The Vampire’s Templar

Kagriss took out the bar of fifty bloodstones and set it down. “I’ll play, but that’s what I have. Is that enough?”

“Yeah, of course. We’ll just lower the stakes. Is everyone fine with that?” Garven asked, once again taking the lead. He looked around the table and everyone who made eye contact with him nodded.

Eva grabbed her. “Wait, do you know the rules? Have you ever played this before?”

Kagriss shook her head. The only gambling game she knew was a game also played with dice in a cup. Only three dice, in that case, and the goal of the game was to guess a property of the cup, such as all the dice are the same, or the sum greater than the median, or the sum is odd. Properties like that.

It was fast, against the house, and since the winnings increased with the odds, it was easy to lose all the money quickly, which was why it was used to orchestrate the vassal’s descent into debt in the book she read.

Here, things seemed a bit more fair and each round took some time, so it may not be as destructive as the game described in the book.

“Do you want us to explain the rules?” Garven asked.

“No, I figured it out when I watched. I’m ready.”

The others looked surprised. “It only took you, what, two games to figure out the rules?” The dwarf put up his hands, waving defensively. “I’m not saying that you’re slow or anything, but the way bidding works isn’t really clear just from watching.”

Kagriss smiled. “It’s fine. If I get it wrong, please do correct me and I’ll take the humiliation as punishment for my overconfidence.”

With her stalwart words, no one argued against her anymore. 

The table was really friendly. Kagriss had thought that a gambling den would be a place filled with criminals and addicts, but it was a pleasant surprise to find her assumptions proven wrong. 

The big room, or rather chamber, was dim, but it wasn’t shady. The perfume that filled the room wasn’t overdone as if to hide an underlying scent and the bouncer at the door was well mannered once she got a pass from the receptionist. There hadn’t been any violence either.

She pulled open the drawer like she had watched Eva done and took out five of those red dice, rolling them around in her hands. They were cool and smooth, slightly indented where whoever crafted these dice marked the numbers.

They didn’t look or feel cheap and they felt quite heavy in her hands and rolled them into the cup, hitting the bottom with a satisfying thunk. “I’m ready.”

Everyone had been waiting on her and when she looked up, she found that a few more bars had been added to the center of the table. Stakes, totally to two hundred and fifty.

If she won, then half of it will be hers at least, and the more people that won with her, the less she got from the remainder. 

If she lost, then that will be it for tonight. 

Wait, she said only one round, so why what was she thinking about? She should just do her best to win one round and get out.

The cup with the heavy dice rattled when she shook her, the contents being thoroughly tumbled. She set it down with a thump at the same time as the others. “Can I go first? I just arrived, after all.” 

“Please. Also, please do look at your numbers first.”

If she had been alive, perhaps she might’ve blushed at Garven’s reminder. Thankfully, she was undead so she managed to suppress it and save herself the embarrassment. 

Her cup contained one of each three through five, and two sixes.

With those numbers, her bidding should favor sixes, though she probably shouldn’t make that too clear to the other players. At the same time, she should be wary of calls containing a large number of sixes from the others since it might give them the way she should incorrectly call their bluff.

Her direct competitors were going to be Marton and Eva, and the others secondary only for agreement or disagreement with the disk.

Looking around and finding no objections to her going first, Kagriss thought for a bit. She cleared her throat. “Three twos.”

Of which she had none, of course, but no one needed to know that. She didn’t change her expression too much. Smiling would be suspicious after all.

Eva glanced at her but didn’t call her bluff, following with her own. “Five fours,” she said.

“Five sixes.”

Kagriss blinked at Garven’s bid that kept the amount of dice the same; she hadn’t expected that. What was the point? Perhaps to associate himself with a large number of sixes? Eva had fours, so currently, there were probably two players with a large number of sixes, herself and Garven, and one with fours, Eva.

 “Seven sixes.”

Another player with so-called sixes. Nien jumped up twice as well, so he probably had sixes. He wasn’t exhibiting any suspicious movements either.

