Deadline Is Raining in the Status Window - Chapter 48

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“Oh my, Titi! Do you have your eye on someone special today?”
“Stop spouting nonsense and bring me something to drink.”
The fool had some nerve. I wondered who this brat thought they were, acting so brazenly, but since a sucker had arrived, the owner decided to squeeze them for money and served dried squid and lemonade.
No matter how the little one claimed to be over ninety years old and a full adult, they looked barely ten years old, so serving beer would have been morally questionable.
“Ahhhh! So refreshing!”
After downing a glass of lemonade with a satisfying gulp, Titi watched the horses trotting out to show their condition before the race and pulled out a notebook and pen from her pocket. The dried squid was so tough that no matter how much I chewed, it refused to go down.
“Jack the Ripper seems to be in a bad mood because of stress, and Royal Emperor Lucius is still irritable as ever…”
That horse performs well only when paired with the right jockey, but otherwise has no motivation—what a problem. As Titi muttered and chattered away, she spotted the silver horse she’d been keeping an eye on striding out proudly and let out a surprised chirp.
“This is it! Today is Silver Lindbergh’s day!”
That thug of a horse, normally vicious and prone to headbutting other horses the moment it entered the track, looked in an unusually good mood today. Moreover, when Titi asked with a questioning blink if the condition was good, Silver Lindbergh even whinnied back, saying today was absolutely perfect.
There was nothing to do but go all in. Titi decided to invest every penny she had on Silver Lindbergh winning first place.
If I didn’t make a big score today, I might as well be dead. My terrifying older sister would surely kill me this time. Cornered from every angle, Titi went to the betting exchange and wagered all her money on Silver Lindbergh.
“Chirp, I should have listened to Mother back then.”
Titi shed a few tears. Had it already been two months? If I had heeded Mother Eleanor’s words and not gambled, the situation wouldn’t have spiraled this far.
Titi had delivered a giant lizard to her sister as an errand and pretended to give her all the allowance money she received from the Serpent King, but actually kept a little aside. It was only a hundred thousand crowns, but that was plenty for a little one’s spending money, and I planned to buy sweets when I got home.
I shouldn’t have followed around Uncle Thomas. Mother said he was a complete human scoundrel back in the day, though he pretends to be human now, and I should have believed her.
Titi had grown tired of life in Ilam after thoroughly enjoying the pleasures of the Capital. Thomas, taking pity on this, introduced Titi to a secret gambling den that was all the rage in Ilam. There, Titi discovered the thrill of blackjack and poker for the first time in ninety years.
It started very simply. Uncle Thomas lost all his money gambling and came to Titi, asking to borrow the stakes, promising to double it back after winning. Since Titi had seen types like this before, I lent the money, treating it as a loss. There was also the calculation that since he was Mother’s friend, he’d at least repay the principal even if he lost.
But this man actually won and turned a hundred thousand crowns into two hundred thousand. Thomas made a big score that day, bought drinks for everyone gambling with him, and treated Titi to delicious tuna sashimi.
My sister goes crazy for tuna, and it certainly lived up to the hype. The belly of bluefin tuna was red in color despite being seafood, and the meat tasted exactly like chewing beef.
While eating the delicious tuna sashimi, Titi thought: This is it. There was nothing else. A business idea suddenly struck. Lend money to the gambling-addicted fools at the gambling den and collect interest—I could make money just sitting still.
Uncle Thomas was Mother’s dearest friend, the captain of the largest ship in Ilam, and supposedly a complete human scoundrel back in the day. With this man’s backing, there was no worry about anyone defaulting on the debt.
Thus, Titi Laef began a small-time loan-sharking operation at the secret gambling den in Ilam.
At first, things went smoothly. The garbage at the gambling den, terrified of Thomas, paid back Titi’s money on the dot, and even if they didn’t, they found the little one’s effort to make money so cute that they paid ten percent interest as if giving pocket money. The gambling den had many sailor customers who only lived for today, all in good spirits with deep pockets. With large sums of money flowing through, Titi made money quickly.
I had already surpassed the level of earnings Mother Eleanor made by working the sewing machine so hard, and if I expanded the business this way, I could easily pocket what my sister Evan made in three months of fishing.
Making money this easily while sitting still—my sister who went out fishing every day, breaking her back, seemed stupid. When she came back during break, I should laugh and tell her that if she wanted pocket money, she’d have to beg on her knees.
When the sparrow’s pride was reaching the heavens, a woman approached, smelling money. The woman revealed herself as an old friend of Thomas, and strangely, she only appeared when Uncle Thomas wasn’t around, borrowing money repeatedly.
From what Titi observed, the woman was a legendary sucker. She lost every single game, yet her competitive spirit was so strong she stayed at the gambling den until her money was completely drained. Word of this sucker spread to the neighboring village, and people even came from Ilam to strip her of her money, yet she paid it all off cheerfully, calling it entertainment value.
Even money-obsessed Titi was worried and told her not to spend money so recklessly, but the woman casually showed a brooch from her pocket and said her father would pay it back instead, so it was fine.
