Damon's Ascension

Damon couldn't understand what had happened, but he could understand the consequence of it.

Even as his probability shift succeeded, causing the displayed votes from the Pre-Chaos beings to all glow green, meaning that he was the victor and was now free, his expression remained grim.

After all, one of his worst fears had come to pass.

He was now in competition with the Universe Will over Chaos Essence!

It was not that surprising when you thought of it. Now that it was confirmed that his Probability Manipulation could offset the cost using obtained Chaos Essence, this changed everything for Damon.

Whether it was him or Marshal, they were nominally the 'strongest' because of their ability to bend reality but were also the weakest because bending reality was too costly, so the things they could make happen stuck within their range of power.

For example, if Kyle wanted to use his vibration manipulation to turn someone's brain to mush, the difficulty he would face was far less than if Marshal or Damon used their reality bending power to do the same act to the same person while possessing the same stats.

But what made reality manipulation stand out was that it was akin to plot armor, able to intervene in places where offensive, defensive, or support abilities could not help.

Technically, Damon had everyone's power. With Probability Manipulation, he could heal or resurrect like Xela, he could empower others with Worldly Essence like Felicia, heck he could even forcibly raise his stats permanently without using Worldly Essence like the normal way!

These were things he had fantasized about, but knew he could only achieve once his level rose to the top and he possessed significant power to back it up.

Now, you were telling him that with a certain amount of Chaos Essence, he could achieve all this even as a 'low-level newbie'?

It was something to be excited about, but Damon was not smiling. You see, when he said he was 'in competition' with the Universe Will, he did not mean that he would have to sneak away some of his mined Chaos Essence from every journey, no.

It meant that he would have to literally hide all his, the human race's, and anyone affiliated with him's earnings and even offer a good price to others to sell their mined Chaos Essence to him instead of the Universe Will.

What he had held in hand was 100 million units of Chaos Essence, not Worldly Essence. Even if it was Worldly Essence, that was a huge amount that could send a non-human to level 100 and beyond with consecutive level ups, turning a weakling into a peak fighter of the universe in one go.

This Chaos Essence was about what the entire universe was able to mine in about half a decade's worth of work. The average top races gathered about a million or more per year while those below the top 20 got about 500,000 or less and below the top 100 races, earning 100,000 in a year was a miracle.

All of that was swallowed up by Probability Manipulation just to shift the outcome of this event. Either these Pre-Chaos beings were so powerful that their collective power was equivalent to this or it was that his ability had a poor conversion rate of external energy compared to internal energy.

Damon surmised it was both. How could his mere level 27 body with spread out stats contribute 1.5% of the total cost needed to make the shift succeed, while the remaining 94% required 100 million Chaos Essence?

Are you saying that 1 avatar body was worth 1.6 million units of Chaos Essence? Laughable!

He doubted he could earn 100 million units as easily outside of the casino, especially now that everyone saw him shift reality using it. Nyros previously threw 100 million over to him because the best the last round was heavy and Chaos Essence was not valued by Bright Realm creatures.

But if he were to try and cheese Chaos Essence from the casino again, it would not give him huge amounts, if any at all, because he could just turn around and use that Chaos Essence to alter reality and win bets!

Damon thought of all this in a split second, realizing that he should not have been thinking about this because he forgot one crucial fact.

He was completely drained of energy!

BAM!

He immediately collapsed like a sack of potatoes, falling to the platform weakly with his eyes glazed over, his life hanging by a thread.

WHOOSH!

Immediately, the Vanguard Team rushed up and surrounded his body, while the shocked Pre-Chaos beings who were flabbergasted by the sudden change hadn't moved yet. Even moreso was Nyros who was frozen to his spot, completely lost as he had seen what he considered to be the impossible.

"What do we do now, Lady Boss?" Connor asked quickly, his eyes full of malice as he scanned the Pre-Chaos beings around.

"Evacuate immediately! Let's go!" Felicia ordered right away.

"Got it!" Bane said as he lifted Damon over his shoulder and charged towards the exit of the Chaos Casino along with the Vanguard Team.

At this time, the various denizens of the casino snapped out of their stupor and became restless immediately.

They had been ruined!

All they had to do was vote against Damon and the casino agreed to free them and even give some benefits so they could restart their lives outside after so long, but it had all gone down the drain as Damon had used his ability to alter their choices!

"NOOO! HOW CAN THIS BE?!" One particularly large and grotesque Pre-Chaos being with a form that seemed to be a mixture of insect and bipedal mammal shrieked with agony.

He was one of the oldest here, having been trapped literally after losing his second bet, signing off an agreement to work for the casino in exchange for being allowed to live. He had forgone his chances to continue to bet in order to secure his life and this deal from the casino was probably his one and only chance to escape.

Now, it was forever gone because of these Post-Chaos scum!

AH!

The fellow went crazy, unable to hold it back anymore!

"DIE! DIE! DIEEE! DIE FOR ME!"

In a fit of madness, this creature actually disappeared from the midst of the Pre-Chaos spectators and charged towards the Vanguard Team, swinging a huge greatsword made of serrated chitinous bone, aiming to cut the entire team down before anyone could react.

The fellow did not care about anything anymore, simply just wanting to vent the anger in his heart!

And with the gap in stats between him and the Vanguard Team, it was no surprise that by the time anyone among the human team could react, half of the team, including Felicia, were sliced in half at the waist, their expressions still solemn as they tried to leave the casino, not realizing that they were dead.

But this was not enough to extinguish them once and for all as their Fortitude stats had been raised. Even some normal people, when bisected, would live for a few moments in agony before actually dying, much less them.

Seeing that his job was not done, the irate fellow was about to take another swing to clear these impudent creatures when a shadow portal appeared before him, swallowing up his body and depositing him right back where he started.

Meanwhile, shadow portals opened up underneath the Vanguard Team, taking them to the exit of the casino and tossing them out.

The irate creature cursed and slashed out a beam of light that hit the last shadow portal, but it only passed through it and hit nothing as it was swallowed into the folds of darkness.

The entire time this occurred, the other Pre-Chaos beings watched with hatred on their faces, while Nyros also spectated with a cold expression, making no move to stop the fellow.

While the rules did prohibit fights among contestants, the casino could bend the rules a bit since it was only supposed to punish the offender. So by delaying the punishments, it bought time for this Pre-Chaos creature to act, but the issue was that only Nyros knew the abilities of the Vanguard Team.

Damon had wisely chosen to share it with him privately through the mental link rather than announce it loudly, which allowed Connor to give them a window of escape after the first unexpected attack, since the assailant did not know he had such an ability.

Seeing that the humans had escaped successfully, Nyros was not bothered. His opinion of everything had changed—just like the Chaos Casino—after seeing that Damon could offset the cost with Chaos Essence.

As such he turned to the Pre-Chaos beings in the casino, and saw that they were still furious due to their lost chance of freedom.

Suddenly, Nyros smiled encouragingly. "Gentlemen, how about we make a bet?"