Radiant Shadow

-Radiant-

Unlike its looks, the void portal functioned exactly the way a normal one would. I walked through it and ended up inside another plain looking room, but this one didn't have any guards inside. But I could just barely sense through the door of the room that there was one guard standing outside guarding the room.

As I walked out of the portal it promptly closed behind me and must've alerted the guard stationed outside the room, because he opened up the door right after.

The guard treated me like a VIP customer just because I had entered through such a fancy way, and tried to do anything he could to help me. Seeing as how this was my first time visiting the place, I welcomed his help.

He led me out of the room and it wasn't long before we reached a bustling floor dedicated entirely to gambling. There were screens all over with different numbers and names, almost like airport terminals with fluctuating betting odds and times. There were different areas seemingly dedicated to different types of bets and categories of bets. One of them was dedicated to RealSports, another dedicated to NewWorld, and even one dedicated to Politics.

As I walked along, my guide noticed me looking at the Politics area with interest, so he said, "Ah, I see you're interested in Politics?"

I responded, "No, not exactly, but I was wondering. Wouldn't you get a lot of heat from the government for betting on things like that?"

He nodded at my question, "Good question. Actually, The Obsidian Acropolis only acts as a platform of these bets, and it tries to be as neutral as possible. Politics betting in particular has a very steep cut of the earnings taken by The Obsidian Acropolis, up to fifty percent of the earnings; it helps keep the betting odds from fluctuating too much, and limits the greed involved."

"I guess, but has The Obsidian Acropolis never gotten any heat from it?"

"Oh, certainly, but nothing too major. You can feel free to bet to your heart's content." He seemed intent on getting me to trust the system and gamble without worry.

"Yeah, sure." I said.

I wasn't here to bet for fun, I was here to win.

-Break-

Or at least I should've been here to win. For some reason, the first bet I made failed by the tiniest of margins, and it led to me losing a lot of the GC I came here to bet with.

Although my main goal in coming here wasn't to bet my regular money, I started to bet with it to make sure I knew how everything worked when I started to bet with my more valuable resources later.

This casual action saved me from losing any of my more precious resources I was here to gamble with.

When the first bet I made failed, despite the absolute improbability of such an event, I was momentarily stunned. The bet I made should've been a sure thing. The reason for this was because what I was betting on was a fight in the New World, a virtual reality game, and my actions during the period between me getting the future message and now should've had zero effect on the events in the New World.

Since New World was a Virtual Reality(VR) game, none of my actions should've had anywhere close to enough effect to cause a surefire win to turn into a loss. Not only that, but the game wasn't even created or hosted anywhere in Talen, the greater continent of Waroth, or even all of Epidas. New World was hosted in a completely different dimension for crying out loud!

I knew for a fact that the kind of time travel I would've used to send back the future message worked in such a way that relied heavily on my Karmic connections to change the past. Which means that the events in the New World should've carried on exactly how they had been described in the future message, and yet a surefire win had turned into a loss.

This was disturbing.

Not only that, but the next two matches I bet on were also different odds than what the future message described. At this point I was starting to wonder if whatever god or goddess that was after me had sent something more than a message back in time, something that was interfering in some way. But if that was the case then it would have to be something tied to me and my soul, since I was ultimately the one performing the time travel, and the most the god/goddess could do was just tagging along; and the kind of time travel I would've used to send back the future message wasn't able to send things back in time that weren't linked to my soul in some way.

In any case, whatever strange things were happening, they seemed to diminish greatly over the course of my first three bets. I wasn't sure why this would be the case, maybe it only had an effect during certain times of day, or maybe it was a limited time event that had just run out of power. I wasn't sure of anything at the moment, but I also didn't want to leave until I had accomplished my goal of gaining more strategic resources through gambling today.

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That being said, I wasn't completely helpless at figuring out what was happening to me. It could be some sort of magical effect, but with my magical capabilities it would've been difficult to hide something like that from me for too long. It was more likely the case that I was dealing with some kind of curse or 'blessing', seeing as how I was dealing with some sort of god/goddess.

So what I needed to do was determine if I had any blessings or curses on me besides my original blessing. One would think that something like that would just show up on the Status when I pulled it up, but that wasn't the case. The Status only showed you what you already knew or expected to be there, it didn't give you an omniscient view of yourself.

