Fair play

Finn entered the casino, and looking around, he could see people playing all kinds of games.

He was there to get a room, but with Loki's endless pestering, he decided to bet some of his money and play poker.

Weapons weren't allowed in the casino, so after hiding them in his inventory, he started walking through the casino hall.

There were a lot of tables that were full, but Finn soon noticed one table that looked a lot more glamorous as compared to the others, and it had only three out of five people playing, so he went there to sit down.

One of the waiters running around told Finn to take his mask off because it wasn't allowed to hide one's face in their establishment, so he took it off and sat down.

The three people playing all raised their eyebrows when they saw Finn sit down at their table.

One man had gray hair neatly combed to the back and blue formal wear. It wasn't quite like the suit from Earth, but it was still very well made.

Then there was a fat man with black hair and a short goatee. He had two women by his side, but they weren't playing. His clothes also looked expensive, making Finn assume that he was rich.

The last person was a woman with a red dress and a red hat. Finn found her mature charm very attractive, but she was not as beautiful as Sophie was.

"Can I join?"

Finn looked at the three people.

"We are playing high stakes, kiddo. Do you have enough?"

The old man looked at Finn with a grin.

"Hard to say. Let's start playing, and I will find out if I do."

Shrugging his shoulders, Finn smirked because he was pretty sure he had brought a lot of money with him.

"Alright. Dealer, open a new deck!"

The dealer nodded and quickly cleaned up the old cards.

A new deck was being opened in front of Finn to show him that the three people weren't cheating by using the old deck that they were playing with before he arrived.

After the cards were shuffled, all the players received their five cards.

As soon as Finn received his cards, he glanced at them, but Loki immediately told him to fold.

'Why?'

Finn tried asking, but Loki didn't share his tactic.

'Trust me and fold.'

So he folded, and this same situation happened multiple times.

The other people were betting hundreds of gold coins, but Finn kept folding his cards.

Soon the fourth round arrived, and the fat man wanted to shoo Finn away because he was starting to think that Finn didn't have enough money to play with them.

"I raise to five hundred."

Suddenly, Finn, who kept folding his hands, raised the bet to 500 out of nowhere.

This made everyone around the table look at him in surprise.

They thought that he might have been waiting for a good hand, so the woman and the fat man decided to fold.

The old man believed that Finn was bluffing, so he decided to continue playing.

The pot slowly changed into 2000 gold coins, and Finn had already put 850 of his coins inside.

'I swear, Loki, if I don't win this then I am going to have to call Sophie and tell her I am broke.'

'Don't worry. We'll win.'

Finn decided to trust Loki, and after betting all of his money, it was time to reveal the cards.

"Three jacks, sorry kid, but I win this one."

The old man smiled, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of Finn's cards, his smile withered.

"Full house."

Finn didn't know the rules of poker, nor did he know what he was talking about, but he just followed Loki's instructions and said what Loki told him to say.

"...I see. I guess luck wasn't on my side this time."

"Fufufu. It seems that you lost Robert."

The old man shook his head in disappointment, and the woman started laughing while holding her hand in front of her mouth.

"Indeed. It is your win young man. But at least I tried to play and didn't fold like someone else did."

The old man, whose name was probably Robert, looked at the woman with a smirk.

"Tactical retreat. It was a tactical retreat."

She replied while fanning herself with a red fan.

"Sure, keep telling yourself that."

While they were bickering, Finn took his haul, and he just more than doubled his money.

"Alright, let's continue."

The fat man chuckled and told the dealer to start another round.

This time everybody joined, and the total money on the table reached 6,000 gold coins.

Everyone started showing their hands, and Finn's heart was pounding because he still wasn't quite sure what he was doing or if the cards in his hand were any good.

"A pair of sixes."

Embarassed, Robert turned his cards over.

"Pair of queens, maybe next time, old man."

The woman smiled at Robert, but he just ignored her. He was trying to bluff in this round, but he ended up with the worst hand.

"Four of a kind."

The fat man turned his cards, showing four cards that had a two on them. This would normally make him the winner, but there was still one more person who didn't reveal his hand.

"Not bad. What about you, kiddo?"

Everyone looked at Finn, but he thought that he had already lost. He didn't know the value of his hand, but in his mind, nothing could beat four of a kind.

Still, he showed his hand and said what Loki told him to.

"Royal Flush."

After saying this, the three people first silently looked at his hand, and then, once they got out of the shock, their faces became filled with surprise.

"HUH?!"

The old man freaked out and stood up.

"HAHAHA!"

The woman started laughing even louder than before, not bothering to cover her mouth this time.

Both Robert and the woman were so rich that the money they had lost to Finn was pocket change to them, and they just found the fact that Finn was hitting the highest possible combinations funny.

"…"

But the fat man just sat there in silence while looking at Finn.

"You must have cheated… How?"

