episode_0084

Victor didn’t lift his head for a while.

“Hoo, hoooooh………”

Then, a sigh so deep it seemed to make the ground sink.

As he even mumbled something as if comforting himself, the woman who had volunteered to help him poked her face in to check his condition.

“Kyaat!?”

Then, *Pak!* The guy pushed her as if hitting her.

He acted out of proportion to his size, lifting his chin like a turtle.

“This is surprising.”

His dreadlocks, as if he hadn’t sweated at all, were swept back.

He regained his swaggering Black rapper style, then made a show of it.

“It seems I’ve neglected managing my establishment lately.”

“…Huh?”

“It may seem like ill-gotten gains from a cowardly act, but even I wasn’t aware of it. It seems I’ve unfortunately profited quite a bit until now, but it can’t be helped, so shall we play properly from now on?”

The explicitly rigged gamble, set up like a scenario, now carried the nuance that he himself was a victim of an unforeseen accident.

This statement, that he couldn’t return the money, was deliberately translated by an interpreter beside him, clearly intended for the audience to hear.

It seemed he still hadn’t come to his senses.

The guy, aiming to manage his image, seemed to believe there was still an escape route.

With many high-ranking acquaintances watching, it was an obvious lie he added, perhaps wanting to dispel his image as a third-rate swindler.

*Smirk.*

Regardless, this part was generously overlooked.

After all, what this side wanted was the newly revised ‘rules’ and the ‘continuation of the game’.

“Then, from now on, shall we receive the cards and play fairly?”

“Wait. I’m sick of card games.”

Pointing to the dealer standing awkwardly beside him,

“As you said, I got caught cheating, so we have to play without this bastard. He dealt the cards like crap without any service, so get rid of the cards.”

Even though he couldn’t understand Korean, the dealer awkwardly avoided eye contact, seemingly understanding that he was being blamed.

On the other hand, Victor, as if things had worked out perfectly, flashed his disgusting gold tooth again, the kind you’d want to extract to avoid military service.

“Excellent! Then this time… how about a dice game?”

As if he had prepared them beforehand, he simultaneously pulled out two golden dice from his inner pocket.

He must really love gold plating; even the dice he had were golden.

He rattled the two dice, placed them on his palm the size of a pot lid, and then stared intently.

“……A dice game?”

“Ah, the rules are simple. It’s a modified version of the existing Craps game: a total of 2 or 3 means immediate elimination. Conversely, 7 or 12 means immediate victory. We’ll just throw them without dividing into shooter and bettor. If any other numbers appear, then how about the person with the higher dice roll wins?”

It meant simply competing directly with the dice rolls.

It was a rule where if you got to go first and rolled a 7 or 12, you could win immediately, but conversely, if you were unlucky enough to roll the minimum values of 2 or 3, you would lose.

Good.

If nothing else, the simplicity of just rolling dice appealed to him greatly.

“Alright.”

“Then immediately─”

“Instead, if you’re going to throw those dice, throw them on the floor, not the table.”

“……Huh?”

At my suggestion, his face instantly stiffened.

Then, as if asking what nonsense this was, he let out a hollow laugh and argued.

“Hyungnim, what on earth are you talking about? Just in case, there are relay cameras installed on the ceiling, so it’s better to throw them on the table so the audience can see, don’t you think?”

“No, you can’t do that.”

“Why not? Why this sudden strange stubbornness─”

“You bastard, there’s a magnetic field hidden inside the table.”

“!”

Flaring up, I pointed it out once more.

As I kicked the table in front of me with a *Pak!* and shouted, he gasped.

“It’s obvious those fucking shiny dice have tiny magnets inside them, so you want me to just take it again with my eyes open? Do I have to embed a bullet in those dice again just so you can be humiliated one more time?”

“…….”

“Please, let’s not be so petty. You’re called the King of Casinos, and yet all your methods are so cheap and squalid.”

He already understood everything.

How this guy was cheating at the casino.

Immediately, Woo Miae, who was assisting behind him, translated these words into English and disseminated them.

Though I didn’t know for sure, inwardly, there must have been many in the audience cheering for Victor.

Even if his nationality was unknown, his appearance was familiar to them, and after all, blood is thicker than water.

-…….

However, with his continuous petty cheating exposed, even the watching audience looked fed up by this point.

Once they realized he conducted his business in such a squalid manner, any inclination to cheer for him unilaterally seemed to vanish.

“Alright, if you’re not going to throw them on the floor, let’s do this.”

At this point, he pulled out an item he had brought.

Just in case, he had stopped by a domestic Daiso store and bought dice that cost 1000 won for 6.

“Put away those dice that just hurt my eyes, and throw with my dice. This way, there won’t be any problem, right?”

“H-How can I trust… that?”

