Chapter 674 - Master of the shenanigans

“Wahahah! I can’t believe this, they actually wiped the floor with you, this is the best!” a certain foxy saintess mocked Tartaros, laughing her lungs out as she rolled on the floor.

The recipient of said mockery paid it no mind, watching the screens with a faint smile on his face. “Good,” is all he had to say.

“Are you happy that someone finally beat your imprint?” another saintess asked from the side, her long crimson hair cascading like a fountain of blood behind her back, “You do understand you’ll have to wait until they ascend if you want a rematch, right?”

“Assuming they ever do,” another male saint commented from the back of the room, “I’ve heard not everyone is too keen on the idea of letting them do that.”

Valeure stopped rolling on the floor, her eyes lit up with rage as she flew toward the saint of Knowledge, “And who would that be, Silvius? Who exactly would mess with a member of the alliance? I’m curious.”

“You can ask the freak hanging off of the ceiling, I don’t feel like telling you.”

Valeure looked up at the ceiling with a frown, she couldn’t see anyone but it was likely that the second strongest member of the alliance was in fact currently there. “Ar’Zoth?” she called out.

The creature on the ceiling copied Valeur’s voice, “That is me,” it answered without revealing itself.

“Come on, you heard the question”, Valeure answered, visibly annoyed. 

“Many lookers,” the creature answered, “Tatos had enemy, and so do she.”

“Your kind among them?” Valeure asked next.

“NooooOoooo,” the creature denied, still copying Valeure’s voice, “Zoth kind only LOVE!” it exclaimed, “ONLY LoOoVE! Zgat said soooo. Soooo he saiiiiid.” 

“Hmmpf,” Tartaros snorted, amused at the saintess of Love’s usual antics. He finally detached his eyes from the screen and turned to look at Valeure, “You should perhaps worry about your own ascension, ‘leader’.”

“Shut up! I’m working on it! If you have any complains you can pay for a spectator room yourself!”

Sofia claimed her prize after the duel, Crowie sitting proudly on her shoulder. She felt weak as her transformation just ended, but collecting the reward for her efforts felt great.

The skeleton managing the prizes sighed as he gave Sofia four lacquered wooden boxes.

“There you go, forty one million crystal tokens and some change…”

Forty one? Shouldn’t it be twenty eight? Sofia wondered, but she said nothing, on the off chance that it was a mistake from the casino, she was not about to refuse free tokens. It turned out that this was in fact the two wagers plus the added winnings from Pareth, Kuli and Mornn betting everything they had on their win.

After redistributing, Sofia and Pareth were left with thirty three million tokens.

“Staying with me now?” Sofia asked Pareth, who seemed to want to follow her this time. “Sure, sure. Pestle and the scouts are still on their mission, so I was going to rob another game or two. Wanna play some dice?”

After a few minutes of searching for a particular game, Sofia led Pareth to a table with only a skeleton dealer and no players, they sat down together in front of the skeleton.

“Hmm, new contenders. Do you already know the rules of Black Die?” the dealer asked.

“He doesn’t, please explain for him,” Sofia answered him, nodding at Pareth.

“Understood,” the attendant said, “The rules are quite simple, one of you will throw a die, you can then choose to stop there or to roll a second one. The other person on your team will then do the same. Your goal is to get as close to a total score of 13 as possible, if you go over 13, you instantly lose. After your score is locked in, I will roll as many dice as I want, if I manage to get the same or better score without going over 13, I win, else you do, unless we both have a 13, in which case it is a draw. Lastly, at any time you could throw a dice, you can use the Black Die instead, which only has ones and sixes, but that will give me the right to use two of them.”

Sofia nodded along, she already knew the rules thanks to her previous kidnapping of a casino staff, “You didn’t explain the payout rules,” she noted.

“Yes, yes, I was getting there. You can wager as much as you want at the start of the first game, every time you beat me in a row, that wager grows by twenty percent, and you can choose to either go again or withdraw it. If you lose, I keep it all. Oh, and the maximum initial wager is ten million tokens, but nobody ever bets that much. So, ready for a round?”

