48. Placing Bets

The self satisfied look on Fable’s face was almost enough to make Isaac take back his agreement. Almost.

Fable leaned further back on their chair, pitching so far backwards that Isaac was faintly impressed that the chair hadn’t tipped over entirely. The Traveler casually played with the fabric of their scarf, winding the red around a gloved finger.

“Nice to know I didn’t misjudge you,” they drawled. Fable cocked their head to the side. “Hm, you’ve got a couple more hours before the obstacle race, so how about this. Since it’s such a big event and I’m oh so very nice, if you guess anyone who places in the top three, I’ll count it as a win. Heck, I’ll even give you some hints for funsies.”

Isaac pursed his lips. “No thank you,” he said, though he doubted he could actually stop Fable if they were really set on the idea. Instead, he redirected his attention to the tablet and pulled up the earlier table of participants.

There were a lot of people. Going through every single stat sheet just wasn’t feasible, so he made an executive decision to filter the stat sheet pile. First he isolated all the participants over level 20, who were much fewer in number. Next, after a bit of thought, he clicked on the speed column to sort by that stat, then added the top participants in that category to his pile of possible victors as well. Given it was a race, at its core, speed would likely end up being the most important stat to look at here. Isaac silently thanked Lilith for making the table easily sortable, otherwise he might’ve wasted the next few hours doing this manually.

Isaac was vaguely aware of more and more people arriving at the venue, and soon the area around their booth was no longer so quiet. He caught a few curious stray glances tossed their direction, but disregarded them, staying hunched over the tablet and steadfastly ignoring Fable’s watching eyes.

Once he’d isolated the pile of sheets, that left him with a hundred or so participants, which was still a lot. Isaac furrowed his brow. If it was an obstacle course specifically, he guessed it’d require some degree of skill and intelligence to get through. Instinct would also be important; freezing up could cost a participant significant time.

After some hesitation, Isaac further reduced the pile by removing sheets whose stats in the non physical categories were too low. He was less certain about that choice, but given that he only needed to find one person in the top three, he had some room for error.

Isaac’s eyes glanced over at the clock displayed at the top of the screen. He’d managed to only use about 15 minutes. He paused briefly to rest his eyes, then began to go through every stat individually, occasionally swapping over to his notes app to roughly sum up the sheets, list relevant skills, and give a rough estimate of where he thought they would place.

There were some immediate standouts. Sharil was the highest level participant in the tournament, but Isaac wasn’t sure she’d place in the top three of the initial race. Her large stature would make an obstacle course more difficult, and her speed stat wasn’t particularly impressive. On the other hand, there were quite a few elemental wisps and sprites in his filtered pile. They were extremely dexterous, fast, and small enough to probably bypass most obstacles entirely. It might be a good idea to bet on the fastest of the—

“Nah, none of the wisps or sprites’re making it into the top ten,” Fable suddenly said. Isaac jumped, sliding back in his chair when he realized that, at some point, the other Traveler had leaned over to peer at his tablet notes. Isaac scowled, mentally scolding himself for not paying closer attention, even if he’d been focusing.

“What do you mean?” he said, hesitant on whether or not he should believe anything Fable said. The Traveler grinned.

“It’s true they’d probably win normally, but the other contestants aren’t stupid, you know. They’re gonna take out the wisps and sprites first thing.”

That…was indeed a possibility. Isaac frowned, glancing over at the tablet again. He hadn’t factored participant meddling into his estimates at all. With that in mind, the most obvious victors might not actually make it into the top three at all. Loathe as he was to take Fable’s word for it, after some debate, he decided to temporarily put aside the wisps and sprites and focus on other competitors.

First Isaac isolated the participants who seemed physically most likely to win and chose the most capable of that bunch.

NAME: ASTER

SPECIES: FEY

LOCATION: THE WOODLANDS, GREEN LINE

[CLICK TO EXPAND DETAILS]

ATTACK: 9

SPEED: 22

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

SKILL: 17

DEFENSE: 9

INSTINCT: 12

INTELLIGENCE: 16

STAMINA: 10

CALCULATED LEVEL: 22

The fey had the highest speed outside the wisps and sprites, and her high skill and intelligence also boded well. Additionally, the fey had a skill listed as [SKILL CONTORTION LVL 23], which sounded like it’d be perfect for an obstacle race.

On the other hand, Fable’s unsolicited advice still lingered in his mind. Isaac wouldn’t discount an exceptionally tactical participant managing to win despite not having particularly impressive physical stats. He went back to the original participant list and sorted by intelligence, just to see what he would get. His eyebrows rose.

