On My First Day Undercover, the Organization Collapsed - Chapter 331

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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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First Day of Infiltration, The Organization Was Destroyed 331
Rigged Gambling (1)
Ziel moved toward the commotion without drawing attention.
A gambling game was in full swing.
It was a game called Dragon’s Nest, where players rolled five six-sided dice and scored based on the numbers shown.
The premise was infiltrating a dragon’s nest and stealing gems—simple enough rules.
You roll five six-sided dice.
If a one appears, you’re caught by the dragon, and that die can’t be rolled again.
You sum up all the scores from numbers other than one.
This is repeated five times, and the player with the highest total takes all the wagered money.
If a one is recorded four or more times, you’re completely caught by the dragon and lose immediately.
Alternatively, if the same number appears four or more times in a single throw, you can use Dragon’s Breath to reduce another player’s score.
It was a simple, dice-rolling game that had been popular for quite some time.
“Come on, give me something good this time! O divine one, please let a two come when I need a one!”
“Usually, that’s how you get a one, isn’t it?”
“Hey, that’s cheating talk!”
Nothing particularly special about the gambling den.
Ordinarily, Ziel would have had no reason to take interest.
If not for hearing Delev’s voice, that would certainly have been the case.
“Looks like it’s my turn.”
Delev, seated among the thugs, rolled the dice. Fortunately, no one appeared. His combined score was just low.
After taking turns through five rounds of rolling, Delev ultimately lost.
“That’s the fifth loss just today.”
“Young Master, you’re having terrible luck. I thought you had a shot early on.”
“Really? Is it a talent to have bad luck for consecutive days?”
“Um… well, I’m not sure. Ha ha.”
In the next game, Delev lost again, by an uncomfortably narrow margin.
Losses piling up.
Yet Delev didn’t rise from his seat.
He had money to spare, after all.
“Money. Let’s go. This time, shall we raise the stakes a bit? 50,000 Cel.”
“…!”
50,000 Cel.
To nobles, it might be nothing, but in a place like this, it was an enormous sum.
50,000 Cel per person.
With five participants, that made 250,000 Cel in total.
250,000 Cel—nearly a Mage’s annual salary!
“Are you certain you wish to continue, Young Master?”
“Yes, let’s go on.”
It looked like nothing more than a thoughtless young noble carelessly throwing money around.
Until Ziel witnessed something peculiar.
‘They’re exchanging signals.’
One of the game participants was exchanging signals with a bystander.
Then that bystander naturally moved toward the person behind the signaler and, in a flash, passed something to him.
It was a die.
Two dice, passed with movements so secretive and swift no one could detect it.
Those dice went directly into one man’s hands.
“Well now, let me shuffle the dice. Young Master, would you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
Delev shuffled all twenty-five dice and divided them into groups of five.
At first glance, it looked like the common procedure at a gambling table meant to prevent cheating.
Moreover, by the rules, the person with the lowest score in the previous game does the shuffling, so it seemed “fair.”
But it wasn’t.
“I’ve received them, Young Master.”
He took five dice from Delev, but in reality, seven dice were in that hand, not five.
‘An unfair game, then.’
But he wasn’t rolling all seven.
The actual method was hiding two dice in an appropriate spot and secretly substituting them with the two clandestinely received dice to roll.
It wasn’t just this one man—there were two others.
Ziel soon discerned that the dice they’d received were slightly irregular.
‘The way the dice roll is unnatural.’
Of course, unless someone were a fool, they wouldn’t make loaded dice so obviously detectible.
It was a fact only Ziel noticed in this room.
“Oh my, four sixes came up already?”
“Let’s keep it reasonable. Goodness, that was an unlucky pick. We shouldn’t play against someone so lucky.”
“Ha ha, my apologies.”
While the total scores were being reduced, Delev’s score was once again at the bottom.
When the five rounds of dice rolling ended, Delev had lost all his money.
“Oh dear, I’m so sorry. My apologies.”
The man’s expression twisted as though he were genuinely sorry, but his true thoughts were quite different.
‘If I can strip him completely and leave today, that’d be perfect. Thanks to this dumb rich kid, we’re having the time of our lives!’
That was it.
Rigged gambling.
With shills deployed and all.
All four men seated at this table were in on it.
Delev would win occasionally, but it meant nothing for this exact reason.
And at appropriate times, one would drop out while another shill took his place.
The rotation of players helped them avoid suspicion.
In the end, no matter who won, the conclusion was always the same—one person lost money.
Only Delev.
“Oh, I’ve lost quite a lot today. I think I’ll stop rolling now.”
“Come on, you’re leaving? Can’t you win a little before you go?”
“Sir, if you keep playing, you’ll lose the shirt off your back.”
Just as one man was naturally about to step aside and a new shill was about to take his place—
“Hm?”
Someone sat down.
A man.
The kind of handsome face you couldn’t forget even if you saw him just once.
“What?”
“I wish to participate in the game.”
Delev was startled.
‘Teacher?’
The shock was so great he couldn’t even pretend not to recognize him.
“S-suddenly?”
“I was told that anyone can sit once a seat opens up.”
The shill who was about to take the open seat froze in panic, while the man who’d set up this game narrowed his eyes.
“You have money to wager?”
“I do. How much should I bet?”
“Well, you just bet what you can. But as you can see, a pot of 250,000 Cel just changed hands a moment ago.”
Rather than refuse outright and invite suspicion, the man chose to naturally drive away the uninvited guest.
But an unexpected development occurred.
“Will 100,000 Cel suffice?”
Thump.
A 100,000 Cel check guaranteed by the Imperial Bank landed on the table.
“And coins as well.”
Jingle.
A pouch filled with Dikelen’s silver coins landed on the table too.
