Ray didn't miss the coldness in the man's eyes. "You truly think you can conceal your pathetic intentions for me? Boy, I was killing monsters with names that would shatter your mind if you heard a single syllable."
His lip barely twitched as he tried to conceal his smile."So which one of us are going first?" Ray finally asked the man. He was sure he had heard the black haired drunk guy say his name at least once , but the man was too insignificant to matter.
Then, thinking of the plans he had for the man he decided to put a bit more effort into remembering his name. His eyebrows wrinkled in thought.
"It should've been something along the lines of cheek or was it chalk? Yes it had to be chalk." Ray thought nodding his head and satisfaction.
So sitting straight with the confidence of a man who was absolutely wrong, he spoke with the same deliberate rasp he had adopted on purpose.
"So cheeks have you decided? Which one of us are going first because I do not have all day."
Hearing how he was addressed, Chuck quickly stiffened and his oily smile nearly twisted into a snarl. "My good, sir my name is Chuck."
Wrinkling his brow, Ray looked at the man in confusion. "isn't that what I just said? Now have you chosen yet, Charles because time waits for no one."
Hearing his words, Charles cough. Chuck greeted his teeth as he spoke. "Yes I have decided, I will be going first."
"oh how generous you are to this poor and helpless old man." Ray said, making sure to fill his voice with as much sarcasm as he could.
Hearing his words, Chucks smile that had disappeared at some point, made another appearance on his face. "If you want to go first, sir, I wouldn't mind."
Ray waved his hand dramatically as he spoke. "No no you can go first after all. What will an old man do with money anyway?"
After hearing that, Chuck lowered his head and nodded. "If you insist. I suppose I could go first."
Even as they both spoke. Inside they both were thinking very different things. Raise thoughts were something along the line of. "You're acting like you weren't gonna go first in the first place you fucking ass hat."
While on chuck's side. His thoughts were something like."If you didn't want to go first, then why the fuck did you bring it up? Goddamn old people in their problems."
But through it all, they both kept up their façades.
Chuck continued to smile and try to flatter the seemingly elderly man across from him.
Even as Ray continued to say words and do gestures to make him be perceived as nothing more than an elderly man to fool the seemingly ordinary out of luck, commoner.
They both were playing their own game, and they both were making the same mistake
As the same goes, all mistakes have consequences.
The dice game was innocent enough until something strange began to happen.
"How the fuck is he doing that?" Chuck thought as he saw Ray roll another when. Chuck had a strategy. His strategy was to let his opponent role two wins at most before switching the normal dice out using a very complex technique. That most definitely wasn't just him dropping one pair of dice into his hand as he pulled out the other. Before he would switch them out with the weighted dice.
So his surprise can be understood when Ray somehow managed to score. A win win the dice he was given, were rigged to do the exact opposite.
Putting his hand out for the dice, Chuck looked them over carefully when Ray handed them back.
"No they don't look like they've been tempered with in anyway. So just how the fuck did he get that?" Chuck thought, his confusion quickly morphing into irritated rage.
On raise side of things, he was trying his best not to cackle like a villain. "This is so much fucking fun. I don't see why I ever stopped gambling."
Ray thought, as he saw the concealed frustration in Chuck's every move. "I bet he's still trying to figure out what exactly I did to his precious dice."
The truth was, he had done nothing to the dice. The trick he was using was a combination of precision And timing.
He threw the dice down on the table, and just as a corner was about to hit he would lift his side of the table slightly. A combination of him only listing it, the smallest amounts and the table belonging to a not so opulent gambling den allowed him to pull it off. When the corner was impacted by the table, it would force it to flip and instead of the extra weight, pulling it down, the weight with fuel the fluid to land on the highest number possible.
The process wasn't particularly easy, and doing it while not getting caught was even more difficult. But Ray wondered just how many times could he win before he was found out?
The game continued on with Ray, wearing a Cheshire cat grin, and Chuck trying his best not to flip the table and rage.
As over half of what he had won in the gambling den was slid over to Ray side of the table he thought frantically. "There has to be a process to it. I know he's doing something he has to be. These dice never fail."
chuck thought his eyes almost animalistic as he looked for anything out of place about Ray, the table or Even the dice.
But for obvious reasons, he found nothing. "There has to be something I'm missing here."
Chuck thought his rage mounting. "He's doing something, and I have to figure it out soon because the games almost over."
Chuck thoughts, his eyes darting around more frantically than before.
At this point, it wasn't just for the money anymore, it was also for his pride as a professional cheater.
The very thought of someone being able to flip his schemes on their heads made him burst out in angry hives.
On raise side of things, he had already stopped focusing on the game, because murmurs of discontent from other gambling tables around them had slowly escalated into shouts.
"Damn I didn't think it would happen so quickly. I don't know if I should be happy or annoyed that they found out so damn late."
Ray thought, as he saw the gambling dens guards. Which were actually just roots making their way through the crowd.
"And that's my queue to go." Ray said as the guards began to slowly move closer to the table him and Chuck we were sitting at.
Stop Chuck seemed to finally notice the over 7 feet tall, muscular individuals walking towards the table.
"Are they walking towards this table or just in this direction?" Chuck said, his eyes locked on the guards in Iron plated leather vest and rough, cotton pants move towards them.
"No idea." Ray said, as he swiped an arm full of coins from both their piles into his coin purse."All I know is I'll be gone before they get here. What about you, old friend?"
Chuck seeming to disregard his calling him. An old friend nodded in agreement "I also intend to be gone when they get here."
And with that, he reached for his pile of coins to pocket them and slip away. But he found nothing but empty air.
Looking down at the table, his gaze became murderous.
"That fucking old bastard." He muttered under his breath as his outstretched hand closed into a tight fist.
