Read Novel Full Chapter 424: Completely Fooled
Chapter 424: Chapter 424: Completely Fooled
Chapter 424 – Completely Fooled
Cassius was completely stunned. But his confusion only deepened when he looked around and finally noticed a thin, almost invisible barrier tearing itself apart around him.
When the barrier disappeared, nothing had changed.
He was still sitting in the alley, people were still walking through the street, and none of them seemed any wiser about what had just happened.
Then Cassius looked at his hand, his brows slowly furrowed.
He wasn’t making the rock he had seen only moments ago.
His hand was making scissors.
"What in the world is this?" he whispered, completely taken aback. "How did I even lose?"
Because it didn’t make sense. While flipping the Coin of Maybe, Cassius had made two statements, each with a different outcome.
The first was that he would choose scissors and win, and he had placed that statement on heads.
The second was that he would choose paper and tie with Gambler, and he had placed that statement on tails.
Whichever side the coin landed on, Cassius was not supposed to lose.
Yet he had.
And even stranger, at the moment of his defeat, Cassius had clearly seen his own hand making rock.
Now it was scissors.
How?
[Wow. He truly got you.] Tysche said, sounding almost impressed. [He manipulated your perception.]
"What?"
[Your perception, darling. His power seems to belong to the domain of illusions, or something similar.] Lady Luck explained. [The Coin landed on heads, which gave you an extremely high probability of winning. And you did choose scissors. What Gambler changed was not your hand, nor the Coin. He changed what you saw.]
Cassius looked down at his fingers again.
Scissors.
"But how does that make me lose? If I actually chose scissors, then I should have won."
[Because you believed you had lost.] Ananke said, and Cassius’s expression slowly changed. [Think about the statement you made. You established that choosing scissors meant victory. Therefore, the moment you looked at your own hand and saw rock instead, what conclusion did you reach?]
Cassius went silent, already knowing the answer.
[You see now?] Ananke continued. [He did not need to change reality. He only needed to make you misunderstand it.]
[And the Coin of Maybe depends heavily on perception, darling.] Tysche added. [The moment you became convinced that you had failed the condition for victory, your own perception interfered with the Blessing’s effect. That’s why it told you that you had been fooled, not that you had simply lost.]
Cassius said nothing for several seconds as the entire sequence replayed inside his mind, and the more he understood, the more disturbing it became.
Someone had manipulated his perception so completely that Cassius had looked directly at his own hand and seen something that had never been there.
Worse, he hadn’t even realized he was inside an illusion.
"He wasn’t real, was he?" Cassius finally whispered, his voice turning cold.
[He wasn’t.] Ananke replied. [I don’t know exactly how his power works, but the Gambler you were interacting with was not real in the same sense that you are. Whatever stood before you disappeared without leaving anything behind for us to track.]
[I am more surprised by how quickly he understood the fundamental nature of the Coin of Maybe.] Tysche whispered. [He understood that whatever outcome you wanted depended on the side of the Coin it landed upon. Since he probably couldn’t interfere with the Coin itself, he interfered with the other part of the Blessing he could reach.]
"Me." Cassius said.
[Exactly.]
However, there was still something bothering him. "But why rock?" He asked.
[What?] Tysche said.
"Why did he make me see rock instead of paper?" Cassius asked. "If all he needed was for me to believe I had lost, why specifically make me see rock?"
Silence followed his words, before Cassius remembered Gambler’s hand: paper.
"Maybe because he chose paper himself..." The moment those words left his mouth, something clicked. Cassius raised a hand toward his lips, his eyes narrowing.
"Wait." He whispered, "What if he chose paper on purpose because he already understood the probability created by my statement? If a side of the coin meant I would win, and he chose paper, then the Coin would push the outcome toward the one choice that could defeat him..."
[...scissors.] Ananke finished.
Cassius nodded slowly. "And once he knew the Coin would push me toward scissors, he knew exactly what he needed to make me see."
[Rock.] Tysche now said.
For a moment, even the Goddess of Luck and Fortune had nothing more to add.
Gambler had not overcome the Coin of Maybe. He had understood how it worked, predicted what it would make Cassius do, and then used Cassius himself to turn its result against him.
All of this happened in less than 3 minutes. The fact that the man understood all of this in such a short amount of time, and against Cassius himself, spoke volumes about his competence.
But no matter how good he was, the worst thing the man could have done was to steal the gift Cassius’s grandmother had given him.
That was literally overstepping any kind of boundaries, and Cassius did not forgive such kind of actions.
"If you can’t track him down," he said, standing up, his eyes dead cold, the temperature around revolting to his silent anger, "then you could at least track my earring, Queen. It’s my possession. You must have a way."
Both goddesses understood that their Blessed was angry, and rightfully so.
[I do.] Queen said, her eyes churning with threads of fate. [I will guide you towards him.]
Cassius took a deep breath, released it, and the air in front of him caught fire. He cracked his head, "Let’s catch the bloody cat, shall we?"
...
’Hahahahah! Loki’s Stinky Cock, that was so easy!’ Swindler burst into laughter as he walked among the crowd, ignoring the strange stares he was receiving, looking at the beautiful earring in his hand, ’that boy Cassius has truly let down his guard. How could he do that? How Aeron had lost to him surprises me still. Whew, I enjoyed the small game. Still...’