Marton, last of the round, bid last. “Eight fives,” he said.

With a dice count that high, there was a pretty large probability that Marton wasn’t bluffing about having fives. In that case, that was three sixes, one four, one five. Six was a danger bluff to call.

Which meant she should be the one to call it.

“Are you okay there?” 

With a start, Kagriss realized that it was her turn again and she had been thinking for so long that Garven got worried. She coughed once into her fist as was socially appropriate to indicate awkwardness and mild apology before she smiled at Garven.

“Yes, sorry, I spaced out a little. Eight seemed a little high, but it seems realistic.”

Now, what should she pick that will be high enough that she thinks is realistic but that someone else might call her bluff on? Nine was too low. Ten seemed a bit low as well, but eleven might be unrealistic. She’d probably call an eleven.

Risk, or not? It wasn’t really her money, after all. Then again, she didn’t want to lose…

“Ten…sixes,” she said finally with the slightest grimace on her face, and at the same time she began to fidget just the tiniest bit with her fingers. According to her observations, those were the body languages associated with a lack of confidence.

Call on me! Call my bluff!

However, no one said anything. They all looked at her thoughtfully, but silently. Rather than looking to see if she was bluffing, it was more like they were trying to weigh the odds if they took her at face value.

Long seconds passed and one by one they looked away and began to watch the other players until the only still thinking was Marton. Marton was the one she thought who didn’t have sixes, so it made sense that he’d hesitate.

Finally, he finished as well and shook his head.

“Nobody?” Kagriss asked, a little disappointed. “Alright then.”

“Heh, you little devil. I have my doubts about you, but it’s a bit risky. On the other hand…” Garven peered at Eva sitting next to him. “Whatever you call, I’m calling your bluff. I doubt there’s eleven of anything.”

“That’s what you think,” Eva said with a little smile. 

Garven’s eyes narrowed in doubt and self-doubt, but Kagriss wasn’t fooled. She caught the twitch of Eva’s lips when the vampire said her lie.

“Anyways, eleven fours. Go ahead and call it.”

Kagriss heard the false confidence, though she didn’t know if any of the others had. To Eva’s credit, Garven no longer looked so sure, although no matter what he was going to have to call or else risk having to bluff a twelve on his turn.

In the end, he shook his head. “Bluff. You’re bluffing. There’s no way you have so many fours.”

But Eva just shrugged.

Kagriss flipped her disk to agree and the others flipped as well—to what she did not know.

As the person calling the bluff, Garven stood up and with slightly trembling fingers began to count the dice. Kagriss counted with him, silently.

In total, there were nine sixes and nine fours, both counting blanks. Eva only had a single four.

When Kagriss saw that there were only nine sixes, she couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief that no one called her bluff. She’d been confident that there were ten, but she’d been wrong…

So she won at least partially, but what about the others. Nien and Marton lifted their hands from their disk. Nien, with a five and a blank, chose to agree. Marton, with two fives, chose to disagree.

Thus, the bloodstone at the center was split between Kagriss, Nien, and Garven, and she ended up with an uneven number at the end…

“How are we going to split it?” she asked. “I doubt you can just cut the bloodstone..”

“Oh, heavens no! That’s illegal. We have small—”

“I’ll just take fifty,” Kagriss said and pulled a bar toward herself, ending with the amount she started with. Nien had been talking and his mouth was still open. With everyone now looking at him, he hesitated and sat back.

“I’ll take fifty as well, then.”

Garven beamed, pulled the rest of the bars totaling a hundred and fifty. “Haha, lucky. I guess the rest is mine. Very generous, Kagriss.”

She wasn’t generous. She just didn’t want the trouble.

“Alright, let’s go again. Fifty again?”

Kagriss looked up from the bloodstone bar in her hands. “Wait, I’m not…” she protested, only for bars from the others to clunk into the center before she could even get halfway through her protest.

They stared at her as one, their eyes burning into her.

