WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Even in a Dark Fantasy, You Still Have to Eat ◈
Chapter 61: Guests of the Emperor of the Abyss # 2
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It seemed this gambling hall used a currency called Casino Chip.
I liked how they gleamed yellow, like gold coins.
‘I want to take one home as a souvenir.’
I went to the exchange counter and asked.
“How much is one chip?”
“Buddy, is this your first time at a gambling hall? We don't trade chips for money here.”
“Then what?”
“We give out chips based on your remaining lifespan or skills. See that statue of Kalasa over there?”
It was a vicious-looking skull statue.
Holding a scythe, it looked exactly like a grim reaper.
The exchange clerk giggled.
“Put your hand on its head, and you'll understand.”
Wary, I placed a hand on the skull statue.
Then the skull statue spoke to me.
【Hehehe, what an impressive guest.】
【The one contracted to that evil dragon.】
Whoa, that startled me.
This was an idol statue!
The skull introduced itself in a seductive voice.
【I am Kalasa of Transactions.】
【I was once grouped with the serpent and lion as one of the Three Fiends.】
The Three Fiends.
Sabranik's friend?
Companion?
As I thought that, Skull Kalasa laughed in my head.
【Companions. I miss the days when we were called that.】
【Enough small talk. I'll convert your skills into chips.】
【Ten chips for your lifespan.】
【Ten chips for your skills.】
【Twenty chips in total.】
My lifespan and skills were chips.
Deals with idols always had strange parts like this.
“What happens if I lose all my chips?”
I asked the skull.
The skull statue's eyes flashed.
【My other name is Kalasa, Necromantic Lord.】
【If you lose all my chips, you must serve me.】
【As my slave forever.】
I didn't know what it involved, but I didn't want to become a slave.
Forever, at that.
“What would Kalasa's slaves have to do?”
【Earn Ether.】
What?
Why did that suddenly sound manageable?
Of course, there had to be something else I didn't know.
Still, I didn't want to become a slave.
【Kalasa.】
【Give my Blessed ten more chips.】
【For old times' sake.】
At that moment, Sabranik joined the conversation.
I was incredibly glad to hear that voice.
Sabranik was negotiating for me!
【You haven't forgotten our adventures, have you?】
【The days when we relied on each other and challenged the impossible.】
Long live Sabranik!
Kalasa, cheerful despite being a skull, giggled.
【Pay back the Ether you borrowed from me first.】
【...Krrrsh...】
My connection with Sabranik was cut off.
Fuck. I got my hopes up for nothing.
Still, Kalasa giggled cheerfully, as though amused.
【Fine. I'll give you ten more.】
【It's been a long time since I heard that nostalgic voice.】
【Be careful not to lose them all.】
Clink, clink.
Gold coins came out of the skull's mouth.
The exchange clerk stared in shock.
“Whoa, how many are coming out?”
“Looks like twenty.”
“With that many, isn't he on par with the Seven Fingers?”
“...A face I've never seen is on par with the Emperor of the Abyss's executives?”
My thirty chips seemed to be highly unusual.
I didn't like drawing this much attention.
I put the chips into my Black Bundle and looked around.
Was there any gambling worth trying?
Then I spotted a man holding dice and a cup, shouting.
“Come on, bet your money and win more with dice! It's such easy money that even a three-year-old who can talk can play!”
Six square dice.
Was it a game where you guessed the total?
As I showed interest, the kid tugged at my side.
“Idiot, do you know how many possible outcomes there are? And something like that is obviously a scam. You should watch the card game over there instead!”
Cards?
I didn't know the rules for those.
Better to stick with what I knew than challenge something I didn't.
I headed over to the dice gambler.
# # #
“I want to play some dice too.”
“...What a strange group of guests.”
The dice gambler was a man with white paint on his face like a clown.
Honestly, the man in front of me was stranger than I was.
‘No openings.’
I examined him with Black Eyes, intending to pickpocket him.
But the man had no openings at all.
“Buddy, you're pretty good at being a Thief, aren't you?”
I asked.