"When I find him, I will tear him limb from limb!" Chuck growled as he slipped out of his chair and into the crowd.
While he was furious, he wasn't stupid.
For some reason, guards were on the way towards the table, and even if they weren't, Aiming for his table in particular, he wasn't willing to take the chance.
On raise side of things he was doing just fine, or as fine as someone stuck in a room full of angry drunk people could be.
"hey can you step aside and you can you stop shouting so loudly and you too right there? If you're going to yell at each other don't splash everyone THE gambling den with your spit it's disgusting. . I suppose I should be thanking both of you for donating to my great cause."
Ray thought filling a mix of both amusement and annoyance of being jostled by so many file smelling people.
The truth was Ray had entered the gambling den with no money at all.
When he was supposedly looking over the games around the den. He was actually relieving many purses of their weight with the knife. He had stolen from the drunk man on the way in.
With as many games, as he had so-called observed, he should have had many more coins than he did.
But he wasn't exactly talented at pick bucketing. While he had passed like 30 people, he was only able to rob five.
"Damn these childish hands." Ray thought, as he glared at his small fingers and palms.
While Ray was blaming it on his vertically challenged stature. The real problem was he hadn't been been pocketing for at least 200,000 years. Thinking of the hundreds of millennia he had spent in a void caused him to stiffen, the paws and movements only lasted a fraction of a second and was impossible to notice from any One perspective.
But in that fraction of time, he experienced every single battle, every single hardship, and every single loss he had experienced in the void all over again.
So when the next drunkard bumped into him, he lashed out with no hesitation.
"Don't fucking touch me!" Ray snarled, his voice, nearly loud enough to be called roar as he stabbed upwards with a jagged knife, it's slipping between two of the men's ribs right under the man's armpit.
The knife was buried nearly up to the handle and the man's ribs, and Ray could feel the blade penetrating the man's heart.
The man stiffened and convulsed a few times before slumping to the ground.
Only then did the blood seem to realize it was supposed to be flowing. As a not so mysterious, RED puddle began to expand from the man's left side.
Throughout the whole scene, raise eyes were as cold and sharp as steel. He had let go of the knife when the man had started falling and stepped aside so the man's rotund weight wouldn't squish him.
The only comment he had for the entire matter was. "How inconvenient."
With that, as the only warning, he suddenly threw his elbow back into the Jules of the man next to him, The scream he let out could have gotten him a standing ovation in acquire.
Not wasting any time, he quickly pivoted and gave another man , whose eyes had widened at the dead body, currently laying on the ground, the same treatment.
The man doubled it over from the pain, his mouth opened in a silent screen. His eyes seemed Almost as wide as saucers.
As soon as the man's head came within, striking distance, Ray slammed his forehead into the man's nose. The man's wide eyes quickly began to fill with tears of pain, and in one swift movement Ray duct before slamming the heel of his hand upwards into the man's throat
The scream, the man had been finally about to let out quickly the game a choked gasp. "Just pathetic." Ray muttered, shaking his head in
The man finally dropped to his knees, the hands that have been on his balls coming up to grip his throat.
"It seems this will be more troublesome then I first calculated." Ray said his eyes still glacier like in their intensity.
Realizing more people were noticing the dead man on the floor. Ray quickly slipped back into the crowd and began to make his way towards the gambling dens entrance.
Many more people jostled him on the way there, but he was able to hold back his revulsion. The only evidence that he was affected at all was his clenched jaw and the increasing coldness in his Luminous silver eyes that almost boost distain.
By the time he made it to the gambling dens entrance, his hands were trembling with the urge to kill anyone and everyone in the room.
As he stepped onto the streets of Maradon again, he could not resist the urge to mudder.
"Just disgusting." Ray hissed under his breath, his lips twisted in a mix of discussed and distain.
He began to make his way back towards the iron blood estate. His new pouch of coins, tied so tightly that they couldn't cling together.
The streets weren't as crowded as they had been when he went inside of the gambling bin, but that didn't make them any less dangerous.
If anything, it made them more so. Because of this reason alone raise eyes were continuously moving.
Observing the shadows around him, focusing on anyone and everyone passing within, arm reaching distance and using the reflection of anything around him to check behind him for pursuers.
Ray hadn't forgotten the man he had robbed, and he was just waiting for the retaliation.
He was prepared, alert, and ready for anything to go wrong. Yet when it did, he didn't notice until it was too late.
He was walking between two rundown buildings when a presence suddenly loomed from behind.
Millennia of training saved him from dying immediately. As soon as he sent someone behind him, he reflectively twisted sideways.
He felt a slight tug at the left shoulder of his cloak as he heard the sound of ripping fabric.
A slicing pain ran through his back. Quickly stepping forward, he spun around to see his adversary.
Standing before him was the red haired man.
"I forgot his name again no he's not looking for that, but what does it matter? He's not worth remembering anyway."
Ray thought, as he met the nearly black eyes of Chuck.
He was still dressed in the tattered brown jacket and slightly darker and more tattered brown pants he had been wearing at the gambling den.
The only different thing he wore was a strangely high-quality black cloak
."That type of material can't be gained from robbing just any random bastard with a little coin."
Ray thought as his silver eyes narrowed.
His back still stung from the knife wound and now he could see said knife his suspicion grew.
The knife chuck held was not something you could just find on the street.
The blade was 9 inches long and gleamed with the telltale blue sheen of high-quality tempered steel, and considering how the moonlight glinted off its Blood covered edge Ray could tell it was wickedly sharp.
"And neither is that knife. If I am correct, I think it's military issued."
Ray thought as he finally spoke.
"You're not just any random commoner are you?"
The question seemed to amuse Chuck as a smile curved his lips.
"What gave it away? Was it the cloak."
Chuck asked , his voice full of sarcasm.