.

An outdoor zen garden waited, stone paths and raked sand, lanterns hung low, the scent of water and pine drifting through.

Boat rides moved along a quiet channel, one hour per man, twenty per boat.

People spoke in low voices about weather and trade, about which peaks were thriving and which were starving.

Their words stayed vague, careful, but seasoned ears could still taste the meaning.

A gentleman hooked a golden arowana from the water, and the payout came immediately.

One hundred middle grade spirit stones, dropped into his hands without delay. The crowd murmured, and more lines formed.

And those were only the obvious games.

Everywhere you looked, someone was winning something, and the Terrace made sure everyone saw just enough victory to believe the next one could be theirs.

Calyx, beside them, had a list on his system retina. Hundreds of thousands of names. Who would win. Who would lose.

The Gaming and Social District was a business, and for the first few days, they were ready to bleed.