Before I could continue my explanation—already warming to the topic and preparing to delve into the more intricate details of my scheme—Oberen cut me off with a burst of incoherent stammering. His words collided midair, tripping over one another in a graceless heap that suggested his mouth was moving far faster than his thoughts were willing to follow.
"There's no—they wouldn't—how could they possibly—" He shook his head violently, as though physical force might dislodge the idea before it could finish forming. "There's no way they agreed to something like this! Nobody would sign onto terms that disadvantageous! They're nobles, merchants, professional gamblers—they didn't get wealthy by making stupid wagers!"
I tilted my head, letting my expression settle into something patient yet mildly condescending, the look you'd give a child struggling to grasp basic arithmetic.
"It was only one percent," I reminded him gently. "A tiny, forgettable sliver of wealth. Harmless. The kind of amount most of these people spend on a single bottle of wine without blinking. They weren't betting their fortunes, just a negligible fraction thereof in exchange for the thrill of participation. A small price for front-row seats to watch someone potentially lose their fingers in spectacular fashion."
Oberen started to sway on his feet, utter disbelief washing across his features in waves so visible I could practically track them in real-time. He began blinking rapidly—once, twice, three times—as though his eyes were faulty instruments and another reset might magically produce a more acceptable version of events.
"No," he whispered, the word barely audible over the crowd's murmuring. "That doesn't make sense. The math doesn't—wait." He straightened suddenly, eyes widening as a new thought occurred to him. "Wait, if you had won our match, you would have owed one percent of your holdings to the crowd, right?"
I nodded in confirmation, keeping my face carefully neutral.
Oberen's hands began gesturing frantically as he worked through the calculations in his head, his lips moving silently as numbers danced behind his eyes. "But that would've bankrupted you instantly!" His voice rose in pitch and volume as comprehension dawned. "If you'd won our game, you'd have collected my one million crowns. Fine. Substantial amount. But then you'd owe one percent to each bettor who picked you correctly—and looking at this crowd, that's what, a hundred people? Two hundred? More?"
He glanced at the pile of chips surrounding my feet, no doubt doing the mental arithmetic. "If you owed one percent to each individual bettor, the total payout would exceed your winnings by—" He broke off, staring at me in horror. "You'd be in the red immediately. Massively in debt. There would be no profit at all! You'd have mutilated yourself for nothing!"
I didn't flinch. Didn't react. Just let him finish his little mathematical panic attack before calmly snapping my fingers—a crisp, clear sound that cut clean through his spiraling thoughts like a hot wire through wax.
In an instant, a figure descended upon us from the crowd.
It was Jazmin, emerging from the sea of bodies with the quiet inevitability of a shadow given purpose.
She carried a rolled piece of parchment in her bronze hands—the document I'd been working on before the match, the one that had consumed hours of careful wording and ruthless precision. It rested against her palm with quiet authority, unassuming in its appearance yet devastating in its implication.
She handed it to me without a word, her expression unreadable, then melted back into the crowd as quickly as she'd appeared.
I unfurled the document slowly—painstakingly, even—allowing the parchment to crackle as it opened, then held it up so both Oberen and the closest spectators could see the elegant script covering its surface.
"Allow me to read the relevant section," I said pleasantly, clearing my throat for dramatic effect. "In the event that Loona emerges victorious in the primary wager, the agreed repayment totaling one percent of final earnings shall be distributed to the 'Winning Party' as a collective entity."
Oberen's jaw dropped with such sudden enthusiasm that I briefly—and quite sincerely—worried for the long-term structural integrity of his mandible.
It hung there, slack and unguarded, the expression frozen halfway between disbelief and the dawning horror of a man realizing the floor beneath his certainty had never actually been solid. For a heartbeat, he simply stared, eyes locked on the parchment as though it might lunge off the page and finish the job.
"You see," I said cheerfully, "the phrasing is quite specific. The words don't lie—they never do, that's the beauty of good contract writing—they just don't particularly care about being understood unless you read them very, very carefully. If I'd won our match, the one percent wouldn't go to each person individually. It would go to the group. The collective. The 'Winning Party' as a single, unified share."
Ever so slowly, Oberen's earlier bravado curdled, his confidence draining away as the implications assembled themselves into something horrifyingly coherent.
