Godfather's System 223

As they dealt the cards, I felt somewhat nostalgic. Ironic, considering I owned multiple casinos at the time, with even more under construction, but I had been too busy to sit down and play a game of my own.

The last time, I had been trying to swindle a silver mine out of Baron Tarug. It wasn’t too long ago from a time perspective, but with running between crises every day, it felt like years had passed in between.

Someone else might have been annoyed that they had to lose, but I didn’t. For me, gambling had never been about winning and losing unless there was some urgency. I had my casinos to make money from gambling.

For me, a game was about sleight of hand, manipulation, misdirection … all aspects of my day job, but it felt different around the table. In a way, it was like watching an aquarium, where I amused myself by the movement of the fish, but no matter what they did, I was untouchable.

It was a nice change of pace from the political and military tightrope I was trying to walk in this new world, trying to prevent a divine disaster…

“… How many cards?” the dealer asked.

“Four,” I said. Despite my enthusiastic expression, I barely paid any attention to my table, and started focusing on the other two tables, focusing on the mysterious noble and the other guard captains. I watched the cards carefully, trying to get a hang of their styles as I read how they played based on their cards and the flow of the game.

The cards were crafted well, and they were enhanced with multiple spells to prevent people from catching their details. Unfortunately, while that would have probably worked against a hundred points of Perception, the same wasn’t true for a hundred points worth of Awakened Perception.

Then there were the benefits of Life Elevation … no, I felt like they were playing with their hands revealed.

However, even with that visibility, manipulating the game wasn’t easy due to one simple fact: I wasn’t a part of the two tables I had been targeting, which restricted my toolkit significantly.

The first rule of manipulation; understand the targets to make sure what was suspicious and what was not. The biggest reason I was using the disguise as a hunter to slowly gather information rather than kidnapping someone and interrogating was to leave no evidence for the others — that, and I wanted to stay near the mainland in case Dahmut faced some problems and needed support.

I didn’t want to leave any evidence for two reasons: First, I didn’t want to scare away my mysterious recruit, who, according to his movement pattern, would visit the safe house near here soon enough. Additionally, I wanted to avoid Somaton attention.

With things tense at the border, they would have probably assumed it had something to do with my recruit and sent their agents. I had no problems escaping or dealing with any force they might send, but the situation was tense enough at the border without adding more variables.

I didn’t want to start a war … unless it was absolutely necessary.

For the first ten hands, I watched all the tables without doing anything, just gathering information. I took note of every single detail, not just their play styles, but also their personalities. During that, I won some, I lost some, but the pile of silver in front of me dwindled somewhat.

Then, came the challenging part. I started to manipulate the games. Mostly through Charisma, playing with their confidence, and making some of the less important players make mistakes. Not obvious ones, but small ones like going aggressive on a good hand, only to watch their opponent reveal an absurdly lucky twist that ruined their game.

Sometimes, I made them play with a bad hand, which gave them a lucky victory. Sometimes, I merely pushed them to play so that they could ruin someone else’s victory. Sometimes, I gave them winning streaks, only to lose big, or reverse.

Big swings in their gambling fortunes left their nerves frayed, which meant the small Charisma pushes I added to make them chattier didn’t hurt. Everyone but the noble started talking about their work or adventures, thinking it was a harmless topic to chat about while gambling.

One of the guard captains, for example, explained his excellent money-making scheme, proud that he had managed to earn ten times his salary from the commoners through a protection scheme, gleefully lamenting how the ones that didn’t join ended up dead.

In a way, it would have been harmless if I wasn’t here. None of the knights or other guards even blinked an eye when a guard captain implied killing dozens of people for personal gain. The noble was even worse, listening to the story with a sadistic gleam in his eyes.

Too bad that I was here, and they had just volunteered themselves to the next part of my plan.

I hated men like those. I was aware of my status being far from angelic, and there had been times I had ignored the risks to innocents, or even risked their lives when the stakes were important — sometimes, selfishly so, just like the time I had thrown myself through the portal, getting into the new world while leaving the young man at the other side.

Some would claim that there was no difference between me and them, and that we were both evil, regardless of degrees … but I noticed all of those people did so from the comfort of their homes, carefully avoiding any situation that would require such a choice.

It was easy to make the moral choice when it was the easier one.

I sighed as I turned my attention to the game. Ultimately, the ethics of the situation barely mattered. I had my targets. Now, I just needed to deliver the next stage of my plan. I first focused on the guard captain, who was playing at the middle table, let him experience a streak of lucky victories, the pile of silver ingots in front of him turning into a small mountain.

Then, he moved on to the most valuable table. I was ready to goad him to that, but he did so without my intervention, which wasn’t surprising. People who stopped gambling when they won or lost enough didn’t become gamblers. For a gambler, there was no loss that couldn’t be regained, and there was no victory that couldn’t be elevated further.

Once he had moved to the most valuable table, I let him maintain his winning streak at the cost of the noble, only to reverse it before it reached a point where the noble might decide to punish the guard captain for defeating him, who had lost his common sense as he played the game with feverish excitement.

They started putting more and more money into the game as they won and lost. The guard captain had mortgaged his house, while the noble had pawned a magic weapon, the game still at the razor edge. The competitive yet friendly atmosphere was gone, replaced by the intense atmosphere of a warzone.

As the game heated up, people started leaving. Some did of their own accord, smart enough to realize that nothing good could come out of that escalated situation. For others, I had to twist their emotions a bit to cool their greed so that they would avoid the table.

Another trick I pulled was to sabotage one of the magic lamps slowly, so that a part of the room had been covered with shadows. So, when I ‘followed’ the others out, I had an excellent spot to slink in. Together with the Concealment, I was practically invisible there. Safe as well, as no servant dared to interrupt the intense game.

They couldn’t afford to offend either a foreign noble or a local guard captain.

And, once the guard captain angrily sent most of the servants away in a fit of rage — for ruining his luck — I decided to act. After all, I was already in a very nice, magically isolated room that blocked both sound and other senses to prevent the players from receiving help from the outside. And, I had a very convenient victim.

All I needed was an excuse. I continued to push their anger higher and higher, the slow process hard to distinguish from their passion for the game. Until, just as their anger was at its peak, I pushed the guard to bet all he had … and lose.

“How dare you!” he growled as he jumped toward the noble. The noble responded by a blast of Charisma, which was reasonably strong, enough to stagger the servants while the Guard had punched him. Even with his anger, he had enough presence of mind not to draw his sword.

The noble, on the other hand, had pawned his weapon earlier, confident that no one would dare to attack him.

While they fought, I rapidly built a few wards to strengthen the isolation effect. Then I added my own Charisma to the mix, disorienting the remaining servants even more, and darted into the room to knock them out. After all, they were my precious eyewitnesses they would swear they had seen the guard captain attack the noble.

They were strong, but not strong enough to defend me from a compromised position.

“I have a few questions for you,” I said as I pulled the dagger I had picked from the guard…