[Third POV]
John didn't want to let go.
For the first time in two lifetimes, his heart felt full. The physical warmth radiating from Angy's small frame anchored him. He buried his face in her shoulder, letting decades of built-up poison drain into the dark.
Then, a sound cut through the silence.
Clap… clap… clap.
The slow, echoing applause didn't belong in the void.
John froze, tightening his grip on Angy as he turned his head.
Standing a few feet away, radiating an ethereal, nauseatingly cheerful rainbow glow, was a man in pristine garb. Instead of a human head, a sleek casino screen rested on his shoulders, three digital slots constantly scrolling across the glass.
"RNGesus?" John breathed.
The entity stopped his slow clapping and lowered his hands. "Yes, my child, it's me. I had hoped we could meet under better circumstances, but it's good to see you nonetheless. The sacrifice, the emotional reunion... every moment of it was beautiful."
Angy peeked out from behind John's arm, her brow furrowing. "Johnny, who's—"
She didn't get to finish her sentence.
With a single, final clap of his hands, RNGesus shattered the comforting dark.
The quiet void was violently replaced by the deafening cacophony of a billion slot machines, flashing neon lights, and blaring alarms. The infinite, sprawling expanse of the cosmic Pachinko Parlour materialized around them, exactly as it had the day John died in Viktor's warehouse.
But John's arms were suddenly empty.
"No... Angy!"
John scrambled to his feet, his hands grasping frantically at the empty, neon-lit air. The warmth was gone, her faint smell was gone. "Angy?! Where did she go?!"
"HA! This is your Chosen One? Oh, Lord of Second Chances?"
A gruff, booming voice vibrated through the floorboards. The tone dripped with mockery, completely ignoring John's panic.
John looked up, his brain instantly throbbing as if a rusted iron spike had been driven through his prefrontal cortex.
Standing behind RNGesus were three entities that his human mind simply couldn't process.
The first was a towering figure with a head made entirely of roaring, cosmic flame lit with merging nebulae and spiralling galaxies.
The second possessed dreadlocks woven from uncountable raw elements that cascaded endlessly into a dimension John couldn't perceive.
The third didn't even have a body; it was an ever-shifting, impossible polygon that folded in on itself in infinite dimensions.
"Well, that was certainly fun," the elemental entity drawled, sounding immensely bored. "Watching him go from an unhinged gambler to a responsible person for once, only for him to die immediately in a fight."
"Yeah, yeah. Now that the sappy drama is over, it's time to pay up, RNGesus," the polygon buzzed irritably. "We won the bets, after all."
Just looking at them was an exercise in agony. You didn't spend your life as a mortal without your brain completely short-circuiting when staring directly at the unfiltered faces of Random Omnipotent Beings. John dropped back to his knees, clutching his bleeding head, gasping for air.
"I may run a cosmic gambling den," RNGesus said, his digital voice taking on a sharper edge, "but that doesn't mean I am a ruffian. The poor kid just died and met his sister's spirit. Give him a moment to collect himself."
"We? ROBs- The Omnipotents of the Omegaverse are supposed to wait? For a mortal to collect himself? Hah," the cosmos-flame entity scoffed.
"Nice way to weasel out of the bet, First Gambler," the elemental sneered.
"We put our cores at stake betting that he would die within the first month of his arrival," the polygon vibrated with smug satisfaction. "And now we've won. We beat the First Gambler."
"Mind your place, lest I show you exactly why the House always wins," RNGesus warned.
The spinning slots on his screen face abruptly clicked to a halt, displaying three crimson skulls. The entire infinitely sprawling parlour began to violently shake. The sheer, suffocating pressure radiating from him was so intense that the three arrogant entities and the countless glowing eyes lurking in the shadows behind them cautiously took a step back.
"...didn't... lose..."
The entities paused.
John forced himself up onto one knee, gasping for air. The phantom pain of seeing these entities still burned in his nerves, but it was quickly being buried under a sudden, familiar rush of adrenaline.
His chest felt hollowed out from losing Angy all over again, but nature abhors a vacuum. The void inside him was instantly filled by the toxic, electric rush of the table. The same damn itch, only this time, he welcomed it as a shield.
"What did the monkey say?" the flame entity sneered.
"Quiet little gambler?" "A mortal dares?" and more such voices came in a wave of scoff.
John looked up, a manic, bloody grin spreading across his face. "I said, he didn't fucking lose!"
With a thought, John forcibly ripped open his status screen. He had played a dangerous game relying on the chaos gacha, but the house hadn't taken everything just yet.
Glowing in a brilliant, blinding purple light was the ability he had pulled from his final Platinum Ticket. The one he had quietly slotted the moment he decided to bet his own life and go All In.
[Rise Again]
|Epic Ability|
Nothing is going to keep you down. As long as this ability is in your active slot, at the moment of your death, this ability activates and you revive 10 seconds later with your health and energy restored to 50%. 7 Day cooldown.
A suffocating silence of the Void descended on the Pachinko Parlour.
Every single alarm, every flashing light, every murmuring cosmic voice stopped dead. The ROBs stared at the glowing purple screen in baffling shock. The mortal had fronted his own death to secure the board.
A second later, the slot machine noise returned with a vengeance. The three red skulls on RNGesus's face spun rapidly before locking into place with a blinding flash of gold.
7-7-7
"I KNEW IT!" RNGesus threw his head back and laughed, a booming, joyous sound that rattled the stars themselves. "No matter how much he deludes himself with heroics, he's a gambler to his absolute core! HAHAHA!"
He turned to the three cosmic bettors, who were suddenly looking very nervous about their "delusional" wins.
"See, that's the thing about you amateurs and us seasoned gamblers," RNGesus said, straightening his lapels. "You're always too eager to show your hands."