Gasps and murmurs of admiration rippled through the room.
The man’s pupils flickered for a moment.
‘A mark? Or a skilled gambler?’
He’d never heard rumors of someone like this at this table. If there were, surely the word would have spread.
The man reached a quick conclusion.
‘He’s another thoughtless young noble, just like the other one.’
If so, fleeing him would be common sense.
Fleecing the wealthy was always a welcome activity.
Of course, he wouldn’t do it stupidly.
He’d simply separate them from enough money—not so much it’d be suspicious, but enough to be worthwhile.
“Well then.”
The man covertly signaled, pushing the new shill aside, and grinned.
“So, 100,000 Cel, shall we say?”
“Understood.”
Ziel put the pouch of coins back in his pocket.
He still didn’t spare a glance for Delev beside him.
“Excellent. Since you’re new, I’ll have you roll first. You understand the rules?”
“Yes. Simple enough.”
“Indeed. There’s hardly a game as simple as Dragon’s Nest.”
That was true.
Which made it all the easier to cheat at.
The dice shuffled by Delev passed into Ziel’s hands.
Five of them.
All perfectly ordinary, legitimate dice.
But again, different dice went into the hands of the other men.
Ziel noticed this time too, but said nothing and simply gripped the dice.
‘Will… will he scold me? Why isn’t he saying anything?’
Delev was trembling.
The Academy’s School Rules didn’t explicitly mention Black Market patronage or gambling, but it was naturally a violation of “maintaining dignity.”
Yet Teacher Ziel said nothing.
He was even participating in the game.
‘Could it be… he’s going to let me try it first before scolding me?’
His entrapment in this dice game had been purely accidental.
Out of curiosity, he’d visited the Black Market and seen what looked like an interesting game in progress, so he joined. That one day, then two, then three, had stretched into a week already.
He’d even abandoned his daily Swordsmanship training, so addictive was it.
He’d lost almost everything, but the adrenaline that surged whenever he won something kept pulling him back!
So he’d gotten lost in it, and today he was losing money again.
He didn’t regret it much.
He’d lost tens of thousands of Cel so far, but Delev was from the Kundel Family, after all.
“Well, the order begins here. You, the newcomer, go last.”
Thump, roll.
The dice rolled one after another.
Going last, Ziel unfortunately rolled a three, four, six, one, and one.
“Oh no, already two ones? If two more come up, you’re eliminated immediately.”
“I know. I saw it before.”
Unfortunately, on his third roll, Ziel added another one, and on his fourth, another one again, leaving him with only one die, which meant he was eliminated by the rules.
“Oh dear, 100,000 Cel. I’m so sorry.”
“Usually, beginners have better luck. Where have you played before?”
“Why do you talk like that? Just win it back next round.”
The men were practiced.
‘Normally, they’d get stubborn now.’
Sure enough.
This apparently wealthy gentleman produced another check.
This time, it was 200,000 Cel.
“I see how it is. Understood. I’ll raise the stakes.”
“You mean 200,000 Cel?”
“Problem?”
“Well… um…”
“If I win at 200,000 Cel, I take 1,000,000 Cel, yes? The bigger the bet, the bigger the winnings, isn’t that right?”
So sensible a statement delivered with such sincerity left the con artists themselves bewildered.
‘What do we do?’
200,000 Cel.
Too large a sum to bite off without hesitation.
He seemed far wealthier than ordinary, and if things went wrong, there could be complications.
But greed overwhelmed reason.
200,000 Cel.
‘I’ll take this, then the next, then we bounce. Better yet, I’ll strip him clean today and flee the Capital.’
That’s what makes gambling so dangerous.
Even the thinking of seasoned gamblers becomes paralyzed before the prospect of money.
“Excellent. We’ll take it. 200,000 Cel. What about the rest of you? Our Young Master?”
The other men hesitated, looked thoughtful, then nodded in agreement.
Delev, as if bewitched, joined in.
‘Could it be… Teacher is like me too?’
Thus began the second round.
By now, a crowd had gathered around them.
“What’s going on? What is this?”
“There’s a 1,000,000 Cel pot.”
“1,000,000? Are they insane?”
A game rarely seen even in a place like this!
In the game that began, Ziel rolled first.
[5, 4, 5, 3, 2, 6]
Not a bad roll.
But the second and third rolls didn’t yield particularly good numbers.
By contrast, one of the men rolled fives and sixes in succession, taking the lead.
‘Those two dice always come up five or six.’
They looked indistinguishable from the others to the naked eye, but Ziel’s keen eye discerned the difference.
A faint scrape on the edge.
A subtle difference in the sound when they hit the ground.
Most critically, an unnatural pattern of movement that the others still hadn’t noticed.
“Well, go ahead and roll, sir. Though I suppose the match is decided.”
Ziel gently handled the five dice in his hands, testing them.
He’d run several experiments with his previous rolls.
The angle of release, the precise control of force.
If he employed this method, one only he could execute—
Thump, roll.
“Huh?”
“What?”
He could make all five come up as sixes.
“I-insane.”
In an instant, Ziel rose to first place.
“I won.”
Ziel had claimed 1,000,000 Cel in a flash.
“H-how… how did…”
“Multiple sixes came up.”
“So what I’m trying to say is… this doesn’t make sense…”
A last-second reversal!
Ziel had seized first place by a single point!
“That was unbelievable! Did you see that?”
“A one-point reversal at the very end!”
“Did a Divine Technique get infused in those dice?”
Cheers erupted from the spectators.
By contrast, the men’s expressions darkened.
Delev didn’t know how to react.
But the game was only beginning.
Thump.
Ziel set aside 400,000 Cel from the million he’d just won and placed it on the table, then asked:
“Double or nothing? Are you game?”
The men had no other choice.

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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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