Ultimate Level 1

“Sir, do I need to change coins into tokens?” Max asked as the employee and his partner collected losses and handed out the winnings.

“You do, sir. You notice everyone has a different color token. That is to help keep down problems of who bet what. How much would you like to trade for?”

Yawning again, Max stretched.

“I’m tired, and I came here with a limit. If I don't try something stupid, I’ll never get enough money to fix this eye.”

Everyone around him chuckled at his statement, words spoken by many fools before they lost everything.

“How many coins would you like to exchange?”

Max reached into his storage and pulled out a coin purse. He brought out five coins and set them on the table.

Whispers and murmurs came from everyone around him as both workers glanced at him and the coins.

“Five tokens, please, one for each.”

“Are you sure, sir?”

Max nodded, ignoring the expressions from both employees and the patrons he could sense facing him.

The man nodded, took the coins, deposited them in a box, and handed Max the same red-colored token he had stacked before him, but each was marked with gold etching.

“Are you sure about this?” the elf asked, leaning in close.

Bobbing his head, Max put one on yellow and smiled. “I got nothing left if I ever want to get my eye fixed. Besides, it’s been a long week and I’m ready to turn in.”

The wheel started turning, and the elf stared at Max. He hadn’t bet yet, and Max could see him struggling to decide what to do.

“No bets!”

Everyone watched the wheel, and others had gathered around, waiting to see what would happen.

Max knew he would lose now. It was going to come up blue fifty-one.

“Blue Fifty-one!”

Max winced, and everyone around him groaned.

The older elf sighed and shook his head but said nothing.

Two wins in a row followed. Six gold tokens sat before him, and Max grinned like he was having the most incredible time of his life.

“You should stop… I mean, you just won a gold coin…”

“Would you stop?” Max asked the elf and watched as the man grimaced, shaking his head from side to side.

“That’s a good point,” he finally stated and laughed. “No… I wouldn’t.”

The wheel started, and Max glanced up at the clock. “Oh man, I need to head to bed. I can barely keep my eyes open.”

Picking up a token, he held it out over the board of all the numbers and watched the wheel.

Everyone watched him, and Max heard the older elf begin to say something before stopping himself.

He counted the numbers, knew where it would come, and then bet wrong.

“No more bets!” the dealer cried out, his voice shaky at the sight of a gold token on the numbers.

Time stretched as people gathered around to see the fool betting gold coins.

“Yellow Twenty-two!” the man cried out happily.

Groans erupted around Max, and people muttered about the idiot losing a fortune.

“Damn, that was not what I had hoped for,” Max said, playing the role as best he could.

He looked at the elf who just sat there, his mouth moving and no words coming.

The wheel started again, and Max felt the crowd still around him.

He placed another loser and heard them groan again.

The wheel was his. Every time, he knew the correct number. Every time, he intentionally chose wrong.

“Son, stop! Please, you’re killing me. If you want to lose money this bad, just throw it in the street or, better yet, use it to have some fun with some women or men, but…”

Max saw the older elf falling apart. Max was down to two gold coins. He had thrown away a fortune by any standards.

The wheel started, and Max sighed.

“Go big or go home my dad always said.”

Saying that, he slid a gold coin on the high monster spot.

No one at the table said a word. Silence in the small area around him replaced the din.

The wheel clicked. The sound of it and its movement in Max’s mind. He saw the number. Knew the number.

Putting the gold token on the blue forty-three spot, Max pulled his hand back.

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The employee coughed and then realized he needed to speak.

“No more bets!” he shouted, his voice breaking from the pressure of what he was witnessing.

People flocked over. No one expected him to win. It was a fool's bet, and everyone came ready to see another patron sent home broke.

Max bit his nails, watching the wheel. It clicked, slowing down more and more.

And then it stopped.

Silence stretched on for a few seconds as the worker stared at it.

Max stared at it.

Everyone who could see was looking at it.

“Call it” came a female voice.

“Blue Forty-Three!” The employee declared, not in his usual loud tone but in one of disbelief.

Max looked at the elf next to him with wide eyes and then back at the spot he had marked.

The man was on his feet, disbelief on his face.

“I won,” Max whispered. “I won. I won.” Each time he spoke, it was louder.

“Wait,” the elf man said, pointing at the spinning monster wheel.

Every eye that was able to get here was focused on it. Images passed, each getting their turn to be chosen for just a moment until it finally stopped.

And then the crowd erupted in cheers.

“Sir, I need to remind you that for your safety, we will post a guard outside of your new room for the night. I also have to ask you to abstain from any more gambling in our facility for the foreseeable future.”

Max nodded, doing his best to look stunned at the four bags of coins he saw sitting on a tray, waiting to be collected.

“I won… I mean, I actually won.”

Adharza nodded, her face emotionless. A tight smile was forced there as she watched Max. “You did, sir. You won. Congratulations on that feat. Are you sure you want to collect your winnings, or would you prefer to keep them in our safe until you decide to leave tomorrow?”