He snapped his fingers.
The three massive, omnipotent entities didn't even have time to run. They tried to throw up all-powerful defences, but reality simply folded around them like origami. In the blink of an eye, the cosmic god, the elemental, and the polygon were violently compressed, flattening out until they were nothing more than three playing cards floating gently into RNGesus's waiting hand.
One smouldered at the edges, the second frosted with void, and the third was impossibly geometric.
John stared, completely stunned. Entities that could have erased his universe with a thought had just been pocketed like loose change. It was a chilling reminder of exactly who was running this game.
"Ah, John, my most loyal follower," RNGesus sighed happily, tucking the cards into his breast pocket. "Even in death, you make me proud. I knew you'd never truly stray from the tables."
He turned toward the infinite rows of pachinko machines, throwing his arms wide as phantom fireworks exploded across the void.
"ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!"
"YEAH!!! BOOM! BAM! RAWR! WOOO!!!"
The deafening roar of countless phantom voices erupted from the infinite expanse of the parlour, half of them screaming in pure degenerate approval at the ultimate clutch play, and the other half howling in rage over their ruined bets.
But John didn't care about the cheers. He stumbled forward, ignoring the glowing interfaces, and grabbed RNGesus's sleeve.
"Please..." John begged, his voice cracking. "My sister... where is she? Give her back."
"I think I am better equipped to answer that."
The voice came from behind him. It was ethereal, incredibly beautiful, and carried an undeniable, heavy weight of finality.
The moment she spoke, the chaotic Pachinko Parlour physically yielded. The obnoxious, flashing neon lights instantly dimmed into a muted, respectful twilight and the blaring jackpot sirens faded into silence, as the harsh smell of ozone and copper was washed away by the heavy, settling scent of incense and aged leather.
John quickly turned around.
Standing there was a woman.
She was striking, with hair split perfectly down the middle, half black and half pristine white. Her skin was alabaster, and a distinct black mark covered her left eye like a tattoo. She wore black leather pants, a heavy black overcoat, and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat with a Colt holstered at her waist.
[Image Here]
"Ahh, Lady Death!" RNGesus greeted, his tone shifted remarkably pleasant and respectful, nearly giving the rest of the ROBs a whiplash. "It's wonderful to see you finally accepting my invitation."
John didn't care who she was or how much RNGesus respected her. He dropped to his knees in front of her.
"Please," he pleaded, tears spilling over his cheeks. "Take it all. Take my power, take my gacha, take my soul... just... just give me Angy back."
"Calm yourself, child."
She stepped forward, her movements impossibly graceful. With every step she took, the degenerate noise of the cosmic casino seemed to actively pull back, refusing to even touch her. She didn't draw her gun or look down on him like the rest of the ROBs.
Instead, she knelt in front of him and gently placed a hand on his head, ruffling his hair. The touch was profoundly maternal, and an instant, overwhelming sense of peace washed over John's panicked mind.
"The sister you saw was just an echo," Lady Death spoke, her voice a soothing balm. "What remained of her soul before she finally passed on to her journey in the afterlife. Her most pressing, deepest desire was to meet her big brother one last time. A meeting she would have had much earlier, if the First Gambler here hadn't snatched you up for his and the rest of the pantheon's entertainment."
John looked up, seeing RNGesus sheepishly rubbing the back of his screen-head, looking anywhere but at them.
"But... but I didn't get to..." John tried to protest, his chest hitching.
"Shh... none of that, my child," Lady Death said softly, wiping a tear from his cheek with her leather-gloved thumb. "I can't stand seeing children cry like this. I'm a mother, after all."
John just nodded numbly, leaning into a comfort he hadn't felt in years. Suddenly, John felt a hand patting his shoulder.
"It's time, John," RNGesus said quietly, the flashing lights of his casino dimming respectfully. "Don't be so quick to come back to my tables this time. And remember... the tickets and the gacha aren't a curse you need to be afraid of. They're tools, weapons and gifts. They are yours to use."
John felt the heavy pull of reality starting to drag his soul back in. The parlour began to fade into a blinding white light.
As the darkness of the living world rushed up to claim him, he heard Domino's voice echo behind him.
"Why don't you check the new challenges for this week? There may be surprises waiting…" she asked smoothly.
***
RNGesus chuckled, watching John's spirit finally descend back to the mortal plane, then turned to Lady Death, rubbing his hands together. "It's been a while since a Death abstract came to my gambling den, not to mention one that's newly coronated. Why don't you play a few rounds, Lady Domino?"
"You'll have to forgive me, First Gambler," Domino replied, a warm smile evident in her voice. "My kids are waiting back home. But maybe next time… I'll bring Jay along."
A fond smile graced her face as she said that name, "Who knows, maybe he'll actually enjoy some gambling."
Before RNGesus could respond, she disappeared in a flash of purple light that left the faint smell of fortune and peace lingering in the air.
"Alright then!" RNGesus turned back toward his parlor full of watching ROBs and phantom gamblers, his screen showing a manic grin. "WHO'S READY TO SEE THE CLIMAX OF THE CHAOS MY LITTLE GAMBLER HAS SPREAD!"
"DOUBLE OR NOTHING!"
"LET IT RIDE!"
"BET THE VERSE ON THE KID!"
The deafening frenzy of the infinite ROBs was powerful enough to tear actual fissures across the void, a cosmic horde of degenerate gamblers eagerly waiting to see exactly how their wild card would Rise Again.
[A/N]:To celebrate finishing ARC-1, I'm also putting a 50% DISCOUNT ACROSS ALL TIERS until June 1st.
If you want to read up to 15+ Chapters in advance, check out my P@treon - Max_Striker.
If you wanna hang out, join my Discord server- https://discord.gg/XxGEYk2PM5