Gambling Apocalypse Risnet
The two of them each anted a chip to open the round, and I dealt five cards apiece into their waiting hands. Risnet, once she picked hers up, kept her face perfectly still.
"Shall I begin, then? Check."
Riding high after beating two opponents in a row, Sukmehek didn't bother hiding her confidence one bit. Risnet paid her bravado no mind whatsoever, her eyes fixed on her hand.
"I check as well."
"It's the first round, so let's take it easy. I'll draw one."
Sukmehek slid a single card from her hand and tossed it face down. I fished one off the top of the deck and slid it over to her.
"Two for me, please."
Risnet carefully picked out two cards and laid them gently on the table, and I dealt her replacements as well.
The gap. What on earth did Risnet mean by "the gap"? If she already knows what it is... then back when Valerie and Fresia faced off, Sukmehek must have shown it. Was there something I missed?
While I was still chewing on that, the two of them bent their heads over their rebuilt hands. Before long, Sukmehek smiled with her eyes and lightly flicked two chips into the middle of the table.
"Bet. Two more chips."
At Sukmehek's bet, Risnet studied her hand intently. She'd surely finished reading her cards long ago. What she was weighing now was how to run the psychological game — to plant the hint about that "gap" she'd told me about.
"Raise."
Risnet gathered up a full three chips and set them down in the center of the table.
A raise! Four of the six chips are already in the pot!
It was an audaciously aggressive play. Deciding this was my opening, I turned my eyes to Sukmehek — but she simply lifted her chips with perfect calm.
"Call."
Sukmehek added three chips of her own. Four of Risnet's chips were riding, and Sukmehek had thrown in every single one of the six she held.
Nothing strange in her expression or her movements... so did I miss it after all?
And then the two hands were laid face up.
Risnet's hand was —
♤6 ♡6 ◇6 ♤9 ♡J
Three sixes. A solid three-of-a-kind.
Sukmehek's hand was —
◇2 ♧2 ♤7 ♡7 ♧7
A pair of twos and three sevens! A full house! Risnet had lost the hand!
Sukmehek let out a snickering laugh and raked in the chips.
"My, my~ how hasty of you, Saintess~"
The same irritating taunt I'd watched a dozen times by now. But even as I studied that taunt, not a single hint came of it. Anxious, I looked to Risnet — and there she was, utterly unshaken by her loss.
So it wasn't that I'd missed something up to now... if the observation starts from here on out?
That thought flickered through my mind.
Her chip stack was all but wiped out. Sukmehek was certain to raise the ante, so Risnet would have to buy in for the next round. I had no idea how many layers she wore underneath, but everything visible on her was just the Saintess Order's uniform and a pair of socks.
Risnet carefully peeled off her socks and folded them neatly atop her shoes.
"Three lousy chips for those? Fine by you? Because I'm raising the stakes."
Why you little—!
"Hee hee. A Saintess of the Order stripping down — what a delightful sight."
Sukmehek said it as she poured tea into her cup. Blatant mockery, blatant provocation.
"How dare you! That is blasphemy!" "That's right! You perverted gambling addict!"
Valerie, seated in her chair, flared up, and Fresia beside her piled on. But neither Risnet nor I paid the taunt any mind — because I was certain that from this very moment, the "gap" Risnet had spoken of was about to reveal itself.
"One moment, please. I'll be buying more."
Cutting off the skeleton mid-offer, Risnet began carefully unbuttoning the collar of her uniform top.
It's for victory's sake, but still... making someone of saintess caliber undress... nngh...! My stomach's churning!
But having loosened just the buttons at her throat, Risnet stopped there.
"Huh?"
I was caught off guard — not because she'd stopped unbuttoning, but because she then slipped her right hand deep, deep inside her now-gaping top.
Don't tell me — her underwear?! W-well, I suppose the top was going to cover it anyway, so maybe undressing from the inside out makes sense, but... the second underwear comes into view, it's already...
Contrary to my expectations, Risnet pulled her hand back out — and then plunged in her left one instead.
"Hey! What exactly are you doing?!"
Sukmehek shouted, her voice edged with an impatient, half-angry crack.
"Almost done."
Saying so, Risnet drew her hand back out of her top and brought both hands together.
Clink.
A faint metallic sound rang out, and then Risnet raised her right hand — something pinched between its fingers — over the table and opened it. Inside lay a metal bar with a round ball at each end. One look at the shape and I knew exactly what it was.
"A piercing...?"
It was a nipple piercing. At the appearance of this shocking object, I managed, with great effort, to turn my frozen neck and look at Risnet. Her expression was one of boundless serenity.
"Wh-what the hell is that?!"
Sukmehek recoiled in horror.
"Equipment I had equipped on my person. Please convert it into chips."
Along with the socks from before, six fresh chips materialized in front of Risnet.
Hold on. A nipple piercing? A nipple piercing?! She's been wearing this the whole time?! A saintess candidate?!
Her strange behavior back at the dungeon entrance came flooding back to me.