The clown smiled.
“Why do you ask?”
“Because there's no guarantee a lowly Thief won't cheat in this game.”
“True. But the kind of cheating you're talking about doesn't happen in this gambling hall.”
“Why not?”
“Because that's the Emperor of the Abyss's policy for this gambling hall. Here, you compete purely on luck. That's why even a three-year-old can become a winner. But.”
The clown opened his narrow eyes and glared at me.
“Things are different if you try to cheat. You die.”
Thunk.
The clown pulled a dagger from his waist and drove it into the wooden gambling board.
Severed wrists were displayed all over the board.
Damn, that was brutal.
I took a chip from my pocket and placed it on the table.
“Fine. I'll bet one chip.”
“I saw Kalasa give you a pile of chips earlier. That's awfully stingy.”
The clown giggled.
“Well, there's nothing wrong with starting small!”
He put six dice in the cup and began shaking it.
Clatter, clack.
I closed my eyes and listened.
The kid muttered beside me.
“The lowest possible total is six, and the highest is thirty-six.”
“Shh.”
Unless I was counting money, I hated number games.
There was only one number in my head right now.
Ten, because the kid was ten years old.
“Ten.”
“I haven't even finished shaking the dice.”
Clack, clack.
The dealer shook the cup like a bartender, then set it down on the wooden floor.
When he lifted the cup, the kid's eyes darted around.
“One, one, one, one, three, three... That really is ten!”
“Hehe, congratulations. You're pretty lucky, huh? Too bad you only won one.”
I had bet one and received one.
I now had thirty-one chips.
The clown slightly opened his eyes and asked me.
“How about betting big this time? Winning a little at a time won't amount to much.”
He had a point.
I bet ten chips.
“Ten again.”
“What?”
The kid jumped in surprise and clung to my arm.
“Master, ten again in a row? Do you know what the odds of that are? You're just throwing away chips!”
“Hehe, the slave is smarter than the master?”
Maybe the commotion had drawn their attention.
The people nearby slowly turned to look at us.
“Did he win?”
“I think so. But he bet on the same number again.”
“What are the odds of that?”
Odds and all that.
But they were overlooking something.
Either ten would come up, or it wouldn't.
The odds were fifty-fifty anyway.
The world was a choice between two things.
Right or wrong.
Live or die.
Eat or starve.
“I'll go with ten.”
“Hehe, well, losing once in a while can teach you a valuable lesson.”
The clown shook the cup.
Then he slammed it onto the wooden floor.
As everyone stared at the board in tense anticipation, the clown theatrically cried, “Ta-da!” as he lifted the cup.
“Now, let's count. Two. Two. Two. Two... One... one...”
“Te-ten!”
The kid shouted in shock.
Everyone gasped.
“He got it right twice in a row?”
“That bastard's insanely lucky.”
“Damn, he used up all the luck he'll have in his life!”
“If he'd bet more, he'd have won more!”
I now had forty-one chips.
How many games would I have to play to gather enough chips?
I needed at least two hundred.
“I'll bet forty.”
I put nearly all my chips on the table.
The clown's expression turned serious.
A bead of cold sweat rolled down his forehead.
“...You're betting on ten again?”
“No. Twenty-one.”
“Is that a meaningful number?”
“My age next year.”
“Symbolic. But will you even see next year?”
The clown put the dice in the cup and spun them.
Despite having turned serious earlier, his voice was as playful as ever.
“Sometimes there are people who gather up all the luck in their lives and win three times in a row. When so many people try, someone eventually breaks through the odds.”
Thump.
The clown slammed the cup down.
“You think you're the main character of your life, don't you? Keep that up, and you'll get burned. There are people in this world who make you wonder whether they were truly chosen.”
“You sure talk a lot. Just show the dice.”
Thump. Thump.
Even I was a little nervous this time.
It was irritating.
‘Fuck, I bet forty chips!’
If I lost this, I'd only have one chip left.
But if I kept betting small amounts, I'd have to play far too many games.
That would draw more people over.
