The Crown Casino's poker tables bled. Chen Mu stepped through shattered glass doors into a nightmare where James Bond met the *Tibetan Book of the Dead*. High rollers' corpses hung from chandeliers like macabre decorations, their eye sockets blooming with bioluminescent fungi that projected their final memories onto the ceiling. The air reeked of burnt banknotes and decaying probability fields.
**
**NecroPestle Charge: 41%**
**Memory Entropy: 22.7%**
**Warning: Quantum Humor Virus Detected in HVAC System**
Chen's golden left eye decrypted the horror—each corpse was a probability bomb, their fungal growths counting down toward reality collapse. The Jester's latest game became clear: rigged roulette wheels spun with event horizon dice, blackjack dealers wore Event Horizon Telescope imagery masks, and slot machines paid out in metastasizing organs.
"Welcome to the grand finale!" The Jester's voice boomed through dead croupiers' throats. "Tonight's special—bet your memories against cosmic odds!"
---
#### **First Round: Schrödinger's Massacre**
The baccarat pit transformed into a quantum superposition of 1901 Federation architecture and 2077 cyber-slums. Chen's NecroPestle hummed as he navigated:
- **Reality A**: Colonial gentlemen shooting Aboriginal ghosts with probability rifles
- **Reality B**: Cyborg triads harvesting players' brainwaves for Blackmoor
- **Reality C (Hidden)**: The Spore Primordial's tendrils rewriting casino codes
**
**Temporal Lacerations Available (3 Charges Remaining)**
Chen sliced through a slot machine, releasing a trapped black hole croupier. Its event horizon breath dissolved reality layers until only the core remained—a mahjong table where his mother's corpse played against Night Owl.
"**She bet your childhood,**" Night Owl's NecroPestle clone glowed. "**I raised with our first kill.**"
The tiles showed fragmented memories:
- **Memory #13**: Chen age 8, burying a still-breathing Blackmoor agent
- **Memory #66**: Voss injecting him with amnesiacs during "therapy"
- **Memory #88 (New)**: The Jester as his kindergarten teacher, planting spores
Chen's weapon pulsed. "**End this farce.**"
---
#### **Second Round: The Infinite Bank Heist**
The high-limit room became M.C. Escher's hellscape. Robotic kangaroos with blockchain pouches hopped across inverted roulette tables, their joeys screaming stock market crashes. The Jester materialized as a 3D-printed Ned Kelly, his armor made from melted-down ASIO surveillance gear.
"Let's play prisoner's dilemma!" He tossed Chen a coin minted from his father's dental fillings. "Heads you join me, tails Melbourne becomes DMT dream soup!"
**
- Heads: 88.8% chance of spacetime fracture
- Tails: 113.2% chance of paradox backlash
Chen flipped the coin into a blackjack dealer's open skull. The resulting probability wave ignited a chain reaction:
1. Currency transformed into carnivorous origami
2. Players' credit scores manifested as attacking credit score golems
3. The casino's AI core began reciting *Das Kapital* in Klingon
"**Pathetic theatrics.**" Night Owl emerged from a slot machine, his weapon harvesting the chaos. "**Let me demonstrate efficiency.**"
His NecroPestle clone devoured an entire poker table, converting the energy into a temporal grenade that froze the Jester's reality-warping.
**
**11:47:22 - Quantum Anomaly Contained**
**NecroPestle Synchronicity: 61%**
---
#### **Third Round: Primordial Poker**
The VIP lounge revealed the true game. Five cosmic entities sat around an event horizon table:
| Player | Stake | Cards |
|-----------------|--------------------|--------------------|
| **Spore Primordial** | Earth's biomass | Supernova Flush |
| **Night Owl** | Chen's memories | Quantum Full House |
| **Jester** | Melbourne's sanity | Royal Paradox |
| **Blackmoor AI** | Human free will | Blockchain Straight|
| **Empty Seat** | ??? | Backwards Karma |
Chen's golden eye revealed the hidden player—his six-year-old self, holding cards made from his mother's autopsy photos. The game's rules burned into his cortex:
1. Each bet alters reality's source code
2. Folding erases a fundamental law of physics
3. Going all-in risks universal thermal death
The Jester winked. "I'll raise you... *this*." He slapped down Chen's Memory #0—a vision of the Spore Primordial birthing him in a Blackmoor lab.
**
**Memory Firewalls Failing**
**NecroPestle Emergency Protocol Activated**
Chen's weapon fused with the table, unleashing a Big Bang-scale reboot. The casino imploded into a singularity that rewrote the city:
- Flinders Station's clocks now tick in reverse
- The Yarra River flowed with liquid antimemes
- Street signs displayed only forbidden knowledge
---
#### **Epilogue: Death's Croupier**
Chen awoke in the Crown's ruins, his NecroPestle now crackling with casino chip energy. Night Owl's voice echoed from a shattered roulette wheel:
"**Seven days remain.**"
Voss's hologram flickered, her body half-consumed by Primordial growths. "The hospitals... they're turning patients into probability bombs. We need—"
The transmission died as Chen's left eye projected the new truth—every Melburnian now carried a quantum suicide trigger in their DNA. The Jester's laughter vibrated through rain puddles, each droplet containing a microcosm of the casino's destruction.
**
**NecroPestle Evolution: Stage-3**
**New Ability: Reality Debt Collection**
**Cost: 3.4% Memory Loss per Use**
As Chen walked past a slot machine spitting out human teeth, he finally understood the game's true stakes—not Melbourne's survival, but which version of himself would pay the ultimate price.