"Ugh..my head...where am I.."

Yuri awakened to a throbbing head and a blurry vision.

“You're finally awake..I was really worried, even if your injury was just a minor cut..the doctor said it was just a minor concussion, so stay still and keep resting”

She was pushed slowly back into bed when she tried to get up.

“Thanks Hikaru..but I'm fine..I want to go get more pastries..and..”

“I bought a sack of pastries for you, of all kinds, so there's no need for you to get up from bed. Just rest. I have also bribed the doctor like you usually do, and asked him if he knew anything of importance. I have also gotten this inn room for us, so everything is done, just rest.”

He placed a large sack filled of colourful pasties near the bed and handed one to Yuri, who began to quietly munch on it.

“Make sure you eat, and I will go bring dinner when it's done. Also..what was that about, why did you suddenly injure yourself like that?”

Hikaru asked, noticeably worried.

“W-well..uh..” Glancing at him and seeing that he was now wearing clothes over his upper body, she slowly relaxed. “I was just..I had a heatstroke and got confused, yeah.”

“Even though you were cooling off in the water..?”

“Heat stroke! It was heat stroke okay!”

“Alright..? As long as you're fine now.” A glass of local juice was poured for Yuri, which she gratefully chugged, not having anything to drink even since before she fainted had made her considerably thirsty.

“So..did you find out anything useful from the doctor..?”

“Well..this city doesn't have any relics or any single item of great value, it's a trading city so it mostly has wares of all kinds. I think we should take this as an opportunity to relax, especially since you are so worn out right now, we can rest for a few days and collect our strength before deciding on anything, does that sound good?”

“Well..I guess it has mostly been either travelling or trying to get a relic all the time...we deserve a break don't we?” She nodded. “Wait, what did you with the horn relic, and besides what did you do with the rest of the relics we got?”

“Don't worry, I have made sure to keep them in a place only I can access. There is no place more secure than where I am keeping them.”

He sounded so confident in his statement that Yuri chose to simply not pursue the subject further and just trust him.

“So..what is there to do in this city?”

She asked curiously, since Hikaru seemed to know about this city.

“Hm..this city is fairly well known for its great production of bronze equipment because of all the copper-filled mountains in the desert. They also have an extensive library, filled with books traded from all over the world..hmm..what else..they have regular auctions..regular plays..gambling..festivals...since this is the season where the trade kind of slows up, there are a lot of events to fill peoples time.”

“Ohhh ohhh! Gambling! Let's do that! And let's look up that bronze equipment, I need a new pair of gauntlets, preferably something that looks good!”

She jumped excitedly.

“And festivals..festivals are kind of nostalgic..I remember when me and my friend used to go to those and just spend the time using all of our skills on petty games to win prizes not worth the entry money..those times were fun..I wonder what he's doing now..”

Her eyes filled with the memories of days that would never again come, and her eyes got slightly blurry.

“Yuri..are you okay..”

Hikaru slowly placed his hand on her head.

“Huh..?” Wiping her eyes, she finally noticed they were slightly wet. “Hah..I guess I do have some regrets after all...”

“Do you miss that friend..?”

Her head was slowly caressed by a caring hand.

“I wouldn't say I miss him..we were just..always there for each other..when one got into trouble they couldn't get out of..the other would pull him up..and we did have fun. We were always prepared for the worst, that's the nature of our jobs..but...I had at least hoped to thank him for being my friend..”

Her eyes got slightly blurry again.

“If you were that good of friends, I'm sure that such words were unnecessary. Your feelings probably came through without even having to utter them.”

“You sure? I guess..would have been nice to at least have said good bye to him before I disappeared.”

Shaking her head, she slapped her cheeks slightly.

“Anyway. Regretting things you can't change is silly, let's go gamble away all our money!”

Hopping out of bed, she declared with gusto.

“Indeed, let's do so.”

Hikaru smiled softly and patted her head before they headed out.

–

“Ohhhh, this place is pretty cool!”

Yuri walked in to one of the more prominent buildings in the city, with Hikaru following after her.

All the tables inside the building were made of pure white marble, and each heavy stone seat had beautiful stitched cushions of dark colours. The walls were entirely lined with bronze that had various figures drawn on it, almost like they were coming out of the walls.

Yuri's expert eyes immediately noticed that these bronze walls were spectacular in value. They were incredibly old, perhaps even thousands of years old or more. Despite that, they looked pristine and shiny, betraying the fact that they had been meticulously cleaned for longer than people could remember.

Most of the images depicted people drinking and chatting, but some were of the men were playing a strange dice and card based game. It was very similar to the game that most people inside the building were currently playing.