To be honest, she was perfectly fine with just leaving them to their game since she cared not about people she just met and would likely never see again. However, it was rude and they’d been nothing but kind…

Besides, Eva was here and she was the one to invite her. If she just upped and left, it might reflect badly on her.

With a small sigh inside, she put her bar in with the rest.

“This is really the last time, okay?”

“Of course, of course!” 

From the dismissive way that Garven spoke, Kagriss couldn’t help but put some doubt in the sincerity and weight of his words.

“Sorry, Kagriss,” Eva said.

“…it’s fine. Let’s begin.” Kagriss rolled the dice again and took a look. Two blanks, two twos, one three. Twos was her best bet, since she effectively had four.

Since Eva lost last round, she started. “Five twos,” she said. 

It was an explosive start that sped up the game, but Kagriss was fine with that since it meant she could call out a high number of twos without too much of a jump. However, did Eva really have so many twos?

When Eva called her numbers, it looked like she did her best to keep the emotions from her voice, but even from the side Kagriss could see how Eva refused to make eye contact while speaking the lie and then immediately searching for someone to look at, as if daring them to challenge it. 

Eva might have twos, but it definitely wasn’t her most common number.

Garven cleared his throat. “Six sixes.”

It didn’t seem to be a bluff, even if the throat clearing seemed a bit suspicious, since the movement and sound both seemed real.

However, when it got to the elf, he hesitated, just slightly. “Seven… threes ,” Nien said. The pause was so brief that Kagriss wondered if she had imagined it, but she thought that Nien paused. A pause…what could it signify?

There was no fidgeting from him, which meant he did have threes. At least one three. However, he was also hesitant, so perhaps he had a blank and equal numbers of the others. That was probably it, which meant that Kagriss could count on at least one blank from Nien.

“Eight twos.”

Kagriss had been watching Marton since her wins relied on her getting called out by Eva or her calling out Marton. Unfortunately, Marton didn’t seem to be lying. But he so confidently called out so many twos, so he probably had some twos…but if he didn’t, then he was a good liar and she was going to lose, since she was going in hard. 

“Twelve twos.”

“Bluff!” 

Almost as soon as she called out her amount, not even her number, Eva called on her bluff. Kagriss smiled. Since she had four twos, she needed eight more, which meant an average of two from everyone else. It wasn’t very much to ask… 

This time, she probably wasn’t wrong, and if she was, it didn’t matter. It was her last game anyway.

She won more if the others agreed with Eva, so she had to make the others doubt her bluff as well. Thinking quick, she pretended to look startled and guilty, making her eyes dart here and there. Of course, she didn’t overdo it since she was naturally quiet after all.

She especially kept her mouth closed.

Eva looked at her triumphantly. “Bluff. Let’s see it. Ah, but first, the disk. Everyone disagree so I get everything to myself~”

Nien laughed at that and he, like the others, made his choice with a covered disk.

With a bright smile on her face, Eva began counting the dice, starting with Kagriss’s. The moment she saw them, her smile darkened and frozen. “That…”

Kagriss smiled and said nothing, the startled expression disappearing. She had already counted, but Eva was still stuck on the first one.

She did feel a little guilty about having Eva be the one to lose to her and she’d much rather win over Marton, but that was just how the game worked. 

“Two twos and two blanks…

“One two, one blank…

“Two twos…

“One two, two blanks…

“One two, two blanks… fourteen twos total. You’ve got to be kidding me. That was a bluff with two more to spare?” Eva said. 

She could hardly believe her eyes and neither could Kagriss, really. Twelve had been the limit for reasonable odds and thirty was really iffy, even knowing what she knew. But she’d never imagined fourteen.

None of the others could believe it either. Their disks were all face up, which meant they agreed with Eva. No one other than Kagriss won.

All two hundred and fifty went to her and she stared at the bloodstone bars that now weighed down her hands. A profit of two hundred and fifty bloodstones…and in such a short amount of time too…

Kagriss had to swallow down her greed before it could flare up.

