"Eh? Why am I the brat? You're clearly the child here." The man wearing the black dragon mask exclaimed.
"I was covering my face last time, how did you still recognize me?" Ciel narrowed his eyes.
"Answer my question first."
"Why should I? Brat."
"I asked first!"
"Then how about we make a bet? The winner gets answers and gets one unconditional request from the loser." Ciel had grudges from being scammed of 85 silvers for a cookie and a ribbon.
'Wait a second, ribbon?' He halted, then looked at his shoulder. The fluffy black hair tied in a ponytail was draped neatly to the side, held in place with a pure white ribbon with intricate gold patterns winding around it. It looked expensive and custom-made.
'Oh, this was his.' He had taken it. Nevermind the bet, he had his answer.
But it was too late to take his words back now.
The dragon masked man took off his mask, revealing a twenty-ish young man with handsome western features.
"I'll take the bet."
Ciel glanced at his young face, omentarily forgetting his regret.
'This is why you're a brat to me.'
He might look like this, but in his past life, he had been a tall and handsome uncle, and after that, he had drifted meaninglessly for a long time before becoming the milky child he was now.
"You didn't even hear the details of it."
"It's something about gambling right?"
Ciel nodded.
'He's pretty sensible.'
"Let's gamble, the one with the most chips at the end wins. No using outside interference, including any type of artifact, your mana or aura."
"You want to compete with me in luck? Hahaha, prepare to lose." The young man tried to pat Ciel's head, only to get swatted aside.
"Don't pat my head." Ciel walked to a poker table with a dealer. He then turned back, "By the way, you're paying for both of our chips."
"What?" The young man's face sank.
"You wouldn't let a little kid who you scammed of 85 silver coins pay right?" Ciel immediately made the world's most innocent expression to face him, all while giving his signature harmless smile. He was completely, totally harmless.
Definitely not out for payback.
"All profits go to me and your losses will be paid back in full." The young man negotiated.
Ciel continued to smile like a doll, "If you win, that can be your request."
"Sly brat." The young man grumbled, but his hands still bought two sets of chips from the dealer. It looked like he was confident of his luck.
While passing the chips to Ciel, the young man caught sight of the dealer's professional happy smile, then looked at Ciel's grin that radiated harmlessness, and suddenly felt that they were pretty similar.
As soon as three more people joined the table, the dealer started the game.
Ciel looked at his cards. They were pretty good. He looked over at the young man, who was trying to hide his face with his cards.
'Looks like he also got good cards.' It was easy to hide negative expressions. If he was hiding his face, the most likely possibility is that his expression was the harder to control positive expression.
As expected, both Ciel and the young man won the first few rounds. Looking at the chips surrounding him in a small pile, Ciel looked over at the dealer and the other three men. The three men were all sitting still with bad expressions while the dealer was shuffling cards with a peaceful expression.
In the next round, Ciel had good cards, but they were worse than his previous ones. The other three men were wearing impassive faces.
'They're cheating. So is the dealer.' Ciel noted.
It was the commonest method of letting newcomers win a lot at first, then have them lose everything. Ciel had seen it plenty of times in the past. He smiled.
'They're not the only ones who can cheat.'
~
As the only one who didn't cheat, the young man lost horribly. He could only puff up with frustration.
"You're young, so you haven't used your luck that much yet. Now that you've used a lot of it, I will win next time!"
'Does luck even work that way?'
Ciel looked at him with pity in his jewel-like eyes, before sweeping the heap of chips he had won into his space ring while pretending they went into his new satchel.
"Are you sure you want to play again?"
The young man responded by exchanging for more chips from the dealer. Ciel laughed before joining another game.
A few rounds later, the young man lost all his chips. Meanwhile, the chips Ciel owned had grown.
"Done now?" He glanced at the young man. 'He didn't notice us cheating at all. As someone from the upper echelons in White Night, shouldn't he be a high level aura user or a high ranked mage?'
"No!" The young man gritted his teeth and bought more chips. He was the prime example of someone who would soon fall into debt.