“A dice based game huh..”

Her eyes glowed, while Hikaru looked around with disinterest, he had never had an interest in gambling, although he could appreciate the skill of experienced players.

“Hey, I'm joining, yeah hello, this seat is free right, I'm game.”

She sat down at a random table and joined their dice game.

“Aren't you a little too young to be gambling, young lady..?”

One of the older men at the table squinted at her.

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“Aren't you a little too old to be playing this? You know I heard that right before you die, the first thing you lose is your sight. Since you have to squint so hard to see me, maybe you should just retire before you fall face first on the table?”

Yuri grinned at him, slightly ticked off that she was both called young and a lady.

“Hahaha!” The old man slapped his knee “If you can make comments like that then you're old enough! Just don't cry when I take all your money”

Laughing wholeheartedly, they began playing while the man calmed down.

The dice game was fairly simple, there was almost no skill involved. You use both cards and dice. The player first throws the dice, if they get both of the dies to land on a six, you skip your turn. If you get any sum of numbers less than that, you draw cards from the card stack equal to the amount on the dice.

The lose condition for each player, is drawing the black card. If you draw it you lose and are out of the game. However, the rest of the cards have various positive effects, such as skip your turn, or put the black card back into the pile at random, or make someone draw more.

Once the black card is drawn and a player loses, the card is put back into the stack. This continues until only one player remains.

It was a game that relied heavily on luck, since if you lose on the dies and have to draw, and the first card you draw is the black card. You automatically lose, since you have yet to draw any other cards you can use to save yourself.

Yuri began playing while Hikaru watched from the sidelines, slowly sipping on a drink.

She played, and had a fair amount of successes and losses, before they finally decided to bet money on the game. Yuri of course went all in. Seeing this, so did the rest. Her instincts weren't wrong and the old man who had laughed earlier put in a sum greater than all of theirs combined.

They kept playing with everyone trying to play their very best. She concentrated all her efforts on using up all her cards to make other players draw more.

This resulted in most of the players drawing the black the card and losing. Soon enough it was just her and the man left.

I became Yuri's turn, and throwing the dice, she unluckily ended up on a 5 and 6. The most unlucky combination, which meant she had to draw a total of 11 cards.

She quickly drew all of her cards one by one, looking at each one to confirm it wasn't the black card before drawing the next.

What the rest of the players did not know. Was that one of the cards Yuri had drawn was actually the black card. Once she began drawing one of the cards, she immediately noticed that the edge of the card underneath it had a black colour.

Thus she chose to draw the black card while holding it underneath the card above it, to make it appear as one single card. This kind of move would have easily been noticed by the other players, But Yuri was quick, her years of having to quickly steal and replace items on her burglaries and heists had granted her superb finger control.

Thus the game continued without anyone of the knowledge that the black card was not in the stack.

They both kept throwing the dice and drawing from the stack which quickly dwindled. Everyone was tense at this intense battle. The man ended up using a lot of his cards to skip his turns and push them onto Yuri. While Yuri, armed with the knowledge that there was black card, simply kept drawing, the people at the table baffling at her courage.

She continued to keep the black card hidden by swiftly moving it behind her other cards.

Eventually, only one card remained. Yuri drew the card and pretended it was the black card.

“Ah! Damn! But I still have this card!”

She threw down a card that allowed her to put the black card back into the stack, and put the black card which had been in her hand all along onto the table.

“Hmph. You survive this round, but not the next. I skip my turn.”

Although he had used up a lot of cards, he still had a considerable sum. So he chose to skip his turn with one of his cards.

“Your turn..” He grinned at Yuri.

Throwing the dice, both of them perfectly landed on a 6.

“Oh, look at that. I don't have to draw. Your turn.”

The man frowned and threw the dice, he wasn't so lucky however, and was forced to draw. He used up another card and shifted his turn to Yuri, who calmly used a card to cancel her turn.

Another turn, he has to draw. He skips and plays a card to make Yuri draw. She uses a card to cancel his card. Next turn, she throws the dice, perfect sixes again.

This continues with Yuri getting perfect dice each turn, and countering the man's dwindling cards, until finally. He is forced to draw, and the card he draws, is unsurprisingly..the black card.

“Damn! It's my loss!”

The black card was thrust against the table.

The other players breathe out a sigh of relief, their tension disappearing.

“That was such an intense match..I've never seen one like that..” Such comments filled the table and the people around them.

“This...is mine then~”

Yuri hugged the pile of money and dragged it towards her.