“I’ll take them if you don’t mind.”

She nodded, and Max reached over, taking each pouch and storing it in his dimensional storage before grabbing the next.

“Thank you for the room. It’s way nicer than I could have imagined.”

She gave a slight bow and motioned to the two men who were with her.

“If that is all, I wish you and your party a good night.”

She turned and left, and Max moved to the door and clicked the multiple locks in place as he had been instructed.

Turning around, he saw Batrire, Fowl, and Tanila staring at him. Each of them had been asleep when the workers had gone to their room and awoken them, summoning them to come up here and join Max.

“What the hell did you do?” Tanila hissed as he approached them. “They mentioned you won in the casino, but what happened?”

“I won a game,” Max replied, taking one of the pouches out of storage and tossing it to Fowl.

The dwarf caught it and was surprised by the weight. Opening the pouch, the dwarf’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

“Dear gods!” he exclaimed, putting a finger inside and touching the contents. “Is this real?”

Max chuckled and nodded. “I sure hope so. If those aren’t real coins, things will be bad for all of us.

Fowl had passed the bag to Batrire, who had the same look of shock and disbelief on her face.

“How many coins? How much did you win?” Fowl asked, still shaking his head.

“Two hundred gold coins.”

They had a contest to see who coughed hardest and fastest when he announced that number.

Batrire momentarily lost her grip on the pouch, and a few gold coins fell to the floor, bouncing and providing a visual representation of his success.

“How?” Fowl gasped, still trying to catch his breath.

“I prayed to the gods, and they must have heard my prayer,” he replied as he tapped his ear and used his eye to look around the room. “The good news is I can hopefully now afford a healer to fix my eye.”

Tanila snorted and shook her head. “For this much, they might be able to give you a new pair.”

They slept better in the beds they had been provided by the inn than any other bed before. Blissful sleep came, and Max felt refreshed as the light orb woke him.

The others came out of their rooms, all looking well-rested.

“Can we take that bed with us in the cart? Perhaps the inn will sell it to you?” Batrire said as she took a piece of fruit off the table.

“I don’t think they want to ever see me again,” Max replied. “I had the distinct feeling that the woman who helped me last night wasn’t sure if she should kill me or allow me to live. I think they thought I must have cheated, but it would have been hard to prove or accuse me of that after how many times I had lost and everyone had seen me doing so.”

After they finished getting ready and putting their full armor on, a knock came at the door.

Opening it revealed a breakfast delivered to them. Compliments of the management.

After a full meal, the guards had taken them out of the building by a back way and waited until their caravan was ready to leave.

Before they left, Max gave each guard a gold coin as a tip and told them both thank you for their service. The man and woman smiled and nodded, and he could tell they were surprised by his gesture. After that moment, each had waited until the caravan departed the grounds completely before returning inside.

An hour into their trip, Tanila plopped down next to Max and stared at him.

“What?”

“How did you do it? How did you cheat?” she asked, watching his face for clues.

“What makes you think I cheated?”

Shaking her head, she bit her lip and kept the same steady gaze. “I would like to believe the gods do stuff for us, but that… that was too much. The odds were impossible. I heard this morning what happened. You got the highest multiplier possible.”

Max nodded, his eyebrows going up. “Yeah, I was blown away that it came up. I mean, the middle circle is so random. No way to even guess what is coming up next.”

“So random… are you saying the other circle isn’t random?”

Max saw Tanila cock her head and narrow her eyes.

“Not to my sonar skill, it isn’t.”

Her eyes bulged, and Tanila covered her mouth as it hung open.

Leaning forward and whispering, she asked, “Are you saying your skill helped you cheat?”

Max shook his head.

“I’m not saying I cheated at all. To do that would be admitting to a crime with bad repercussions. I am saying, though, that I picked the one number out of one hundred, which gave me fifty gold. The lesser demon that appeared and gave me the max multiplier at that amount gave me two hundred gold.”

He started to chuckle and then rubbed his face with his hand.

“You should have seen the room. The chaos and congratulations. I thought the man who worked my table would pass out, he was so white… and the elf I had sat next to all night did. Guards had to come and escort me away because the pandemonium was overwhelming. People wanted to congratulate me, some wanted to borrow money from me, and a few men and women offered to sleep with me. It was quite the show.”

Tanila sat there, trying to absorb everything Max was saying.

“After they escorted me to a room and I waited a little bit, three people came in, one the woman from last night, and asked me a few questions. I answered them, and they nodded. She then told me about my room needing to be more secure, and I told her about you three. We were all together not long after when she gave me my winnings.”

Max’s smile could have blinded some as every tooth he had was showing.

“By Thuyja’s blessing… there will never be a dull moment with you,” Tanila finally said.

Both of them laughed and leaned back against the edge of the cart.

In a few more hours, they would be in the city and done with this traveling, starting the next part of their adventuring.