She was so lost in the bloodstone that she didn’t notice that the other players around the table had already placed in their stakes, two hundred each. By the time she realized what had happened, she was once again the center of attention.

Garven smiled thinly. “You can’t be thinking of taking our money and running, can you?”

“Can you?” Eva repeated, staring up at her, a finger hooked around her sleeve.

Kagriss stared at them, and then back at her bloodstone bars, and then back at them. If she thought about it a certain way, these bars in her hands had been free, since she earned them with the fifty bloodstones that Eva gave her.

Since Eva told her to stay, then it’s fine…right? Right? Right.

Pushing the alarm bells and warnings to the back of her mind, she placed her stake as well, picked up the cup, and began to shake.

Although she did not show it on her face, she smiled. Two blanks, two threes, one five…

———

Kagriss had already lost track of how many games she’s played. She kept count in her head—it’s just that she couldn’t bother to sum it all up. However, it was a lot.

She’d played so many games that she didn’t lose anymore outside of instances of freak luck, and she never lost alone. The worst she’s done in the last few games was losing a bit of money in a three-way break for half the prize.

After so many games of observing the others, she could read them like an open book, guessing when they’re lying and when they were telling the truth; when they bluffed and when they really did have a large amount of the number they called.

She couldn’t put it into words, but when she looked at them during the game, she just knew with a feeling that nudged at her.

The pile of bars in front of her grew slowly but surely. Her original fifty from Eva grew to hundreds, and eventually hundreds grew to thousands, gathered from the other players. Nien and Marton left, replaced by new but equally temporary players, but Garven and Eva stayed until the end. 

Finally, traffic to the Den slowed until there were more people leaving than entering. It was just the three of them at the table.

Kagriss looked out of the corner of her eye at yet another gambler leaving, looking tired and haggard, and almost certainly with a lighter bar-pouch than he had when he walked in.

“Say, what time is it? Is it morning?” She wasn’t sure, but it felt like she spent the whole night here. The Den was partially underground with vents and bellows for ventilations, so the outside sky wasn’t visible from within.”

“Na, it hasn’t been that long. Time sure passes quickly when you’re raking in the money, doesn’t it?” Eva nudged her. 

Kagriss smiled and nodded. 

It was a real smile this time that she didn’t have to consciously form, and she stroked the pile of bloodstone bars with the tip of her finger again.

“Yeah. Speaking of which, aren’t you two upset?” she asked. She’d taken almost a thousand bloodstones from each of them, probably well over and nearing two thousand for Garven, but neither of them seem particularly mad.

Eva sometimes made little verbal jabs at her, like she did just now, but she kept on playing. She even refused to take half the money that Kagriss won when offered.

“Upset? No. I came here knowing that I win or I lose. I’m the one that walked in here, so I can’t really complain if I walk out poorer, can I?” Garven said with a belly laugh. “Besides, I’m still here. I still want to take a win off of you. It’s been way too long.”

“But isn’t a thousand a lot?” she asked. After all a thousand bloodstones could last Camilla and everyone else a good few weeks. A ticket through the teleporter was seven thousand bloodstones.

She had some idea about how much Eva earned because she’d seen the rewards for C-rank commissions. They tended to be a thousand to a couple thousand in the upper end of the difficulty spectrum, while B-rank commissions went up to the tens of thousands total.

But the earned money had to be split, so it’s not like Eva got a thousand after every commission.

Eva waved it off. “I know what I’m doing, and I don’t spend what I can’t afford, if that’s what you’re worried about. Unlike what a certain dummy thinks, I do have savings, you know? It just grows slower than that dummy’s.”

“Dummy?” Kagriss asked. “No, never mind. I’m assuming it’s the same for you?” she asked Garven.

The dwarf nodded. “Same here. Smart lassy. Gambling is fine if you know your limits, of both your pouch and your ability. Hehe, I seem to have trouble with the latter! Seven threes!”

“Bluff.” Kagriss counted. “There are five total, one of them yours. Sorry.”

“Gah!”

