Gamble Scramble!

by Natsume Akatsuki

  “Sir! P-please, any more bets and…!” A guy who had been watching us from the crowd for a while now came over to me. I assumed he was the manager, because he was white as a sheet. If this had been a private establishment, I might have taken pity on them, but unfortunately for them, this casino was state-owned. I could take them for all they were worth and the only real victims would be that prince and his prime minister—i.e., no one I cared about.

  I made a show of sipping the coffee Darkness had brought me, then pulled out the two pendants around my neck. “Hey, you know what these are?”

  “…? …Wh-what?! Crests of both the Dustiness and Sinfonia households, the most powerful families in Belzerg?!”

  The manager, who clearly did know what these were, went even paler.

  “You got it: I have two major noble houses standing behind me. Hear what I’m saying? If you tell me I can’t bet anymore, then I’m willing to bet there’s going to be a diplomatic incident.”

  “Hrk…!” The manager ground his teeth but backed away, glaring at me.

  Heh, I win…again.

  Iris had been watching excitedly; now she took my hands. “Amazing, Elder Brother! I heard you had good Luck, but I never imagined it was this good! With this kind of fortune, maybe you should have skipped adventuring and made your living at the casino.”

  Live the gambling life, huh? The thought had occurred to me, but if a trouble-magnet weak-ass Adventurer like me started winning big at the casino, I was sure someone would come after my life. Anyway, this sort of thing only works when you do it occasionally. When you get greedy and try to keep the gravy train rolling, that’s when the trouble starts. The whole reason I could even do what I was doing at that moment was because I had the backing of a princess and two noble families, plus the pretext that I was trying to raise money to fight the Demon King.

  Otherwise, I was pretty sure Lady Eris would have taken me to task for this little show.

  “Nah, games of chance aren’t my calling. You know me: I live to adventure in order to defeat the Demon King.” I made sure I sounded as cool as possible; Iris turned eyes sparkling with respect on me.

  I put the bucket full of chips on Black 6, sending a murmur through the crowd of onlookers.

  “Now spin that wheel!”

  Sweating but unable to say no, the dealer picked up a ball…!

  “I’ll take that same space!”

  “Huh?!”

  Before I could stop her, Aqua had put her chips on Black 6, too. At the same instant, the ball went plummeting onto the wheel, where it spun crazily.

  “You—! I told you not to get cocky; this isn’t a game!”

  “Why can’t I bet, you stingy NEET? I’ve been losing every round! I need to make something back…”

  As I was busy yelling at Aqua, the ball slowly came to a rest…

  “Red Five.”

  “Looook at thaaaat!”

  “Waaaah! I lost all my allowance!”

  I motioned to Darkness to drag Aqua away.

  “Hey, Darkness, please! I have to make some cash here or I won’t be able to buy Emperor Zel a souvenir! Lend me some money, please? I’ll pay you back when I win!”

  “I’ll buy you a dumb souvenir—just get over here! Our nation’s future is at stake!”

  I composed myself as I watched Aqua being dragged off. Now that the goddess of bad luck wasn’t sitting next to me anymore, I should be able to get my groove back.

  “Kazuma, Kazuma, the way to get back what you lost is to make a biiiig bet! All the chips you have left!”

  “No way! Unlike you, I’m trying to be serious about this! Hey, don’t grab my chips! Darkness, get her out of here, too!”

  While Darkness handled Megumin just like she had Aqua, I put down a bet on Black 8.

  “It’s on!”

  That night.

  “Ooh, Kazuma, Kazuma. You were so cool today. Hey, you know what? There’s something I’ve always wanted to tell you…”

  “Heap all the praise on me you want; I’m not going to give you any money. Besides, you’d just copy my bets… Oh look, right on schedule.”

  We were heading back to the inn after a day of winning really, really big when something totally predictable happened.

  “Hey, you there. Got a moment?” Several masked men blocked our path.

  When Iris saw them, she looked up at me with genuine respect. “Elder Brother, that’s incredible! You even foresaw this!”

  “Right? I told you, they’ll one hundred percent try to ambush us. These guys are hired muscle from the casino.”

  The men shook their heads almost frantically. “N-no we ain’t! We’re bandits who heard you came into a lot of cash! Leave the money with us and no one gets hurt. C’mon—we’ll spare your l—”

  I ignored the man and took out some Bind wire. “All right, guys, let’s tie up these suckers and get one of those magic bells that jingles when you tell a lie! If the country or the casino is behind this, we’ll make a big stink about it and squeeze even more money out of Elroad!”

  That caused not only the men in front of us but, for some reason, my companions, too, to stare at me wide-eyed.

  “K-Kazuma, you… So this is why you wanted to take dark back roads to the inn. And why you had Aqua buff you and why you insisted on full armor and equipment even though we were just going to the casino…,” Darkness murmured. The men took a collective step back and held a whispered conference:

  “This could be trouble. I feel like we’re the ones who got trapped here.”

  “And ain’t that a Crimson Magic wizard over there? Plus two girls with blond hair and blue eyes. And you know what that means…”

  “Shit, there are nobles here?! A lotta nobles are nothing to sneeze at!”

