Chapter 066

Sitting in his study, which also served as his go-to drawing room, Leon was carefully reproducing the map he and Latia had completed when a knock sounded at the door.

*tok* *tok* *tok*

"Hmmm...it's open..." responded Leon, prompting the person who had knocked to open the door, revealing it to be a petite woman with golden-blonde hair, bright blue eyes, and a delicate face framed by pigtails. She also had pointed elven ears and, as a member of Felt's squad, sported an outfit reminiscent of a shinobi's but green instead of black, as everyone in the team had a color code.

"Oh, Linkle...what can I do for you...?" asked Leon, surprised and a little tense as the elven girl before him wasn't from a game he had personally played but a relatively 'infamous' Source Filmmaker video he had seen in his previous life.

Pressing the tips of her index fingers together and looking nervous, Linkle responded, "I got a little carried away gambling at the local tavern...could I perhaps get another advance on my salary? I promise to repay you..."

Closing his eyes and exhaling through his nose, Leon remarked, "It hasn't even been three weeks since you've been summoned and this is the third time you're asking. How much are you short this time...?"

"Thirteen gold, nine silver, and fifteen copper..." replied Linkle, turning her head to avoid Leon's deadpan stare. Whenever she sought him out, she was in even greater debt than the time before, so he couldn't help feeling at least a little exasperated.

"Why do you keep gambling...?" asked Leon.

"Because it's fun and exciting...?" replied Linkle, tilting her head to the side as she asked, "Does Lord Leon not gamble?"

"I used to be pretty good at it in my previous life, but-"

Before Leon could finish, Linkle practically teleported across the room, leaning over his desk with her hands on its edge as she exclaimed, "Then let's play a game! We'll play five rounds of Evens and Odds! If I win, you'll cover all my current debts! If you win, I'll, uh..."

"I've told you before, but your Luck stat is terrible..." said Leon. "But, sure. If you win, I'll cover your debts. And since it's why you came here, I'll also cover your debts if you lose, but with double the usual repayment..."

Swallowing nervously but with a stubborn and fiery resolution in her eyes, Linkle asserted, "I won't lose...!" before pulling out a cup and a set of dice she always carried on her person. Then, slamming the cup opening down with the die inside, she shouted, "Evens...!"

"Mhmmm..." responded Leon, half-turning in his chair to rest his elbow on the desk and his cheek atop his knuckles.

Removing the cup, Linkle carefully counted their combined value before throwing both hands into the air, shouting, "I won...!"

"Now you just need to win two more..." remarked Leon, unconcerned by the outcome of the first die roll. He also didn't mind if Linkle came out the penultimate victor, but with a unique Skill like [Terrible Fate], ensuring her Luck scaled painfully slow compared to her other stats, the odds weren't in her favor. After all, Luck was his highest stat...

As she had won the second turnover as well, Linkle was over the moon with excitement until she performed the third, fourth, and fifth turnover, losing all three in sequence.

Falling onto her hands and knees in an orz pose, a gloomy cloud hung over Linkle's head as she asked herself, "How could I lose after winning the first two turnovers? It doesn't make any sense..."

"Your luck is 218..." remarked Leon. "How can you expect to compete with my 3,449?"

Leaving Leon speechless, Linkle bounced back like a spring, slamming her hands on the table with a borderline-zealous look as she exclaimed, "Best of seven! Double or nothing...!"

"Knock yourself out..." said Leon, watching in awe as Linkle won the first turnover, getting super psyched before invariably losing the second and becoming despondent. This process repeated a total of nine times and nearly went into a tenth before Leon courteously pointed out, "You realize that if we were betting with money, you'd be up to 4,864 gold, right? Lose the next one, and you're up to 9,728..."

Hearing Leon's words, Linkle's eyes and mouth opened wide, the cup and die dropping from her hands and clattering across the desk and onto the floor.

Straightening his chair, placing his elbows on the desk, and linking his fingers, Leon remarked, "Lucky for you, we weren't gambling with money on the line. However, this incident has taught me you have little to no self-control. As such, I'm prohibiting you from gambling in town until you have paid me what you owe..."

Though she was initially relieved to hear Leon mention they hadn't been gambling with money, Linkle spent a few seconds counting on her fingers and doing math, her expression paling when she realized how much she owed and how long it would take her to 'repay' Leon. The proposition she made in the past was an hour of sex to cover one gold, which was already heavily stacked in her favor, but even with that, it would take more than a year, maybe even two, for her to break even...

Less concerned about the sex than the fact she wouldn't be allowed to gamble, Linkle, sporting a wry smile and with her right brow twitching, tentatively asked, "D-Double or nothing...?" while Leon stared at her with the stoniest expression he possessed.

...

..

.

With three weeks passing without a single clue as to how they could advance to the Seventh Floor, Leon was investigating the ruins of a large, incredibly dilapidated tower in the hope of discovering something to point them in the proper direction. He had thought he had made a breakthrough a week prior when he found a colony of bipedal felines capable of speech, known as Palico, but while they had passed down numerous legends and provided great insight about the Sixth Floor, they knew nothing about the Guardian or the method to unlock the Seventh.

