Damon's Ascension

The wheel spun and landed on Ambition, with the light of the casino's main floor falling upon Damon as it called him onto the grand stage.

Meanwhile, the Vanguard Team were still processing what he had just revealed.

"Boss, what the heck does that mean? A trap? How?" Henry asked with a slight panic, not comprehending the sudden change.

Damon casually turned to his party and explained. "I don't know why you guys miscalculated, but I still have one more bet to clear before I am free. In both Xela and Felicia's bets, I may have done the speaking, but I wasn't a direct party to the gamble, so they don't count."

"Yes, but…" Kyle began, his expression one of someone at a complete loss, but Felicia stepped in.

"From the beginning, the goal was to capture us all and make us stay behind, that was the purpose of the third bet. Even if Xela and I could leave, Nyros would have likely found some appealing method to keep us behind, likely something very lucrative or powerful."

She shook her head slowly with a sigh. "But after hearing about our abilities after sacrificing the second bet to win the third, his reaction and words showed that he feels we are a threat, and doesn't want to keep us all."

She then glanced at Nyros whose cold expression was one of a predator that was watching its prey act alert but was already cornered.

"So rather than decide to keep us all, a bunch of unstable elements who could produce many combinations with our collective abilities—which the casino cannot control even if we are enslaved to it—he decided to only take one… the most important one."

Saying that, she glanced at Damon with a look of slight worry and consternation, seemingly unhappy that this was all playing out in a way that couldn't be avoided.

Nyros clapped ostentatiously. "It seems like the Quantum Analysis skill hasn't gone to waste on you. I am now more interested to see where you might take it to in your future journeys."

Then he turned to Damon with a calm yet piercing glance. "And you… you realized this from as early as the last round's conclusion huh? You are taking a gamble yourself, a gamble that we will let your people go and take on you."

Damon folded his arms. "Since you are gloating over your perceived victory and are in a revealing mood, I can also reveal some things if you promise not to cause any trouble after I lose."

Nyros chuckled. "Cause trouble? Even if you somehow win, which a cunning fellow like you is definitely trying to do, I wouldn't cause trouble then, much less if you lose according to plan."

Damon sized Nyros up. "I really find you to be quite amusing. I have already been compelled to tell you about my avatar ability from the last round, so even if you win the bet against me this time, you can only retain this avatar."

Damon shrugged. "And I will tell you plainly, I can just dissipate this avatar and recondense it elsewhere."

The Vanguard Team, previously overwhelmed by the bad news, were now excited.

Henry's jaw dropped. "Wait, wait… are you serious right now?! You mean this is just a copy of you?!"

Kyle's mouth stretched into a grin. "He really did pull a fast one on all of us, huh? Nice Kage Bunshin by the way."

Levi gave a rare chuckle, shaking his head. "This guy..."

Even Marshal's eyes, usually unreadable, gleamed faintly with the shimmer of satisfaction.

Xela clasped her hands to her mouth, then laughed! It was light at first, then more intense, as if some immense pressure had been lifted from her chest.

"He let us worry on purpose, just so we'd feel the relief later…" She muttered with playful resentment.

Nicholas smirked with a knowing look. "A performance fit for a Prime Representative."

Only Felicia remained quiet, watching Damon's avatar with a thousand thoughts behind her eyes. She hadn't doubted his various plans and countermeasures, but now she finally understood the depth of them.

Connor chuckled under his breath. "A trap within a trap, huh? Not bad… Not bad at all."

Bane nodded once, arms crossed. "Then let's get this last one over with and leave."

Hope surged like a tide through the Vanguard Team. They weren't out yet, but now they knew Damon had never played to survive… he had always played to win!

However, Nyros was not bothered by this at all.

"Yes, I imagine you think so and it's fine. You are Post-Chaos creatures who have only come into the Bright Realm for a century or two, so it's likely you lack a lot of crucial information about how things work."

Nyros shook his head and chuckled. "You know what, I'll do you all a free favor, because I like the difficulty you faced to become the people you are today."

"In the Bright Realm, there are two things you should always know in order to never get tripped up. The first is that rules are not necessarily absolute, but they are certainly flexible and alive. The second is that the concept of existence is fixed and when it comes to things like punishments, debt paying or prisons, having skills or abilities with multiple bodies or souls or whatnot mean nothing."

Damon's expression darkened, but not by much. Meanwhile, the Vanguard Team who previously seemed reassured were now like a person receiving a message that they had a loved one who had encountered a hazard, distraught and panicked.

Felicia sighed with lament as she knew it could not be so easy and glanced over at Damon, she did some rapid calculations and found that his chances of winning in this game mode was nearly nil!

After all, that was the essence of the trap. This was not a game mode that could be won by luck, but purely by the approval of the 'impartial' audience of ancient Pre-Chaos beings with cruel smiles on their faces, likely being guaranteed their freedom if they voted against Damon.

After all, one Damon was worth more than a million of them to the casino. To secure Damon alone, the price it had paid was not small and it was not a joke at all.

It gave up many precious materials and especially, its anonymity. It had never let anyone who entered ever escape to inform the others, but this Vanguard Team would soon be able to leave and warn the world about this area and its tricks.

Damon had the ability to alter reality and even Marshal did, but both of them knew that doing so was impossible. It was fine to alter a 3rd party luck based event and wrestle with the casino's luck altering mechanics to seek victory, but this one would require Damon to directly manipulate the casino or the Pre-Chaos beings doing the voting.

To manipulate the chaos beings by warping their minds when they voted to vote green or to warp the casino who collected the votes and displayed them at the end to display green.

Each of these was nigh impossible for the duo to do. Even wrestling against the casino as a third party, separating his Probability Manipulation one by one to minimize consumption and preserve victory chances, Damon was almost bottomed out many times, relying heavily on his other bodies outside to bear the burden since they were in safe places.

If he wanted to have a shot at winning, he had to utilize his Probability Manipulation's full 60% modification rate (when all four bodies' 15% were combined at once) and that would not even guarantee victory, just give him better odds.

The rate of manipulation was fixed, so even if it was to make the Chaos Eye call him father, he would still have a 60% chance to achieve it assuming the base rate was zero (rates can't be negative as far as Damon knew).

But the issue came with the cost. The more 'magnificent' the thing he was trying to do or act upon versus his current base of power, the more it would drain him to effect that shifted probability rate.

So there came the problem. Damon was strong and he was building a strong foundation, but even in the home universe, he was no match for someone like Ambrose in direct combat due to stat and skill difference, much less these ancient beings that absorbed raw void energy to survive back in the day.

If there was to be some sort of measurement between them in terms of stats, then the Pre-Chaos beings would likely be in the thousands while he was merely in the single digit rate, none of his stats reaching or surpassing 10.

After all, these fellows were not suppressed like they had been in the battle royale game, their full power was present on the casino floor.

And that was the crowd, as for manipulating the casino…

Putting aside the fact that the casino also had some luck or reality altering powers of its own, it was an Area supported by the entire Bright Realm. Damon was sure that he probably couldn't fathom the level of consumption needed to even begin to tickle the casino's underbelly.