“I think you’d be better off just telling the truth and leaving it up to luck,” Eva said. “See? I’m losing money a lot slower now.”

The dwarf glared at her. “Now look here, lassy…” and they began to bicker again. “Show some respect to your elders!”

“Hmm, and how old are you? I’m a vampire, you know?”

“Yeah, and I know a brat when I see one. I’m a hundred and twenty. I bet you’re no older than five ten-years!”

Eva winced. “Ah, you got me there…still, a hundred twenty, huh? You’re old.”

“Don’t call me old!”

Kagriss and Eva both laughed at that. The dwarf was more elderly than they expected, although looking back he certainly did have the right tone and overall feel of a wizened man at times, even if he did normally sound younger. 

“What do you do anyway?” Kagriss asked. “I’m a hunter. Just started with no quarry yet, so I guess it’s not official…”

“And hunters here too, but we do have killed. C-rank.”

The dwarf didn’t say anything. For a moment, Kagriss was worried that she might have touched upon a sore spot or a tragic past, but before she could apologize, the dwarf seemed to recover, shaking himself.

“Ah, sorry. I was wondering which job to tell you, see. But I guess I can tell you my highest earning profession, hehehe!” Garven downed a few mouthfuls of the alcohol he’d gotten. It’s been his fifth mug, yet he didn’t look any worse for wear. Not even a little tipsy, or so he claimed. “I’ll tell you. Truth is, I own a mine!”

Kagriss froze. Mines. Then she relaxed. Not all mines were like the ones that Camilla was reborn and forced to work in. Especially here in vampire territory. Even if there were necromancers, the average mage here seemed to only be able to control normal, lesser undead.

Greater undead were rare. Plus, there aren’t any of those weird undead gems around to cause trouble.

Although she spaced out a bit in her thoughts, Kagriss didn’t neglect to pay attention to Garven, but the dwarf didn’t say anything else.

“...a mine, and then?” Eva prompted him.

Garven shook his head with a secretive grin. “That’s all. But I will say that to me, the amount I lost to Missy Serious over there is not significant. If I wanted to, I could play in the back, but…” he drained the rest of the mug, “they’re too competitive. Not much fun, see, and why do anything that’s not a job that’s not fun?”

With those words, he began to pack up. When he finished, he slid off the seat and waved his empty mug goodbye, leaving just Kagriss and Eva at the table.

Kagriss looked at her stacks of bars, some which she already put away. However, the amount of the table won’t fit into her pouch, so she was going to have to exchange some of it for bars of a higher denomination. There were at least four thousand bloodstones, probably around five.

Maybe a fifth of that is from Eva.

“Congratulations. How’s your first night at the Den?” Eva asked. 

“It was… worth it. Thank you for bringing me here, although it was kind of mean for you to make me stay.”

“Heh. Well, it turned out fine in the end.”

Kagriss shrugged, neither affirming or denying Eva’s words. Although the time she spent with Eva and Garven changed her views on gambling, she was nonetheless still wary. She only had to look to Eva to see the consequences.

Like most other things, there were winners and losers. Tonight, she was the winner and Eva a loser, but who knows if that’ll change? But at the same time, it was true that because Eva brought her here, she was almost five thousand bloodstones richer than she had been when the night began.

She took out the pouch containing the rest of the bloodstone bars, the ones she already put away.

Eva chuckled. “What are you doing? Counting your spoils of war? Hm?” She looked surprised when Kagriss split off a portion and pushed it toward her. “What’s this about?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s your share. You brought me here, and some of this is your money that I got from you.”

“Oh? Is that the person you think I am, accepting back the money I lost back. Although it is a bit tempting…” Eva bit her fingernail before she shook her head. “No matter what, you did win it fair and share, but…”

She reached out and took just two of the fifty denomination bloodstones, waving them. 

“Tada~, today is my lucky day. See, I doubled my investment!”

Kagriss stared blankly at her, having some idea what Eva was talking about from context clues, but not entirely. “In...vestment?”