Someone might recognize the kid, or someone might pick my pocket or start trouble.
In other words, this was basically a race against time.
‘If I lose this bet, everything gets screwed up.’
Still, I had a plan.
If I lost most of my chips, I would mortgage the kid's life to Kalasa too.
Betting the life of imperial royalty?
Obviously, it would be better if that never happened.
“Look at this guy. I can hear his eyeballs turning.”
The clown giggled.
He slowly lifted the cup.
The pips on the six wooden dice seemed to be staring right at me.
“Six, five, four, three, two, one.”
The kid muttered.
They counted on their fingers, then shouted brightly.
“Twenty-one! It's twenty-one! Really twenty-one!”
That was the moment.
The clown's eyes glowed red. He drew his dagger and pointed it at my throat.
“Hey, you fucking bastard. I told you I'd kill you if you cheated, didn't I?”
It was an incredibly smooth, quick motion.
The clown really was a skilled Thief.
“How the fuck does it make sense that you keep getting the number right?”
But from my perspective, this was ridiculous.
“The cup and dice are yours, and your people rolled the dice, so why the fuck are you coming after me?”
“Fuck you, bastard! Did you pull something with a skill? Huh!?”
I was one step away from having a hole punched through my throat.
The clown's bloodshot eyes turned to the kid.
“Or was it them? Did they see the dice and tell you the number? Huh?”
I was so wronged that I was getting angry.
Fuck, this wasn't the first time this had happened.
That was why I didn't actually like gambling.
Every time I gambled, I got beaten up.
And the last time, I nearly got hanged.
“Let's say I did cheat. If the Emperor of the Abyss personally runs this gambling hall and can't notice something that obvious, shouldn't he be the one ashamed?”
“Hah, what? You fucking bastard.”
The blade pressed into my throat.
But the hand holding it suddenly stopped.
A man who had appeared without warning was holding the clown's wrist.
“Claude. That's enough.”
“Gasp, B-Baine, sir!”
The clown dropped his dagger and bowed his head.
The others were so startled that they fell over.
“The Emperor of the Abyss himself?”
“Fuck, we're lucky today.”
“For some reason, my gambling win rate goes up whenever I see the Emperor of the Abyss!”
“Isn't that just superstition?”
He was a man wearing a black mask over his face, his head hidden under a hood.
He was about my height.
But I hadn't been able to feel or sense when or where he had appeared.
‘Baine, the Emperor of the Abyss.’
‘This is the second time I've met him.’
The first time was at the Thieves' Guild.
Back then, I didn't even know what an Emperor of the Abyss was.
But now things were different.
‘One of the former Empire's Four Stars.’
An adventurer on par with Lieutenant General Raiden.
A vile hero who had reached level twenty despite being a Thief.
I shivered.
Every cell in my body seemed to be telling me to run.
If this man killed me, I would probably die before I even realized it.
“Oh, those are my weapons. Even the Black Bundle? Wow, are you the brat who supposedly took down One-Eye?”
The Emperor of the Abyss asked me.
Everyone was shocked at the name One-Eye.
“That One-Eye?”
“I heard that guy died.”
“That crazy bastard lost to a twenty-year-old brat?”
Even the clown who had just tried to kill me was stunned.
“This guy took down One-Eye...”
At this point, even I was surprised.
What the hell was One-Eye?
Wasn't that bastard just an idiot?
Also, the Emperor of the Abyss didn't seem to know this was our second meeting.
Well, to the man in front of me, someone like me probably mattered less than a stone on the road.
“So, you didn't cheat?”
The Emperor of the Abyss asked me.
I brushed off the collar that had been grabbed and answered.
“Th-that's right.”
Fuck, I wanted to sound cool, but I was scared.
Then the Emperor of the Abyss took a pile of chips from his pocket and placed them on the wooden board.
“Then play a round with me. For the record, I've never lost at gambling since the day I was born. I've never found gambling entertaining either.”
The Emperor of the Abyss's black eyes gleamed.
They were as dark as the Night itself.
Author's Note
September 27...!!!
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