WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Haruto
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Even in a Dark Fantasy, You Still Have to Eat ◈
Chapter 62: Guests of the Emperor of the Abyss # 3
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The Emperor of the Abyss took a coin from his pocket.
One face was dazzling gold, while the other was scorched black.
Ting.
Baine, the Emperor of the Abyss, flicked the coin into the air.
Clink. Whirl.
The coin fell to the floor and spun like a top.
“What are you doing?”
“My own ritual.”
“A ritual?”
“I check my fortune before I start a job.”
Ah, I’d seen this kind of fortune-telling before.
Thieves breaking into houses did it often.
They flipped a coin. If the good side came up, things would go well that day.
If the bad side came up, they called it off for the day.
Of course, it was just superstition.
I never did it.
Still, I never expected the Emperor of the Abyss to be the type.
Whirl.
Everyone in the gambling hall watched the coin spinning on the floor.
At last, the coin stopped.
The bright, gold side faced up.
The Emperor of the Abyss laughed behind his black mask.
“A hundred days of heads in a row. Today’s fortune is good too!”
“Wow, you really were born lucky!”
“Mr. Baine! Share some of that luck with us!”
“Let us win a fortune too!”
The crowd chattered like monkeys.
‘Get a grip.’
The Emperor of the Abyss wasn’t what mattered right now.
The imperial kid was.
We came to this gambling hall because the kid needed to save their family.
And then we ran into the one person we should never have met.
“So, brat. Want to play a round with me?”
At least the Emperor of the Abyss had offered me a gamble.
I wasn’t sure about a knife fight, but I was confident in gambling too.
“What are the stakes and the game?”
“You decide.”
He was letting me choose both?
Luck was on my side too.
Clink!
I put all eighty of my chips on the table.
“Let’s flip a coin. We each have to choose a different side. Deal?”
A coin toss seemed like the gamble where I had the best chance.
Heads or tails. Fifty-fifty.
I was facing the Emperor of the Abyss himself with a fifty percent chance.
“A coin? You saw my ritual just now, and you still want that? I’ll give you one last chance to change your choice.”
“Why does the great Emperor of the Abyss keep flapping his tongue? Not confident?”
I bluffed even harder.
It was like sticking my hand into a lion’s mouth.
But the imperial kid was behind me.
Fuck, I couldn’t back down.
The only way to survive when every choice was terrible.
Beat the Emperor of the Abyss in a gamble, win a mountain of chips, get the prize, and run.
“That dog bastard dares say something like that to Mr. Baine...!”
The clown drew two daggers.
Baine stopped him.
“Enough.”
Baine showed me the coin.
“The bright side is heads. The dark side is tails.”
Ting.
The coin flew into the air.
A moment later, it fell to the floor and spun.
Baine quickly covered it with a wooden cup.
“Go on. You choose first. Heads or tails.”
He was giving me the choice?
Heads or tails.
Fifty-fifty.
My heart pounded, and my vision swam.
Eighty chips were on the line.
It was a gamble with my whole life at stake.
If I lost?
I’d have only one chip left.
Then what would happen to my mortgaged skills and lifespan?
Would all my skills be taken away?
Would my lifespan be slashed too?
If that happened, I’d definitely fall behind during Wall expeditions.
Hammer’s party would kick me out too.
In other words, losing meant losing my chance to grind Ether.
I couldn’t lose.
The odds were fifty-fifty.
Heads or tails.
‘Baine said he got gold heads in his ritual for a hundred days straight.’
Was it even possible to get heads a hundred times in a row?
It sounded like bullshit.
Even if it was true, wouldn’t it be time for tails now?
Fine.
Tails.
I let out a long breath.
“Tails.”
“Then I should choose heads.”
Baine’s voice was indifferent.
He was completely different from me, whose life depended on eighty gambling chips.
He didn’t seem interested in this gamble at all.
Even though he’d suggested it first.
Maybe eighty chips were just pocket change to him.
“Then let’s see.”
Baine reached for the wooden cup.
Suddenly, anxiety surged through me.
“Wait. You could’ve cheated.”
“Why would I do something like that?”
Baine frowned.
The people around us immediately started shouting too.
“If Baine wanted to kill a kid like you, he could’ve done it ten times already!”
“Baine doesn’t pull cheap tricks like cheating!”
“That’s why he’s the Emperor of the Abyss!”
“That’s what you people say. I don’t trust you. I’ll lift the cup.”
“Fine. Do that.”
Baine backed off more easily than I expected.
My heart racing, I reached for the cup.
“Please, pleeease...!”
My heartbeat was so loud that I could hear it.
My mouth was dry, and even breathing was hard.
The world spun around me.
My life was inside this cup.
‘What if I lose?’
I couldn’t bring myself to look.
My teeth chattered, and my legs trembled.
Then the kid grabbed my side.
They whispered in my ear.
“You’re risking your life to save my family. You’re different.”
“So what? I’m concentrating, so don’t talk to me!”
My life was on the line.
Who cared if they were imperial royalty?
The kid added something to my sharp reply.
“If you lose, use my life as chips too.”
What?
Their life?
Did this kid even know what they were saying?
Still, it was a very effective plan.
Baine clicked his tongue at us.
“Will the coin change just because you two whisper to each other? Hurry up and lift the cup.”
Tails.
Please let it be tails.
I gripped the cup tightly and lifted it with all my strength.
# # #
For an instant, my vision swam.
When I came to, I was running around on all fours and shouting at the top of my lungs.
“Tails! It’s tails! Tails!!!!!!!”
Inside the uncovered wooden cup, the gold coin lying on the floor was completely black.
“I won!!!!”
