Chapter 358: Betting Board
The smaller man’s footwork was entirely nonexistent.
He threw his balance entirely forward, leaving his center of gravity completely exposed.
There was no feint, no defense and no weight transfer. It was just blind panicked street aggression.
’I really don’t know what I was expecting...’
The brute in the executioner’s hood didn’t even try to dodge as he simply raised his thick leather-wrapped forearm.
CLANG!
The jagged shiv struck the brute’s arm, but it didn’t pierce the flesh.
The sickening sound of metal grinding against metal echoed loudly.
Underneath the synthetic skin, the brute’s entire skeletal structure was reinforced with heavy industrial-grade cybernetic plating.
"Hehehe..."
The brute let out a mechanical wheezing laugh.
He reached out with a massive hand, his fingers lined with hydraulic pistons that hissed with pressurized air.
He grabbed the smaller man directly by the throat, completely lifting his kicking struggling body off the ground.
"What were you saying... huh? I can’t hear you!"
The cyborg brute pulled his right fist back.
WHAM!
He drove a piston-powered punch directly into the wiry man’s ribcage and the sickening crunch of shattering ribs snapped through the air.
"Gahk!"
The smaller man choked on his own blood.
WHAM!
Another massive mechanical hook crashed into the man’s jaw, instantly dislocating it.
Blood and shattered teeth splattered violently against the gray metal doors of the lockers but the brute didn’t stop.
He just kept mercilessly hammering his metal fists into the smaller fighter, completely turning his torso into bruised pulverized meat.
WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! PTCH! PSSH!
The surrounding crowd of fighters cheered wildly for the early violence, slamming their fists against the lockers in a primal rhythm.
Silas just watched, feeling underwhelmed.
It wasn’t a fight... It was just a sloppy unrefined beatdown by a guy who bought expensive robot arms.
If this was the peak competition of the Underworld, the Battle Royale was going to be a boring joke.
The brute raised his metal fist for a final skull-crushing blow.
CRACK! CRACK!
Two deafening concussive gunshots rang out, echoing like thunder through the cavernous room.
The massive brute in the executioner’s hood violently jerked forward, a massive gaping hole blowing out the front of his throat, severing his hydraulic spinal cord in a shower of sparks and blood.
A fraction of a second later, the smaller wiry man’s head simply ceased to exist, exploding into a fine red mist as a secondary high-caliber slug completely pulverized his skull.
Both men crumpled to the floor in a tangled bloody heap, dead before they even hit the metal grating.
Silas looked up with his enhanced eyes instantly tracing the invisible thermal trajectory of the bullets.
High above the locker room, perched silently on hidden suspended steel catwalks cloaked in shadow, were a dozen Syndicate snipers holding heavy smoking rifles.
The loud chaotic locker room went instantly silent as the message was brutally clear.
The snipers didn’t issue warnings and they didn’t break up fights. They just executed anyone who broke the pre-game rules.
Every single fighter in the room, from the massive cyborgs to the desperate slum-rats swallowed hard, suddenly realizing that this shit was incredibly serious.
Well except Silas.
’They could have had better aim to be honest.’
...
Far above the bloody holding pens, Evelyn materialized in a flash of spatial light.
She stepped out of the warp with her boots hitting plush, expensive red carpeting.
She adjusted her oversized gray hood and her Kitsune mask, stepping forward to the edge of a sleek glass-paneled railing.
"Haah..."
Evelyn appeared right at the top of the VIP viewing stands and she looked down with her breath catching in her throat.
It was a massive and staggering underground arena.
It looked like an ancient Rumen colosseum ripped from the history books and fused with brutal cyberpunk architecture.
The stadium seating wrapped around in a massive circle, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of screaming bloodthirsty spectators.
The noise was a physical pressure against her eardrums.
Blinding high-intensity spotlights swept across the crowd, casting dramatic shadows.
But the centerpiece of the cavernous room was the arena floor itself.
It was a sprawling flat expanse of packed, blood-stained dirt, enclosed entirely by a massive fifty-foot-high cage made of thick, glowing Null-stone bars.