He grinned, his brown eyes glowing, ’a power related to probability? This man is truly unfair, isn’t he? But probability is a dangerous power because anyone smart enough can manipulate it.’
Smart enough like him, of course. One needed a great deal of intelligence to be a good swindler like Swindler.
And it was that same intelligence that told him, with a certain certainty, that the likely likelihood he would regret deeply if he kept this earring was...very high.
’There are things you steal and keep. And there are other things you steal, and send them away. Knowing the difference between the two is a great skill for a Swindler. Right, Loki?’
[I have taught you well, HAHAHAH! My cock is tingling with Joy! With Joy, I say, you little fucker!]
’You yourself are the fucker. I am actually a great Swindler.’
[I have told you that you will only be a great Swindler if you do it to a god.] Loki grinned, [But you are on a great path. Still, boy, on my majestic cock I pledge, you better give away that earring fast. The Desdemona boy is tracking it.]
’Hahaha, I know.’ Swindler then looked around the place, and noticed he had arrived at a rather calm space with many benches lined up.
There was a fountain made of pink water that went in and out of a sculpture of a dolphin.
There, just face to face with the fountain, his eyes landed on two young women sitting side by side, eating ice cream.
Swindler came up with a sudden idea, and walked towards them without much hesitation.
Before he was even close, the two women snapped their heads towards him.
One of them had a pixie-like hairstyle, with eyes that looked like mirrors polished into eyes, cold and sharp. Her face was immediately wary, looking at him.
Then there was the other, who was a silver-haired and silver-eyed girl but with a face and look so innocent and pure that Swindler was taken aback for a brief instant.
Only for a brief instant, though.
Ignoring their wary expressions, he got close enough to the two of them, and kneeled down, smiling, as if proposing.
The mirror girl instantly began to hiss.
"I am sorry to disturb you, beautiful ladies." Swindler said, "but I have seen you from afar, and couldn’t help but be struck by your beauty."
Now he was talking only to the silver woman, finding her more pleasing to him.
"What do you want?" The voice was sharp, "and who are you? Can’t you see we are busy?"
"Uh...Naty calm down." The silver girl whispered nervously to her friend, "Don’t be so rude."
"Rude? Me? He is the one being rude, Kei!"
"But...but..."
"No but!" The mirror girl, Naty, Swindler assumed, snapped her head towards him and hissed, "Go away! If you want our number or anything like that, we won’t give it to you!"
"Loki’s cock, who cares about your number, ugly woman." Swindler waved at her lazily, then turned to the one he assumed was called Kei, the silver woman, "I am only here for you, and to give you this."
He reached out and gave Kei the red earring.
"I will confess, sweetie, that I have stolen this earring." He said with an earnest face, "I have stolen it because I knew that someone more deserving than that bastard would come to me. And here you are. It must be fate."
He tried to place the earring inside her hand, but the girl named Naty pointed a dagger made of mirror at him, her eyes clearly threatening.
"Don’t you dare." She said, while Kei was looking at him as if he was very strange.
Swindler laughed, amused. Naty was so weak he could kill her in a heartbeat, but he wouldn’t.
Instead, he simply dangled the earring in front of Kei,
"Take this earring." He said, "It will do you more good than him, I am sure. His bloodline is already strong enough. I hate greedy bastards."
"A stolen artifact?" The one called Naty hissed again, and Swindler ignored her. He only looked at the sweetie Kei.
"I...can’t." Kei said, shaking her head, "it’s very bad to steal, sir! You must give it back!"
"Give it back? How? I can’t." Swindler said, "the man might actually kill me."
’Not like he has the power to do it.’
"Then go fucking die elsewhere!" Naty said, pushing him with her leg.
Swindler was very tempted to break it, but the sweetie Kei was here. He, somehow, wanted to make a good impression.
[By giving a stolen artifact? You fucker! Hahahah] Loki was dying of laughter, thinking that he had the best Blessed in the world.
"Oh...die? Then, uh, I will give it back to him." Kei nodded cutely, so cutely that Swindler wanted to pat her head, "tell me...tell me who it belongs to and I will give it back. But stealing is really bad, sir. Really, really bad!"
Naty was looking at her friend as if she was the greatest fool to ever exist. But Swindler was looking at her like she was an angel.
He would have wished to stay longer at that instant, just to talk a bit more to Kei who looked fun, but he could feel a danger coming at him.
So he smiled, bowed down to sweetie Kei, took back the earring, and said,
"No, forget about it, sweetie Kei." Swindler said, and he threw the earring far away with all his strength, "Let the little boy run behind the thing like a dog."
Then without leaving them any time to gather themselves, his body began to disappear as if he was nothing but an illusion,
"Now, now, now..."
He winked at Sweetie Kei.
"Next time, on Loki’s tiny cock I pledge, I will give you something I have not stolen, alright, sweetie Kei? If I see you ever again, that is."
The two women blinked, and found the man was gone.
Keisha and Natalia stared at the empty space for a moment, then looked at each other, before Natalia’s face twisted.
"Who the fuck was that?!"
—End of Chapter 424—