Garath was certain of his victory, because his claymore had fiercely penetrated into the girl’s squirming, worm-like hair. She screamed in pain, as pitch-black blood sprayed out into his only working eye, but then he felt a strange numbness encompassing his entire body.

The massive Orc fell to his knees as dark-green liquid oozed out of the sides of his mouth. Behind his back, Sarah was holding the grip of her Obsidian Wakizashi with both hands, as she twisted the blade and severed his incredibly durable spinal-cord.

His health had dropped to 29/60 after receiving a huge critical strike. Throughout the whole room, people were booing and shouting, complaining because most of them had lost their money.

It took her a while, but eventually, Sarah managed to slowly saw his head off with her serrated blade. Michael was laughing hysterically as he happily received the seventy-five gold, plus the one coin that she earned for winning the fight.

Of course, it was all placed into the magical crystalline card, so he didn’t actually receive any of the physical currency. He noticed that even though he didn’t fight, he still received half of the twenty-four experience for killing Garath.

However, when he was about to head into the ring, Sarah glared at him while whispering “I just got a Quest to win ten times in a row…”

He sighed and told her “Fine, but if you die, I’m gonna be really fucking pissed. Now that you’ve already shown-off, the odds will probably start tipping in your favor. Which means that I’ll barely be able to make anything even if you keep winning. I’m gonna go abuse my overpowered Luck at the gambling hall on the first floor; otherwise, I’ll just be soaking up your experience.”

After saying that, he glanced around the room and whispered “There aren’t any Elites, so you shouldn’t have too much trouble. Just be careful okay?” With obsidian blood leaking down her face, Sarah nodded slightly and then turned away from him, facing her next opponent.

Before even entering the town, Michael already knew what kind of places those casinos were. In fact, he had already guessed the true nature of that ‘Temple’ the moment he read the name ‘Asura.’

He casually walked down to the first floor and muttered “Let’s see… Blackjack is quick and easy, but Poker takes a bit more effort. Hmmm~, Roulette is kinda interesting… Unfortunately, with all the magic and mages, I’m not sure how any of these things can be safeguarded against cheaters.”

A tall blonde overheard him and chuckled, before approaching the shirtless Human. “Gabriel, Level-19 High-Elf Marksman, rank-E” was written above the extremely effeminate man’s head.

He was wearing a thin, dark-green t-shirt and loose, black pants: Each of which seemed to be made out of cotton. Across his back was an elaborately designed pale-golden longbow, and on his right hip was a quiver filled with arrows.
Gabriel casually explained “You don’t need to worry about cheating here. I wouldn’t recommend trying to either. I’ve seen what happens when people are foolish enough to try to go against the Goddess of Chaos. Everything depends on Luck.”

After looking around some more, Michael asked the two-meter tall Elf “Do you work for the casino?” Even if he wasn’t an Elite, that man was certainly the highest level person that he had seen since coming to that world.

Shaking his head a few times, the long and straight blond hair waved back and forth; Gabriel told him “I heard rumors about this place in my village, and only arrived a few days ago. It doesn’t seem nearly as bad as the elders made it out to be. Well, the music is awful and if you aren’t very powerful, it would be hard to survive, but overall, it seems pretty nice so far.”

Michael sighed and whispered “You seem like a naive brat, so I’ll give you some advice. Go back home while you still can. Let’s just call it intuition, but I doubt that this town will exist in a week or so.”

Once he delivered that warning, the lightly bearded man walked towards the Blackjack table and sat down. However, the curious High-Elf followed after him and sat down to his left.

After placing the crystalline-card onto the table, it started glowing and seventy-six illusory gold coins appeared in front of him. Gabriel was shocked to see so much money, and couldn’t help but feel embarrassed as he looked at his thirteen gold.

The dark-skinned dwarven woman dealt out the cards to all five people who were playing; Michael smiled as he glanced at the Jack and Queen, before betting ten gold. A few of the other players called for a hit, but he didn’t bother and just waited.

