Chapter 42: The Gun Will Never Die
The world became a roof, a set of walls, and a skull-faced table.
The ruins of Fleshmarket transformed into an empty saloon smelling of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. There were no doors or windows, with only a single flickering lamp above the central table for a light source.
Yuan found himself sitting in a chair, with Revolver and the Gun on his left and right respectively. The latter had shrunk from a giant to a human-sized avatar of itself, its cannon-hands replaced with metal fingers. Yuan’s weapon and wounds were gone, as were Revolver’s own. No violence could take place within these walls.
None of the players could harm each other, except through the game.
Three golden revolvers lay on the table, one for every participant. Three deaths slumbered within three of their chambers each. One killshot for each player.
By pressing the gun against their head and firing, a player had one chance out of six to kill another player or themselves. They had no way of opening the chamber and checking before pulling the trigger, and nobody could leave or enter the pocket dimension until it claimed a life.
Yuan knew this instantly. Information poured into his mind by the power of the Authority in a complex sutra script, teaching him the rules of the final game one of the three competitors would ever play.
This was, without a doubt, the world’s purest contest of luck and guts. The law of the Authority would allow no cheating nor foul play to taint it. The promised death would strike the loser no matter their rank or power. Slaves and slavers, scraps or cultivators, gods or men… none would survive Death’s Roulette. No defense or intervention would protect the loser from their fatal fate. Not even the Authority’s creator would be spared.
Within this imaginary space, even reality followed the rules. Death would switch from an outcome into a certainty.