NAME: REMUS

SPECIES: DEMON

LOCATION: THE INFERNO, RED LINE

[CLICK TO EXPAND DETAILS]

ATTACK: 17

SPEED: 9

SKILL: 41

DEFENSE: 4

INSTINCT: 27

INTELLIGENCE: 31

STAMINA: 6

CALCULATED LEVEL: 29

“What the fuck,” he muttered. Isaac realized half a second too late that he’d spoken out loud. Those had to be the most insanely unbalanced stats he’d ever seen while in the Underside.

The thing about the stats was that they all tended to be in similar ranges in accordance with a creature’s level. Intelligence, for example, also included combat intelligence and experience, which was why high level creatures tended to have higher intelligence stats than lower level ones. At least, that was how Lilith had explained it. No matter how he tried to splice it, Isaac just couldn’t figure out what was going on with this Remus’s stats. He clicked on [EXPAND DETAILS], in case that offered a clue, but Remus had a suspiciously small amount of skills, none of which were particularly extraordinary or stand out. Either way, he was definitely someone to keep an eye on. Isaac added the demon’s name to his growing list of potential victors.

He also added Sharil’s name. Even if she was probably disadvantaged in an obstacle course specifically, he wasn’t going to discount the highest level participant, and her defensive and mental stats were high enough that she’d likely find ways around the obstacles.

Isaac also added 🗌🗌 to the list, which he was fairly certain was the worm-like Abyss creature that had been weaving around the crowd earlier. It wasn’t as skilled as Aster, but had comparable speed and better defensive stats. Plus, Isaac got the feeling that most people tried to avoid Abyss creatures, so that might give it an advantage in terms of competitor interference.

NAME: 🗌🗌

SPECIES: ELDRITCH HORROR WORM SLIDEY SNAKEY THINGY 2

LOCATION: THE ABYSS, THE PURPLE LINE

[CLICK TO EXPAND DETAILS]

ATTACK: 13

SPEED: 21

SKILL: 9

DEFENSE: 16

INSTINCT: 17

INTELLIGENCE: 9

STAMINA: 18

CALCULATED LEVEL: 26

The real conclusion Isaac got from this was that Fable had definitely been vague about the nature of the obstacle course on purpose, just to make this harder for him. Still, Isaac was fairly certain at least one of the people on his list would make it to the top three, it was just a matter of who to place his bets on.

Part of him wanted to bet on Sharil just because he knew her the best out of his mini list by far, so he could personally vouch that she was capable. But at the same time, he knew he was probably biased and that, logically, she probably had the worst odds out of the bunch.

Remus and his insanely unbalanced stats were intriguing, but they also made Isaac a bit uneasy. There had to be some sort of story there, and he didn’t feel particularly inclined on putting all his faith on something he didn’t understand.

That left the fey and the Abyss creature, and he was leaning on the fey, Aster. The combination of speed and mental stats made her a strong contender, and her level, while above average for the participants, wasn’t so high as to immediately draw negative attention from other competitors. Isaac himself didn’t recognize her name, so she was probably lowkey enough to pass unnoticed.

When he glanced over at the clock again, he realized with a start that the tournament was beginning in a few minutes. Had he really spent that long on this? It had felt like half an hour maximum.

Fable was still staring at him with those sunglass-covered eyes of theirs, a shit eating grin spread wide across their face.

“Done?” they asked in a sing-song voice. Isaac slowly nodded.

“Yeah, I guess so.” He wasn’t super confident or anything, but it looked like his time was up anyway.

“Incredible timing, wow I’m so impressed.” They clapped mockingly. “Well, write the name down on that app thing and we’ll get this going.”

Isaac rolled his eyes, but did as instructed, opening a new file and simply writing down Aster’s name. To his surprise, he felt oddly energized despite having literally spent the past few hours sitting in place. Once he was done, he closed out of the notes app and opened up the tournament general list just as Fable stood up beside him.

The Traveler picked up the mic, which immediately released an ear splitting screech that made Isaac wince on instinct. Fable kept talking like the microphone didn’t sound like someone crying bloody murder, and their voice boomed so loud that it managed to be even more painful on the ears than the screech had been.

“Okay folks, quiet down and all that, I’m sure you’re all oh so very excited.” Fable spoke in their usual languid, I-don’t-give-a-shit-way, only now it was being amplified to maximum volume. They smiled sharply. “Let’s get this show on the road.”