Halsem also furtively flipped his cards and took a look.
He cried out for joy inwardly, even as his face clouded over.
'Nice! 1 of His Holiness the Pope?! And 2 Holy Knights, plus 1 merchant! An excellent hand!'
"Oi, sir Holy Knight. There's a thing called 'throwing' in this game: it's what you do when you see your cards aren't good. That'll result in a defeat, but you can take back half of the pool."
Tom replied with an affable smile without even looking at his hand.
"Will you throw?"
Halsem frowned at Tom's provocation.
"As if! Then I take it you're on?"
"Yes."
"Fine. Don't you regret it later!"
Halsem unfolded his cards: 1 Pope, 2 Holy Knights, and 2 merchants.
"Ohh! Halsem's got a good hand!"
The spectators hurrayed and whistled. Halsem gazed at Tom with a mocking expression, drunk on the atmosphere.
"Now, show us what you got. It's no use throwing after seeing your cards at this point since I've shown you mine already."
"Yes, well then…"
Tom flipped one card, still maintaining that affable smile.
Halsem stared at the card with a jump.
"A hero card? Ha, so you got a card with some points! But not as much as His Holiness!"
Tom flipped the next card. It was also a hero.
Seeing this, Halsem went tense with silence.
He inverted the next one. Another a hero card.
He flipped them all — the whole lot of them depicted the visage of a hero.
Halsem stared at Tom, frozen, while the latter uttered one line with a smile on his face.
"It seems the Lord above has accepted my prayer."
Ellin gazed at the cards in surprise before fixing her eyes on Tom.
"What rubbish are you saying!" was what she wanted to yell, but his hand had truly come out well, to an absurd extent, at that.
Halsem stared blankly at his opponent's cards, feeling as if he was falling into an abyss.
"H-hey! Again, let's go again!"
"Yes, I see. Then, why don't you make a wager first."
Believing that he would make a comeback, Halsem put up the gold to bet while gritting his teeth in response. Tom reciprocated by placing an equal amount on the table.
Halsem shuffled the deck and dealt the cards.
And then they flipped.
Halsem: 2 merchants, 1 Holy Knight, 2 goblins.
Tom: 5 priests.
"… A-again!"
Halsem clenched his teeth, his heart shedding tears of blood. Bad luck was what he chalked it off to, however.
Tom replied with an awkward smile.
"Hey, if you will…"
"What is it?"
"Let's take it up a notch, shall we?" Tom put his gems as well as everything he earned from Halsem on the table. "I'm a bit busy, you see."
He came off as rather arrogant, the way he spoke with a grin on his face. It was very clearly an indication of him looking down on Halsem.
A vein popped on the verteran gambler's forehead. The provocation seemed to have worked as he appeared angry, the sound of his gnashing teeth audible.
"Ahh, so you want to get it on, is that right? Huh?"
'Damn, I didn't want to use this today since my luck was good facing that missy, but…'
Tom licked his lips, as if he had successfully hooked a fish.
'I may look like this, but I'm an experienced gambler. I'll show you what deft fingers are!'
Halsem chose to go all-in.
"Good! I'm gambling day-to-day! I'll risk everything!"
Thus the game began, and Halsem shuffled the deck.
Many onlookers were in the surrounding, with bated breaths. Their eyes were looking at Halsem's cards, but he didn't lose his nerve at that. He liked this aspect of spectators. Everyone would be assured of him being unable to cheat under all this attention.
'Then… let's have at it.'
As Halsem was shuffling the deck, his hand slipped, and he dropped the cards onto the table and floor.
"Ah, sorry, sorry. I got nervous, you know, with the stakes being so high. Hey, pick them up for me, will you?"
A few spectators did as he asked. Some of them were definitely watching Halsem, but the attention on him was instantly split up.
Halsem aimed for that moment, and in the midst of gathering the dropped cards, a card that was inside of his sleeve smoothly fell out, which he mixed among the deck. It looked the same as a regular one; only, the back of it was coarser and rougher.
"Now, time to deal out the car—"
Just as Halsem was about to finish speaking with a smile, his eyes met Tom's, and his hands paused for a moment.
"… Ah… Uh…"
Halsem trembled as he broke out into a cold sweat. His opponent's golden eyes were glaring at him with a cold gaze. A chill ran down his spine, and his body stopped responding as if he were paralyzed. All he could manage was a groan after strenuously moving his lips, wishing to escape from this nightmarish situation.
'What? What is this? This is… s-scary!'
Halsem felt overwhelming powerlessness. Countless onlookers were in the surrounding, shouting in a furor, yet he could not see them, nor hear their voices. He could not even make out the face of his opponent.
All that entered his vision were the two golden glints of light shining amidst pitch-black darkness.
The golden eyes before him.
And they spoke to him.
[I do not permit lies.]
A moment later, the pitch-black darkness vanished, and his vision grew bright, restoring everything back to normal.
The spectators stared at Halsem dubiously, feeling perplexed.
"What's up? Halsem, what are you doing?"
"Is the fellow feeling nervous?"
"… Oi, that guy."
The spectators blocked their noses and hurriedly retreated.
"He pissed himself."
Halsem sat there laughing, oblivious to the urine dripping from his pants.
"Haha… What was that just now? That… was u-utterly terrifying."
Halsem shook in fear but was strangely in a good mood. He dropped the card he had hidden in his sleeve to the floor as if in a trance. He was going to attempt bottom dealing, but he simply could not muster the courage to do so anymore.
He instinctively realized that his trick, which was unnoticed by any other until now, would not work against the Holy Knight before him. He had to compete with luck only.
"… Haha. Hahahahahahaha!"
Halsem's heart raced with excitement. A clean and fair contest with no tricks involved whatsoever: a showdown of pure luck.
And that was what the fate of his fortune hung upon.
'Haha! I'm losing my mind. I'm getting cold feet. Freezing cold feet! But it's exciting!'
Halsem began to reshuffle the deck with shaking hands and began to deal the cards. A strange sense of pleasure washed over him as tension numbed his rationality. This thrill, it was the feeling experienced by those unable to stop rolling the dice.
A longing that held greater pull than the desire to eat or to copulate!
An inextinguishable craving toward gambling!
Win, and he would be greeted with utmost delight. Lose, however, and he would suffer despair akin to death.
This was gambling.
"Well then… no throwing! Come, let's flip!"
Halsem immediately unfolded after dealing Tom his cards.
5 merchants. He got bonus points due to having 5 identical cards.
"Oooh! Halsem, that's quite good!"
"I say, it's hard to get a hand like that too."
While the spectators were making admiring remarks, Tom quietly flipped his cards one by one. The people who were watching let out joyful cheers following his action, but with every other card revealed, the sounds they made gradually died down instead.
Caught by astonishment, Ellin muttered under her breath while looking at the cards.
"5 of the God Artarrk?"
"… Goodness."
"This is unprecedented!"
"… It's my first time seeing a hand like that."
While the spectators were feeling shocked, Halsem stared at those cards in awe before shifting his gaze to the Holy Knight.
This was truly a game of chance. The opponent had competed with him in luck, and that went the same for him as well.
Yet for a hand like this to appear?!
He got 5 merchants, while the opponent got 5 Artarrks…
This was an unbelievable disparity in level!
'Ha, hahahaha! What is this? Even if I didn't use a trick, this… was a lost cause anyway, wasn't it?'
Halsem stared at Tom with a hollow look in his eyes, feeling as if his world had been turned upside down.
"I've won."
His opponent merely sat there, smiling.
— Ω —