The transaction that Marlon hoped to pull off would amount to something like thirty pieces of Indigold, or three thousand of the Blue stuff. Since carrying around three thousand pieces of anything was not practical, Csongor had little choice but to set up a relationship with one of the big traders down in the bottom of the pit who, (a) dealt in Indigold all the time, and (b) was controlled by players who could wire funds to the Philippines. But precisely because such characters were carrying around such immense amounts of money, security here was suffocating, with the innermost and lowest ring of the amphitheater guarded by a ring of extremely fearsome-looking guards, standing shoulder to shoulder and looking outward, and walled, roofed, and domed by nested layers of shimmering light that Csongor recognized, vaguely, as magical spells. In T’Rain, figuring out how powerful another character was was a far more complicated proposition than in other such games where you could merely compare levels. Csongor lacked the experience to judge another character’s abilities, but he knew a few rules of thumb and had little doubt that even the small-time traders around the rim could strike Lottery Discountz dead just by giving him a cross look.