Chapter 46 - Bare-knuckle arithmetic – Part twelve

“H-hey Beck! What happened!? What are you doing over there!?”

She used 《Telepath》, but received no response.

Could it be that those problems were too difficult for even Beck to solve?

Claudine certainly hoped that was the case, because she didn’t want to think about the worst case scenario.

But as she was thinking this, something a little worse than what she feared was developing.

Claudine thought that even if what she had been doing arouses suspicion, no could would come up with any proof.

There were rarely any Telepath Orbs in the market, and the number of people who knew of its existence was even lower. Claudine thought she could hide her trick forever.

That was until Beck appeared on the roof of the adventurer guild, tied with a rope.

“Sorry Claudine and Leon, I messed up.”

Beck had an innocent smile on his face, and Tianna and Sem walked alongside him, preventing any attempts to escape.

“Referee, they were cheating.”

Tianna tossed the orb to Wilma.

“Is this… A Telepath Orb…?”

“So you know what it is. That makes things simpler.”

“Yes. No doubt about it, someone can cheat as much as they want with something like this.”

Claudine quickly decided her next course of action. She kicked over her table, and rushed straight towards Wilma, but no matter how fast she was, her telegraphed actions were pointless.

A hand grabbed Claudine’s leg with vicious strength.

“Gyah!?”

“Don’t run. The match isn’t over yet.”

Karan knew Claudine would try to run away, and was already on the move.

She then lifted Claudine with one hand.

“W-what match!? You… You were just pretending to solve questions weren’t you…!?”

Claudine angrily protested, and she was correct.

It seemed like Karan was solving questions with an incredible speed, but it was just a bluff to make Claudine impatient and force her to use her trump card.

“It’s a pretty innocent lie compared to all you’ve been doing.”

“Shut up! Let me go!”

“You want me to let you go?”

Said Karan, with Claudine still suspended in the air, who realized what was about to happen and frantically started shaking her head.

She was either going to slam her or drop her, and Claudine was very well aware that a Karan boiling with anger would not go easy on her.

“A-alright, I-I won’t run away…!”

“Then stay still.”

Karan tossed Claudine to the floor of the roof, and with a pitiful shriek, Claudine lost consciousness.

“D-dammit…!”

Only Leon was left, but the adventurers around him would not allow him to escape.

The rule that would not allow the participants to leave the venue came back to bite him.

“Hey Leon.”

“Damn you… You set me up…!”

“I don’t want to hear that from you. Not that it isn’t true though.”

Said an exasperated Nick.

“Leon… You thought you were doing a great job tricking everyone with the Telepath Orb, but most people were already suspicious of you. The whole reason the old woman put this duel together was to smoke you out.”

“Stop calling me an old woman. Well, the only miscalculation was the fact that Survivors noticed what was going on.”

The adventurer guild was in fact in cohorts with a party, but it was the Survivors.

It all started with Sem. As a result of his efforts gathering information during the night, he managed to find several people that were victimized by the Steel Tiger Crew.

Their testimony led to the conclusion that the Steel Tiger Crew was somehow cheating in duels and gambling, and said cheating started ramping up after they explored the Labyrinth of Bonds.

Sem remembered Bond saying that there should have been Telepath Orbs when they were in the Labyrinth of Bonds. The Steel Tiger Crew most likely took the magic items they found while exploring the labyrinth without presenting them to the guild, much like how Survivors hid the Sword of Bonds.

Sem took this circumstantial evidence to Wilma of the adventurer guild, and proposed the possibility that the Steel Tiger Crew was involved in systematic scamming and cheating.

The adventurer guild also noticed something was strange, but couldn’t do anything due to lack of evidence.

The whole mess that led to a duel between the Steel Tiger Crew and Survivors was a godsend to the guild. It was their chance to obtain evidence and expose all the cheating that had been going on.

Sem smiled while saying ‘so basically you’re just using us’, and Wilma dropped any pretense and admitted it. And then, a deal was made.

“We agreed that the adventurer guild would reward us if we could expose the Steel Tiger Crew’s cheating… Our dungeon exploration was delayed, so this will be a nice source of income.”

Said Sem to Leon while smiling. It seemed momentum was on their side.

The audience became focused on not letting Leon get away. There were probably people among them who were cheated by Leon while gambling.

Shouts of ‘Give the money back’ started spreading.

“Leon, how about you give up and end it here?”

Said nick.

“What?”

“I’m telling you to start fighting for real. At least be cool in the end.”

“…Dammit!!!”

Leon assaulted Nick with killing intent, but even as it clouded his vision, he did not falter.

He learned techniques that made use of his flexibility, which Nick found sad.

Leon’s skill was definitely not bad, in fact, his muscles showed the results of his constant training.

The way he was stalling before was no easy feat either. It required both the muscles he had been developing, and a strong force of will to not become impatient.

He also needed experience and guts when it came time to attack.

Much like the answer to complicated mathematical equations, there had to be a decisive blow at the end, but…

“Wha…!?”

“Sorry, but it ends here.”

When that was all someone could do, the opponent could figure out the answer when the time came. No matter how great of a blow it was, Nick could easily evade it.

Before Leon knew it, Nick’s fist was buried into his cheek.