Beast Gacha System: All Mine-Chapter 116: Mean

"This is...?"

Cecilia stared at the ornate, rectangular table that had materialized in one of the castle’s many grand, empty salons. Its surface was inlaid with dark felt, and a fresh deck of cards lay neatly at its center.

"This is poker," Oathran said. "I am aware you already understand the rules."

Cecilia blinked. "Yes. I do. But... why?"

Oathran gestured for her to approach the table. "You expressed a distinct dislike for games built on the sacrifice of pieces, and where loss is a mandatory cost of strategy."

"Card games like this are a purer calculus. They require mathematics, probability, and the reading of tells. And... a touch of luck. We theorized you might find it more palatable," he continued.

"You think," Cecilia said slowly, her head tilting, "I should prefer a game where the outcome hinges, at least partially, on... luck?"

Oathran’s lips twitched, a clear sign he was fighting a losing battle against a full smile. "Come now, Saintess. Do not make me say it. Eastiel, Arkai, and I put our minds to this. We debated many table top games."

Cecilia, too, pressed her lips together, but for a very different reason. If only they knew about the gacha... "Of course! A game famously popular for gambling!"

"BWAHWHAHAHWAHAH!" Oathran was delighted. He knew how it sounded. Absurd, almost disrespectful to her identity as a saintess. But God forbid three men were trying to find a suitable game for their intelligent mate. "Humor us. Come, I will show you something."

He pulled out one of the heavy, carved chairs with an old-world gallantry, settling her on one side of the table. He set the deck before her, then took his own seat opposite. Then, he spread the cards face-up, displaying the standard array of suits and ranks.

Then, he leaned back.

The cards moved.

Without a touch, the entire deck lifted a hair’s breadth from the felt. Each card pirouetted gracefully in the air, flipping to face down with a synchronized soft shuff.

Then, they began to scramble. They wove around each other in complex, interlacing patterns, before settling back into a neat, facedown stack in the center of the table.

"Oh!" Cecilia’s eyes widened. "Is this a construct? The table?"

Oathran chuckled, pleased. "The table is indeed a construct. A minor one. It shuffles, it deals, it keeps score."

Cecilia’s delight sharpened into a sly look. She narrowed her eyes at him, a smirk playing on her lips. "Hmmm? Didn’t a certain Dragon Lord recently declare he was embarking on a grand, world-changing quest to design a construct that would render every alchemist on the continent obsolete?"

Oathran didn’t even have the decency to look sheepish. He met her gaze squarely.

"...yes," he nodded once. "But also, I do what I want."

The sheer audacity. The dismissal of lofty purpose in favor of indulging a whim to build a magical poker table for her. Somehow it struck Cecilia as hilariously honest. How could he deliver such a line with his dignity intact and even seemingly enhanced?

A burst of laughter escaped her. She realized her draconic husband’s idea of changing the world might just include making sure she was never bored in it.

"But now, before we begin, let’s add a small rule to... spice up the stakes," Oathran proposed.

Cecilia raised her eyebrows. "Rules?"

The dragon nodded, his eyes glinting with a light that was both playful and predatory. "I observed there are precisely seven layers of enchanted fabric on your person today, my Saintess. And, as it happens, there are seven upon mine as well."

He gestured loosely to his own attire. The deceptively simple tunic and trousers that were, she knew, woven from materials just as miraculous as her own. "Let us wager our layers. Each lost hand, a forfeit. We shall see who finds themselves... bare... the earliest."

Ah.

Strip Poker.

Of course.

So blatant, so classically, transparently male. And yet framed with such archaic, draconic elegance that it bypassed crude and landed squarely on deviously clever.

How... mean...

A burst of butterflies took flight in her stomach.

It was a different sensation entirely from the intellectual firestorms Eastiel ignited in her, the debates that felt like a duel that inevitably melted into passion.

It was also distinct from the dark, taboo pull of Arkai, with his wildness tempered by a gentle, fiercely protective maturity that made her feel both coveted and safe.

But this man...

This man... he was the most unfair of them all.

He possessed facets of the other two. The cerebral challenge, the primal allure... but he wielded them with a different ego. A mean edge.

Romantically mean. Sexually mean. Just... mean.

Because how dare he be all of this... and then still hold at his core that promise to leave her? To make this beautiful ride nothing more than a prelude to his death by her hands?

It was... unfair.

But as much as she was tempted to trade his tunic and pants for the truth, she couldn’t just ask him what the real reasons for his insistence to die were. At least, not in this poker game.

There must be a different way to know.

"Let’s start?"

*** 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

Far to the north, beneath a sky the color of tarnished silver, a frozen lake stretched into the distance. It was a vast, flawless pane of milky-white glass set into the earth.

Its surface had subtle textures. Whorls of trapped bubbles, fractures like ghostly spiderwebs, and patches of wind-scoured ice so clear you could almost see the dark, unknowable depths below.

Rinne narrowed his eyes at his father, a fishing rod in hand, with its line plunging into the hole in the thick ice. "Lord Father, why do we suddenly go on a fishing trip?"

Arkai didn’t immediately answer. Under all of their heavy fur coats, they all looked like a group of bears on the ice, hulking, fur-draped silhouettes against the endless white, their breath pluming in the frigid air.

"The weather is nice, and fishing is good to clear the mind. The point of fishing is to be quiet and relax, being alone with our minds. So shut up, son," Arkai rumbled, his face flat.

"Shut up, shut up, nice weather my ass, it’s cold," Anton mocked beside him in his thick accent. He jabbed a thick finger in Arkai’s direction, though his own face was mostly buried in a fur collar. "You reek of rut. The mind you want to clear is swimming in other things, no?"

Arkai let out a long-suffering groan that steamed in the cold.

"This is still the first time I meet someone who goes into a rut even though the lady is not by their side," Anton tsk-tsked, shaking his head. "Pathe—"

"Brother, you’re still recovering. Don’t dive into that hole," Arkai threatened, not looking at him, his gaze fixed on the dark circle in the ice where his fishing line vanished.

Arkai sighed. He couldn’t help it.

Elder Brother... why...?