Chapter 15 — Tomochika, the Gambling Genius
“Hey, kid, come here.”
Tomochika was enjoying herself playing card games in the casino. A woman wearing a man’s suit was calling out to her, staring at her coldly. It only took a single glance to see that she wasn’t an ordinary member of staff.
“Wh-Wh-Wh-What is it?!”
“I told you, Dannoura...” Yogiri sighed from behind her. He had insisted she was going too far, but she had been too entranced by her own winning streak to pay him any mind.
“I can’t ignore the method by which you seem to be winning. We’ll have to play one-on-one.”
“O-Oh? You’re challenging me, Tomochika, the gambling genius?!”
“You get kind of weird when you’re on edge, don’t you?” Yogiri commented.
“A gambling genius would never run away from a challenge, would they?” asked the woman.
Tomochika knew she could always feign ignorance and walk away. And of course, if it came to violence, they were more than capable of fighting back. But her guilty conscience wouldn’t let her turn it down.
The woman took her, Yogiri, and the Enju robot into a small room with a single table.
“Oh, I never introduced myself. The name’s Degul, and I’m a guard here. My job is to deal with suspicious patrons,” the woman said, sitting down. There were two other staff members in the room as well. “You’re good to play some cards, right? The same game you were so proud of winning this whole time.”
It was similar to poker, where one acquired and dropped cards to build up a good hand, either raising their bet or surrendering what they had bet so far in order to quit. Tomochika had been overwhelmingly victorious.
“You deal the cards,” Degul said, motioning to Yogiri. “It won’t be fair if we do it.”
“Me? All right, I guess.” He took on the role of game master. Despite the fancy name, it simply meant that he was responsible for dealing.
“I shouldn’t have to say this, but no cheating.”
“O-Of course!” Tomochika stammered.
“And using that ghost counts as cheating,” Degul continued, pointing at Enju, who was still being controlled by Mokomoko.
“We’ve been found out!” Tomochika wailed. Mokomoko had been looking at the other players’ cards and giving that information to her descendant. That alone was a powerful advantage that no one should have been aware of.
“Card games here are strictly between the patrons. We don’t care how it ends, and it’s normal for customers to complain about cheating all the time. But you went too far. We aren’t going to ask you to return your winnings, though. That’s why I challenged you.”
If forced to play fair, Tomochika had no chance of winning, and they all knew it.
“Well, that should be enough. I can’t push too far with our special-class passengers.”
Tomochika surrendered her winnings, falling flat on the table.
“It’s not my fault Mokomoko kept whispering information in my ear...”
What?! You’re blaming me?! cried the ghost. If you wanted to play fair, all you had to do was say so!
“Do you see this kind of thing a lot?” Yogiri asked the nonchalant Degul.
“Every so often. Idiots are always rolling in, thinking they can win with their skills or magic. But we’re ready for it all. We’re not naive enough to let something like that pass.”
“That makes sense. If you didn’t have some measures in place, you couldn’t open a casino in a world like this.”
“Hey! I completely forgot!” Tomochika interjected. “We weren’t even here to gamble, were we?”
“You’re the only one who forgot that,” Yogiri answered. “Can we go now?”
“Yeah. Play fair from now on.”
Leaving the private room, they returned to the main hall of the casino. There, they saw Yousuke Hiiragi, the man they had met at the port, who had told them this world was only a game. For the past few days, he had been spending his time in the casino, so they’d dropped in to have a look. It had been three days since they’d left the port. Nothing of note had happened yet, but there was no doubt they needed to keep an eye on him.
“It looks like he’s just playing the game normally,” Tomochika observed.
The guy wasn’t betting particularly large amounts of money, and he lost as often as he won, so he appeared to be like any other customer.
“I thought he’d go a bit crazier if he really believes this is all just a game.” Since Yousuke considered everyone around him to be an NPC, his manner seemed like it should have been far more arrogant.
“Well, there are people who do just play the minigames normally,” Yogiri replied. It was possible there was nothing for them to worry about. “I’m a bit concerned about the people he brought with him, though. Like that old guy.”
At Yogiri’s words, Tomochika grew curious. Yousuke had four companions. Three were young maids, but one was a ragged-looking old man. It wasn’t surprising that Yousuke would surround himself with beautiful women, but it wasn’t clear why he had an old man with him.
“I guess we shouldn’t think the worst of someone who hasn’t actually done anything wrong yet.”
“I guess. All he did so far was say some weird stuff.”
They couldn’t let their guard down, but Tomochika figured they didn’t need to be quite so careful around him.
“Isn’t there anything interesting we can do?” Tired of gambling, Youko (AKA Yousuke) was lying on the bed in her room.
“Uh-oh, it looks like Master Yousuke is going to start something,” one of the maids at her side commented. Her companions had been part of her game since before she’d entered the VRRPG version of it. They were loyal to a fault and wouldn’t chastise her, no matter what she did.
“How about winning all the money in the casino?”
“I did that once already.” Doing the same thing over and over would just be boring, so this time she had played by the rules.
It had been three days since their cruise began. She hadn’t yet done anything of note while on board. Her objective was to go to Ent and burn down the Elven Forest, so this was nothing more than travel time. It would be a pain if she went too far and ended up sinking the boat, so she had been well-behaved so far but was growing increasingly tired of it.
“What happened to the pirates? Didn’t it sound like some were going to show up?”
Youko remembered hearing several NPCs talking about pirates. It was common for random conversations to actually foreshadow events to come. If that was the case, the pirate attack event might have already been set in motion, but she had yet to see any sign of it.
“If pirates did show up, that hero would deal with them, wouldn’t he?”
“Yes. Hornet of the Crimson Bond,” one of the maids confirmed. “That’s who we saw in the port.”
“How strong is he?”
“I heard he slew a whole flight of dragons single-handedly. He also defeated a Demon Lord. He seems to be a real hero among heroes. It must have cost an awful lot to hire him as an escort.”
“He only claimed to kill dragons to give himself a stronger image,” Youko said. “It’s probably all a bluff.”
“It could mean different things, anyway,” the maid replied. “‘Dragon’ refers to a wide range of creatures, after all.”
“Well, if he’s around, the pirate event is probably related to him somehow.”
If left alone, he might deal with the pirates single-handedly, or they could fight them off together. At least, that was Youko’s prediction.
“So, what would happen if we got rid of the hero?” she continued.
They had gone through the trouble of placing the character on board, so it must have meant things would get bad if the pirates’ attack succeeded.
“I don’t believe he is the only defensive force the ship has.”
“What if we crushed the others too?”
“You aren’t planning on allying with the pirates, are you?”
“Don’t you think that sounds more interesting?” Youko got out of bed. She had been painfully bored before, but with a new goal in front of her, she was suddenly feeling motivated.
“Your opponent is a hero, you know. Are you sure you can win?”
“That’s a good question. It might be impossible, but I’ll figure it out.”
Youko wasn’t conceited enough to consider herself all-powerful. There were plenty of opponents she couldn’t beat in a head-on fight. But there were any number of ways to remove the hero from the picture without direct combat.
“At the very least, I can always make it into an ‘I tried to fight the hero!’ video.”
If worse came to worst, she had numerous ways of escaping. If she was ever in danger, she could always run away, and that could make for an interesting video as well.
Youko decided to go meet the hero, Hornet.
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