“Shit. Then did I trust you and lose all this time?”

After rebuking his shameless remark,

“And don’t worry, I don’t have the sleight of hand to cheat. If we take turns throwing, there won’t be any worry about trickery unlike poker, and these are perfectly cheap plastic dice that don’t react to magnetic fields at all.”

“…….”

He held them in his hand and shook them so they rattled.

“Then, as a penalty for cheating, I’ll throw first?”

“W-w-wait─”

The atmosphere heated up again.

Unwilling to listen to any more nonsense, he threw the dice forcefully, like striking iron in this fiercely heated atmosphere.

The cheap dice, incongruous with the luxurious table’s prestige, rolled quite far before revealing their numbers.

5 and 6.

It wasn’t an instant win as it wasn’t 7 or 12, but a combined total of 11 was a quite high roll.

As soon as he saw the numbers, Victor gulped down the whiskey beside him.

Perhaps they were bothering him, or perhaps because his card-cheating scheme had been exposed, he even took off his black sunglasses to confirm the numbers directly, then gripped the dice the dealer stiffly handed him.

Tremble tremble tremble…

The guy, terrified like a lamb, a sight never seen from him before.

In this hopeless situation where a high dice roll or an instant win with the lucky number 7 seemed unlikely, he clenched them tightly before lightly throwing them down.

The dice, with a whopping 2 billion dollars riding on a single roll, left his hand so anticlimactically.

The cheap dice, not going far and spinning weakly─

“SHIT! YES! YEEEES!!!”

The result was 7.

1 and 6 added up to 7.

A cheer that sounded like it would tear the place down erupted as soon as he won.

Even his subordinate, who was being held by my mercenary, cheered as if his country had been liberated, and from the audience, exclamations of “OH!” turned into growing applause.

It had been a bit frustrating that his cheating had been exposed, but this time, his reaction was one of complete sincerity.

“I won, I won! You won’t have any complaints now, you fucking kimchi bastard!?”

…It seemed he had secretly held onto the insult of being called “bibimbap” earlier.

Though his curses seemed endless, since this was a fair loss, not a rigged game, I added some feigned applause.

“You’re excited because you won a fair game?”

“Fuck off, you idiot! I won, you loser!”

“Hey, you’re already acting like we’ll never see each other again?”

“Now all that gold is mine! Your life is over, so don’t pretend to be calm, you bastard.”

*Smirk.*

“How could the bell have rung already?”

“……?”

“The game still has a long way to go, doesn’t it?”

*Clank, clank clank clank!*

As soon as he spoke, the forklift that had left earlier came back in.

Exactly twice as many forklifts as before entered, lifting heavy cargo stacks of gold and depositing them beside us as if piling up luggage.

Due to the heavy, clanking weight, even the festive atmosphere in the audience section fell silent.

Exactly twice the amount of gold brought earlier.

Now, a total of 30 tons of gold piled up in the casino.

Considering the possibility of weight burden, it was dispersed.

“This time, it’s 20 tons. I’ll bet a whopping 20 tons of gold, just the way you like it.”

Even the scraps would be immense, worth well over an estimated 2 billion dollars.

A gleaming gold mass so heavy that even if it were given for free, carrying it would strain your back.

Victor overtly stuck out his tongue.

The tower of gold, which he had been watching greedily just moments ago, now made his pupils tremble slightly, as if he were scared, as it doubled in size.

“More… there was more?”

“Of course. We agreed to go all the way, didn’t we? Did you really think the gift for my brother-in-law and cute younger sister was just 10 tons?”

“…….”

“…….”

“As promised, we have to double the stakes. The pot instantly became 4 billion dollars, hasn’t it gotten more interesting?”

Strangely enough, as the stakes rose to this level, even the audience section fell silent.

The amount was so absurd, and with such a massive amount of gold on the line, it was perhaps too preposterous; now, instead of mere entertainment, an air of solemnity and tension permeated the space.

Even the police officers deployed for security were simply staring blankly, watching like spectators.

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, uhhhh…”

“Don’t make me wait, throw it quickly. Everyone’s waiting, aren’t they?”

His mind had completely blanked.

Like a marathon beginner who thought they had crossed the finish line, only to realize it was just a turning point.

Like a novice who thought they had cleared the game, only to realize it had been just a tutorial all along, his spirit drained.

He seemed utterly dismayed, having never imagined such a quantity of gold would be added.

He seemed to find me burdensome now, having never expected me to hit the accelerator so hard and plunge in like this.

Tremble tremble tremble…

However, the only thing he could do now was to continue the game.

No matter where he looked, everyone was focused on the game, so there was no one left to rely on.

People around him shouted “GO! GO! GO!”, but Victor’s gaze must have been fixated solely on the dice, his vision narrowed into a tunnel.