It was a literal meat-grinder designed to trap the fighters inside until some remained.
Evelyn gulped with her mind racing as she calculated the sheer scale of the blood-sport.
Silas was going to be thrown into that pit with over two hundred killers.
Before she could fully process the nightmare, a polite voice broke her concentration.
"Excuse me, Ma’am?"
Evelyn turned. A young woman dressed in a pristine traditional black-and-white maid outfit walked up to her.
"You possess a Manager’s token, correct?" the maid asked politely, gesturing to the glowing red badge pinned to Evelyn’s hoodie.
Evelyn simply nodded, keeping her rigid untouchable persona intact.
The maid smiled warmly, bowing with elegance.
"Well then, Ma’am," the maid offered, extending a white-gloved hand toward a row of private luxury viewing boxes suspended over the arena. "Let me show you around to your designated suite as the slaughter is about to begin."
The polite uniformed maid walked with practiced, elegant strides down the dimly lit plush-carpeted hallway of the VIP sector.
Evelyn followed closely behind her with her boots sinking softly into the expensive crimson-dyed fabric of the floor.
The transition from the filthy smoke-filled dive bar on the surface to this luxurious sound-dampened subterranean corridor was still very jarring.
The air up here smelled of rich mahogany, expensive colognes, and chilled wine, completely masking the scent of the slaughterhouse waiting below.
"The warehouse on the surface," the maid explained, her voice sounding smooth as she looked over her shoulder, "is simply a spatial anchor point. A portal gateway if you will... The actual fighting arena is located far beneath the deepest known bedrock of Shogitown, secured within a reinforced subterranean cavern. It keeps the noise down and keeps the World Council enforcers completely ignorant of our operations."
Evelyn adjusted the oversized sleeves of her hoodie, processing the staggering cost of maintaining a permanent two-way spatial anchor in the middle of a crowded city.
The Black-Ash Syndicate possessed resources that rivaled guilds.
"As a registered Manager, you hold a very specific crucial position in the hierarchy of tonight’s events," the maid continued, gesturing with a white-gloved hand as they walked past a row of locked, polished oak doors. "You are the lifeline to your Fighter... Under the official rules of the pit, if a Manager explicitly demands that their Fighter be removed from the tournament, the Syndicate guards are contractually obligated to extract them immediately. The match ends, and they forfeit."
Evelyn’s dark eyes narrowed behind the narrow slits of her painted Kitsune mask.
Her mind instantly caught the sinister, underlying implication of that specific rule.
She felt a cold prickle of realization.
"That means," Evelyn reasoned out loud, her voice echoing slightly in the quiet hall. "even if a Fighter is winning, even if they desperately want to keep fighting and claim the prize, their Manager can unilaterally pull them out against their will."
The maid offered a polite closed-mouth smile. She didn’t confirm or deny the statement, but the silence was deafening.
Evelyn understood the grim reality of the criminal Underworld.
It was a massive exploitative leverage system.
A Syndicate could simply kidnap, threaten, or bribe a Manager sitting safely in the stands.
They could coerce the Manager into surrendering the match, effectively eliminating a dangerous independent Fighter without ever having to defeat them in the Null-stone cage.
It was a rigged game from the very start.
Well, that specific vulnerability was not an issue for her.
Evelyn was a Classic Lord and while she was not as powerful as Silas, she was still powerful in her own right.
Nobody in this grimy undercity was going to successfully coerce, bribe, or intimidate her into pulling Silas out of that pit.
But still, she couldn’t help but question the overwhelming scale of the event.
"Is the prize really that important?" Evelyn asked, probing for intel. "A single hacker with a Slave Rune? Why go through the massive logistical trouble of hosting a two-hundred-man death match just to auction off a data broker?"
The maid slowed her pace, glancing back at Evelyn with an assessing look.
"Wasn’t that the exact reason why you registered tonight, Ma’am?" the maid countered smoothly, deflecting the question. "To claim the prize for your own operations?"
Evelyn didn’t react, keeping her posture rigid and unreadable.
