Showbiz clapped her hands together, the sound echoing across the stadium like a gunshot. "ALRIGHTY THEN! Let's keep this train MOVING! Time is money, and money is DIVINE CREDITS, and divine credits are... well, I don't actually know what they're for but Dad says they're important! NEXT GUEST!"
She teleported over to the Spartan daughter, who had been sitting with perfect military posture the whole time, one hand still resting on her sword hilt. Up close, she was striking in that dangerous, athletic way, muscular but not bulky, with sharp features and eyes that tracked movement like a predator. Scars crossed her exposed arms, each one probably with a story. She had her dark hair pulled back in a warrior's braid, and she radiated the kind of manic energy that came from someone who genuinely loved combat.
"And NOW!" Showbiz announced, gesturing dramatically. "The daughter of the LEGENDARY King Leonidas! Trained in the ways of SPARTA! A warrior born and BRED! Please give a warm welcome to—uh—" She paused, leaning in to whisper. "Wait, what's your name again?"
"Pleistoanax," the Spartan daughter said, standing up with fluid grace. Her voice was sharp, confident. "Named for my grandfather, though I prefer to be called Plei."
"PLEISTOANAX!" Showbiz shouted. "What a MOUTHFUL! Get it? Mouthful? Like it's a lot of syllables? COMEDY! Anyway, PLEI! You're up!"
Plei stepped forward, looking at Ruho with an intensity that made him want to step back. She wasn't looking at him like a person. She was looking at him like an opponent. An opponent she was already planning how to defeat.
"The one I choose," Plei announced, her voice carrying across the stadium, "shall be the one that takes a LIFE!"
She slammed her fist down on the table in front of her briefcases.
The impact was absurd. The entire table jumped into the air, and all three briefcases went flying upward like they'd been launched from catapults. They spun through the air, tumbling end over end.
Plei's leg snapped out in a kick that had clearly been practiced ten thousand times. Her boot connected with the middle briefcase mid-flight, sending it rocketing toward Ruho like a missile.
"Oh shit—" Ruho started.
The briefcase hit him square in the chest with the force of a battering ram. The wind exploded out of his lungs. His feet left the ground. And suddenly he was flying backward, tumbling through the air, completely out of control.
He crashed through something, a curtain? A wall? Reality?—and landed hard on his back in a dimly lit space that was definitely backstage.
His vision swam. His chest hurt. His ears were ringing. He tried to sit up, tried to orient himself, tried to—
"Oh yeah, baby, FUCKKKK!"
Ruho's brain stopped working.
Ten feet away, writhing on what might have been a couch or might have been a piece of abstract furniture, were Tyrix and his wife.
But they weren't... human-shaped anymore. They were still glowing yellow, but their forms were... melting? Merging? Their bodies looked like living slime trying to consume each other, organic matter flowing and shifting in ways that made Ruho's eyes hurt. Eyes appeared on the surface of the mass, dozens of them, blinking independently. Teeth formed and dissolved. Limbs that weren't quite limbs reached and grabbed. The sounds they were making weren't human sounds. They were something between ecstatic screaming and the noise that reality makes when it's being violated.
"OH GOD!" Ruho scrambled backward, his hands slipping on the floor. "OH GOD, OH GOD, WHAT THE FUCK—"
Reality folded again and he was back on stage, teleported by Showbiz who appeared next to him with her characteristic confetti burst.
"THERE you are!" she said cheerfully. "Took a little detour, huh? What'd you see back there?"
The crowd was laughing, clearly thinking this was part of the show. Ruho's face was probably whiter than the femboy's crop top.
"Is that..." Ruho's voice was barely a whisper. "Is that how gods reproduce?"
The crowd ERUPTED in laughter. People were slapping their knees. Someone fell out of their seat. Even Lu Bu cracked a smile.
But Ruho wasn't joking. What he'd seen back there the slime, the eyes, the teeth appearing and disappearing in the organic mass, the sounds, that was seared into his brain forever. That was trauma he'd carry into whatever came after this afterlife.
"No time for PTSD!" Showbiz shouted, grabbing the briefcase that had been kicked at him—it had somehow followed him through the teleportation. "Let's see what Sparta's finest has given you! OPEN IT UP!"
Her hands moved faster than Ruho's shell-shocked brain could process. The briefcase was opened before he could protest.
Golden light spilled out, and text materialized above it:
NEW SKILL: KILLING INTENT
User can now sense killing intent from all intelligent life within a 50-meter radius. When on the brink of death, user can activate a 5x adrenaline boost and suppress all emotions to ensure survival at all costs.
The crowd made appreciative noises. This was actually good. This was really good, considering he lived on an island full of things trying to kill him.
"HAHAHAHA! YES!" Plei's voice boomed across the stage. She was on her feet, fist raised triumphantly. "THE POWER TO SENSE AND ACT UPON KILLING INTENT! TRULY MAGNIFICENT! You will KNOW when death approaches! You will FEEL the bloodlust of your enemies! And when all hope seems lost, you will become a WEAPON! Pure survival instinct! NO FEAR! NO HESITATION! ONLY THE WILL TO LIVE!"
She was getting way too into this, her eyes gleaming with the kind of excitement that came from someone who'd probably triggered that exact state multiple times in actual combat.
"That's..." Ruho looked at the glowing text, his brain still trying to reboot from the divine sex horror he'd witnessed. "That's actually really useful."
"Of COURSE it is!" Plei shouted. "A true warrior knows when death stalks them! This gift will serve you well in battle! Use it with HONOR!"
"I just want to not die," Ruho muttered.
"SAME THING!" Plei declared.
Showbiz teleported between them, microphone appearing in her hand. "Well THERE you have it, folks! Three selections down! Ruho's got a stick-throwing power, a massive mana boost, and now a death-sensing survival instinct! He's climbing the power ladder! Going from pathetic to... slightly less pathetic! It's PROGRESS! You know what they call progress in the divine realm? IM-PROGRESS-IVE! Get it? Impressive? I'm progressive? WORDPLAY!"
The crowd groaned at the joke, but they were still cheering. Ruho had two more briefcases to open. Two more chances.
He looked at the remaining guests. Plato, who'd been sitting quietly this whole time, probably contemplating the nature of existence or whatever philosophers did. And the femboy, who was watching him with those big eyes, still doing occasional little supportive gestures.
Ruho's chest still hurt from the briefcase impact. His brain still hurt from what he'd seen backstage. But he was alive or whatever passed for alive in the afterlife—and he was getting stronger.
Two more cases. Two more rolls of the cosmic dice.
"NEXT UP!" Showbiz announced, teleporting over to Plato. "The PHILOSOPHER! The THINKER! The man who wrote about CAVES and SHADOWS and probably had some THOUGHTS about your current situation! Let's see what WISDOM Plato has in store for our boy!"
Ruho approached the philosopher's three briefcases, trying very hard not to think about divine reproduction, and prepared to make his fourth choice.