From what Titi knew, that brooch bore the crest of a lord’s territory far to the west of the Demi-human Village Friendly to Humans.
In any case, the woman who kept borrowing and repaying and borrowing again from Titi eventually praised her for working hard to earn money at such a young age, and they quickly became close friends, with the woman even inviting the little one to her house.
For a lord’s daughter, the villa was quite magnificent. Treated lavishly at the woman’s house, Titi became best friends with her, even teasing her about being a sucker and generously offering to reduce her interest out of pity.
And then that incident happened not long ago.
The rich sucker made a big bet and lost everything again, coming to Titi to borrow money. This time the amount was substantial enough to make Titi’s hands tremble, but not wanting to be looked down upon by her close friend, I boldly lent her a hundred million crowns. I borrowed all the money I’d saved so far, plus a little from Uncle Thomas and the gambling den owner, and when I got home, I told Mother I’d pay her back soon and borrowed a few hundred more.
Needless to say, the woman disappeared after that.
To collect the debt, Titi went to the house where the woman had lived, but different people were living there. They even said they’d been living there for ten years, and some woman had paid them to rent the house for just one day.
Titi flew around and even went to the lord’s territory to the west, but couldn’t even meet the lord—the guards scolded her for trying to prank them, saying the lord only had a son, and chased her away.
Titi had been dealt a harsh blow when she tried to make some money, and she cursed the world. Just days ago, she had nine hundred thousand crowns in capital, but now all her money was gone and she had accumulated a debt of ten million crowns. The shock of the debt itself was devastating, but Titi was certain that when her sister returned, she would be killed on the spot.
If she was discovered, she was dead. If just the gambling den visits came to light, she’d be beaten senseless. But if the truth emerged that she’d been swindled by a con artist while gambling and had squandered money from the gambling den owner, Thomas, and Eleanor’s mother, there was no way she’d die peacefully.
That vicious sister would circle around Ilam Village and have people throw stones at her, accomplishing both public shaming and stoning in one fell swoop.
She couldn’t just sit around waiting for death. After racking her walnut-sized brain hard, Titi knocked on the door of Serpent King’s Tower. The king there was close with Evan, and was so incredibly kind-hearted that she thought if she asked as his sister, he’d lend her some money.
Her prediction was correct. When Titi stammered and asked if it would be alright to borrow a bit of money, there was no need to go all the way to the Serpent King—his son Hubert simply asked if she was short on pocket money and casually handed her ten bills of one hundred thousand crowns.
He certainly had a generous spirit. Titi chirped her thanks and headed straight to the Horse Racing Track with the money. If she invested this in horse racing and multiplied it tenfold, she could pay off the ten million crown debt. That was the best solution her walnut brain had come up with.
“….”
But this solved nothing.
For Titi, it was a type of gambling she was fairly confident about. She was a demi-human, after all. Therefore, she could communicate with animals to some degree through intuition. Full conversation was impossible, but she was confident she could tell if a horse was in good condition today, in good spirits, whether it would run hard. That much she was sure of, and this confidence lasted less than half a day.
She didn’t guess the first-place horse even once. Titi Laef, the legendary alchemist who had turned one million crowns worth of betting tickets into scraps of paper, knocked on Serpent King’s Tower’s door again the next day, and the day after that, too embarrassed to keep borrowing money, she took her sister’s belongings as collateral and borrowed more.
Accumulating debts bit by bit like this, the total eventually reached one hundred million crowns. Just a month ago, Titi had ninety million crowns in capital, but now she was nothing but a debtor with one hundred and ten million crowns in debt.
Her sister’s vacation didn’t have much time left, so the deadline might be today. Once today ended, she was done too. With that resolve, Titi staked everything on Silver Lindbergh.
“Run! Silver Lindbergh! Win for me!”
Did Titi’s desperate wish reach heaven? Along with a sparrow’s sharp chirping cry, an excited horse neighed.
Neigh!
Silver Lindbergh sprang up at the starting signal and began taking strange steps. At first glance, it looked like he was dancing.
“….”
It was over. Titi stared at Silver Lindbergh with cold eyes. While the other horses were running hard, he alone was dancing about excitedly and had fallen behind. The alchemist Titi had turned all the betting tickets clutched in both her hands into scraps of paper once again.
“Chirp chirp chirp!”
Titi threw the scraps of paper she’d just created into the air and tore at her hair. She was dead. Really dead. Evan was the kind of person who could quietly dispose of her and pretend nothing happened, even if Mother tried to stop her.
Should she run away now? Hide somewhere else until the vacation ended? But considering her sister’s nature, it was obvious she’d chase her to the ends of hell, find her, and use her as bait to catch tuna.
What kind of person was she? How could just thinking of her existence make cold sweat pour down? Wouldn’t it be better to confess everything honestly and beg for forgiveness? Then maybe she’d spare her life. Just as Titi reached that thought, a loud bang echoed and an explosion erupted.
“Ohoho! Ohohoho!”
Had this tuna-obsessed woman learned explosion magic at the Academy? Titi nervously called out for her sister and looked around, but all she could see was a horse demi-human holding bombs in both hands.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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