Outworld Liberators-Chapter 174: How to Spread a Myth Without Forcing the Crowd

Chapter 174: How to Spread a Myth Without Forcing the Crowd

Radeon and Calyx built the entrances and exits with the same cold care they used for auctions.

Losers still had to pass the cash counters. They walked out slow, carrying empty sacks and heavy faces, forced to see the piles they could not touch anymore.

Worse, once your bank balance dropped by ten percent, you were done for the day, banned till next week.

No pleading. No bargaining. You could kowtow to Eldric until your forehead split and it would not matter.

The attendants would guide you out all the same, firm as iron and just as cold.

Some people spat curses as they were pushed aside, indignant at being denied the chance to chase their losses.

Halfway down the paths, that anger thinned into something closer to gratitude. They could have been burned out there, emptied until even pride was gone.

This kind of ruthlessness had a shape to it, and the shape was care. They hated it while it happened, and appreciated it once they could breathe again.

Winners left differently. They exited on the all over the Radeon Terraces, where attendants guided them through private lanes and quiet doors.

There, you could spot Tiberius and Gregodor stepping out with their noses lifted toward Heaven, pride leaking through the masks even when the masks hid everything else.

They had walked in with ten high grade spirit stones. They walked out with more than a hundred each.

Goldman exited through another route entirely, an obscure opening higher along the peak.

In total, there were ten thousand exits, and they rotated their use. Every day the paths changed.

Some people walked for hours to find daylight. Others found it in minutes.

The winners did not complain. A long walk felt like nothing when your pockets were suddenly heavier than your life.

That day, fortune reshuffled. A small declining underground boss stumbled into luck, spending his last couple hundred spirit stones on lottery tickets and winning a Blaze Runner Series Carriage.

By evening, he had resold it for a thousand high grade stones to a city lord.

A meager farmer from the far side of the Goldkeep Crownmarkets won something that left his hands shaking for an hour. He had gone in with ten gold. He walked out with ten thousand.

By the time he stumbled back to his village, the sack felt heavier than his own bones.

He marched straight to his landlord’s house and slapped the man silly with the weight.

After the landlord stirred, he asked for the man’s daughter’s hand, then held up the sack as dowry.

Winners appeared one after another, and so did losers, because the line between them was only one pull of a lever and one moment of greed.

Some people lost a few gold. Others lost hundreds of high grade spirit stones.

The worst were the ones who had been winners first. They got greedy, chased the feeling, and lost not only what they had just gained, but what their blood, sweat, and tears had earned before the gaming district ever opened its doors.

They left quieter than the others.

And later, when mouths loosened over cups and laughter, people began sharing usernames, trading them the way gamblers traded scars.

That was when another cruelty revealed itself. Many had not lost to some nameless stranger.

Some had lost to their own boss without ever realizing it in the moment.

Some small timer had beaten a city lord, and the lord had never known whose hands took his stones until after the fact.

It was not coincidence. Not always. Some connections were too distant to matter, true, but connection was still connection, and in this era names carried weight even when faces were hidden.

Those discoveries turned into tea, then small talk. Small talk turned into drinks. Drinks turned into dates.

Rivalries softened into bargains, bargains into favors, favors into quiet alliances, and the wheel kept turning because everyone wanted to be close to someone who might win next.

The username system made it sharper. It made it feel personal. Almost sacred. 𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

As if Eldric himself had handed them their names, and by doing so had given them a place in his game.

While people bragged wins and cried losses, Radeon and Calyx tallied it all. In total, the Terrace lost about a hundred high grade spirit stones.

That was small. The Social and Gaming District hosted two hundred thousand visitors, and the games were capped at a million.

The landmass could hold a small city, with underground facilities layered beneath it like a second world.

Radeon had done it deliberately. He let customers test the games. He let explorers discover a new world of entertainment, which in turn became talk in taverns and tall tales at home.

Those who found a game first were allowed to win a little, just enough to feel chosen.

Word spread fast. The winners kept a few coins as souvenirs and deposited the rest, because the bank had already made carrying wealth feel old fashioned.

Soon people began arguing about the image stamped on the coins.

Some said it was a god.

Some said it was how Eldric looked under his skin.

Some swore it was the God of Fortune, ready to hand you gold with all twelve hands.

No one called it calamity.

They gave it one name instead, a name that made the Terrace feel like it belonged everywhere.

Radeon Coins.

Tiberius and Gregodor even had the metal examined. It held no hidden arrays, no poison marks, no tracking tricks.

Just well made gold, silver, and copper, minted clean.

As business boomed, the winners of the auction finally came to claim what they had bought.

Calyx handed out schedules, orderly and strict. The discretion felt complete, with no need to glance over one’s shoulder.

The last one’s to arrive were young boys, six to ten, prime age to start changing a body before the bones set too hard.

Once again, Goldman arrived. This time he was not alone.

His son stood beside him, tall for his age, round and fat, always looking joyous.

Bald too, his scalp shining under the lantern light.

Despite the flab, the boy moved with a strange agility, light on his feet like someone who had never been burdened by his own weight.

Radeon’s brow lifted. Too familiar.

He stepped forward. His size made Goldman flinch, but Goldman held still, assuming this was an instructor for the Physique Accelerant Bath Solutions.

He let the man examine his child.

Radeon placed a hand on the boy’s abdomen and rubbed slow. His Myridion Seersight flared.

"Mister," the boy giggled, "you tickle me."

Radeon kept his hand there as if he were only testing softness, counting breaths in silence.

A dozen passed. Then he withdrew and looked at his own fingers as if they held proof.

He smiled. A special constitution.

He leaned slightly toward Calyx and whispered, his fingers pointing towards the boy.

Goldman’s mind turned sour with paranoia. The man in dark clothes and white hair did not match the rest of the peak.

Was this dangerous? Had he offended him? Was the inspection a warning disguised as kindness?

Anxiety tightened around his throat like a collar. Then the boy tugged at his sleeve and spoke with child certainty.

"Dad. That man looked like a good person."