The rest of my workout-information gathering session with Shovon thankfully went uneventfully. No wait, it regretfully went that way. While I didn’t have to open up more to him, our research hit a bit of a dead end. We got plenty more strengths written down about the Fatewatcher, such as super speed and durability, but almost nothing in terms of weaknesses beyond the impossible.

Holy weapons. Mjolnir broke a couple of bones, but their own fists were able to overpower the wielder. Zeus’ lightning bolt actually vaporized one of them, but Ultarian did something weird that apparently cut off Mount Olympus from the rest of reality or something else insane. All things I recognized from religions back home, but were reduced to nothing more than long-gone myths here. Well, they were pretty much myths back home too, but people still told them back there! They were declared outright dead by Ultarian’s holy book, he’d taken over. He won.

So we tried to follow Shovon’s plan of finding ways to convince that asshole to leave us alone. And of course, there wasn’t much. We figured the Fatewatcher was impatient, quick to temper, and prone to violence over talking things out beyond throwing around a few taunts. The only thing we had going for ourselves was that their love for Ultarian was apparently so strong, they would do anything he told them, or would act to defend his honor. Maybe with enough Intelligence and Charisma, I might be able to come up with something clever enough to convince that bastard to fuck off, but that was a really big maybe.

So in the meantime, I settled for the closest thing to a holy weapon I could get my hands on.

“Alright, just fill out this form and you’ll soon be the proud owner of your own Beretta 686 Vittoria!” exclaimed the salesman at the sports store I stopped by. “So, your wife plans on hunting birds with this baby?”

“Well, of a sort,” I replied with a smile, flexing Charisma. I had no idea why the damned attribute told the shopkeeper that the gun was for my wife, but he seemed to be agreeable to it, so I went along with it. “And you said I could get this now?”

“No no, it’ll have to be tomorrow afternoon. As much as I’d love to hand it to you now so you can take it to your wife, I still have to get the paperwork filed or else I’ll get into some serious trouble. I’m already cutting corners as it is, so this is the best I can do. Just make sure your wife comes by tomorrow to pick it up.”

“Yeah, sure,” I replied, beginning to catch on to what Charisma was doing. “Tomorrow, then.” After work.

I spent the rest of the evening watching TV and eating dinner, before falling asleep early.

The next day went as expected, I finished up my work as a handyman before heading over to Goldshanks’ casino for my real job.

[Skill Level Up! Tinker (lv 8)]

[Skill Level Up! Tinker (lv 9)]

I walked into the casino an hour before the tournament would begin, earlier than yesterday thanks to [Tinker] continuously leveling up, and was met with a loud screaming I didn’t expect from the nearly empty building.

“What are you doing?! Your off schedule! You’re supposed to patrol this area for ten seconds exactly, not fifteen!” shouted Todd, the casino’s head of security.

“Woah, sorry boss,” replied a bouncer with his hands placatingly raised in front of him. He looked oddly demurred, despite being almost half as tall as Todd. “But it’s only five seconds, it shouldn’t make a difference.”

“It’ll put you out of sync with the others, and that leaves openings for cheaters! There are already so many, way more than there should be! You can’t be taking any more risks, numbskull!”

“Alright, I’m sorry boss,” the bouncer responded. “I’ll be more precise.”

“Good, I don’t like having to babysit you all. Now what are you waiting for? Get moving!”

The bouncer ran off while occasionally looking at his watch to make sure he was on schedule.

I slowly walked over to Todd with a questioning look. “Damn, don’t you think you were a little harsh?”

“Huh? Oh Mike, I didn’t see you there,” replied the head of security as he turned to face me. “Sorry, it’s just stress. I probably shouldn’t be taking it out on the others like that.”

“I won’t lie, there are a lot more cheaters than I expected either.”

“But you’ve been covering for the rest of us pretty well, so thanks. This is the least we can do to help out.”

I nodded and turned around to walk away, but I stopped halfway and looked back at Todd. “Hey, just curious, but what’s your story? I talked to Goldshanks yesterday and he told me about why everyone who does works here.”

“Huh? Oh yeah, that.” He scratched the back of his head and looked to the side before continuing. “I was pretty much at the bottom rung at the last place I worked at, always getting bullied and shit by everyone there. They made me do some pretty humiliating things, so I don’t like to think about it much, but they pretty much treated me like dirt.”

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“Li-” I stopped myself from finishing that sentence. Like you’re doing now? It wouldn’t be good to say that to the face of the man who’s supposed to be making my job easier. “Like, that’s pretty bad,” I said instead. “I’m sure the bouncers might be feeling the same way about how you were treating them earlier.”