"They wouldn't each receive one percent of my winnings," I continued, savoring every syllable. "They would split it. A fraction of a fraction. If a hundred people bet on me and I owed one percent total to be divided among them, each individual would receive point-zero-one percent. Barely noticeable. Essentially worthless once you distributed it across that many people."
"You're... a genius," He said, the words slipping out of him on a shallow breath, stripped of their venom and weightless with defeat. "A complete and utter genius. Or a sociopath. Potentially both."
I gave him a little bow, gracious in victory, just enough to acknowledge the accuracy of the observation. "You're too kind. Really. Though I prefer 'creative problem solver' to 'sociopath'—sounds better on business cards."
"It was always a trick," Oberen whispered, more to himself than to me, his eyes distant as he processed the full scope of what I'd accomplished. "The whole setup. The wager, the terms, the phrasing. All designed to seem fair while being completely stacked in your favor. And they didn't catch on? Nobody questioned this?"
"They never do," I replied blankly. "You should know that better than anyone, Oberen. You've been running scams in this casino for decades. How many people have you fleeced using carefully worded terms and buried clauses? How many gamblers signed agreements they didn't fully understand because the print was small and the promise seemed too good to refuse?"
Oberen just… stood there. Dumbstruck in the purest sense of the word, like someone whose soul had briefly stepped out for refreshments and forgotten to come back.
His mouth worked soundlessly, whatever grand rebuttal he'd been assembling moments ago dissolved into static, his expression cycling uselessly through disbelief, denial, and the faint, panicked hope that if he stared hard enough at the parchment it might politely retract itself.
My smirked widened then. "The truth is, I expected my safety net to provide maybe a hundred thousand crowns if everything went perfectly—enough to guarantee I wouldn't be completely destroyed by losing, but far less profit than winning would've given me. A consolation prize, nothing more."
I gestured at the mountain of chips surrounding my feet. "But here's the twist I genuinely didn't see coming—losing turned out to be even more advantageous than victory ever would've been. Over a million crowns from the crowd alone, possibly more than your current holdings. My safety net didn't just catch me; it fucking catapulted me into a profit margin I couldn't have achieved even if I'd won our match outright!"
Around us, the crowd had sunk into a stunned hush, the kind that carried weight—spectators exchanging looks heavy with dawning understanding, eyes flicking between Oberen and me as the shape of the con finally revealed itself.
A few of them laughed.
Not the roaring, celebratory kind—no, these were short, sharp bursts of sound, edged with bitterness and reluctant admiration—the laughter of people who'd just realized they'd been expertly, irrevocably played, and couldn't quite decide whether to be angry about it or applaud the craftsmanship.
I didn't pay them much mind. Instead I began searching the crowd, glancing behind me and up through the casino's three levels, scanning faces until—ah, there he was. Exactly where I'd told him to wait, positioned perfectly for maximum dramatic impact.
Oberen's voice suddenly grabbed my attention, pulling my focus back to him. "Well," he said, the word dripping with bitter resentment, "congratulations on your victory. Truly. You've played this beautifully, orchestrated a scheme worthy of legends, and walked away with more wealth than most people see in their lifetime. I hope you enjoy it."
Then he turned.
He didn't storm off—no, Oberen had far too much pride for anything so undignified—but stalked away with rigid shoulders and measured steps. The sand pit seemed to quiet as he moved, the scrape of his boots against the packed grit sounding far louder than it had any right to.
He made it perhaps three steps before my voice cut across the pit, clean and precise. "We're not done yet."
Oberen froze mid-stride.
Not slowed. Not hesitated. Stopped. One foot remained suspended in the act of leaving, his entire body locking in place as though my words had reached out, grabbed him by the spine, and hit the pause button on reality. It was the kind of stop you only ever see in cartoons or badly reenacted historical plays, the sort where momentum simply gives up out of confusion.
You could practically hear the gears in his head grinding—metal on metal, sparks flying—as he recalculated, again, what I was about to cost him.
"You're going to face me again," I continued calmly, "One more game. Final round. And this time you won't just bet your current holdings—you'll put up your emergency fund, your attendants, your Velvet guards, the very casino itself. Everything you own. All of it on the line."
