I Thought It Was a Healing Farming Game - Chapter 96

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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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I thought this was supposed to be a relaxing farming game.
Chapter 96

I hastily scribbled my to-do list in my notebook and headed downstairs.

[Finish the fieldwork]
[Find clues about Kaies]
[Read “The World of Zero and One” thoroughly]
[Potion lesson with Siard]
[Visit the costume shop]

The busier I became, the more important it was to slow down—so I decided to read the book first while my mind was still sharp.
“No matter how many times I look at it, it’s still difficult.”
After concentrating on reading for about an hour, my head began to ache, so I stepped outside to tend to the Vegetable Garden for a bit.
I followed the charmingly decorated lane and arrived at the Village Square. I could see people decorating the street.
“Are you preparing for the autumn festival?”
“Ah? Yes, we have to start now if we want to finish on time.”
Pumpkin decorations hung in various places, and colorful lights had been strung up.
“I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.”
“You are? I’m excited about the Tavern menu myself. Their autumn special is always delicious.”
As I made my way around the street and passed near the Tavern, I noticed several people heading inside.
Most of them were laborers and farmers.
‘Having a beer after work, are they?’
I was about to walk past when a boisterous voice caught my ear.
“Prepare yourselves. I’m going to take it all today.”
“You should be so lucky.”
“I’ve never once seen you pull that off!”
As I watched the men head into the Tavern with great enthusiasm, I spotted some women lingering near the entrance.
Rather than heading directly inside, they glanced nervously about before descending to the Tavern Basement, clutching something carefully in their possession.
‘Did they bring something valuable?’
Kaies had specifically said the basement was full of only men, but apparently that wasn’t quite the case.
I peered through the open doorway into the Tavern.
The interior was unusually crowded today—packed enough that I could slip downstairs among the crowd without anyone noticing.
I bowed politely to appear unsuspicious and smoothly entered the Tavern.
“Hello, is Kaies here?”
“He’s not in his office. He stepped away for a moment.”
“Ah… Thank you.”
I smiled with apparent disappointment and stepped back, allowing the next customer to approach the counter.
I glanced around the hall as I naturally moved aside.
The other staff members were busy hurrying back and forth between the main room and the kitchen, leaving them no time to pay attention to me.
While the bartender attended to a new customer, I naturally blended in with the laborers and descended to the basement.
Creak—
As the heavy wooden door swung open, a flood of blue light poured out.
‘What is this?’
My eyes widened as I stepped inside. The entire basement was awash in blue light.
The people who had entered with me handed something to a staff member near the door, then moved off toward their destinations without hesitation, as if they each had an assigned spot.
“Um…”
I looked around. It wasn’t a place where people gathered to drink and have fun.
Nor did it appear to be a venue for rough matches or fighting.
Instead, large wooden tables arranged in the center were the site of intense games in full swing.
People placed round chips on the tables, their eyes gleaming as they studied the cards laid before them.
Click-click, click-click.
Their hands moved with machine-like speed and precision as they passed chips back and forth.
“Oh…”
I surveyed my surroundings with a dumbfounded expression.
Wherever I turned my head, someone was rolling dice, and elsewhere people were hurling darts relentlessly at a target.
Ting-ting.
The mechanical whirr of a spinning roulette wheel joined the chaos.
Lost in the frenzy, I was standing bewildered when an employee near the door spoke up in a business-like tone.
“How many chips would you like to exchange?”
“Chips? I… ah.”
I’d wandered in knowing nothing.
Ding!

In the Tavern Basement, you can wager chips and play games.
One chip exchanges for 100 Gold.

“A hundred Gold?!”
“Yes. One hundred Gold per chip. For higher-stakes tables, we use chips worth one thousand Gold each.”
My mouth fell open. My mind went blank in an instant.
“Will you not exchange any?”
As the employee pressed me with bureaucratic efficiency, cold sweat broke across my palms—but I exchanged just one chip.

-100 Gold

“May your day be filled with fortune.”
A single round chip landed in my palm. It was worth a full 100 Gold.
‘This one chip is worth 100 Gold….’
My hands trembled. So that’s what those women had smuggled in their bosoms earlier—these chips.
Only then did I notice the heaps of chips stacked in front of the people gathered around the tables.
‘How much is all of that?’
I stared at the tables in disbelief.
Dice and roulettes spun wildly in every direction, and shouts of despair mingled with cries of elation.
Even my eyes and thoughts seemed to spin along with the chaos.
“I’m getting dizzy.”
I turned my gaze away from the dizzying whirl of the tables.
That’s when I noticed a man pressing buttons in steady rhythm at a machine that stretched along one wall.
He fed chips into the machine one by one, his hands never pausing.
Bloodshot eyes bulged from his face, washed in a sickly blue glow. He looked like a ghost.
Watching these figures, even with a clear mind, my thoughts grew clouded. If this was how drunkenness felt, I understood why.
Just then, a middle-aged man with gleaming eyes spotted the chip in my hand and shuffled toward me.
“That chip—you have one left, don’t you?”
“Sorry?”
“You’re in the same boat as me, aren’t you? Give it to me. Bet it with me. I’ll turn it into three times—no, five times what it’s worth!”
His dilated pupils fixed obsessively on the chip in my hand.
I clenched the chip tight and inched backward. Then my back collided with someone’s solid frame, and I froze.
A voice thick with fatigue settled at my ear.
“So curious, were you?”
Buried beneath the din of voices and machine noise, it was a whisper—but unmistakably familiar.
In the same moment, an arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me back.
A chip flew before my eyes with a soft clink. The man leaped after it like a predator spotting prey.
“Oh! Thank you. Thank you so much!”
Without sparing me another glance, he scrambled away—and I turned my head stiffly, like rusted metal creaking on hinges.
Dark eyes looked down at me, tilted at the same angle as my own.
Kaies let his mouth curl faintly. His eyes remained cold.
“If you’re curious, you might as well try.”
The arm around my shoulders withdrew. Kaies unfolded my fingers one by one as I held the chip.
A cascade of chips tumbled from his hand.
I gasped and reflexively opened both palms to catch them.
Clink, clink.
As I looked down at the chips clinking and colliding in my hands, an explanation panel bloomed before my eyes.

Chips (100): You may select a game of your choice and place a bet.

‘A hundred?!’
A hundred chips, each worth 100 Gold—my hands trembled without my knowing.
Among them were chips of a different color mixed in as well, and they seemed to be the thousand Gold ones the employee had mentioned earlier.
“Go on. Try it.”
At Kaies’s words, my head spun. The thing that had terrified me just to hold was suddenly thrust into my hands.
“I—how am I supposed to…?”
“If you’re frightened of a mere chip, what good are you?”
He tilted his head and drew near, then whispered with a low laugh.
“It’s only a game.”
I swallowed hard. Yet no one in this place paid me the slightest attention, even as this unfolded.
Everyone’s attention remained fixed on their own games alone.

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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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