Olvia began her victory stride towards the front stage where the announcer had been standing since the beginning of the match. Of course, the only thing there now was rubble and debris, but she’d probably somehow look in just the right place to stumble upon the prize.

“Hey,” I called out, “who are you, really!? How’d you become such a prolific sweepstaker!?”

Olivia kept walking. “Have you ever bet on a world before, or maybe even a universe?”

I couldn’t even muster a reaction to a question like that.

“Yeah, I thought not, judging by the face that you’re probably making.” Olivia didn’t even have to look over to verify. “The difference between you and I isn’t a gap that can be closed, no matter how hard you try.”

Those words sounded awfully familiar: it only took a moment to recall my old rival, Vegeta, telling me the exact same thing. It was something that I’d heard and proven wrong time and time again, like my role models in the shonen manga I read before bed.

But this time was different. A feeling in my heart - no, my soul - welled up inside: she was right. There was no way I could surpass her. It didn’t matter if I had an eternity to do it. The difference was too great.

Olivia let out a sigh as she walked, visibly disappointed. A powerful earthquake began to shake the room, bringing even further damage to what little was left of the venue. Naturally, the shaking caused the rubble to move in such a way that a large treasure chest popped up from the ground, right in front of Olivia. She spared no time in opening it, and with her luck, she was bound to find something useful.

When I looked at what was inside, though, all that I saw was only a few hundred pounds of gold. Any half-decent sweepstaker could make that in a day, so why did someone as powerful as Olivia only receive this? By all accounts it should have been something more helpful. The only explanation was that she didn’t want the prize in the first place - this had been a clever setup to demotivate me from saving this world, a conspiracy of similar scale to that of the Sweet Cakes.

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Assuming she knew about these sweepstakes ahead of time, it was only fair that she would know the prizes. No world class sweepstaker would compete in something with such a meager reward. There was more: the timing of her arrival in the sewers, the cocky attitude with her extra ticket, the way she prolonged the match despite clearly outskilling me from the start. It was all to establish her superiority and deflate my will to continue. By convincing me that she was an equal rival at the start, it hurt that much more than if I’d gone into the fight expecting to lose.

“Why!?” I exclaimed, “Why are you here? What’s your goal?” It was one thing to know that she wanted to demotivate me, but it was another thing entirely to not know why.

“Listen, I’m gonna keep it real with you. I can tell you think you’re special, that you think I’m just here to prevent you from achieving your goal. But I’m here to say that you’re just some kid, and what’s happening now is about me, not you.”

“But... you recognized my business uniform! How could you claim that you weren’t targeting me if you knew who I was from the start?”

“Yeah, because of the other Isekai Winners. People who have a lot more stake in the game.”

“Other Isekai Winners? Who else is there?” Tchadd had never told me any of this, perhaps I needed to be less trusting of his intentions.

“You don’t know your own coworkers? Not Paige? Not even Cuthbert?”

// Author’s Note: Cuthbert is the protagonist of the previous Isekai Winner entry, Basketball Boy. It’s somehow even worse than this one. //

“I wasn’t told anything about these people you’re referring to. How do you know them, but not me? Please, tell me... who are you?”

“I was brought here by Dhayve. Well, not contracted in the same way you were, he just runs a sort of tunnel between worlds. I came here with my student loan money.”

There was too much to unpack here, but what I wanted to know was about the contract.

“You say you weren’t contracted, but you got here anyways. Are you dead? How’d you get here? Why’d you come here? Is there a way to null the contract?” The questions came out faster than I could think of them.

“Oh no, I’m not dead or anything, and like I said, I came here using my student loan money. I didn’t really have a plan or anything, I just wanted to mess with lower sweepstakers like you. And you can definitely null the contract, I mean, if you want to go to hell.”

“You... came here for fun? Just to mess with me? What drives you?”

“Again with the ego tripping, ‘L’-zer. I’m just here for kicks.”

“But there’s an entire world about to be destroyed! You're really not here for that?! Someone like you could easily save this place if they wanted to!”

“Uh, gonna be honest, I didn’t even notice anything was in danger. I guess that’s why transportation here was so cheap, although I still ended up paying more than I probably should have.”

“The water is running dry around the world. Our luck prevents us from getting the worst of it, but people are dying.”

“Didn’t it just rain, like, a few minutes ago?”

“Well, yes, but only after a meteor killed all the people that were going to drink the water. It’s just going to evaporate away and the drought will continue. I don’t know what’ll happen to me if this world gets destroyed.”

“Tchadd would probably just summon you back, there’s not really much of a penalty for this kind of thing.”

“Oh…” I paused. “So, what’s the point in trying to save these places then?”

“I mean, if you mess up enough times, the contract can get terminated, but it takes like a few thousand blunders in a row before Tchadd starts taking it seriously. Worlds are pretty expendable.”

“So… you’re saying that there’s no point?”

“I mean, if a world sucks you can get it over with faster, which is some kind of point, I guess. Or if you care about the people in it or something.”

That changed things. I had been under the impression that failure would mean an eternity in hell. In an instant, any motivation I had to save the world disintegrated. Now, I could enjoy the same lifestyle I had before I got dragged here without fearing any consequence. Losing my first sweepstakes still felt like a pike through the gut, but it was less painful than before. I guess I might as well put forward at least a little effort, though, because this place really does suck, and I’m not about to just kill myself solely for a new world.