The maid sighed softly with her professional facade cracking just a fraction.
She leaned closer, dropping her voice to a hushed conspiratorial whisper.
"How would a lowly, contracted hospitality maid such as myself have the definitive answer to the inner workings of the Syndicate?" the maid prefaced, covering her tracks.
She thinned her lips, glancing nervously down the empty hallway. "But... I hear things. I serve the drinks to the high-rollers. There is a very prominent rumor circulating through the staff that the hacker in question is directly related to the Boss by blood. That is why this is such a massive guarded event. It is family business masquerading as a blood-sport."
Evelyn went completely silent.
Her previous deduction in the hotel room was confirmed. They weren’t just stepping into a gang dispute over stolen credits... they were stepping into the middle of a vicious family war.
The maid straightened her posture, instantly returning to her polite corporate demeanor as they rounded a corner and entered a wide brightly lit atrium.
"Now, before I escort you to your designated seating arrangement," the maid announced, gesturing to a massive glowing structure occupying the center of the atrium wall, "allow me to introduce you to the official betting board."
It was a staggering piece of magical technology.
A huge sweeping holographic display board projected crystal-clear images and scrolling text into the air, illuminating the plush carpets with a chaotic flurry of neon numbers.
"This is the primary wagering terminal," the maid explained. "People sitting in the viewing boxes can place immense sums of money on the heads of the combatants they want to win. You essentially stake a given amount of spirit credits against the house odds... You can pick someone right now, but you do not need to bother with an immediate upfront physical payment. The original bet pay and any potential winnings will be collected and distributed after the Battle Royale concludes."
Evelyn walked up to the glowing interface.
"Once the Battle Royale officially starts," the maid added, pointing to a sleek metallic datapad resting on a nearby pedestal, "every Manager and VIP spectator will have a personal synchronized tab in front of them in the stands if they wish to adjust their wagers dynamically but the first, preliminary bet available right now is a survival wager. You must select a specific candidate that you believe possesses the skill to survive the initial meat grinder and enter the Top Twelve."
Evelyn’s ear twitched beneath her hood.
The Top Twelve.
Out of two hundred and fifty men, only twelve would survive the free-for-all to reach the actual tournament bracket.
She stepped closer to the massive board. It displayed rows upon rows of glowing pictures, accompanied by names and odds.
Evelyn realized with a jolt of surprise that the pictures were stealthily taken headshots.
The wicked receptionist behind the glass desk in the dive bar had clearly been using a hidden magical lens to photograph every single fighter as they signed the bloody contract.
She scanned the sprawling rows of masked killers, cybernetic mutants and scarred veterans until her dark eyes locked onto a familiar image.
It was Silas.
The photograph captured his upper torso and head perfectly.
He looked very... devilish.
The dark trench coat blended into the shadows, making his broad muscled shoulders look like a looming mountain.
But it was the Oni mask that stole the focus.
The harsh fluorescent lighting of the bar had caught the jagged silver fangs of the demon visage, casting menacing shadows over the metal.
His golden-ringed eyes glowed with a terrifying intensity through the narrow slits.
If Evelyn didn’t know the surprisingly responsible young man resting behind that terrifying mask, she would have genuinely thought of him as the most intimidating and cold-blooded monster on the entire roster.
’I’ll bet on him all the way,’ Evelyn decided instantly in her mind.
While she was a chronic chain-smoker and a ruthless tactician, she wasn’t exactly a habitual gambler.
She preferred calculated investments over games of chance.
But looking at the staggering odds stacked against the unknown "Onii-chan" she saw an opportunity to rob the Black-Ash Syndicate blind.
What other choice did she have?
As she raised her hand toward the holographic interface, the maid gently cleared her throat.
"Ma’am, a word of advice, if I may," the maid offered, pointing a slender, white-gloved finger at a different portrait on the board. "Even though you are the registered Manager for someone else, there is no rule stating you must bet on your own Fighter. If you want to guarantee a massive return on your investment, you should bet on this man."
Evelyn blinked, tracking the maid’s finger.