-Radiant-

I settled down into one of the private rooms, and searched around for a bit until I found the controls to make the crystal windows turn opaque. With the windows now opaque I probably could've taken off my mask, but it wasn't a good idea to get into the habit of taking it off unless I was ready and capable of acting like Experience Silver. Needless to say that wasn't going to be possible while I was at an Obsidian Acropolis gambling room.

The room was a simple one, with a couple of couches around a stone table in the center of the small room. I sat down on the comfy cushions of one of the couches, and picked up a tablet that was resting on the table. I once again had to use my newly chipped Cell to verify my identity, and the tablet booted up with a welcome message before showing a home screen with a few various buttons on the side.

The receptionist, or maybe it was better to call him a bank teller, had informed me how everything was supposed to work, but words were always inadequate when it came to these kinds of things.

The home screen showed me the available resources I had to bet with, currently showing 120 points worth of pure mana crystals, plus 23 points worth of the Colossal Medousa Lumingel I had obtained from level 3 of the Dungeon of Tribulation. I had to deposit them before coming into this room, and thankfully they had containers to hold the glowing Lumingel that was just sitting in an isolated space inside my Internal World.

The points might not seem like much at first, but the bank teller had told me that 1 point was roughly equivalent to an average person's yearly wage, or about 60,000 GC. Except for the fact that these points couldn't be bought with GC.

I did have other rare resources that I could have used to get even more points, since I didn't intend to lose this stuff while gambling, but with this new Curse haunting me I didn't want to risk any of my other materials currently.

The Curse was something I would have to keep an eye on, but now that I was aware of it, it actually showed up on my Status, so I wouldn't have to keep using divination to check up on it. However, I would still check with divination every now and then just to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

But for now I need to get used to using this tablet before I can gamble.

-Break-

It took me longer than I'd like to admit to figure everything out, but by the time I was ready to gamble I had figured out a few interesting things. First of all, this 'gambling with rare resources' that Obsidian Acropolis did was something that seemed to be linked to all of the other Obsidian Acropolis gambling places across all of Waroth. This meant that the rare resources I could potentially obtain were so much wider in variety and quantity than if I was only gambling with those in Talen or even just its few neighboring countries.

The second interesting thing was that all rare materials were converted into points, which meant that the Obsidian Acropolis were the ones deciding how valuable all of the materials being gambled were. All together, everything I currently had to gamble added up to 143 points. It wasn't a small amount, but it wasn't a large amount either, in fact most of the points came from the large quantity of materials I had deposited, rather than the rarity of them. Sure the Colossal Medousa Lumingel was valuable, but on the scale that the Obsidian Acropolis was working at, it wasn't anything too difficult to obtain. My pure mana crystals, on the other hand, were valuable mostly because of the high demand for them.

Mana crystals were a consumable resource, and pure mana crystals were kind of like a universal consumable resource that could be used to substitute for any other type of mana crystal, like the highest grade universal fuel. This meant that, although my pure mana crystals weren't all that valuable individually, with the amount that I had deposited it added up to a considerable fortune, or at least 120 points worth.

With everything figured out I started to gamble, constantly checking my Status to see if the Curse had started working again, afraid that my bets would suddenly become losses out of nowhere.

While I was doing this, I laid back on the couch and thought to myself between bets.

With this, all of my short term goals are now accomplished. I've got my Obsidian Acropolis ID now, and I'm going to have my Adventurer's ID soon too. With this I've gotten all of my short term goals completed.

However, now I have a new problem. What do I do with my time now? Originally I probably would've visited a temple and gotten a Class after my first visit to civilization since my escape from prison, but with that mark on me I won't be able to get a Class until its removed or until I can stand up against a god, which isn't happening anytime within the next century at least.

I sighed as I recalled the power I once had at the end of my last life. Although I hadn't been strong enough to take on a god, I was resourceful and prepared enough to stand my ground against an assault of multiple gods and transcendents, even if only for a short time.

I'll recover back to my peak eventually, but within the three year time constraints I'm working within I won't be able to gather enough power to even flee from whatever god or goddess is after me, not unless I can complete some of my more promising experiments I've come up with over the years.

I sighed as I waited for my latest bet to finish, bringing in more and more points. In the future message, the other me's hadn't been able to access the Obsidian Acropolis' resource channels and rare materials. This meant that all of their, or should I say my experiments had been greatly delayed or even postponed entirely due to a lack of specific resources.

Sure there were other less illegal institutions that had access to the kinds of materials I needed for my experiments, but they were just as hard or even harder to access than the Obsidian Acropolis. So my past selves had all been somewhat stuck in their routes of progress, being forced to focus more on their personal progression.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I, on the other hand, was currently raking in those rare resources like it was nothing, casually gathering hundreds of points that could be used to trade for the resources my experiments needed.

I guess I've only really got mid and long term goals on my plate now. I need to gather information using my new ID, and try to find out which god or goddess could possibly be after me. And of course, I need to find out if there's a way to somehow get rid of this mark on my soul, or at least restrict it somehow.

Some of my pending experiments might be able to help me in regards to taking care of the mark. In fact, one of me in a past loop had been tentatively confident that he could deal with the mark completely, but he hadn't had access to what would have made it possible. But I now might be able to make it work.

