Harassing Thief Girl Chapter 60

It's a Gamble

“Fufufufu. I'll take the pot this time.”
“Hmm, I'm in deep already.”
“I will give up on getting rich quick.”
“It's a strange game, but I should have a 1 in six chance of getting it.”
“Nya! I will bet one as well nya.”

Ellis was teaching her four companions what is said to be the ultimate gambling game: Tehonbiki–the simplified version.
In a nutsh.e.l.l, it was actually a pretty simple game where the child just had to match the number of the parent.
The rules are as follows.

Each player has a hand with numbers from 1 to 6. Parents have a set of cards with a different appearance from the players that also ranges from 1 to 6. Parents must display their hands to the players in order to confirm the hand. Parents then declares the minimum bet and sets up the table.

You are now ready to play.

The parent chooses one number from their hand, places it face down in front while covering it up with a special handkerchief. The card hidden underneath the handkerchief is referred to as the ‘landmark.' The child picks up to 3 cards from their own hand and places them down in front of them along with the amount they are betting. The payout is six times if you place down one card, three times if you place down two, and two times if you place down three. The parent is to set the revealed landmark to the side at the ‘s...o...b..ard' in order to serve as a record for the parent's history before retrieving a replacement card from the deck. The parent is meant to plan and adjust their choice of landmarks per hand rather than blindly picking one at random. The s...o...b..ard is meant to a.s.sist the parent in planning which card they put out while helping them avoid developing some form of pattern. Only when one of the cards the child has placed down matches the revealed landmark will a child reveal their card. Any non-matching cards remain face down. If there is a hit, the parent immediately pays the dividend to the child while gathering the bets made by everyone else.
※ 10% of all winnings are taken as part of a player's fee. This rule is unnecessary in the event that the parent wins the hand. This gives the parent a little extra elbow room and incentive to try and trick all the players. One set consists of six games. Repeat this. Before beginning the second set, a parent is to declare if this is to be their last set. This is to prevent any parents from running away while they are ahead. Because of this rule, the last set before a winning parent retires can become quite chaotic. However, if a parent declares that it will be their last set, then that parent will be terminated after the last six games are finished.

The point of the game is for the children to try and read the parent's habits while the parents are to try and misdirect the children.
The parent can choose to select the same number twice or even three times in a row, but being able to hide the fact that you are doing so is difficult for most people to hide.
Still, if the parent is good at what they do, then they are able to completely control the flow of the game.
There is an ante that the child must put up once the game starts that is separate from their wager. Usually, this money is left unattended, but there are two cases where the parent can collect the antes as a fee.
The first is in the event of an “All Out.”
This is when no child was able to get a hit off of the landmark. At that time, the parent is able to collect the antes along with the wagers.
The second is in the event of a “Bad friend.”
This is when two players who put forward three bets each, or three players with two bets each put forward an out of the way complimentary hand. If the parent suspects that there is a case of children working together in such a way, they may ask to have the players in question reveal their cards. Should the players indeed have complimentary hands, then the hit is rendered invalid, and the parent gathers the bets along with the players' antes. For example, if the landmark it is revealed that one child placed down the numbers ‘1', ‘2', and ‘3' while another player placed down a ‘4', ‘5', and ‘6', then the hit would be declared invalid and their antes gathered.
This is a measure against any players who might coordinate to try and avoid an All Out in the worst case. It also acts as a way for each child to remain vigilant of other children giving the game another factor to keep in mind.
Ellis named this game “Warren's Numbers.”¹

Another game uses two dice: one red and one white. It is meant to be a combination of street dice² and roulette.
In this game there are no parent or children, and the dealers serve as the shop.

The dealer would roll two dice inside a cup and place the cup over the two dice so that the players would be unable to see the results. The customer can first bet on up to three options for what the red die landed on. One guess has a six times payout, two guesses has three, and three guesses has two. In addition, the players are able to make a bet on what the white die landed on as well using the same number of guesses that they had used for the red die. If they get both dice correct with one guess then they get a 36 times payout, two guesses means 18 times payout, and etc. At the end, the dealer reveals the dice and collects the bets while distributing the payouts. Ten percent of winnings are collected as a gambling fee just like with Warren Numbers.

This game would go by the name Warren Dice.

Thus Ellis had developed two different games for the nightclub. For now, two of each game would be set up with the possibility for growth depending on how things played out.
Warren Dice was an easy game to pick up and there was little to the game other than luck.
Warren Numbers was much more compet.i.tive. If they could get a good parent to run the table, then men who hate to lose would come forth in droves. Ellis licked her lips just thinking about all the money she would get from the game fees.

While acting as the parents for Numbers, the habits of the four came out.
It might be said to be as expected, but Reeve is able to plan out her moves. It was almost impossible for Ellis to accurately read her.
Frau had the habit of starting with low numbers and then gradually working her way up.
Claire was slightly more complicated tending to constantly switch off between odd and even numbers. When she put forward two consecutive numbers, she tended to have the next number be consecutive as well.
Katie was just out of the question. For a member of the Thieves Guild, she wasn't able to lie to save her life, and sometimes she would mouth the number she was choosing as she was placing the handkerchief over top of it.
Ellis informed each of them of their habits to have them work on it in the future because from now on, they would be teaching these games to the members of the Adventurer's Guild and Workshop Guild who would end up being the nightclub's main visitors.
Warren Numbers would be handled by Reeve, the girl who had learned all sorts of techniques due to the hobbies had by her grandfather. Claire, who was cable of learning from her losses, would be a.s.sisting her.