If I wanted to find out what was going on, I would have to do something that I had stopped doing ever since I had fully unlocked my Status. I would have to use Divination to look at myself and see if I could find anything strange lurking within me.

Walking through the busy floor of people gambling and yelling at each other, I made my way over to a private room so I could focus without distractions for a moment.

Sitting down on one of the somewhat worn down leather couches, I closed my eyes and switched out one of my Active Skills for [Foreign Analysis]. Firing up a divination, I focused on where I had focused many times before during my years in prison, and using [Foreign Analysis] I analyzed everything in my Status bit by bit, trying to pick up anything that might be hidden due to the fact that I wasn't aware of it.

The amount of information I had to sift through was enormous, but that was mostly due to me going through everything I had received from the divination with a fine comb. It took me a while, even with my mind sped up through Mental Operator. But eventually I was able to glean something from my divination.

[Blessing/Curse: Ascending Bad Luck (Degraded/Unfinished); Currently Inactive]

I wasn't able to get any real description of it beyond that, for that I would have to get someone who was familiar with Blessings and Curses to take a look at it, but just from the name alone I could tell that it was almost definitely the cause of my bad luck recently.

I rubbed my temples. Well, it says that it's inactive right now, I'll have to periodically check it to see if it activates again. It says it's degraded and unfinished, so maybe it's completely offline now and will never activate again? …I mean, I can dream. At least now I have something to point to for all of my bad luck right?

I sighed, shook my head and stood up in the small room. In any case I came here with a goal. So I went out of my little room and made one more bet to get back my lost GC, the betting odds now matching up exactly with what was described in the future message.

With that done, I decided to start betting using the strategic and rare resources I had been saving up in my Internal World. I would have to find an opportunity to get myself checked out for any curses or other things later, but for now I was determined to finish what I came here for while the blessing/curse was inactive.

To gamble using non standard currency here, required a certain amount of prestige or status. Usually someone would have to gamble and win so much money to be marked as a 'person of interest' by the gambling hall, but I could just use my handy new Obsidian Acropolis account which would allow me to skip such a troublesome process.

Walking through the noisy floors, I headed towards the back bar. There was a single guard standing in front of a door leading behind the bar, with someone that looked like a chronic gambler begging the guard to let him through the door. The guard didn't seem to pay the gambler any attention and just stood there looking like he was waiting for his shift to end.

As I neared the door I could hear the gambler whine about how qualified he was, but I ignored him and walked right up to the guard.

The guard put up his arm to stop me and said, "Hold it. Only certain people are allowed back here."

I didn't bother responding and just took out the Cell that had my Obsidian Acropolis chip in it and waved it in front of the guard. Something on the guard's wrist lit up with a green light, and the guard nodded and stepped aside to allow me in.

As I walked through the door I could hear the gambler whine, "Hey, why is he allowed in? I've been gambling here forever, why is someone like him allowed in and I'm not?"

"Maybe if you had earned enough money you could go through, but you suck at gambling. Stop bothering me already, I'm just doing my job."

The door closed behind me, shutting out the sounds of the whining gambler. Walking down a short hallway, I opened another door and walked into a high class looking reception room. The floor was covered with carpets with fancy designs, and there wasn't as much echoing going on, probably due to the special looking material the ceiling looked to be made out of. The carpets were fancy, but I had no idea how expensive they were, the ceiling on the other hand I was sure was extremely expensive. I knew many different materials thanks to my past research, and the material the ceiling was made out of was usually only found on moons or rocky planets without an atmosphere, making the material very rare and expensive.

I also noticed that there was a subtle smell in the air, which meant that this place was not affected by whatever magic effect made all of this black market smelling like nothing.

There were different people sitting around tables in rooms with clear crystal walls, though some of the rooms' crystal walls were completely white and opaque, seemingly at random. Probably some sort of privacy setting that can be turned on and off.

The atmosphere here was much less rowdy than the gambling hall I had come from, which I thought was much more comfortable, though it also indicated how much more serious the kind of gambling that went on back here was.

With only a bit of trepidation, I walked towards the reception desk that looked more like a bank teller's counter, with bars and defenses all around it, and a vault-like door behind.

As long as the curse is inactive there shouldn't be any problems. It's time to gather some resources.