Fuck, fifty-fifty.
Eighty gambling chips!
But I couldn’t celebrate too much.
I was wary of the Emperor of the Abyss’s reaction.
Without saying a word, he stared at the black side of the coin.
“...”
The atmosphere was so cold that it felt like an icy hand had gripped my heart.
I had a bad feeling.
So I carefully reached for the chips I’d bet and Baine’s bag of chips.
“Then I’ll take all the money I won. Like a gentleman...”
He wasn’t suddenly going to stab my hand with a dagger, right?
I was taking what was rightfully mine, but it felt like putting my hand into a hungry crocodile’s mouth.
“Baine lost?”
“In gambling?”
“Did that bastard cheat...?”
The crowd stirred.
The clown was especially furious.
“You dog bastard! Did you cheat!?”
The clown had already decided that I cheated.
Swish.
The clown’s dagger came for my throat.
If I hadn’t twisted aside, I would’ve been stabbed to death.
“What cheating!”
I knew this would happen.
I won chips fairly through gambling, and he was starting a knife fight?
This was why real Thieves were hated.
They always went back on their word.
‘These fucking Thieves!’
Because of bastards like them, even a kind and righteous Thief like me got cursed along with them.
I drew my dagger and swung my arm.
Unfortunately, my attack didn’t touch the clown.
The bastard did a strangely flexible backflip.
“You vile clown bastard!”
“Vile? Look who’s talking, you filthy cheating bastard...”
“Claude, that’s enough.”
“But, Mr. Baine, that bastard cheated! Otherwise, how could you possibly lose at gambling!?”
“Claude, are you saying I’m an idiot who lost to a brat’s cheating? That I got fooled by a twenty-year-old punk’s sleight of hand?”
Baine frowned.
The gambling hall became silent as a grave.
“Gasp, th-that isn’t what I meant... I-I only meant that you, Mr. Baine...”
The clown trembled.
Even through the heavy clown makeup, it was obvious that Claude was panicking.
“You useless idiot. You’re fired.”
Splurt.
Then I heard a sound like a fountain bursting.
When I came to my senses, Claude the clown was on his knees, blood spraying from his chest.
“Guh... m-my heaart...”
A beating heart was in Baine’s hand.
Thump, thump.
Claude the clown fell over and died.
‘He stole his organs with pickpocketing?’
Was that what it took to be called the king of Thieves?
He was completely insane.
“You. What’s your name?”
Baine asked me.
I squeezed my eyes shut as I looked at the heart in his hand.
It didn’t seem like a good thing for that man to remember my name.
But he’d see through me right away if I lied.
He was the king of criminals.
He had to be an expert at scams and lies.
“...Ahem. I’m Yore...”
I honestly gave him my name.
Baine repeated it.
“Yore. Yore. Are you that Yore with a Breakthrough Stone refined to level twenty?”
“Well, you could say that... or you could not...”
“Hah.”
Hah? I carefully opened my eyes.
Baine burst out laughing.
“Hahahahaha!”
“Heh, hehe...”
He laughed so freely that I laughed along with him.
After laughing for a while, I felt a little better.
Baine spoke.
“You may search the clown’s corpse, Yore.”
Whoosh.
With those words, Baine melted into his own shadow and disappeared.
‘What the fuck was that?’
It was amazing.
He hid inside his own shadow!
‘Isn’t that basically magic?’
Could Thieves do things like that once they reached a high level?
But that wasn’t what mattered right now.
I searched the clown’s pockets.
‘A job’s a job.’
There were seventy chips in the clown’s pocket.
That brought my total to 231 chips.
There was also a gold ring marked with a seven on the clown’s hand.
Was it pure gold?
Just as I was thinking it looked expensive, Taco, the guard at the entrance, slapped my shoulder.
“Yore, you’re becoming a new member of the Seven Fingers.”
“Seven what? I have all ten fingers.”
“It means Thieves recognized by the Emperor of the Abyss. People with rings like that.”
Ah. There were seven numbered rings, and the people who had them were premium Thieves recognized by the Emperor of the Abyss.
Something like that?
“What’s so good about becoming one of the Seven Fingers?”
“You can live like a noble in this city. It’s a position everyone dreams of.”
The nobles among Thieves, huh?
Then a thought suddenly crossed my mind.
“Could I meet a skilled blacksmith too?”
“Well, sure...”
Nice.
Still, more than anything, I wanted to get out of this place.
Clink. Jingle.
I bought the Special Prizes with two hundred of my chips.
“This is the first time anything like this has happened since the gambling hall opened.”
The exchange clerk reacted in amazement and handed me a key.
It was probably the key to the barred enclosure holding the Special Prizes.
I fed the remaining thirty chips to Kalasa.
【What a shame.】
【I wanted to make you my bonded servant.】
I got back my mortgaged skills and lifespan.
That left me with just one chip.
I was thinking of keeping it as a souvenir when Kalasa spoke.
【Hold the chip and call for me!】
【It will become a medium through which you can make a contract with me.】
I could trade with Kalasa through this chip?
More options were never a bad thing.
Holding the key, I headed for the barred enclosure.
Click.
When I unlocked the door and reached inside, a woman held out a white hand.
“So you are the one who purchased me.”
Her voice was beautiful.
The kid behind me cried out, quietly but clearly.
“...Sauriel! It’s me!”
“...That voice!”
The woman’s name seemed to be Sauriel.
She lifted her veil slightly and looked at the kid.
“Gasp.”
The face revealed beneath it was so beautiful that it felt like my breath stopped.
But what shocked me even more was her long, pointed ears.
‘An Erdari...!’
Author’s Note
September 28...!!!
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