To his left, the elven man had already lost, and was groaning. However, when the dealer ended up with nineteen, the smirking immortal had easily won ten gold.

What he didn’t expect was that he would actually receive a Quest: “Win ten games of Blackjack in a row. Reward: Fifty experience and a Soulbound item.”

Compared to fighting to the death in the arena, it seemed a lot quicker and easier, but in a way, it was also much more difficult of a challenge. Michael sighed and grumbled “Hopefully my Luck is able to get me through this…”

Meanwhile, upstairs, on the floor of the octagonal ring were five corpses; four of which belonged to Sarah’s opponents, the first was a decapitated Orc who had been there before she entered. Since her Companion left, she had killed a level-9, rank-G, Goblin Fire-Mage, a level-14, rank-F, Human Archer, and most recently, a huge, level-10, rank-E, Ogre Warrior.

After each match, the ‘referee’ would cast a Nature spell called ‘Rapid Regeneration’ which would help her heal quickly. However, until she left the arena, only challengers were allowed to enter.

A mixture of different colored blood was splattered across the relatively large platform, with the bodies splayed about. That tiny girl, wielding an obsidian wakizashi and casually strolling around in the gore, was starting to become extremely intimidating.

Since she leveled up before fighting the Ogre, her Stamina was almost completely full as well. In order to boost her Attack Rating, she put both of her new stat-points into Strength, and noticed a huge difference in her overall power.

The next enemy wasn’t a single person, but a Beast Tamer and his Companion. She had no way of ‘Identifying’ the strength of either of them, aside from taking a wild guess.

One was an elderly Dark-Dwarven man, who wore thick, black plate-mail and the other was a large red-scaled raptor, who was covered in scars. The short and stout man was wielding a mace and a tower-shield, so she knew that it wasn’t going to be an easy battle.

If Michael was there, he would have warned her that the giant lizard was a level-15, rank-E, Elite, and the Dwarf was only level-10 and rank-G, but was also an Elite. Seeing those two enter into the ring, many of the spectators were booing and complaining “Get the fuck outta here you cheating bastard!” or other similar jeers.

In a match like that, two versus one was obviously an unfair advantage. It was obvious to everyone but the worm-girl that the organizers were getting annoyed by her winning streak and brought in one of their ‘executioners’ to remove her from the arena.

As soon as the fight began, she immediately Shadow-Stepped behind the man, attempting to stab him in the back of the neck. Unfortunately, his full-helm easily deflected her attack, and then he quickly smacked his tower-shield into her incredibly light body.

Sarah was sent flying backwards into the chain-link fence, where the ferocious raptor suddenly lunged at her, while sending out a torrent of flames from its mouth. Saving her mana, she used her unreasonably high Agility, combined with her recent increase in Strength, to leap five meters in the air, while performing a back-flip.

Her bright-red worm-like tail smacked against the cage’s ceiling and sent her flying downwards, gaining enough momentum to stab the tip of her blade straight through the Dwarf’s iron shield. The man roared in pain as he swung his spiked steel-mace into her lower left-side ribs.

However, she was able to avoid most of the damage, and her health was still at 23/30. When she fell to the ground and tumbled for a moment, the raptor pounced towards her, and managed to sink its teeth into her left ankle,

Without much effort, her foot was completely severed, and she screamed as her body vanished in a puff of smoke, appearing to the right of the old man. Her short-sword was quickly thrust into his eye-socket, and when she pulled the blade out a moment later, he was already dead.

According to the rules, the fight should have ended then, with her victory. Unfortunately, that completely uninjured raptor was still in the ring, and neither the referee, organizers, nor any of the audience members were willing to fight against it: especially since it had gained the ‘Enraged’ buff.

The beast started to rapidly grow until it was so large that it was more like a tyrannosaurus-rex, than a raptor. Sarah was completely out of mana and already unable to use her left leg properly, so she just sighed and Unequipped her Obsidian Wakizashi, while complaining “This is fucking bullshit.”

Next!