Outworld Liberators-Chapter 190: Flag Collection Ranking Progress

Heaven did not frown on anyone. It just did not hand luck out evenly.

Irongrit had been thrown into a place that felt made to choke him.

An underground cave he had trudged through for nearly half a day with no exit in sight.

He might have believed he had been dropped into a different contest entirely, if not for God Eldric’s announcements reminding him the clock was still the same for everyone.

Forward or back. The walls scraped his shoulders with every step. The ceiling hung low enough to kiss his hair with grit.

That still was not the worst of it. Skeletons kept appearing. Above, below, both sides, as if the stone itself was birthing them.

Irongrit’s breath came loud, trapped in the tight tunnel with him.

For a wild moment he felt like God Eldric had plotted against him.

Then he remembered what he was.

A bastard of a City Lord Gregorius. Not even acknowledged by his father. Not important enough to be singled out for cruelty.

His own sword was already gone, shattered on the seventeenth skeleton he faced.

Now he fought with a heavy stone sword torn from a skeleton’s grip.

He pushed forward anyway. The cave widened. A faint draft touched his cheek.

He tasted air that did not smell like old damp rock, and hope rose in him before he could stop it.

He was close to an exit. Then heaven mocked him. Again.

Four skeletons spawned behind him. Two more appeared ahead.

A bony hand shot out from the wall at his side, fingers clawing for his head.

Irongrit moved on instinct. He chopped the arm clean off the wall. He chose the side with only one skeleton and lunged, forcing space with brute momentum.

Then he retreated hard, maximizing every step the tunnel gave him, almost reaching the pair of skeleton behind him.

At the last moment he pivoted and lunged again toward the lone one, driving it deeper into the narrow cave where fewer blades could reach him at once.

The ones behind kept closing, clacking closer in the narrow tunnel.

His teeth ground together. He snatched up the severed arm and swung it behind him like a club, buying a heartbeat.

He knew how good those stone swords were. Too good. If one of them impaled him in this tight passage, there would be no crawling away.

Seeing the pair behind him unfazed, Irongrit threw the bony hand at the single skeleton in front.

The skeleton answered with a thrust. Irongrit brought his vambrace up and parried. The impact rang through his forearm.

He surged forward and hugged the skeleton, locking it tight to steal its range.

The stone skeleton did not care. It opened its jaw and bit into his shoulder.

"Argh. Fuck," Irongrit roared, pain flaring hot and bright as the teeth dug in.

The skeleton twisted its wrist, trying to turn the stone sword in close, trying to end him right there.

Pain did not make Irongrit stupid. He jammed the stone blade into his side with brute force, forced the angle off, and in the struggle something shifted inside him.

A strand of energy. A thread he had never felt before, pulled tight somewhere deep in his abdomen.

It did not feel like muscle. It felt like a door cracking open. His body moved the energy on its own, dragging the thread through him before his mind could argue.

He seized it anyway and shoved it into his grip, into the stone sword, then swung the sword in an awkward, desperate arc as it began to glow.

The skeleton split clean in two. The cut traveled from its left lower ribs up through to the right shoulder.

The skeleton fell apart like a puppet with its strings sliced.

Up in the seats, people gasped.

"He, he, he’s become a cultivator?"

"What’s this, then? How in all the gods names is that possible?"

"City Lord’s blood waking in him, I’ll warrant. Aye, that’ll be it."

Calyx was being scolded by Radeon inside his mind. The ancient voice kept pressing the same point.

If Calyx wanted a smooth road to immortality later, he needed to bolster his own name, not just hide behind a master’s shadow.

So Calyx took the initiative and spoke to the mortals, choosing a tone that sounded helpful instead of lofty.

"You see, this is a natural awakening to cultivation, brought on by life and death," Calyx said.

"But do not deceive yourself into taking it for a secret shortcut. The chance of it succeeding is vanishingly small."

"For those who cannot read, allow me," Calyx added, dry as dust. "It is like trying to drive a nail with a feather."

The ones who had been about to get ideas went still. The ones who could not read but knew how to survive felt the kindness in being spoken to plainly.

Street wise or not, numbers did not always mean anything to them. A feather and a nail did. They understood.

For a moment, awe and veneration rolled toward Calyx like warm water.

Radeon let him feel it. Faith with fanaticism settling, extremely pleasant and light to the heart, the way praise could feel like heat after cold.

