Myths Reawakened

Back to the card table. Veronica and Silvia had joined. Their arrival didn’t save Darienne from her bad luck, but instead made her losses worse.

The Lando family had always been quite lucky, which was clear in their eye for people. Veronica and Silvia always picked up the aces on the first try, never even touching the smaller cards.

“How did this happen? This can’t be happening...”

Darienne stared at her own hands with disbelief. They had played two games, and she had not won a single hand. Silvia and Veronica had purposefully gone easy on her several times, but she still lost to Wayne.

“Kid, you have to be cheating!” Darienne clenched her teeth, determined to prove her card skills. This time, she didn’t flip the table. She again identified the reason for her losses—two, actually.

First, the dealer. Senna was Wayne’s mount and had clearly dealt the good cards to him.

Second, Silvia was his master, and Veronica was his fiancée. With four people working together against her, she couldn’t win even as the Gambling God.

“So?” Wayne asked, sitting behind a pile of chips.

How dare you, kid! I’ve been putting up with you for too long!

Darienne flipped the table and lifted her long leg to step on the chair. “Change of dealer. I’ll decide who takes over.”

Soon, sexy dealer Anastasia was summoned. She started dealing cards under Darienne’s urging.

She was completely bewildered. Who am I? Where am I? How did this table get here?

Anastasia was confused. Of course, the Church of Darkness’s Holy Maiden wasn’t going to be a busty airhead. Thinking of Senna’s earlier inquiry, she suspected that this card game was deliberately set up against Darienne.

Now, the question was what it was that Senna wanted.

Anastasia suppressed her confusion and gave Darienne a look. With her involved, Darienne would surely win.

“Why are you looking at me? I summoned you here for fairness. I’m not planning to cheat!” Darienne raged, thinking that Anastasia mistakenly believed Darienne to have summoned her because she was a sore loser and wanted an insider to deal the cards.

How outrageous. How could she possibly be a sore loser?!

Darienne glared at Anastasia, re-emphasizing the principles of fairness and justice before pointing at her own eyes. “Wayne, is it? I’m watching you. Be careful. You better not let me catch you cheating!”

With a wave, she told Anastasia to start dealing cards. She would prove her skills fair and square.

She had wished to, anyway.

(꒪⌓꒪)

The heroic, graceful, aloof, and noble Moonlight Knight was thoroughly defeated. Since she sat down, she had not won once, and she had exhausted nearly all her excuses: bad seat, problematic cards, new chips, uncomfortable armor, strong magnetic field... She had brought up every excuse she could think of.

She even changed the games. From Blackjack to Schafkopf to pairs, she didn’t win a single game, not even when they played something as simple as drawing a card and comparing them.

“You cheated!”

Darienne flipped the table in anger, pointing at Wayne, but ultimately, she swallowed the profanity at the tip of her tongue because she didn’t want to lose her dignity before a junior.

Seeing Darienne pant heavily from intense frustration with heaving chest, Wayne sighed and said, “Darienne, you chose the dealer. I never even touched the cards during shuffling. How could I have cheated?”

“Besides, given your formidable power, I couldn’t have fooled your eyes even if I had tried to cheat.”

...You were calling me ‘Lady’, and now you’re just calling me by name. How straightforward of you!

In competitive sports, being bad was the original sin. There was no arguing with it.

Darienne still refused to admit defeat, though. She had Anastasia set up the table again before taking a deep breath. “Everyone, step aside. I’m playing this kid one-on-one!”

“Maybe we should call it a day, Darienne. Your luck is terrible today. Another day—”

“Today! If you dare to step out, I’ll beat you to death!”

Veronica looked up. That was usually her line.

War was cruel. Veteran Veronica had developed PTSD for beautiful women. Whenever she saw a beauty appear near her fiancé, she felt the panic of losing him to a scheming wench. Today was no exception. When Darienne insisted on deciding a winner between her and Wayne, Veronica couldn’t help but overthink it.

That was how everyone’s first relationship went. Her imagination went down a slippery slope and showed her the image of Darienne whisking Wayne to her bedroom, sealing the door with a barrier of Moonlight. Listening to the screams and lecherous laughter inside, Veronica could only huddle up with Kristen and Vera and cry.

No, not happening!

Veronica gritted her teeth in secret. Her fiancé was too popular, attracting beautiful women wherever he went. She bore some responsibility, too; she was too reserved and always thought that a token effort would suffice.

Not anymore. Starting today, she would go harder and make sure that even when Wayne attracted a beautiful lady, he could do nothing but stare helplessly.

“Darienne, it’s getting dark. I still need rest. Let’s say you won today, okay?” Wayne suggested earnestly.

“The Frozen Land only goes through the day-night cycle once every six months. It’s not getting dark. Sit down, now,” Darienne insisted.

Under Anastasia’s suggestion, both made compromises. They would have three chips each, and they would draw cards and compare them to decide the final winner.

“None of the games prior to this count. I’m going to win these three matches!” Darienne stared intently at Wayne. “Roll up your—oh, they’re already rolled up. Then don’t touch the cards. Anastasia, deal the card face-up to him directly. Don’t give him a chance to touch anything.”

