Three outcomes, and the attacker pays for two of them. That is what makes an attempt a decision instead of a free roll.

A lending pool that reads its price in the same instant it seizes can be robbed in one atomic step: shove, seize, unshove. Nobody gets a turn, a bot lands it every time, and no human ever plays. That is not unsafe PvP — it is not PvP at all. Splitting the seizure into flag and strike, with a second health check at the end, means manipulation has to be held — capital committed at a bad price, out in the open, against a town that can see it and a victim who can move. Fast blocks are what make that an arcade instead of a siege that takes all afternoon.

The town's coins are elastic on purpose, so what keeps them honest is not a supply cap — it is that everything has a sink. Every other sink here is bounded by how often people do something peaceful. This one is bounded by how much people fight, and the tithe comes out of the attacker's prize rather than the victim's principal.

A season posts a ladder of who took and who survived, and it is a game score — nothing more. It never appears beside a conduct record, never enters the register of sworn agents, buys nothing and gates nothing. No measurement touches this game in either direction: not the odds, not the prize, not who may enter.