“Hikaru! Carry all this!”

Yuri and Hikaru walked out while carrying a large sack of coin each.

“Yuri that was amazing. How did you manage to keep getting sixes at the end like that!”

He asked with amazement.

“Well. Back in my world. I also liked to gamble. It was like a more relaxed form of thieving, which you do when you're tired from your heists. So I developed this dice throwing technique that would always allow me to make it land on what I want, well most of it I learned from that one friend. That's why I was always drawing so much throughout the game after the fact that everyone except one guy had lost. I wanted to draw the black card so I could use it later.”

“Ah I see..”

Somehow, he figured he should have expected Yuri to cheat, but the way she cheated at a game she had never played before was still impressive. That match became a well known story at that gambling house for many years to come.

–

"What do you mean you can only make stuff from bronze?"

Yuri was standing in the middle of a loud hot workshop, where several people were busy either heating up metals in a large furnace, or hitting anvils with large hammers.

“Well missy, as much as I want to, we are in between trading seasons, which means we don't have nearly the amount of other metals we need. All we got is copper and the stockpiles of tin. So bronze is all we got for a few more weeks.”

A large muscled man spoke while shaping a bar of metal on an anvil.

“Well that's annoying..bronze isn't that durable..oh I know! Here's your metal”

She threw two bags that landed with a mass of small clangs at the ground in front of him.

He opened the bags and found them full of all kinds of coins, from steel and silver to gold.

“No matter how much you pay me, I can't make anything with metal I don't have..”

“No you idiot. That's the metal! Melt down those coins and use them.”

“Are you serious? Do you realise how much you can buy with all this coin and you want me to melt it down..?”

The big man looked at her with disbelief.

“Yes. So make me my damn gauntlets already”

“Alright..but the main component will still be bronze..I can make it a bronze silver and steel mix..the gold is too soft so I will take that as payment. Also even though you are giving me these coins, there is only enough for one gauntlet”

“I see...then make a gauntlet for my left hand, I can use the right to hold something else I guess..”

She patted where her dagger was hidden beneath her clothes.

“Well then, I shall get working then, it should be done in a few days, come by then.”

With this Yuri left the workshop and walked up to Hikaru who was waiting outside.

“Alright! Let's go to this library of theirs and see if they have any useful information on rune magic or the relics, they should right? It's a library with books from all over the place after all”

“Indeed, they should have at least something of value for us”

They walked through the lush green city and walked into a small building that extended far beneath the rocks, like a large basement, presumably done so in order to preserve the books better.

“Hey, we're here to browse the library a bit, Is that alright?”

She asked an old woman sitting at the counter that looked like she could either be asleep or dead.

“Why yes..the library is open for all..all you have to do is write your name before you come in..then you can browse and read as you want, it's always nice to see young people interested in the fine arts of reading..”

She handed them a small note book with a bunch of signatures, like a visiting book.

Yuri wrote down her name in large letters, making sure hers were bigger than everyone else's while Hikaru just wrote his name with a small signature in the corner of the page.

“Thank you my dears..” She took back the book and glanced at it “Wait..Yuri..is that..you're the thief who stole all the valuable books from our library!”

The old woman stood up and took up a broom.

“Such shameless behaviour! What did you do with all the books! Sell them? You shameless girl! Guards! Guards!”

The old woman yelled and began chasing Yuri around with a broom.

“W-what!? I didn't steal anything! At least not from you or this library! H-hey! Stop that! OW!”

Yuri ended up getting smacked on the head with the broom a few times before she managed to escape from the old woman with Hikaru.

“W-what was that about!?”

She breathed out in relief once they were a fair distance away.

“Yuri. Perhaps it was not wise to write your own name if it was well known that you have stolen there?”

“No! That's the thing! I didn't steal from there! I've never been in there until today! You should know, you've been with me the whole time!”

“That's true..then why did she recognise your name..besides her assumption about you being a thief was correct..”

Hikaru lightly scratched the side of his head.

“I don't know. That woman was probably crazy or something. Did you see how old she was. She was on death's door, wouldn't surprise me if she was delusional.”

She huffed and folded her arms, slightly annoyed over not being able to get the info she needed.

“Well, we can just go back there tomorrow, after the festival, she will probably have forgotten you by then. For now let's just go get some dinner and dessert.”

Yuri lit up at the mention of festival and dessert and they headed off to find the best restaurant in the city, if they were resting, they might as well do it with the best food in their bellies.

Although something still bothered Yuri about that incident with the old woman, she chose to dismiss it for now, instead focusing on the delights that would be her dinner.