  Well, this wouldn’t do.

  “They’re thinking about running away,” I announced. “Don’t let ’em! They’re worth a fortune! Don’t hold back! If worse comes to worst, we’ve got Aqua’s Resurrection!”

  Then I turned toward the men…!

  “Run for it! This guy is trouble; he said he’s got Resurrection or something! He’s gonna eat us alive!”

  “Don’t let ’em catch you; run like the wind!”

  “Wait! Wait for me!”

  I guess I was right about these guys, because they ran for the hills.

  “…You know, Kazuma, I’m not sure I like you bringing Resurrection into all this.”

  “Aw, I didn’t really mean it! I was only trying to scare them! Seriously, I don’t have the nerve to… Geez, why are you looking at me like that? It’s true!”

  Suddenly I was the villain, and I had to walk things back in a hurry.

  4

  After that, I started going to the casino on a daily basis.

  “He’s heeere!”

  The blood would drain from the manager’s face as soon as he saw me.

  At first, I think they assumed I couldn’t keep winning like I had been. Whenever I would show up, the manager would just watch from afar, storm clouds on his face. But as the days went by and the winnings I took home got bigger and bigger, he started to realize this was no laughing matter.

  “Honored customer? You’re so strong, and I’m afraid if we allow you into our establishment any more, we’ll go broke. We’re prepared to offer you a small honorarium, but I must ask—”

  “This is a state-run casino, isn’t it? You can’t go broke. In the black, in the red—it doesn’t matter. Plus, the prince himself told me to cheer myself up at the casino. Get a load of this: It’s a special VIP card he gave me.”

  “Th-the prince?! I—I can hardly believe…”

  I ignored the flabbergasted manager and went back to making my customary outrageous bets.

  Several days after that. My bags of betting money had come to look sort of like a snowman, and I was starting to think I had about enough in there to make up the additional support funds.

  “H-h-h-honored customer. Let me be quite honest with you. We are
considering closing the casino for a while, starting tomorrow. Seeing as you seem to be, er, one of our most regular regulars, sir, I thought we should let you know…”

  “Aw, is that right? Well, I came here ready to stay a few years to make all the money I needed, so I don’t mind waiting. But if the casino’s closed for too long, isn’t that going to impact the country’s bottom line?”

  “A few y-years?”

  I had them so desperate, they were ready to close the place to get rid of me.

  “Sir, I beg you! Please! Please, no more! My superiors take me to task every single day! Please forgive me!”

  “Aw, don’t worry about it. I’ve got the prince’s blessing, after all. You got a problem, take it up with him.”

  At long last, we had simply reduced the manager to tears.

  We were on our way to the casino that morning for another day of gambling when we were met by a messenger from the castle.

  The messenger brought us to the castle, where we were admitted directly to the audience chamber.

  “I must humbly beg you to go back home.”

  Those were the first words out of the prince’s mouth when he saw us, his head bowed low. It hadn’t been that long since we saw him last, yet he looked haggard, beat down. Maybe it was my imagination.

  “Hey, hey, you were the one who told Iris to go cheer herself up at the casino. And that’s exactly what we’re doing. When we feel cheerful again, we’ll get out of here.”

  “Stop, we can’t afford to have you pick us clean like this! Any more and it will be considered the same as if we had given you the support money!”

  Well, yeah.

  “So you call yourself the country of casinos, but when somebody wins big, you send them home? That sounds pretty sketchy to me. We’re just enjoying ourselves at your establishment. You got a problem with that?”

  “Hrrgh… Listen. Elroad has circumstances of its own…”

  Yeah, you keep alluding to them. But that didn’t have anything to do with us.

  “These circumstances, what are they exactly? Could you possibly tell us about them?” Iris asked, stepping forward.

  The prince looked unsure for an instant but then said apologetically, “No, I’m afraid they—”

  He didn’t make it to the end of his sentence.

  “This nation of ours is engaged in negotiations with the Demon King.”

  The prime minister looked at us with total calm, despite the staggering thing he’d just said. The crowd didn’t so much as stir, indicating that everyone in the room already knew about this.

  “Lugkraft, you…!”

  The prime minister kept speaking, cutting off the nervous prince. “Our nation is conducting peace talks with the Demon King’s army. They would prevent his forces from moving against Elroad even if they should triumph over Belzerg. Our side of the bargain is that we will no longer provide you aid in your struggle against the Demon King.”

  He sounded so…nonchalant. Darkness bared her teeth at him. “You monster, you can’t trust anything the Demon King says! As a member of the human race, you should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “But it remains a fact that Belzerg has reached an impasse with the Demon King’s army,” the prime minister said to the obviously enraged Crusader. “You’re at a stalemate, and there’s no way to know which of you will prevail. In such circumstances, when one receives an offer of non-harm in exchange for neutrality, it would be foolish to dismiss it out of hand.” He frowned so that he at least seemed apologetic.