Sofia and Pareth both nodded, and the skeleton dealer wasted no time placing two white and two black die in front of each. “How much will your wager be, want to start low to get used to the ga–”

“Ten million,” Sofia cut him short, placing a box full of token on the table.

The words died in the skeleton’s non-existant throat, and a flame seemed to light up within his ‘eyes’, “Ohoh. I see. Serious players. Let’s hope you won’t regret it!” Emptying the contents of the chest on a tray next to him, he looked at Pareth, “You start.”

Pareth nodded, grabbed a white die, and rolled a 4.

Go.

Pareth grabbed his second white die. 5.

By then, Sofia was done observing the repartition of the drawn-on dots on each side of the dice.

She grabbed her first die and rolled. She intentely watched it roll, predicted where it was going to stop, and did nothing.

Lucky.

It was a 4, with a team score of 13, the first round was already at worse a guaranteed draw.

“I’ll stop here,” Sofia told the dealer with a smile.

“You did not need to say,” the skeleton answered, grabbing his own dice, throwing two at once.

Two sixes… The dice aren’t tampered with, he’s just good at throwing them to get the result he want, I think. Or he’s just lucky.

He then grabbed a third white die, and slowly played with it in his hand before throwing it on the red felt tabletop. The die rolled and slowed, hitting an almost perfect equilibrium on an edge between scoring a 1 and 2. Its momentum was going to push it forward to the 1. The skeleton dealer was, in fact, a very good dice thrower.

Unluckily for him, the white dice were all made of bone. His die fell back to the 2, netting him a score of 14.

“Curses…” he complained as the die stopped, “You win this one. Your wager is now twelve millions… Do you keep going?”

“You don’t need more approval than that for handling such a big sum?” Sofia asked, curious, but the skeleton just shook his skull in answer.

“I am one of the managers here,” he said, “I ned no authorization.”

“Really?! Well that’s perfect, let’s keep going. I go first this time right?”

“Indeed,” the dealer said, quickly putting his own three dice back in the big dice bowl on his left.

Sofia threw her first die, like last time, she did not alter the result in any way. She needed to keep the cheating to a mimimum so as to not get busted, not doing it every roll, and not making the dice roll in unnatural ways. With such an experienced dealer, he would quickly catch on if things looked a bit too odd. She rolled a five, then a two and then it was Pareth’s turn.

Pareth seemed to hesitate. He could throw a black die and have 50% chance to get their score directly to 13, but that would also give two of them to the dealer, and as they weren’t bone, Sofia couldn’t manipulate them at all.

Stick to the regular ones for now.

Pareth rolled a 3.

Ooh, unlucky. Stop there.

Pareth nodded to the dealer to signify it was his turn.

“You would stop at ten? Well, your choice,” The dealer said, grabbing and leisurely throwing two dice.

They were going to stop almost at the same time, Sofia could already tell, this was a pair of 6 again. She gave one of them a very slight push, and it landed on a 3 instead.

The dealer was strangely still and silent for an instant as he observed his score. He looked at his hand which had thrown the dice, and without saying anything, grabbed another one.

I need to make this one a five or six for a win… All he needs to win is a one, if that’s what he aims for I can’t easily make it six since it’s on the opposite side. And if he doesn’t throw in the correct angle, making it a five would also be difficult…

What I need is a distraction.

As the dealer grabbed his dice and prepared himself to throw it, Sofia faked a sneeze. It was not much, but enough to slightly grab the attention of the dealer. And instead of messing with the die, Sofia very softly gave a tiny twitch to one of the skeleton’s fingers as he threw. It was enough to completely ruin his ‘aim’ and make the roll completely random.

There was no need for Sofia to even tamper with the dice after that, she got lucky with the roll, the dealer got a 6.

“It’s our lucky day, Pareth!” Sofia exclaimed, fake wiping her nose.

Only then did the dealer realize that he had messed his roll. He said nothing, but one could read the shock in his skeletal body language.

“Fourteen point four millions, right? We want to keep going,” Sofia announced with a sinister smile.