Oberen turned back toward me very slowly—so slowly it looked almost mechanical, like he was pushing against invisible molasses or wading through a swamp made entirely of bad luck and worse accounting.
When he finally faced me fully, the expression he wore sat squarely between incredulous and homicidal, as though his emotions had been thrown into a sack, shaken violently, and dumped back onto his face in the wrong order.
"Why," he asked, "the fuck would I do that?"
I smiled, pleasantly. The sort of smile you give right before explaining gravity to someone who's just stepped off a cliff.
"Because I heard from Byron—before Jazmin thoroughly dealt with him, of course—that you've been struggling financially recently. Massive losses from high-end gambling nobles who'd learned to outplay you, debts mounting into the millions, your reserves depleting faster than you can replenish them through normal operations."
I watched his face carefully, noting how his eye twitched at the mention of his financial troubles. "You're desperate, Oberen. You've been scrambling to scrape yourself back together by preying on the weak, targeting easy marks like Julius who couldn't possibly fight back against your predatory rent increases."
Oberen's face twisted into sudden disgust, lips curling back from his teeth in something approaching a snarl.
"It's the entire reason you agreed to face me in this gamble anyway," I continued relentlessly. "You saw an opportunity to recoup some losses by crushing someone inexperienced and foolish enough to challenge you directly. But here's the thing—" I paused, letting him take in my words, "—the one million crowns you wagered? It's pocket change in the grand scheme of your operation. How long will it sustain you, really? How much does it cost to maintain this casino, to pay your employees, your Velvets, to keep the mechanisms running, to satisfy your creditors, to pay off those secret financial auditors who sign off on your laundering operation without asking uncomfortable questions?"
Oberen went absolutely still at that last part, his face draining of color so rapidly I worried he might actually faint. "How—" he began, the word barely a whisper. "How do you know about—"
I cut him off. "I can see it. The hunger. The greed in your eyes just staring at my wealth like a starving dog eyeing a piece of meat it can't quite reach. You want this fortune, desperately, because you know falling into another bet right now could double your profits overnight and bring you a measurable step closer to financial stability."
I paused, letting that temptation sink its hooks in deeper. "One game, Oberen. Winner takes everything. You could walk away with enough to solve your problems completely, or at least buy yourself breathing room to figure out your next move."
For a heartbeat, he stared at me.
Then Oberen burst out laughing.
It came out of him loud, bright, and just a shade too sharp, echoing across the sand pit until the sound felt less like amusement and more like a stress fracture finally giving way, making several spectators take a few nervous steps back on instinct.
"You're delusional!" he exclaimed between gasps, wiping at his eyes. "Absolutely, certifiably insane! Yes, fine, I'll admit it—I'm desperate. You've assessed the situation correctly. And yes, your offer is quite tempting on paper. But a mere one million crowns in exchange for betting my entire casino?" He shook his head vigorously. "That's ludicrous! The math doesn't even remotely balance! I'd rather find some way to manage on my own, scrape by through whatever means necessary, than risk everything on odds that disadvantageous!"
I laughed right back at him, matching his volume and intensity. "Oh, Oberen," I said through my laughter, voice warm with something approaching affection. "you beautiful, paranoid fool. That's not the only reason you'll be entering this gamble."
I raised my good hand and waved it casually toward the second floor, the gesture slow and theatrical.
Just then, a figure stepped forth on the balcony, moving into the dim light spilling from the torches, and Brutus's massive frame became visible to everyone watching.
In his hands—held high above his head so the entire casino could see—was an envelope. Simple, unassuming, sealed closed, containing documents that would absolutely destroy Oberen's life if their contents became public knowledge.
The same envelope that held the full anatomy of Oberen's money laundering scheme, complete with names, dates, transaction records, and enough detail to satisfy even the most skeptical of regulatory authorities.
Oberen's face drained of color so quickly it bordered on performance art, pale giving way to ashen in the span of a heartbeat. His eyes locked onto the envelope with the intensity of a man staring down a venomous snake.
The casino fell into a silence so sudden and complete it felt staged, and in that hush—tight, reverent, merciless—I could practically hear his heart slam to a halt.
"So," I said pleasantly, my smile growing wider, "shall we discuss the terms of our final game?"