  It wasn’t like I couldn’t sympathize; I didn’t want to have anything to do with the Demon King, either. I was puzzling over how to wrap this up neatly when Darkness exclaimed, “You trust the Demon King…?! Let me tell you something about him: The Demon King will abduct a woman the moment he sees her—any woman, even a child—and make her his plaything. He’s a despicable creature who kidnaps princesses and female knights, all to subject them to the most hideous depredations. That’s the truth about your ‘king’!”

  “S-such impudence! Wait, where did you even get a story like that? Truth be told, my experience at the negotiations was that the great king was a very amiable fellow, a demon of the most trustworthy type…”

  I thought the idea of a trustworthy demon sounded pretty questionable in its own right, but anyway, the prime minister was obviously keen on the Demon King. But…

  “Where did I get it? I think that story is one of the more well-known ones… Some people also say that he’s into little girls, some say that he’s the biggest pervert on the entire continent and loves freaky role-play, and some even say that he’s gay. I mean, I’ve heard all kinds of stories…”

  “Who has been spreading these ridiculous rumors?!”

  For some reason, all this really seemed to tick off the prime minister, but Aqua, standing there with a big grin on her face, announced, “That was the Axis Church! My children have been telling the stories I made up about him.”

  “Say, are you sure it isn’t your fault the Demon King is so bent on attacking us?” I said.

  The prime minister held his head and shook when he discovered that this was the doing of the Axis Church. A strike against someone you had chosen to trust was essentially a strike against you, so I could understand why he might want to make excuses for his negotiating partner. But still…

  At that moment, Iris said, “Um, Prince Levy? I think I’m starting to see the situation here. You’ve been told that when Belzerg is defeated, Elroad will be next, and if you want to avoid that fate, you must work with the Demon King. Isn’t that right? If, as the prince of this nation, you’ve considered the matter and feel this is the best way to survive, then I won’t press you on it any further.” As ever, she sounded sweet and selfless, eager not to say anything that might hurt her listener. “So I beg you to put your mind at ease. I’ll speak to my father to ensure this will not harm relations between our countries going forward… I think of myself as, if nothing else, a fine judge of character—did you know that? I’ve known from the moment we first met that you don’t actually hate me, my prince. I don’t say that to sound pretentious. It is just a feeling.”

  The prince looked at the ground when he heard that.

  “The royal family of Belzerg is very strong,” Iris said. “So much so that we would not be defeated by the Demon King’s army even without support. So…” Her voice was gentle, like she was comforting a wounded child. “Please don’t look so pained.” Then she gave an absolutely innocent smile.

  “…I’m given to understand that in the wider world, I’m known as the idiot prince,” the young man admitted, sitting down on his throne. He looked at everyone around the room; I don’t think any of us was expecting this change of topic. “They say I wash my hands of politics to spend all my time gambling.” Finally, he turned to Iris, who was standing with her mouth open, and gave her a grin that, for once, made him look like a boy his age. “How about you make one more bet with me? No tricks this time. And if you win just one more time… I’ll place my bet on Belzerg defeating the Demon King!”

  “M-my prince?!” the prime minister said in an agonized voice. But the prince was already pulling out a coin, hiding it behind his back. Then he thrust out his closed fists at me.

  “So which hand is it in?”

  5

  That night—it was that awkward time when it was too early to go to sleep but too late to start anything else.

  I assume I don’t have to spell out how my little contest with the prince ended.

  The prime minister threw a fit, but His Majesty’s entourage looked surprisingly happy about the outcome. For all the rumors and talk, they seemed pleased that the person they served had finally made a decision of his own.

  I had a feeling the “idiot prince” talk might die down after this.

  So, in the end, defense payments for the fight against the Demon King would continue as they always had. We were also promised a large sum of money in the near future to help with a
n offensive. And on top of all that, Iris was bestowed with the nickname “Dragonslayer.” So it was a pretty great result all around.

  …There was just one thing still bothering me: The prince seemed a little too interested in Iris. He had been putting on the whole mean-guy act since our first meeting merely to drive a wedge between our two countries, but after everything was resolved, we had another big feast, and this time, he seemed pretty darn friendly.

  That’s right: There was an out-and-out reconciliation between the two of them.

  I thought back to my original plan. After all, the whole reason I’d come along in the first place was to keep Iris from being given away to some know-nothing from nowhere. I’d been relieved to discover on our arrival that the prince himself didn’t seem very interested—but now I recalled my mission.

  “What to do? Maybe I should use Steal on the little punk right in front of Iris and leave him half-naked? …No, that would be bad for Iris’s education, showing her something sick like that. But this is a prince we’re dealing with. I can’t get too rough…”

  I was muttering to myself, in bed in the room the prime minister had given me for tonight, when it happened. There was a soft knock on the door and a voice from outside.

  “Kazuma, are you there? There’s something I’d like to talk about. May I come in?”

  It was Megumin. I hadn’t locked the door yet, since I wasn’t planning on going to sleep for a while, so I just called, “It’s open!”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s late…,” Megumin said quietly as she came in, her cheeks a faint red. I wondered what she could want. Was she here to thank me for what I’d done for Iris? Yeah, the two of them seemed to be up to something on the sly. This would be the perfect opportunity to quiz her about it.