With those trembling hands, he had to throw the dice the dealer had brought back to him.

One more time. He had to hope that the luck he had seized earlier would follow him again.

However,

“Ah, aaaaaaaaaaaah…!!!”

A flood of mixed emotions crossed his face the moment he threw.

*Smirk.*

“Yes, this is normal.”

He immediately bared his teeth and laughed.

This time, the dice showed 1 and 2.

A total of 3, Victor’s bust, meaning I didn’t even need to throw again.

With just two rolls of cheap dice, 4 billion dollars were shattered.

The dealer, noticing the dismal result, had no choice but to rake all the chips over to this side.

When he had to rake in my chips, he did it cheerfully, but now he was trembling like a newborn foal as he moved his boss’s chips to their new owner’s spot.

Just like that, I won it all in one game.

All my money he had swindled until now, along with Victor’s own seed money of 600 million dollars.

“…….”

As if it were a dream, Victor, drenched in sweat as if he’d showered in his clothes, stared only at the table.

“…….”

His dismayed younger sister Cha Soeun’s face was an added bonus.

The couple, both looking completely lost, stared at the now empty table.

-YES! YES! YES!

Conversely, our gallery, who had been watching breathlessly, slowly joined in the applause, then erupted into cheers.

As trillions of Korean won were swept away like a wave in a single go, dopamine seemed to rush through them, and they enthusiastically dropped champagne bottles to the floor.

‘Hoo… Shit, at this point, even I’m trembling.’

Honestly, my heart was pounding this time too, but I endured as much as I could.

I returned the exhilaration of the first victory to Victor, as if teasing him.

“What’s wrong? You only lost once.”

“…….”

“Cheer up. Just because you lost that, it doesn’t mean your life or this game is over, does it?”

“…………………What?”

*Grin.*

“Well, this round has a whopping 8 billion dollars on the line.”

I tapped the table.

Victor, thinking everything was ruined, furrowed his brows for a moment, seemingly unable to comprehend my meaning.

Soon, his milk-tea-colored skin turned pale white, drenched in sweat.

“Y-y-you don’t mean… we’re going even further from here!?”

“What, did you forget our promise? We agreed to go all the way until one side lost everything, didn’t we? It’s not over yet, so we have to keep raising the stakes.”

With a smirk, I threw his initial words back at him.

“Or are you just going to let me clean you out of 600 million dollars and end it?”

*Gulp!*

It was over now.

It was no longer a game of the mind.

With nearly 700 billion won lost in one go and the absurdly inflated stakes, his mind could no longer function.

Whether to stop here or not was now a matter of his heart.

Because the losses he had incurred were substantial.

Moreover, simply handing over the enormous sum of 600 million dollars he’d lost to me would virtually be impossible.

The guy trembled.

Not because of the cheating gambling he had been so confident in, but because of the dice that yielded honest results.

He trembled as if about to wet himself, terrified at the thought of advancing toward a stone bridge that might collapse.

However, retreating would only extend his public humiliation for escalating the show, and the losses were so immense that he’d have to sell an entire mega-casino.

It was a point of no return; he had come too far to go back.

“Th-there’s no way I have that kind of cash right now… If it’s 4 billion, I’d have to scrape together every single casino chip I manage!”

So, the guy made excuses.

He made a paltry excuse, as if no other words came to mind.

My reply to that was simple.

“Then bet that.”

“What!?”

“Since you brought it up, why don’t you bet all the casino shares you own?”

A gasp, as if he was about to fall over.

I calmly explained to the dazed man.

“I looked it up, and the value of the casino you own is roughly over 10 billion dollars, you know? But while this might not be your pure personal asset, there’s no problem if you bet an amount equal to what I’ve put up, right? I’ll value it very highly right here and now.”

Then he glared at me as if I were insane.

The bastard who had made money through gambling until now was horrified at the thought of gambling away all his assets.

“You want me… the King of Casinos, to bet my entire fortune on a mere roll of cheap dice?”

“If you don’t want to, then quit. But even if you quit, you’ll spit out all the money you lost in cold hard cash. And from now on, you’ll rename yourself ‘Squalid Corner Store Owner’ instead of ‘King of Casinos’.”

“…….”

“What will you do? Will you pathetically spit out 600 million dollars and end it?”

“…….”

“Tell me. Will you be the King of Casinos, or the owner of a corner store?”

As I prodded him, his eyes went wild.

He resentfully glared at the chips that had all been seized and moved to me, and then he glanced at the magnificent gold piled like a tower beside them.

Our brother-in-law was no longer the King of Casinos.

He was merely a wolf, coveting that shining gold which had been given and then taken away.

He was just a common gambler, staring greedily at the gold that had been given and then taken, unable to pull out his deeply immersed arm, like a monkey with a banana clutched in its hand.