With my new Obsidian Acropolis account, there was an opportunity coming up in the next few months to steal something valuable, which would then hopefully provide the means for me to get rid of this mark. It was something I would have to consider, but it wasn't something I would have to worry about right now.

Right now all I had to worry about was keeping an eye on this new Curse.

However, no matter how many bets I placed, the Curse remained inactive, and at this point I was slightly upset at that fact, because I had started playing somewhat cautiously to avoid the worst case scenario of losing everything should the Curse suddenly act up, and yet the curse never even so much as twitched.

All in all I now had 1040 more points than I started with, and it was nearing the time when I would no longer be able to bet.

The future message only had the winning bets for certain days, during certain times, when it was the most profitable to do so, since filling up the future message with just betting numbers would be a serious waste of space.

So I would have to stop betting and leave soon, only having one bet left today. Apparently there was some kind of major tournament happening in the New World today, and that was what I was betting on this whole time, and all that was left was the final big showdown of whatever tournament was going on within the game world.

I'll finish up this last bet and then use my points to buy some of the resources I need. Apparently some of these resources are extremely difficult to get, according to the future message, and getting them through this gambling den is the easiest way to acquire them. I can't imagine how frustrated my other selves would've been not having access to this place.

I would still have to buy back the things I had left with the 'bank', but none of the resources I had left with them would be confiscated unless I lost everything, since I had told them that I wanted my resources back. I didn't really need to get the Colossal Medousa Lumingel back, so I would leave it with them, but the pure mana crystals were as close as I could get to a universal resource, so I could always use them later.

With just the final bet left, just like I did before every bet, I looked at my Status, and the Curse was inactive as always. But I still fired up a divination to check it out manually, just in case.

This time I wasn't expecting anything to be any different from the other times I had done this while gambling, but while I was looking at the Curse with divination I saw it shift into something else. Taking stock of myself, I couldn't feel any difference, but I quickly opened up my Status and saw something that made me grimace.

[Blessing/Curse: Ascending Bad Luck (Degraded/Unfinished); Currently Active]

My mood soured as I took in the change. Obviously I could just stop gambling, and I was about to do just that, but I stopped as I considered something.

It became inactive before, so obviously there's some sort of conditions necessary for it to activate and deactivate. It's called Ascending Bad Luck, so maybe it gets worse over time? But based on the three bets I did before when it was active, it seemed to get less powerful with each successive bet. That makes me think that it might be using some sort of 'resource' to give me bad luck. If that's the case, then wouldn't it be better to gamble right now and possibly use up whatever 'resource' this Curse is using? If it is using up some kind of resource, then I'd rather use it up on something like gambling, rather than whatever other unknown thing it might latch onto. Bad luck is scariest when you don't know what it's doing.

I hummed to myself as I thought it over. It was a solid theory based on what information I had, but at the same time I was drawing conclusions based on what could be, potentially, completely unrelated information. For all I knew, continuing to bet could be empowering the Curse in some way, maybe even taking it closer to completion.

Should I continue to bet or not?

Looking over the odds of this final match, and according to the future message, it was going to be a complete stomp, apparently the final victor of the tournament wasn't even close.

If this curse can turn something like this into a loss, then I'll have to be much more conscious of its effects going forward. If not, then maybe I can still learn to live with it somehow.

Unlike all of the previous matches where I had just bet and waited around for it to finish, I actually pulled up the live view of the tournament and got ready to place my bets.

It was almost ready to start, with two people standing opposite of each other at the center of a circular arena, with a crowded audience in the stands all around the large arena. The races of the crowd were very diverse, with bipeds and quadrupeds and more, I even saw one centipede looking person, and slimes and morphs weren't uncommon either.

It was obvious to see that the New World was much more diverse than Tallen, and it was probably the reason why the rising generation in Tallen was a lot less racist than the older generations, though that didn't change the fact that Tallen was still a Human centric country, and that would probably never change either.

The two combatants in the middle of the arena were both bipedal races, one looked like a white puffball had been mixed with a really buff giant. Their fur or wool or whatever it was, covered most of their body except for a pair of metallic shorts. They also had a pair of glowing bracers on their wrists, and a pair of greaves/shoes on their ankles and hooves. Their weapons were a pair of brutal looking clubs with a variety of spikes coming out of them.

The other combatant looked like a Lithoid, their body was entirely made of stone and minerals, and their metallic armor seemed to be fused to their body with seams and gaps to allow for easy movement. Their weapon was a huge sword that looked like it was meant to smack things around more than slice and dice, in fact its tip was completely flat, completely lacking any piercing power.

Even without checking, I knew which combatant was most likely to win this tournament. The Lithoid was definitely strong looking, but the matchup seemed to be a direct counter. The fluffball seemed to be light on their hooves, and their lack of armor meant that they were confident in their fur/fluff's defensive capabilities.

Fighting in the New World was almost indistinguishable from the real world, so unless the Lithoid was hiding something, the battle between the two obviously physical combatants was only going to end one way, with the victory of the fluffball.

Well, I guess I'll see if my Curse can do something about that. If nothing else, this will be a good test.

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