All the East District folks looked shocked as hell. They really didn't think some moron would actually step up to get himself killed.
You gotta understand, this round of Devil's Wheel was different from the usual deal. Normally you just had to win once, but now you had to keep winning until the cursed thing accepted you. The West District's Magic Hand Marcus had already won three straight rounds and fired five shots without getting picked. You could tell how brutal this was gonna be.
"Who? Who's got the balls for that?"
Everyone turned around and saw some raggedy-ass teenager with chains on his feet slowly walking up.
The kid's face was caked with dirt so you couldn't make out his features, but his eyes were crazy bright—totally different from everyone else around here.
These people's eyes were either dead and empty, or vicious and greedy, but the teenager's eyes still had that fire in them. It was like a flame made of civilization and wild instinct mixed together.
A time traveler from the civilized world, crossed with a wasteland badass.
"Leon?!" somebody yelled out, totally shocked.
"Wasn't he nuts before?"
"Well duh, if he wasn't crazy, would he be stepping up right now?"
"I heard when Leon went hunting out in the wasteland, he got messed up by something. When he came back, the dude totally lost it, kept spouting crap like 'I am the god of the new world! From this day forward, I shall rule from the heavens...' that kind of bullshit."
"Not just that—I heard him quoting poetry too. Something like 'Beyond the ruins, who dares to reign? Leon's shadow falls where others flee. Three winters of ash have been my pain, but I walk through hell to sovereignty...'"
Hearing everyone's whispered trash talk, Leon's face went dark as the cringe memories came flooding back.
When he first got transported here and figured out he'd unlocked the time-freeze cheat power, he went completely overboard. His inner eighth-grader went nuts, and he proclaimed himself the god of the new world, looking down on everyone like they were garbage.
Right when Vincent and his boys showed up to collect protection money, he totally flipped out. What trash? Some two-bit East District boss, a worthless piece of crap, coming to shake down a god?!
He went off on them big time. Facing Vincent and his crew's gun barrels, he was about to flex his godlike powers and show off his abilities, then got stuck. Time froze for two seconds before going back to normal, because he'd already burned through fifty-something seconds testing his power earlier.
That's when he found out he could only stop time for one minute per day.
After that, he ended up like this—went from nobody to slave.
In the post-apocalyptic world, tons of people had mental contamination. Vincent and his crew just figured he'd gone batshit crazy. They didn't want to waste the manpower, so they knocked him down to slave status.
Those memories were too painful to think about. Good thing Leon's face was all grimy so nobody could see his expression.
East District Leader Vincent heard someone volunteer and got pumped, but when he got a good look at who it was, his face got all weird.
Leon?!
Wasn't this kid supposed to be out of his mind?
This morning, the kid was still calling himself a god in front of him, acting all mystical, talking about creating a new world...
"You..." Vincent wanted to say something but held back.
"I'm good now. I accidentally ate some bad mushrooms out in the wild before and had some hallucinations," Leon said smooth as butter.
He'd always been good at spinning white lies.
Seeing Leon talking straight and making sense, no longer calling himself a god, Vincent's face lit up with joy. He knew there really were some poisonous mushrooms out in the wild that could mess with your head. Some people even went looking for them on purpose.
"Leon, I thought your brain got scrambled before, so I had to bump you down to slave. Don't sweat it—if you can handle Bone Spitter, I'll not only get you back to resident status, I'll make you my blood brother! From now on, the East District will be run by both of us!"
Vincent sounded super friendly, but hey, making promises was free.
Leon smirked dismissively. In his past life, he'd swallowed enough empty promises—his boss dished them out every single day. He was sick of that crap and naturally wasn't buying Vincent's act.
"Get these off." He rattled the iron chains on his feet.
Hearing Leon's blunt order, a flash of coldness crossed Vincent's eyes, but he smiled and said, "Look at me, almost forgot. Somebody come unlock Leon's chains."
One of his guys ran over with keys and unlocked Leon's leg irons.
Leon stretched his somewhat stiff legs, then kicked the dried-up corpse sitting in the chair.
Wham!
The corpse flew about three feet and smashed to pieces on the ground.
His badass entrance got everyone's attention. Actually, he wanted to keep things low-key, but his abilities wouldn't let him! With the power to stop time, how could he stay under the radar? Sure, it was only for one minute so he couldn't be the god of a new world, but being a cocky SOB was still doable, right?
Magic Hand Marcus across from him squinted his eyes, looking at this arrogant teenager and feeling a little on edge.
He had some memory of this East District kid. People said Leon was a wasteland lone wolf who barely talked to anyone and made his living hunting.
These days, anyone who had the guts to hunt solo in the wasteland wasn't someone to mess with.
But then he'd heard Leon went crazy. Turns out it was from eating bad mushrooms.
Still, would a wasteland hunter really eat poisonous mushrooms by accident? Was he starving, or chasing some kind of high?
While Marcus was thinking, Leon had already sat down across from him.
Leon glanced at the clock from the corner of his eye: 11:55 PM—still five minutes before his ability would reset.
Damn, showed up too early!
If he wasn't worried Vincent would just bail, he definitely would have waited longer before stepping up.
After that embarrassing mess, he'd figured out his time-stopping ability completely, even understood where it came from: time desynchronization!
Time desynchronization sounded complicated, and explaining it was... also complicated.
The mysteries of time could only be fully understood by standing in the time dimension itself, just like how lower-dimensional beings had trouble understanding higher dimensions.
He couldn't accurately describe how the ability worked in words. He could only use comparisons to help his brain barely wrap around it.
Simply put, his previous world—the civilized world from two hundred years ago—and the current post-apocalyptic world didn't have the same flow of time. If the civilized world had 24-hour days, then the post-apocalyptic world had 23-hour-and-59-minute days. There was a one-minute difference in time flow between the two worlds.
He didn't know why there was this difference, but it was probably caused by that major disaster from a hundred years ago.
His soul, as a 24-hour being, had come to a 23-hour-and-59-minute world, giving him one extra minute of free time each day!
That was why Leon could stop time for one minute daily.
"Let's get this started," Marcus said.
"You going first or me?" Leon asked, trying to kill time even though he already knew the answer.
Marcus frowned. "Obviously we rock-paper-scissors to decide who goes first. Even if you've never played Devil's Wheel, didn't you just watch and figure it out?"
Bang!
Leon slammed the table hard, the sound so loud it made people from both East and West Districts jump. Some even instinctively went for their guns.
"Who you calling stupid?! I'm asking you who you're calling stupid! Got the guts to say it again!"
Marcus looked confused as hell. "When did I say you were stupid..."
"You still got the nerve to say it!" Leon flew into a rage, grabbing Marcus's floral shirt collar like he was about to beat the crap out of him.
Click click click...
Viper and the other West District guys all pulled out their guns, pointing them at Leon.
Vincent and his East District crew behind Leon also reacted like they'd been hit with a cattle prod, quickly drawing their weapons and pointing them at each other.
Both sides were locked and loaded, like they'd start blasting any second.