Truthfully, Charlie wanted nothing more than to rescue Anna immediately. However, he was no amateur prone to reckless outbursts. The casino floor was currently swarming with hundreds of eyewitnesses, including several Gods possessed by a brand of curiosity that was nothing short of a nuisance.
For the time being, he had no desire to cause a scene that could jeopardize the entire operation. Through his Senrigan, he monitored Anna's situation in real-time. As long as the girl remained unharmed, Charlie would hold his hand. But the moment a single line was crossed, he wouldn't hesitate to tear the place apart.
Besides, he wasn't the type of man who believed every problem required a violent solution.
(Let's play a little, if only for the sake of camouflage.)
Charlie realized his movements were starting to draw the gaze of the security detail. In a place like this, standing still or wandering aimlessly without touching a betting table was the equivalent of painting a bullseye on one's back.
As he made his way toward the exchange counter, a loud, grating laugh—one that felt both familiar and irritating—exploded from a corner of the hall.
"Ooh, another win! You're on fire today, Guild Master!"
"Gah ha ha ha! What did you expect? The Goddess of Fortune has always favored me! It is surely a reward for my tireless work, day and night, for the prosperity of Orario!"
Charlie glanced toward the source. There sat a man of vulgar proportions, laughing so hard the rolls of fat on his stout frame quivered.
(Royman Mardeel, huh... I thought the foul rumors about him were just slander from those who hated his policies. Turns out, the reality is much worse.)
Royman was the most powerful figure in the Guild. Corrupt, greedy, and power-hungry, he was the visual antithesis of the Elven race, who were renowned for their physical grace and elegance. His repulsive stature made him a pariah among his own kin in Orario, earning him the derisive moniker: The Guild's Pig.
The whispers that he often vanished for days at a time to wallow in the debauchery of the Entertainment District were now proven beyond a doubt.
Unwilling to waste another second looking at the man, Charlie turned away and hurried to the teller to exchange his currency for gambling tokens.
Despite his past life as a police officer—where he'd spent years raiding gambling dens and arresting the kingpins behind them—Charlie was no high roller. His knowledge was limited to basic rules and amateur tactics. Tonight, however, he didn't need sleight of hand or complex mathematics.
After collecting his tokens, he decided to seek out a game that relied purely on one thing: providence.
Luck.
That was the Development Ability Charlie had chosen upon his Level Up. It was an invisible, metaphysical force that operated outside the boundaries of logic. He decided it was time to test just how much "destiny" was willing to bend for him.
A hostess girl standing behind a red-and-black roulette wheel greeted Charlie with a practiced, professional smile.
The rules were simple: place a bet on the table and wait for the ball to stop. If it landed on the corresponding color or number, the customer would walk away with a payout based on the odds.
Without a shred of hesitation, Charlie casually tossed a single token onto the felt.
The hostess girl felt certain the young man before her didn't even know what he was betting on. She had seen this type of customer a thousand times—people down to their last few chips, surrendering everything to fate in a desperate hope to turn the tide. Reality, however, rarely favored the desperate.
Suppreing a flicker of pity for the handsome youth, she maintained her poise. She spun the wheel and released the small, faintly glowing ball. It rattled against the brass deflectors before finally dropping into a black pocket.
"A win for you, sir..."
The hostess girl dismissed it as beginner's luck as she offered her congratulations.
Charlie's expression remained flat. As if the result had already been factored into his calculations, he took his two winning tokens and immediately threw them back onto the betting layout.
"..."
The hostess girl's brow furrowed slightly.
(It's a fluke. This boy is too arrogant; he needs to learn when to walk away before it all vanishes.)
The wheel spun again. Moments later, Charlie won again.
This time, he collected eight tokens without so much as a glance, pushing the entire stack toward the next betting area.
"..."
The hostess girl went rigid. She began to feel a sense of unease; this greedy, all-or-nothing style of gambling was abnormal. Everyone knew luck had its limits, and with this style of play, losing everything was only a matter of time.
Hesitantly, she spun the wheel once more. The blur of numbers turned into a dizzying smear, mirroring the nervousness creeping into her heart. And once again, Charlie's choice was dead on. With the multipliers applied, he was now sitting on ninety-six tokens.
The hostess girl's professional smile was now frozen. In roulette, there was zero room for cheating—neither from the house nor the player. She had never seen a player this bold—or this lucky—in her entire career.
Charlie took the pile of tokens, not even bothering to count them, and with a calm, lethal motion, he placed the entire bet on a single number.
"Sir..."
Bound by professional ethics, the hostess girl should have remained silent, but she couldn't suppress the surge of curiosity blooming in her chest. Her eyes darted to the mountain of tokens now resting on one narrow spot.
"Are you truly certain you wish to wager all of this on a single number?"
At this table, the highest payout could only be achieved through the lowest probability—a suicide mission for anyone with a grain of common sense. She could already see the tragic aftermath: this young man losing everything in the blink of an eye.
"Yes, this is fine."
Charlie still held one final token in his hand as a safety net. Even if he lost this round, he was confident he could win it all back. To him, this wasn't just gambling; it was an experiment to gauge the extent to which his Luck ability could warp the odds of the wheel.
"..."
Seeing the cold, steady light in the youth's eyes, the hostess girl realized that no warning would shake his resolve. With a sharp exhale, she spun the wheel for the final time.
Red and black blurred into an abstract vortex. The light from the small ball seemed to lock the gaze of everyone surrounding the table. Seconds stretched into an eternity until the friction finally claimed the ball.
"This... how is this possible..."
"He bet everything on a single number and actually... won?!"
The hostess girl murmured under her breath, her eyes fixed on the impossible position of the ball. In all her years in the industry, she had never witnessed a phenomenon this absurd, this terrifying.
A casino staffer quickly arrived, hauling a massive tray of additional tokens. The glint of the precious metal immediately acted as a magnet, drawing the attention of the entire hall.
"Someone actually cleared that many chips from a single roulette spin?!"
"What kind of luck does that guy have?!"
"No way! Move over, I want a turn!"
"Hey, Lucky Newbie! Let me shake your hand, maybe some of it will rub off!"
Amidst the hysterical cheers of the patrons and the enthusiastic requests beginning to swarm him, Charlie remained unmoved. He ignored the cacophony as if the mountain of wealth before him were nothing more than common gravel.
With a steady stride through the heating atmosphere, Charlie began to walk away from the table toward the next gaming area.
The hostess girl could only stand there, paralyzed, watching Charlie's silhouette as it was swallowed by the crowd. A faint sense of regret began to cloud her mind.
"I didn't even ask his name... I should have asked for an autograph while I had the chance..."
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