After a few seconds, he finally opened his mouth and immediately accused Finn of cheating.

"I didn't cheat. It was fair play."

The fat man tried to make Finn confess, but Finn was good at bluffing, so he just smiled and remained silent.

When it came down to playing poker, he was trash if it wasn't for Loki, but pretending not to be cheating was Finn's specialty.

"Stop being salty, Joe. You lost, so accept it."

After laughing her heart out, the woman looked at the fat man, who was called Joe and smiled at him.

When Finn heard that name, he realized something.

"Joe? As in, the man who owns this place?"

Finn immediately asked to confirm his suspicions.

"That's right."

Joe nodded, and Finn started to feel bad about scamming him when he wanted to ask for a room.

"Actually, I wanted to buy a room for the night, but seeing how much fun you were having playing this game, I decided to join."

Finn quickly cooked up a lie and decided to ask for a room, hoping that Joe wouldn't make him leave.

"You want a room? One night is one hundred gold coins."

"…"

After hearing the room's price from Joe, Finn realized that he would have been screwed if he didn't win the money from the poker match.

He planned to stay for seven days, so he would have to pay 700 coins, plus he needed money for the slave auction.

"Then I would like one, please."

Finn asked for it, but he thought that Joe wouldn't give it to him because he had lost money to him.

"Alright, Bill, send this man to an empty room."

Joe looked at one of the waiters, and the waiter nodded in response.

Finn started to get up, but the woman stopped him by grabbing his hand.

"Aren't you going to play a little bit more?"

This made Finn pause, and he asked Loki.

After getting the response that Loki still wanted to play more, he nodded and sat back down.

So Joe then told the waiter to ignore what he had said before and continue what he was doing.

The dealer started dealing cards again, and they all started playing.

---

"I am out. I don't want to lose any more money."

The old man, Robert, decided to throw in the towel and looked at Finn, whose previous small pile of gold had managed to turn into a mountain.

The woman, who introduced herself to Finn as Scarlett, and Joe had long given up on playing against Finn because they knew that he must be cheating, but they just didn't know how.

Loki had been doing two things.

Number one was card counting. It wasn't quite the same as the one in blackjack, where you remember the cards that have already appeared.

Instead, in a very simplified way of explaining it, it is mathematically calculating the chances of you hitting a good combo and then deciding to keep the hand or fold it based on those calculations.

Number two was his luck. Because he was inside Finn's consciousness, Finn received a small luck boost when he was gambling.

It wasn't an amount where he would win every game, but with this small luck boost and card counting technique, Finn quickly managed to win most of his rounds.

Finn's 900 gold coins, which he had entered Leviathan with, had managed to turn into 20.000 gold coins in one night.

This was a staggering amount that he would normally never be able to acquire, but luckily for him, he had met some very powerful people and played poker with them.

The three people that Finn had played with asked him what his technique was, and because he didn't plan to gamble anymore, he decided to tell them what card counting was.

He also told them because he was afraid that they would send assassins to kill him if he kept it a secret.

Finn didn't know who the old man, Robert, or the woman, Scarlett, were, but if they could afford to lose that much money, their backgrounds must have been important.

And Joe was the owner of the biggest casino in the city, so he was just losing money that he had scammed from someone else.

All three of them thanked Finn for sharing his technique, and he left the table to check his room out.

The room looked like a five-star hotel room, and it had a huge bed that Finn jumped on because he was starting to get really tired.

Luckily for him, nobody tried to assassinate him during the night, and with the casino's great security measures, he could sleep while knowing he was safe.

---

Upon waking up, Finn still had six more days before the slave auction would begin, so he planned on doing a quest here in Leviathan.

He only knew how to trigger this quest and what the rewards were, so he was looking forward to finding out what the quest would make him do.

Finn needed two things for the auction: money and influence. He already had a lot of money, so now he was planning on doing a quest to gain some infamy in this city.

Leaving his room and the casino soon after, Finn was met with a bustling street of gangsters and dirty common people that were just trying to get by.

Once he was outside, he put his mask, which looked like a black skull, on and headed towards a certain bar in the city.

After walking through the city for a little while, he finally arrived in front of the bar called Drowned Fish, and he could hear shouts and curses inside the bar.

CRACK THUD

He suddenly heard a loud crash that sounded like a chair breaking, and before he could enter, he had to step to the side because someone was flying out the door.

When the person rolled onto the street, the doors remained open, so Finn checked the situation inside.

"You dirty scum! Today we will show you who is stronger once and for all!"

"That's rich coming from you, you inbred bastards. Shut your mouth and kiss my fist!"

Hearing the curses and seeing two sides of gangsters fighting each other, a smile bloomed on Finn's face.

"Yep. This is the right place. It's time for me to have some fun as well."

Finn cracked his knuckles and rushed inside the bar.