It was decided that Frau would be handling Warren Dice mostly due to her own frustration and indignation at having been so utterly bested by Reeve at Numbers. Katie would be a.s.sisting her since even though she was completely unable to do anything else, she could still roll the dice.

“Well then, let's get started right away.”
Ellis, Frau, and Katie headed towards the Adventurer's Guild while Reeve and Claire left for the Workshop Guild.
While they were there, Reeve and Claire were also put in charge of ordering more dice and the slates which would be used in place of paper cards.
The Thieves Guild would end up learning both games even if they were left alone, and the Merchant Guild would be a.s.sisting in running the nightclub which meant that they would pick up the rules as they were taking all the money from the Adventurer's Guild and Workshop Guild guys.

At dinner, the girls gathered back together and talked about the adventurers they had grabbed before they could jump to the labyrinth and about the large amount of  money they had put out as advance payments to the Workshop Guild.

Meanwhile, the results of the Pi-tan ability synthesis experiments were broken down.
As part of the conclusion, it was deemed that experimentation would be slow and difficult from now on since none of them were able to eat armor or weapons other than Pi-tan. This killed every idea Katie had tried to put forth.
The first result showed that after Pi-tan ate a piece of equipment that had Exorcism placed on it, it did not matter whether he was given another piece of equipment with Flying Swallow, Stupor, or another piece of equipment with Inhalation, or Purification, the end result was always Exorcism. As a result, even with combined abilities it was ruled that an item can only have one command type ability and one autonomous type one.
As a secondary result in this experiment, it was discovered that the same ability applied to different parts of armor whether they be armor for the body, arms, or feet exhibit different effects. For example, the hero's equipment Resistance could now be applied to gauntlets and boots.
The results were as followed:
Resistance guantlets – Impossible to restrain. Required MP: 0 Autonomous type.
Resistance greaves – Poison immunity. Required MP: 0 Autonomous type.
Resistance half plate armor – Reduces medical damage by 10. Required MP: 0 Autonomous type.
Earth gauntlet – Physical damage reduction of 2. The opponent cannot repel wearer's attacks. Required MP: 0 Autonomous type.
Earth boots – Physical damage reduction of 2. Opponent is unable to knock the wearer over. Required MP: 0 Autonomous type.
Earth plate armor – Physical damage reduction of 2. 25% chance to completely invalidate the opponent's attack. Required MP: 0 Autonomous type.

And then today's featured item. Somehow, Resistance and Earth had been an exception to the previous rules and Pi-tan's synthesis of the two abilities was successful–perhaps because of the similarities and natural cohesion of the abilities.
The name of this new ability was Interception.

Interception gauntlet – Physical damage reduction of 3. Impossible to restrain. The opponent is unable to repel the wearer's attacks. Required MP: 0 Autonomous type.
Interception boots – Physical damage reduction of 3. Immune to poison. Opponent is unable to knock the wearer over. Required MP: 0. Autonomous type.
Interception plate armor – Physical damage reduction of 4. Magic reduction of 10. 25% chance to completely nullify an opponent's attack. Required MP: 0. Autonomous type.

With the new equipment, the whole party was able to acquire a sum total of 10 physical damage reduction.
Unfortunately, Katie's claws seemed to count as weapons, so Interception could not be copied to them.
As a matter of fact, Interception could not be equipped to leather armor at all, so it ended up becoming a Frau exclusive ability.
She now was able to reduce physical damage by 20, reduce magical damage by 10, and that wasn't including her ability to straight nullify one out of every four attacks.
It was almost impossible to kill this glamorous beauty.

One other eye-catching ability was the combination of Berserker and Splendor.³
The resulting combination came out as a new ability called Mad G.o.d.
Mad G.o.d estoc – Increase physical damage twenty fold. For a certain period of time, there is a 25% chance that an attack from this blade will cause instant death. Necessary MP per attack: 20. Command word: {Lunatic}.

If you are hit by this weapon, you will almost certainly die.
If anyone other than Ellis were to use this weapon, they would almost certainly die.
Please, keep out of reach from children.

1. Tehonbiki is a complicated game, and the fact that it is hard to look up because it's a j.a.panese poker game doesn't help. For those who don't know, gambling for money is illegal in j.a.pan which made some of the information on Tehonbiki hard to find.

2. The actual j.a.panese name for this is Saihonbiki. I couldn't find out much about the specific game's rules, but I'm pretty sure it's referring to a dice game where the dealer rolls the dice in a cup and you guess whether the total will be even or odd.

3. I don't remember the ability ‘splendor' being in the story. It might be a new ability never mentioned before, or I might have just missed it and forget to add it to the magical ability sheet. Either way, I can guess what it does based on what it synthesizes into.