A sharp, observing silence replaced the sound of the cold rain as Elias processed the stranger's words.
The air inside the cramped cage grew heavy and thick with tension. Elias didn't answer right away. He used those moments to study every movement and detail of the man sitting across from him.
He watched the way the man sat in the dark corner. His shoulders were slouched, and his hands were tucked between his thighs, hiding any visible trembling.
His eyes were calm, constantly keeping watch outside the cage even while talking to him. These were the deliberate movements of someone used to hiding his true feelings. It was the exact posture of a veteran gambler.
"Who are you?" Elias asked, his voice cold and careful. He didn't take his eyes off the stranger.
A bitter smile crossed the man's bloody face. He leaned his head back against the hard steel of the cage before answering slowly. "They call me Number Seven here. But in the world we came from, my name was Tomas. I was a shuffler and a card player in the underground casinos in Manila before I ended up in this hellhole without a fighting chance."
Elias felt a familiar connection, but he kept the walls in his mind up. In the gambling world, there are no true friends. Everyone across the table is a potential enemy just waiting for the right moment to take everything you have.
"If you're a player from our world, why are you sitting in a cage as a slave?" Elias asked as he tried to align his numb left arm on his thigh. "Why didn't you use the law of equivalent exchange to buy your freedom?"
Tomas answered with a weak chuckle mixed with a cough. He glanced at Elias's paralyzed arm before looking back into his eyes. "Because this world isn't a fair table. The nobles you saw earlier don't play using their own lives. They use slaves like us as their chips. I saw what you did to the monster earlier. You bet the sensation of your arm for five years, didn't you?"
Elias didn't answer, but his silence was a clear confirmation. He waited for what the stranger had to say next.
"It's a huge mistake to think that what we lose here is gone forever," Tomas whispered carefully, leaning his face in slightly so the guards outside wouldn't hear. "The law of equivalent exchange is like a massive ledger of debt managed by the Gods of this world. They act as the banker. They take collateral in exchange for power. The sensation of your left arm is just pawned to them. That means you can buy it back."
A spark of hope suddenly flared up deep within Elias's cold heart. The bet he made wasn't a lifelong curse. There was a way to reclaim what he had sacrificed.
"How?" Elias asked, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.
"You have to win against the house itself," Tomas answered, pointing at the towering buildings outside the cage. "When you kill an opponent inside the arena, their life, their soul, and the wealth they gambled become yours. You can use those winnings to pay the scale and buy your arm back before the five years are even up. Everything gambled can be reclaimed if you manage to bleed your opponent dry. But let me warn you. Many have tried to do exactly that, and they all turned to ash."
Elias listened closely to every detail of the rules Tomas revealed. The entire magic system of this world was a perfect reflection of a massive casino.
The nobles were the billionaire high rollers who always won because they had bottomless pockets. The slaves were the cheap cards, thrown away the moment they got ruined. But if the law was based on a ledger of debt and redemption, it only meant that no one was safe from going bankrupt. Even the most powerful noble could lose everything if they sat across from someone who was better at cheating.
Before Elias could ask another question, the carriage suddenly lurched forward. A violent tremor shook the cage as the two skinless beasts began pulling the dark iron vehicle. Elias watched through the bars as they slowly descended from the dark mountain toward the center of the sprawling city.
The view was a maddening mix of absolute luxury and extreme cruelty. The streets were paved with glowing blue stones that radiated an artificial heat. Towering structures made of black glass and gold stood on both sides of the roads. But underneath the beautiful bridges and lavish buildings, Elias saw the true source of all that light.
Thousands of slaves were chained to massive iron wheels. They were being forced to turn the machinery while being continuously whipped by guards wielding glowing lashes. Every spark of magic lighting up the city's sky came from the life of a slave squeezed down to their very last drop of blood.
Elias felt his blood boil, but it wasn't out of fear. It was the familiar heat of excitement he always felt whenever he saw a massive jackpot sitting in the middle of the table. This entire empire was built on the foundation of gambling and exploitation.
He didn't care about saving the world, but he had a burning desire to break the system of people who thought they held everyone else's fate. He was going to bring down this colossal casino from the inside out.
After an hour of a bumpy ride, the carriage stopped in front of a massive structure. It was built like the giant crater of a mountain, surrounded by floating rings of gold. The sound of thousands of screaming people echoed from inside. This was the Colosseum of Fates. The largest and most brutal bloodbath and betting ground in the entire empire.
The cage door violently swung open, and the guards quickly dragged them out. Elias and Tomas were hauled into a dark tunnel that smelled of rust, old blood, and burnt flesh. These were the dungeons beneath the arena, where slaves were prepped before being thrown onto the sand.
Waiting at the end of the long hallway was the noble who caught them earlier. Beside him stood a massive man wearing a thick black cloak and a mask made of polished monster bone. This man was the Arena Overseer. In his hands, he held a glowing golden scale that hovered slightly in the air.
"These are my two bets for tonight," the noble said, pointing at Elias and Tomas. "They both know how to use equivalent exchange. Put them in the opening matches so I can see if what I saw in them is actually worth anything."
The Overseer nodded and approached the two of them. Elias felt a scorching presence radiating from the golden scale.
"Before you step onto the arena sands, you must pay the entry bet to the Gods," the Overseer ordered coldly, sounding like a machine completely devoid of emotion. "The Scale of Entry does not accept gold. It only accepts a piece of your being as payment for the privilege to fight for your masters."
A guard dragged Tomas closer to the scale. Tomas swallowed hard, knowing there was absolutely nothing he could do to refuse the rule. In this world, the house always dictates the opening bet. Tomas leaned his face close to the glowing object.
"I bet the hearing in my right ear for one month," Tomas declared, his voice trembling.
The golden scale glowed a searing red. Elias felt a drastic shift in the air. Tomas screamed, clutching his right ear. He collapsed onto the cold floor, writhing in pure agony. His companion wouldn't be able to hear a single thing on that side of his head for an entire month. The house had collected its fee.
The Overseer turned to Elias and presented the scale right in front of him. The red eyes behind the bone mask stared straight into his soul.
"You're next, Number Zero," he ordered. "Place your bet to open the gates of the arena."
Elias looked at the golden scale floating before him. He carefully studied the blue energy swirling around its two plates. He used the eyes of a man who had spent his entire life watching for sleight of hand in cards and loaded dice. He furrowed his brow, staring even harder at the magical mechanism built into the golden object.
That's when he saw an impossible truth that none of the slaves who had passed through this place had ever noticed. The right side of the scale, where the Gods placed the power or the reward, was slightly tilted and burdened by a hidden weight made of pure dark magic. The scale wasn't fair. The law of equivalent exchange that everyone believed to be equal and just was one massive lie.
This was exactly why so many slaves died even when they bet their entire lives. The magic system of this world was deliberately rigged to always favor the house and guarantee that the bottom feeders always lost. The very Gods granting the power were cheating.
A dark, terrifying smile slowly curled on Elias's lips. He didn't feel an ounce of fear from what he just discovered. Instead, he felt an insane rush of thrill. For his entire life in his original world, he always lost because he played fair against people who cheated. Now, sitting right in front of him, was the biggest rigged game in the entire universe. And he knew exactly how to break a crooked table.
"It's absolute idiocy to play fair at a table specifically rigged to cheat you," Elias whispered coldly as he raised his right hand toward the scale.
The Overseer was caught off guard by his words, and the noble took a slight step back. Before they could even ask a question, Elias opened his mouth to lay down a bet that had never been heard of in the entire history of the empire. He was going to use the scale's own cheat against itself to shatter the very first rule of the game.