Once again, I was reminded of how monotonous life could get at sea.
Since I’ve managed to learn Somatomancy already, there wasn’t really any reason for me to continue attending Mary’s lesson as I would distract Delmare instead.
Thus for today in particular, I decided I would take a walk around the ship again to see if there was anything interesting going on.
Accompanying me were Katsuki, Odeta and Lisa, the three of them following me despite me telling them that I had no destination in mind.
Which was why we’re now standing below the deck of the ship overlooking the rows of shops without a plan on what to do.
“So… Do you girls have any suggestions on what we can do?” I asked.
“Ehehe~ anything is fine as long as you’re here, Aster~” Lisa replied immediately while slipping her hand into mine.
“I think so too! It’s always fun with sister Aster!” Odeta added quickly from my other side.
Hmm… Even if the both of you say that, I don’t really know what we could do… I suppose the most obvious choice would simply be to shop again, since I did receive quite a lot of money recently from Emilia.
Just as I was thinking about asking whether my three companions were interested in taking a look at the shops, Lisa suddenly clapped her hands together.
“Oh wait! I know! I know! There was a place that I saw yesterday during my walk that I wanted to visit with Aster! Could we go there?”
I tilted my head at her, “What kind of place is it?”𝒐𝑣𝗅xt.𝑐𝑜𝐌
“Ehehe~ You’ll see! I think you’ll like that place quite a bit!”
She then started pulling me along as she led us through the ship. More specifically, she seemed to be leading us towards the lower decks where the more questionable shops seemed to be.
I say questionable like there was a shop we passed by that had some guy tied up and blindfolded to be put on display. I decided not to ask any questions.
Unlike the floors above, this place seemed to be quite heavily guarded with several Nekomata crew members patrolling around the area.
I also spotted people I presume to be Mercenaries patrolling around, most likely they were hired by Emilia to fill in the gaps of the staff she had to get rid of for plotting against her.
Eventually, we came to an area that was brightly lit with music and the sound of coins echoing in the background, a far cry from the darker parts of the ship we had to walk through to get here.
“Ugh… What is this place? It’s so noisy…” Odeta whined.
“A casino?” I asked, looking at Lisa incredulously.
“That’s right! We can play here, can’t we? Aster? Pretty please?”
Well… I have been to casinos before but this would be the first time I’ve seen one in this World and I don’t frequent them in my old World either.
Do they even have the same games and the same rules? More importantly, how big of a scam are they? Just because I have obtained a small fortune now doesn’t mean I’m willing to gamble it all away for no reason.
But still… I didn’t think Lisa would be interested in a casino of all places…
“Why a casino? I didn’t know you were the gambling type, Lisa.”
The Infrid tilted her head at me, “Eh? I’m not though?”
“E… Eh? Then why did you bring us here? What’s more, I clearly heard you say that you wanted to play just a moment ago?”
She puffed her chest proudly, “That’s right! The casino is where we can find the desperate and sad people who have lost all their money! There’s also the overconfident and cocky idiots too! This is the best place for me to look for single or even unfaithful husbands to seduce so that I can cuck them later~”
Ah… Umm… Alright then… I shouldn’t have asked…
Lisa giggled, “Oh don’t worry Aster! I’m not asking you to seduce them with me! You can just watch me from afar! That would be plenty enough already!”
“Are you telling me that you get turned on from that?”
“I’ll be lying if I said I wasn’t. Ehehehe~ Just knowing that you will be watching me while I flirt and seduce those people… Oops, I think I got a little wet thinking about it~”
I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear anything…
Putting that aside, I admit that I am a little curious about how the casinos of this World work so I do want to go in and take a look.
But I still needed to ask a question to make sure…
“Are there age restrictions for going into casinos?”
“Eh? Why would there be? Of course not,” Lisa informed me without a moment’s hesitation.
Hmm… I’m not sure if there wasn’t a rule to forbid it because of the existence of people who mature differently as compared to the humans of my old World, or it was simply because no one gives a damn if you were to ruin yourself over gambling.
Unfortunately, no one seemed to know the answer which honestly just made it even more concerning to me.
Wait a minute… Why do I even care? Yeah, I am completely unrelated to this so who cares?
In the end, we decided to go in to take a look, where one out of four of us was looking for a target she could seduce while the rest were simply interested in the games offered here.
The games offered here seemed to be rather similar to my old World. I found what looked like a roulette table, some dice throwing games and they even had card games too which included their own variation of blackjack and poker with different card desgins.
I took a look at the stakes and realised it wasn’t as expensive as I thought since the people around here were all betting in Decreas. Of course, there was still the high stakes section where I saw people literally throwing hundreds of Creas on the table too.
After taking some time to watch a few games, I decided to try out my hand at playing poker since I knew the rules for that and it felt like it would be fun to play it here.
“Has Mistress played any of these games before?” Katsuki asked.
“Umm… Not exactly, I’ve umm… Heard Mother talk about them before,” I lied.
It was easier than telling them that I was an Off-Worlder after all.
I turned to the Amrap beside me, “What about you, Odeta? Have you gambled before?”
The Amrap thought about it for a moment before she nodded, “Back when I was younger, the people in my village would also use food and chores to make bets with each other. Oh! They also played these games when I accompanied sister Ardi on her trips out to sea too! I tried it once and it was so boring that I went ahead to just beat up everyone and take the winnings myself! Wahaha!”
Right… I suppose that’s Odeta for you. But please don’t do that here.
Oh, speaking of which, I’m not using Somatomancy right now since I’m still not able to move around normally without breaking the spell unless I chant. I’d hate to scare off unsuspecting people because I suddenly changed my looks in front of them or even worse, get accused of cheating.
Although something tells me that I won’t actually get that big of a reaction considering what kind of World this is.
Putting that aside, I decided to join a table in a game of poker by taking the empty seat at the far side of the table.
This one was obviously played with similar rules to Texas Hold’em poker with how each player had two cards in their hands while the dealer dealt five cards on the table.
I admit I don’t have the best poker face and I’m literally an amateur at the game but hey, I’m playing this for fun and not actually trying to win.
The pot seems to be in Decreas anyway so I shouldn’t lose much even if I played badly.
In the meantime, Lisa had already separated herself from me to look for her unfortunate victim that she could cuck.
The Nekomata dealer nodded at me, “Big blind is two Decreas, small blind is one Decrea. If you need more coins, please let me know.”
It seems like they don’t use chips but let people use actual money in their bets.
I wanted to ask if this was really risky to everyone involved but what do I know? I’m merely an Off-Worlder and a complete beginner in this.
I pulled out a single small bronze coin and slipped it to the dealer.
He took it and a pile of copper coins was quickly presented to me with varying denominations, half of them being small copper coins.
I gathered the coins and the dealer started dealing the cards out to the six of us around the table, four of them being Mahuns with three males and one female while the last one was a futa Inugami.
I know that she was a futa with how obvious her male part was creating a tent on the dress she was wearing and also the bosoms that were probably the size of soccer balls.
Gathering up my cards, I took a peek at what I got and found I had been dealt two Aces.
Ohhh~ This is a good hand! I’m definitely playing thi–
“Fold.”
“I fold.”
“Fold.”
“I fold as well.”
“Fold for me too.”
…
I suck at poker don’t I?