This saintess... is anything but ordinary...
"Now then, shall we resume the game?"
"Y-yes. But... put that p-piercing away somewhere first."
"It's such a tiny thing, I worry it might get lost. I'll leave it right here."
With that, Risnet set the piercing down in the center of the table, right beside a chip.
"Iik!"
Sukmehek made a very strange noise.
"Please place your chips."
"I-I know!"
All of Sukmehek's composure had vanished without a trace. With hands trembling like jelly, she snatched up her chips and flung them toward the center of the table.
This is it...
Gripping the deck, I thought that — and then dealt the cards to the two of them.
THIS was the gap Risnet was talking about!
So then... how am I going to pry this gap open and shake her apart... with moves that only I — not Risnet — can pull off!
"My turn first. Bet — one more chip."
Sukmehek watched Risnet's bet with her legs quivering beneath the table.
"I-I..."
Just as Sukmehek reached to place her bet, Risnet's hand — withdrawing from her chips — drifted toward the piercing instead, turning it this way and that, her eyes examining it closely.
"What are you doing?!"
"Ah, forgive me. I'd forgotten which one was the left and which was the right."
"L-left, r-righhht?!"
That openly flustered face! Now I was certain!
"Less chit-chat, more betting, if you please?"
"I know! I know already!"
Sukmehek barked that back and hurled her chips down roughly. Two of them.
"That's a raise." "Ah, no! I only meant to toss one!"
She'd meant to call, obviously. But she panicked and threw down whatever was in her hand. That's how badly you're rattled. And claiming it was a mistake hints at a weak hand, too!
"Call. Please let me exchange one card."
Adding two chips, Risnet requested her draw without a moment's hesitation. That total lack of delay — I had read her intent perfectly.
"Valerie! Fresia!"
"Yes!" "Yeah! Hero!"
"Get those blankets OFF, riiiight now!!"
"EEEHHH?!" "Okay!"
Even as Valerie shrieked with her eyes bugged wide, Fresia whipped her blanket off and flung it aside. The violent motion sent her huge, soft breasts and long cock swinging sideways with a wobble.
"Wh-what do you think you're doing?!"
While Sukmehek shrieked and bounded out of her seat, I swapped out Risnet's card for her.
"Come, come! Valerie, hurry up too!"
"W-wait a moment! Fresia! Hero!"
Fresia seized Valerie's blanket and yanked it clean away, and Valerie spun in place, baring her naked body to the room. She crossed her arms over herself to cover up. Valerie's plump, springy breasts squished against her arms, and the cock her hands had been hiding — whether from the stimulation or not — began to perk up and lift its head.
"You bastards! Cut that out! Skeleton, why aren't you stopping them?!"
"Why you—!"
A righteous judgment, you walking skull!
"Hey! Hero! Tell those two to cover themselves back up, now!"
Hooked!
"You want me to tell them?"
"Yes!"
"You really want me to?"
"I said I do!"
"Reeeally want me to?"
"Iik! Yes, I damn well do!"
Giving the leaping, panicking Sukmehek not even an inch of gap, I pressed the question again.
"So all I have to do is have them wrap the blankets back on, and finish the draw. Right?"
"Yeeees! ... *gasp*!"
Your card exchange is over! You hapless little minnow with a fishhook in your mouth!
"Valerie, Fresia. Blankets back on, please."
I said it with a smile, my gaze nailed to Sukmehek. She stood frozen, overwhelmed by the words that had just come out of her own mouth, with no idea what to do.
"Now then — betting time again. I bet."
The chips flowed from Risnet's hand without a hitch. But the amount hardly mattered anymore. Sukmehek had already shown her hand wasn't even worth a two-chip bet, and she hadn't even managed to exchange her cards. It would be nearly impossible for her to follow Risnet's raise — Risnet, who alone had completed her draw and built her hand.
"F-fold..."
Sukmehek's shoulders slumped as she forced the word out through the floor.
"You bastards... that was dirty... so dirty..."
"Dirty? I just suddenly felt like seeing those two naked, that's all."
I teased her with a perfectly straight face.
"Ahn~ Hero, you big perv~"
For once, Fresia's cheerful cackle sounded like music to my ears.
"That was the 'gap' Risnet was talking about! Think back, and it was obvious all along...
The moment the skeleton proposed this strip poker, you flinched. There's no reason to be startled by a game you proposed yourself — which means what rattled you was the stripping part.
Then you handed blankets to Valerie and Fresia after they lost, so they could cover their bodies. Catching a chill? Please. Not a chance. It was so you wouldn't have to see those two naked! And when they actually did strip down, you even averted your eyes and sipped your tea!"
"And there was another big hint in how strange this dungeon is."
Risnet picked up where I left off.
"This dungeon is called the Pleasure Dungeon... it stimulates humans' desires to harvest pleasure from them... and yet! Nowhere in this entire dungeon was there a single room related to carnal desire."
"That's right — exactly!"
Like a detective cornering the culprit at last, I thrust my finger straight at Sukmehek.