"Think this could be a clue...?" asked Cynthia, standing with her arms crossed in front of a mural depicting what Leon recognized as a White and Crimson Fatalis battling one another alongside various monsters. As for why Cynthia was with him, Leon could argue it was because she was an archeologist, but no one would believe him, even if it 'was' the reason he had approached her.

"Hmmm..."

Positioning himself behind the buxom blonde, Leon unhesitantly wrapped his arms around her, caressing her stomach and nestling his bulge against her plump and pliant ass as he supposed, "It's certainly possible...but this looks like a war. The Fourth Floor taught us that eliminating the source of monsters could open the way to the next, but that doesn't fit the 'setting' of Monster Hunter games...not any that I've played, at least..."

"What is the usual setting...?" asked Cynthia, not minding that Leon had slipped his hand under the shirt, caressing her abdomen directly. Rather, she relished it...

"Hmmm...usually you're a new Hunter that has just arrived in a small town or unique locale where a particularly dangerous monster has appeared, or an unexplained phenomenon was occurring..." explained Leon. "You then have to hunt said monster, which is usually an Elder Dragon, or locate the source of the strange phenomenon, which is also usually an Elder Dragon, and eliminate it..."

"Then it sounds like we need to find and eliminate these Elder Dragons..." mused Cynthia, reaching up to hook her hand around Leon's head as he buried his face into her neck and kissed beneath her ear.

"I reached the same conclusion a while back," replied Leon, removing his face from the furry choker around Cynthia's next to explain, "The problem with that is that Latia and I have mapped out just about everything visible above ground, and the only Elder Dragon we've discovered is something called a Jhen Mohran, minding its own business in the desert. I thought it would be easy since they usually affect the weather, but even with Mana Radar, I mostly find things like Uragaan, Anjanath, and Diablos. The rarest thing I found was a Zinogre, but while its appearance makes the Kirin look like a toy horse, it's not an Elder..."

"It's a shame they resist training and can't be captured with Pokeballs..." said Cynthia, placing her hand over Leon's and guiding his fingertips to the waistband of her pants. "With their ability to endure otherwise lethal blows, they would have made powerful frontline forces..."

"Mordred suggested something similar, but I shot it down since we don't have the manpower to attempt such a project," contended Leon, slipping his hand down Cynthia's pants and into the fabric of her panties to gently caress her slit.

"Besides..." added Leon. "They may be tough now, but if they're unable to grow, they would eventually become fodder on the higher Floors. Most of the Crimson Valkyries can solo them if the situation requires, and they will only get stronger...not to mention that a 45-100kg person is a lot easier to house and feed than a five to ten-ton wyvern..."

"I don't know..." mused Cynthia, her voice gaining a sensual drawl as she licked her lips, turned her head to face him, and hummed, "My appetite is pretty big..." before kissing him. Her Latios, whom she had named Mateo, was observing with Latia from a few meters away, but as he had already been thoroughly 'broken' by her, he didn't direct any hate or envy toward Leon. Instead, he covered his mouth with his paw to stifle a yawn before turning to his sister and telepathically asking if she wanted to look around and play tag. Unfortunately, Latia has always been a voyeur, so she chose to stick around and observe as Leon and Cynthia went from making out to making love using the stone mural as support...

...

..

.

After returning to the manor and parting ways with Cynthia at her room, Leon sent Latia to theirs so she could rest for a few hours before they set out to accompany the Crimson Valkyrie Squad during the day. As for him, he made his way over to his study to continue detailing his map. The Sixth Floor was roughly the size of Australia, a factoid Leon found humorous, so while mapping the area with Latia had only taken a few days, he had been working on the paper map for more than sixty hours across the past three weeks.

'At least my [Drawing] and [Cartography] Skills are improving...' thought Leon, carefully detailing the faint silhouettes of trees from an aerial point of view before lightly staining the area green using cotton swabs. Doing so might seem extra, but color-coding different terrain types and denoting things like elevation and depth made it easier for people to read and more reliable for planning hunts.

*tok* *tok* *tok*

'Every single time...' thought Leon, setting aside his pen, donning a smile, and calling out, "It's open..." in a poised tone with his hands resting and fingers linked atop his desk.

Seeing that the person who had knocked was Miyako, offering a curt, "Excuse me..." as she entered the room, Leon raised his right brow and asked, "Did something happen? You're about four and a half hours early for your usual shift..."

Approaching Leon's desk with her eyes closed and hands folded over her lap, Miyako stopped roughly a meter away, opened her eyes, and dropped a veritable bomb by stating, "Yamato sent me to inform you that we have discovered a missile silo and what we believe to be sixteen thermonuclear warheads..."

Opening his mouth but failing to find the words to express his shock, Leon was left wholly unprepared when Miyako closed her eyes, bowed steeply, and appended, "And we are ashamed to report that one of them has gone missing..."

'You've got to be fucking shitting me...'

....

..

.