Chương 136: Gamblers Don't Bet Their Lives

Seconds ticked by. The air in the living room felt frozen, heavy with the sound of everyone's suppressed breathing. Standing dead center in the circle, Chen Yang's face gradually morphed from nervous anticipation to utter, blank confusion. All he could feel was a faint, icy chill where the Crystal hit his stomach. Other than that? Nothing. No pain. No surging power. Aside from a racing heart, he didn't even feel the slightest bit of discomfort. Ten minutes passed... Twenty minutes passed...

"Vince..." Suffocated by the oppressive atmosphere, Chen Yang finally broke. He didn't dare look up at the two lethal blades hovering right above his head. He lowered his gaze to Vince, his voice trembling on the verge of tears.

"Did it... not work?" Vince let out a sudden sigh and turned to Bruno.

"How long did it take for the effects to kick in when you ate it?"

"The second I swallowed it, I felt the physical stat boost. It was a feeling... I just knew!" Bruno looked at his own hands, then shot a pained look at Chen Yang. If he had eaten that Crystal, he would've scaled up another notch. A full twenty minutes had passed. The guy's HP readout hadn't shifted a single pixel. It remained a yellow [91/100]—it had even dropped by 1 point just from sheer stress.

There were no red, parasitic tendrils wrapping around his Health bar like when Zoe was infected, nor were there any signs of his maximum HP pool expanding.

"It failed..." He tapped Zoe's arm. The two deadly Flying Blades slowly retracted back into the leather bag she was holding. Seeing Vince stand down, the crowd let out a collective, uncontrollable sigh—a messy cocktail of relief and profound disappointment. In the center of the ring, Chen Yang collapsed onto his ass, gasping for air. The burning desire to Awaken had entirely evaporated from his mind, replaced only by the euphoria of having narrowly survived.

At first, he thought betting his life for a shot at becoming an Awakened was a solid gamble. But when those two blades were literally suspended over his skull, gleaming with cold intent, his blood had run completely ice-cold. For the first few minutes, he had tried to sense any power surging through his veins. But after that, nothing was left but blind terror, chanting,'Don't turn into a zombie... please don't turn into a zombie...' over and over in his head.

Looking at the crowd and the trembling man on the floor, countless clues flashed through Vince's mind. Blood, the HP UI, infection, Crystals, scaling up... A bold theory formed in his head. There was a fundamental problem with this spherical Crystal. If he assumed the spherical Crystal was some sort of unformed structure, then Zoe, Claire, and Seth had all consumed it to unlock their abilities. But there was a prerequisite: they had all reached a critical threshold through their own blood—that 105 HP state.

Then they consumed the Crystal, completing their Awakening. Therefore, it made perfect sense that a baseline human eating one would result in absolutely nothing happening. And Bruno could scale up by eating them because the fundamental energy within the Crystals was the same; it was just a matter of structure... With a thought, the multifaceted Crystal reappeared in Vince's hand. It was a Hardening Crystal with a 10% structural integrity. He had three of them and hadn't gotten around to synthesizing them yet.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere. If the spherical Crystal could push someone from that critical threshold into a full Awakening, its "dosage" was clearly too weak for a normal human starting from zero. There was only one solution: up the dosage! But not just by eating another weak one. He needed to up the dosage fundamentally. A Crystal with a complete structure and level was obviously the superior choice.

Building on this theory, Vince arrived at a wild hypothesis: what if the integrity percentage represented its potency? For example, a 20% structure was strictly better than 10%, and a 100% Crystal guaranteed a direct Awakening... But leaving aside the fact that Vince didn't have a 100% completed Crystal, even if he did, a flawless Crystal represented a massive spike in his own combat power. Unless his inventory was overflowing with them, he would absolutely never let anyone else eat one.

But this one is a mere 10%... Vince muttered internally. If that translates to a 10% chance of Awakening, the remaining 90% failure rate definitely won't just result in a mild headache... Still, since he had already opened this can of worms, Vince extended his palm to the crowd.