The young man looked at Ciel, who was sweeping his earnings into his satchel(space ring). "You aren't playing?"
"No. If you get more chips then the amount I have, you win our bet." Ciel yawned and looked at the sky. It was getting dark, but the open gambling hall had the same amount of brightness as in the daytime. If Ciel hadn't looked straight up at the darkening sky, he would have thought not much time had passed.
Another common method of making the customer gamble longer, Ciel thought as he wandered off to some other tables.
After a while, when he came back, he was surprised to find the young man win a few times. Whether it was because the dealer and the others found compassion in their hearts or if they wanted him to have confidence to continue losing mone—to continue playing, Ciel didn't know.
If they gave him a few wins to continue playing, they would have failed. After the game, the young man excitedly scooped up his chips and ran over to Ciel, who was eating a few sweets on the side.
"I won big this time! Take out your chips!" He dumped the small hill of chips onto the table next to Ciel. Ciel looked at them with disdain, before dumping a mountain of chips next to the young man's chips.
–Clink clink clink.
A few chips dropped onto the floor.
There was no need to count, Ciel was the clear winner.
"You cheated! You didn't have this much when you stopped playing!"
"I never said we only had to play poker." Ciel shrugged. He had worked in a casino in his past life. His cheating methods didn't only extend to poker.
"..." The young man didn't say anything as his face contorted. He immediately started to go towards the other tables.
"We already compared chips. I won the bet. Where do you think you're going?" Ciel grumpily chucked a few chips at the young man.
The young man quickly caught the chips before coming back. "You want to know how I recognized you?"
Ciel shook his head. "Nope. I know the answer."
Giving a pure smile at the young man, he shoved the mountain of chips towards him, loudly saying,
"According to our bet, I can make one request and have one answer. Since you paid for the chips, you keep them all. Contact me later." With that, he quickly left the vicinity, stuffing the remains of the sweets into his mouth.
He had won a lot of money, the gambling hall would definitely send someone to take it back. He would know since he had worked at one before.
That young man had the abilities to work at the White Night information guild. He would be fine, but Ciel would not.
Money wasn't as important as life, or pitting someone.
Only interesting things were worth his life.
Ciel quickly ran out of the open air gambling hall. The previous empty backstreet was now bustling with people. Vendors were selling things on the streets, while several buildings with pink and red lights had beautiful men and women waving at people on the street, smiling flirtatiously.
Gambling, street venders, and prostitutes.
Ciel finally realized where he had landed himself in, 'This must be the close to illegal night market area in Anatol, the Ovine district. That means the black market must be close, right?'
The sky was already dark. This was the perfect time to go to the black market.
Jadiel's words on coming back before dark were tossed to the very back of Ciel's brain.
Recalling the novel's contents, he pulled out a pre-prepared, pure white smiling mask and a black robe and started looking at the colorful buildings.
'Black market entrances are marked with the pi symbol. Hmm, pi symbol, pi symbol. Ah, found one.' Ciel stopped in front of an establishment that looked like a tavern. The pi symbol was engraved in silver on the bottom of the door frame. If not for Ciel's current short stature of a kid, he would have missed it.
~Jingle jingle.
The bells rang as Ciel pushed open the door.
"I would like a midnight cocktail filled up to the 3.14 mark."
The bartender looked up. Ciel noticed that both his dark eyes were cloudy and unfocused. 'He's blind?'
"Would you like anything to go with it?"
"Please add some nightshade fruit. Thank you."
The bartender stood up and walked to the back, beckoning Ciel to follow him. Another bartender instantly took his place as Ciel followed the first bartender through the back.
Ciel was led underground, and the pair stopped in front of an iron gate.
The blind bartender spoke, "First time?"
Ciel nodded, but then he remembered the bartender's eyes. Before he could speak up, the bartender handed him a white token.
"First timers get the newbie token. You can upgrade it through purchases and selling things. If you lose it, get a replacement at any gate. You have to drop a bit of your blood in here after marking your token with it."
Smiling, the bartender held up a small transparent bottle.