Darienne strongly suspected Wayne of cheating; he couldn’t have been so unnaturally lucky. She refused to believe that she would still lose the last three matches even after she eliminated any possibility of cheating.

“Darienne, I’ll agree to your demand, but you must keep your promise. These are the last three matches.”

“Are you insinuating that I’d go back on my word?!” The silver-haired knight raged. “I won’t!”

No one believed her. Everyone, including Anastasia, had witnessed her going back on her word, multiple times.

Anastasia’s card dealing produced such reliable results that she seemed like a spy. Wayne always drew ten, and he won three out of all three matches with no suspense.

“Ah, I won again. I couldn’t lose even if I wanted to. This is bad.”

Wayne shook his head wryly. Darienne was right. He had cheated. Nine out of ten gamblers do. It would be impossible to win every hand without cheating. He just hadn’t made a move at the card table, so Darienne didn’t have any proof.

There was an extra antique silver coin in Wayne’s chest—from Auston, graciously granted by Grau the Misfortune Spider—one of the Goddess of Death’s avatars, also known as the Observer.

Auston had resisted at first because the ancient coin could suppress the Darkness Knight’s power and conceal his identity from outsiders. Who knew what would happen when the Death Knight touched the coin of Death?

Only recently, as Auston began to accept himself as the Darkness Knight, did he gradually let go of his obsession with the coin. Moreover, he discovered that his power grew faster while he wasn’t carrying the coin. Clearly, Death’s avatar had given the Darkness Knight the coin for ulterior motives.

As soon as Wayne got the coin, the Book of Greed opened its maw and consumed two things: first, the divine power of Death that had suppressed Darkness, and second, something indescribable that was probably luck, if a descriptor had to be given.

Luck was an esoteric thing that could not be put into words, yet the coin gave it a tangible form.

The Book of Greed had plundered it and stored it on the book’s cover, namely, Wayne’s skin. It was the third time Wayne had sensed a novel power that was distinct from the four elements, Nature, Death, Heaven, or knowledge. He believed it to be a Law of information and, in essence, a concept. The Book of Greed’s separation of it from the other powers had to be significant in some way.

The antique silver coin itself was quite extraordinary. The raw materials came from Windsor, and each higher-up at the Ministry of Magic possessed one. After receiving Grau’s blessing, it became a divine artifact.

Just like the case with Shadow Nightmare and the other divine artifacts that chosen knights wielded, the information inside the coin remained intact even after the book plundered it. It was puzzling.

Back to the present, Wayne started clearing the table after winning the final three rounds, mumbling about how difficult defeat was. Even the Gambling God and the Gambling Saint together would lose their pants to him. Thus, he would declare himself the Gambling Freak!

“Wait, who said you could leave? Sit down and continue.”

“What, again?” Wayne smothered a smile and put on a resigned look. “Darienne, you should keep your word. You’re out of chips.”

“I swear this is the last time!”

Darienne didn’t look the slightest bit embarrassed. She had already broken her promise, so what was another broken promise? Would Wayne and the others spread the word? Even better if they did. If they offended a chosen knight, she would have the justification to summon them for card games every day.

“Who are you swearing to? The Goddess of Moonlight?”

“The Goddess of Darkness!”

Darienne’s shamelessness left everyone stunned. She was lucky that no follower of Moonlight was around, or witnessing her behavior, they might just slam their head against the table and risk killing themselves just to change her mind.

Wayne shrugged, sitting down like he had no choice. “I can see it. You have to win no matter what. You don’t care about losing chips.”

“So? Do you disapprove?”

“Of course! I’m dying to go back and sleep!” Wayne mumbled quietly. He looked up at Darienne, scanning her. “How about this. Let’s raise the stakes. Only by making you bleed will you care enough to let me leave.”

“Oh, what do you want?” Darienne asked curiously.

You aren’t coveting my beauty, are you, young man? Interesting. You’re bold!

“Let me think...” Wayne frowned for a moment before saying expectantly, “How about this. Master Moula is too busy to teach me swordsmanship. You have free time every other day. In the mornings, I’ll play cards with you, and in the afternoons, you’ll give me lessons.”

“No problem!”

“That easy?” Wayne looked at her suspiciously. “One more thing. I want to learn archery, too. What do you say?”

He had unfurled the map completely, revealing the dagger[1]!

“No problem. I can teach you both, but I also have a condition...” Darienne raised an eyebrow. Her map was quite long, too. “Your luck in card games is good. How do you do it? Can you teach me a trick or two so that we can get better together?”

(눈_눈)

So this was the Moonlight Knight. She seemed no different from Kristen and Filomina in the way she gave herself away freely. He only had to move an inch, and she would give him a mile.

1. As explained in an earlier chapter, this is a play on the phrase “unfurling the map and revealing the dagger,” which means revealing one’s true intention. It originates from the story of Jing Ke hiding a dagger in a map to assassinate the emperor of Qin. ☜