“Yeah, I think you’re right about that. I’ll try to take it easy, thanks Mike.” He slowly walked away to the back of the casino, likely to the security room.

I just took a deep breath and made my way to the catering table. The selection was similar to yesterday’s, but the quality of everything looked much better. I successfully assembled myself a breakfast sandwich with the unspoiled ingredients and took a bite. It was delicious. And worth the effort to, as plenty of the common items on the tray were still pretty bad. Moldy fruit and slimy, near-putrid chicken were pretty easy to avoid though, so I wasn’t complaining when what I was able to make out of it was still so good.

I followed my sandwich up with a small, overly-saccharine pastry and a cup of milky coffee to jolt me even more awake, and made my way to my position. The hour since I got here passed pretty quickly, and the tournament soon started.

The cheaters went down relatively quickly. They mostly used the same methods as the others I’d caught in the previous days, so figuring out these new ones wasn’t anything worth writing home about. But eventually, my Skills pulled me over to a seemingly normal table, and I just knew something was going on there.

The competitors looked relatively benign, each of them staring at the dealer as she handed out the cards, scratching at her ponytail partway through. Apparently she had an itch or something, because she did it again during the next round as well.

And the one after that.

Yeah…

Detect Cheating (lv 13)

Target

Naomi Yates

Method

Invisible Ink

And to find who she was helping.

Nope, nope, not him, not her, so that left…

Detect Cheating (lv 13)

Target

Hank Phill

Method

Aided by Dealer

This was honestly starting to feel kind of easy! The videographer gave me the biggest challenge so far, and these two were definitely in the same tier, but I figured it out in no time flat. I guessed that it was the higher Skill levels and synergy between them that let me do this. In fact, it was [Situational Awareness] that was pointing me towards Hank’s eyewear, which gave me the last piece of the puzzle.

With a quick tap on their shoulders and a few polite words, Goldshanks’ bouncers made their way to the table in question.

“Excuse me sir, could I please see those glasses?” asked the formally dressed gorilla to the cheater in question.

The bouncer inevitably wrenched them from the player’s face when he refused, and the hulking man even let out a chuckle when he placed them in front of his own eyes.

“Would you look at that, it really is invisible ink! You’d think this was some kind of spy movie or something!”

“Maybe my optometrist got my order mixed up?” replied a nervous Hank. “If you have a phone, I could give them a call.”

“No need, they’re right here!” replied the bouncer as he turned to the dealer. “I love what you’ve done with your hair! But I’ve never heard of anyone dying it with invisible ink before. Come on you two, you’re both out.”

“Dammit Hank, you said we wouldn’t get caught!”

“I’m sorry, honey! They said it’d be the perfect plan!”

“Now who told you that?” asked the bouncer.

“Uh… my psychic?” replied Hank with an awkward smile.

“I see. Is your psychic also sitting at the table?”

The bouncer frowned when he saw me shake my head. And the gorilla of a man showed only greater displeasure when the two cheaters got up of their own accord and made the walk of shame to the exit unassisted.

The rest of the round went by uneventfully, at least for me. I heard Jerry whatshisname give some colorful commentary on some sort of obscure poker mechanic that was made use of by one of the competitors, but nothing that I cared about or really understood anyway.

Eventually, everyone had finished and started packing up. The staff collected the cards and chips, the camera crew their gear, and the losers their broken egos.

As I was about to make my own egress, I was stopped by a deep voice behind me.

“Mike, great job today!” exclaimed my boss with a hearty chuckle. By his side were the same two women who usually accompanied him, his daughters, who gave me a pair of bright smiles.

“Thanks!” I replied with a cheerful look of my own. “Hey, if you don’t mind me asking, why do you let all of the cheaters just leave? Shouldn’t you call the police or something?”

“What do you mean?” asked Mr. Goldshanks. “There’s a squad car waiting outside to pick them up. But at this rate, they should switch it out for a bus!”

“Huh, I never saw them,” I shrugged. “I guess they leave before I do.”

“And get here after too,” said my boss with a nod before changing the subject. “So, quite a number of bizarre cheaters so far, huh?”

“That’s right sir, but nothing I can’t handle.”

“Good, that’s good!” As he finished his laugh, his eyes began to narrow and voice grew to a tense whisper. “But don’t you think that it’s been too weird? That there are too many cheaters around?”

“Every day.”

“Yeah, I’ve been thinking that too. I’m hosting an emergency meeting for all of my staff now. Come over to the security room in the back.”

I nodded and followed my boss to my second ever office meeting.