"I have a new theory. The spherical Crystal was the wrong item. This Crystal might actually produce the effect I mentioned earlier... However... it's highly likely—and I'm stressing the word likely here—that it only offers a one-in-ten chance of Awakening..." He then turned to Chen Yang, who was still parked on the floor.

"You want to try again...?" Chen Yang stared at Vince's outstretched hand. The gleaming Crystal on his palm no longer looked like a golden ticket to Awakening. It looked like poison. Lethal, agonizing poison! All he saw was the same cold, lethal glint that had just been hovering over his head.

"I... I..." Faced with Vince's offer, Chen Yang's lips trembled, unable to form words. The euphoria of winning the draw had inverted into a death warrant. Seeing him subconsciously scramble backward on his hands, Vince immediately understood his answer.

"It's fine..." Vince waved a hand, gesturing for him to relax. He wasn't some mad scientist treating people like guinea pigs. The guy had volunteered; he wasn't going to force-feed it to him. He then raised his hand again, offering the multifaceted Crystal to Ben and the three men standing behind him. Ben's gaze was dark and steady. He had never intended to participate in this experiment. While he craved the power of an Awakened, Vince's speech earlier today had clarified his role.

He wasn't about to gamble his life for a fleeting shot at superhuman strength. As for the three men behind him, the initial feverish greed had been completely purged from their eyes. Looking at Chen Yang trembling on the floor, they started seriously questioning why they even wanted to get stronger in the first place. The fact that they were in this room meant they were the core inner circle of the camp. They had food, women, and respect. They weren't desperate outlaws.

Besides, judging from how Ben and the others usually talked about him, they knew Vince didn't just pull numbers out of thin air. At first, he said there was a "chance" of turning into a zombie. Now, he had narrowed it down to exactly one-in-ten... Ten percent! Playing Russian roulette with nine bullets in a ten-chamber cylinder? Are you insane? If every normal guy in this room ate one, statistically, they'd all die without producing a single Awakened! That wasn't a gamble; it was suicide!

If a mutant zombie suddenly spawned in the room, right in their faces with no way to run, every single one of them would inhale that Crystal without a second thought—hesitating for a second would be a disrespect to their own survival. But right now? They didn't have the guts.

"Vince, how about..." Seeing the men around him avoiding eye contact like whipped dogs, Ben took the initiative. He stepped forward and gently grasped Vince's hand. He didn't want this hesitation to sour Vince's impression of his crew, and he needed to give his men an out. At the exact same time, sensing the mounting unease suffusing the room, Claire gently tugged on Vince's arm from behind.

"Vince..."

"It's fine. You guys did good..." Vince decisively withdrew his hand, storing the Crystal back into his inventory. He patted Claire's hand to reassure her, then spoke with absolute sincerity.

"I'm not being sarcastic. You made the right call." Hearing his tone, the men finally lifted their heads to look at him. To their surprise, a faint smile of genuine relief had settled on his face.

"The first lesson I learned in school was to value life. Betting it once is one thing, but pushing your luck for a second bet... None of you are insane. That's a good thing." Vince patted Ben's shoulder.

"Let's go. Head downstairs. Feel free to share tonight's results with the rest of the camp; no need to hide it. If anyone out there does want to take the gamble, send them to me. I'll give them their shot. Oh, and don't forget Chen Yang—he still needs to be tied up in isolation for the night."

"Heh... definitely, definitely..." Ben let out a long, heavy exhale, purging all the crushing pressure that had built up over the last half-hour. He looked at Vince, a complex smile on his face, and gave a heavy nod in agreement. Even though he knew Vince wouldn't force-feed the Crystal to anyone, the atmosphere in that room had been legitimately terrifying.

"Thanks for your time, Vince..." A chorus of polite, relieved farewells echoed from the men filtering into the hallway. It was obvious everyone was breathing easier. The sheer pressure had nearly suffocated them, and seeing Vince head for the door, officially ending the human trials, was the ultimate relief. RUMBLE... Vince, Ben, and the others stepped out of the supermarket and parted ways. Vince had barely taken two steps toward home when a faint, muffled rumble of thunder echoed from the distance.

Even though the thunder sounded a bit off, Vince's mind was still preoccupied with the mechanics of Awakening, so he brushed it off.