Calyx’s chest loosened. It felt good. Then Radeon cut it off.

"For the illiterate, this kind of faith comes easy. It’s fragile, too. Displease the ones praying to you, and it breaks."

Calyx flinched inward. For a heartbeat he thought Radeon was mocking him.

Then he felt no ill intent behind it, only instruction, blunt. He swallowed his pride and let the feeling pass, telling himself not to be prejudiced.

As the discussion died down, a highlight screen caught on Youngbanners.

He had come in with a hundred spearmen, thinking this competition would be a team play.

Now he was alone. He could still hold his own without an army at his back, but he had already paid for one mistake.

His spear snapped on the second skeleton he faced, a stone sword shearing through the wooden shaft like kindling.

Now he had just finished his seventh skeleton after nine hours.

Not because he was weak. Because adaptation was all he had.

He had collected large stones and dragged them up into a tree, sweating and swearing in the dark.

When skeletons passed beneath, he rained rock down on them from above, crude gravity doing what skill could not.

He could have picked up a sword, sure, but he did not know how to use one properly.

The skeletons moved with basic martial forms of their own. He knew better than to treat them like mindless children.

So he fought smart instead of proud. Then his eyes glinted.

"Fucking finally. What I need."

Ahead, a stone skeleton carried a spear. If he could take that spear, it would be like a fish in the desert stumbling onto water.

As time trickled toward twelve hours, the flag count kept shifting. Again and again and again.

The boards refused to stay still, names rising and falling like breath.

You would think Almsgiver would be leading. On the screens he now had more than three hundred skeletons around him and five giant skeletons digging like laborers for his childish wish.

Anyone watching him would assume the contest had been decided by kindness and absurd luck.

They would be wrong. Three men from the top ten betting ranks collided in the dark and did not clash.

They meshed. Sackmace. Lonequiver. Reelfisher.

They were not like Whiteblade and Nightskin, strangers forced into partnership by circumstance.

These three were the opposite. Early twenties. Childhood friends.

Their paths had split through different underground arenas, and sometimes they had even fought each other when patrons demanded blood for entertainment.

Now they moved like a single machine.

Lonequiver had only one hand. It did not stop him from becoming a fighter. Heaven had taken one thing and given another.

His eyes were good, not mystical, not blessed with light, just good. Clear. For him. It was already treasure.

He held a crossbow in his left hand. Bolts rode between his lips for loading. A holster of thirty steel bolts hugged his biceps.

Reloading looked awkward, almost foolish, but his rhythm was ruthless. Each shot was a headshot.

Steel did not shatter stone skulls. It had no qi. Lonequiver had learned that fast. Still, it was enough.

His first probes had taught him the key. The skeletons could see in this darkness. Better than mortals.

So he did not try to kill them with the bolts. He used the bolts to steal their attention.

Reelfisher waited above on a thick tree branch, built like a man who had hauled nets in rough deep rivers.

He held a steel fishing rod and a steel net, tools turned into weapons by stubborn need.

When a skeleton stepped into range, he cast. The hook snapped forward and caught near the skull.

Then Reelfisher leaned back and pulled with his whole body.

The skeleton was heavy, but he could lift it. He dragged it up until it flailed in the air like a caught fish, legs kicking at nothing.

Then he threw the steel net and tangled it tight, turning the thing into a struggling bundle.

Below, Sackmace was already spinning. A strongman like Reelfisher, the sort who carried potato sacks by the dozens.

His steel sack was thick, stuffed with five iron balls, each one thirty five pounds.

He swung it around his body in a wide circle, building momentum until the air itself seemed to whine.

"Now," Sackmace roared.

Reelfisher hauled the bound skeleton into the arc of that spinning sack. Stone met iron.

The skeleton exploded. The body shattered. Dust and fragments sprayed the dark.

A flag dropped. Then another skeleton was already being pulled into place, Lonequiver’s bolt thudding into its head to turn it, to bait it, to keep the machine fed.

[Flag Collection Ranking]

(1) [Sackmace] [4]

(2) [Reelfisher] [3]

(3) [Lonequiver] [3]

(4) [Almsgiver] [2]

(5) [Tabulae] [1]

(6) [Irongrit] [1]

(7) [Whiteblade] [1]

(8) [Ropefist] [1]

(9) [Raxutus] [1]

(10) [Raj] [1]