Slye finished his lunch and with the last few minutes left until he had to start going to his next class he closed his eyes and meditated until he could see chi. The mist was still there and the chi he could see felt blurry and out of focus, but that was how it was until you were out of the body-strengthening stages. He finished the rest of his school day in relative peace, and bought more groceries on his way home. When he got home, he meditated and this process repeated for the next two days until he was able to intake chi and start getting rid of the impurities in his body.
Slye already knew how to move chi from his past life, so the process of purifying himself with it was much easier and in the day after, he had already purified most imperfections. He grew more than a few inches overnight, going from about 5 foot 6 to a comfortable 6 foot. His facial features became more defined and he looked much better than he did before, modelling himself after what he liked about each of his previous lives. Most people would have suffered chi deviation and injured themselves, but due to his past experience cultivating and the added bonuses of his intelligence stat it made more extreme modifications extremely easy.
It wasn’t an exaggeration to say he became a different person overnight, and he looked older at the end of the process. This was part of his plan too, one thing he noticed with his intelligence stat was he was able to do mental calculations much faster, proportional to how hard he focuses on it. Not only could he split his attention and thoughts up to five times, but it turns out he could also focus up to five times harder on a single subject, speeding up his thoughts immensely. The fact that intelligence also made you think faster made this even more insane, being able to put in minutes worth of focus and thoughts into seconds if he really focused.
Testing already proved that his body couldn’t keep up yet, not even close. It was much better to keep his insane focus for just thinking for now, until his body caught up he learned after ending up falling over once too many times.
Where would having a superhuman ability to think and looking older help? The casino, of course! It was somewhere his college Earth self loved a bit too much, and would get kicked out after counting cards if he wasn’t losing money on roulette. He would even bet amounts from his student loans on gambling, it wasn’t something he was proud of and he could be called a gambling addict, but he usually ended up making some money or coming out net neutral.
Slye also didn't feel bad about taking another day off school, he felt a small sense of shame that he was skipping school to gamble, but he has been in enough schools in his lifetimes, and he doesn't feel like trying to be a great student anymore. There were no big casinos in his side of town though, so he grabbed the last one hundred credits he had in savings and left to start his walk to the biggest casino in the center of the city. He could try taking the train or a taxi, but his 100 credits was worth about 50 United States Dollars based on his rough estimations from the prices at the grocery store, and he would rather walk the extra hour or two to save the money to earn more later.
The legal age for gambling, drinking and the rest was sixteen as Slye learned as he got to the doors of the casino at around 11:20 am. Before he got inside, the bouncer outside warned him of the casino rules. Most of the rules were similar to the ones on earth, except that no system skills were allowed to be used, if you did it would automatically forfeit your winnings for the night to the casino. They probably had cameras, a magic field, or some magic equipment that could tell who or when someone use skills, and Slye didn't worry about it, since he wasn't going to use any system skills to win today. Slye got up to the chip counter to exchange his money into chips and the lady at the counter gave him 100 his credits worth of chips. After a quick thank you, Slye got to the general floor and beheld the sight of the floor. Looks like gambling psychology was the same on earth, the room was lit up and the interior design just exuded a sense of wealth and excitement. A red carpet with gold designs spanned the entire floor, and it was busier than he expected for it being lunch during a weekday.
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Surprisingly, slot machines were in this world too and their return was mostly the same, bright flashing lights to draw you in and past the forest of lights there was a circular shaped bar area in the center of the room with a large, golden chandelier hanging above it. Past the bar were the game tables which involved games which looked vaguely similar to poker, blackjack, roulette, and the rest.
Slye walked past all the slot machines, dissuading their intense allure and going past the bar as well. Going up to one of the roulette table he watched others around him bet while focusing intently on the movement of the ball. After about five minutes, he smirked because he was right, and with about 90% accuracy he felt like he could accurately guess where the ball was going to land every time, and he only felt more confident as he saw it continue more and more.
Then he threw in his first bid, putting a nice even 50 chip on black. No surprise to him, it hit black and he got 100 chips winnings. Then he threw his 100 on black again, which was right once again winning him a nice 200. No one was looking his or thinking he was suspicious yet, but before they could he threw another 50 on black again, and when it landed on red he feigned the grief of losing money. He wanted to win and earn as much money as possible, but he also didn't want to get caught so he was going to have to throw some false losses in there just to make sure he didn't get flagged as suspicious. Sure it wasn't illegal to do well at roulette with no skill use, but at the same time the casino could forbid you from playing roulette whenever they wanted if they so felt to. He continued his game betting on black or red until he got up to a comfortable 2500 credits, which the people around him started to take notice since it was hard not to notice the person who started with 100 and now has 2500.
Sensing he had some attention on him, he decided to go all in on the lucky bastard idea, and was going to make one last bet. Now becoming extremely proficient on how to guess the ball, only failing twice the whole half hour, he could tell it was going to land on 7 this time. He put all 2500 on a trio bet of 6, 7, and 8 and it the ball spun around and ended up landing on 8 in the end. He was scared he messed up, but took his win and was glad he didn't do a straight guess on 7. Betting on just 7 would have given him 35x his money if he was right, but he chose to be safe and bet on a trio still giving him a nice 11x the amount bringing his total up to a nice 27500.
The table exploded when he got the guess right, and they tried goading Slye into betting more but he just told them he "ran out of luck" and retreated back to the bar. His next target was the poker tables, but he wanted to grab a quick drink to calm his nerves first.