Gambling can get people addicted. Vane felt this deeply at this moment—though what got him hooked wasn't winning money.
He brought three hundred thousand Belly. Betting five thousand at a time, even if he lost every round he could still place sixty bets, and in that process it was impossible for him to keep losing.
On the contrary, his luck wasn't bad. Hitting three out of five bets was pretty likely, and after dozens of rounds, three hundred thousand Belly actually became three hundred fifty thousand Belly.
Winning fifty thousand Belly didn't make Vane very happy. His goal was to train Observation Haki, not to win this little bit of money.
He kept trying to use Observation Haki to capture the shaking trajectory of the dice, but failed every time. Being able to win this much was purely luck.
Maybe the dice's trajectory was just too hard?
The larger the object—especially if it's a living being—the more obvious the aura on it. Dice are small objects, and they're inanimate; the difficulty really was a bit too high.
Vane changed the target of his perception, from the dice to the person shaking the dice.
"Big!"
"Small!"
After restarting, Vane's luck suddenly got a lot worse. He kept betting wrong, and his money flowed out like water.
Very soon he had lost down to only one hundred thousand Belly.
"Place your bets, no more changes!"
Bang!
The dice shaker slammed the dice cup hard onto the table again. Everyone placed their bets; big and small were about half and half.
Suddenly, an inscrutable smile appeared on the uncovered lower half of Vane's face. Everyone was drawn by that smile, and then they watched him push his money onto the highest-multiplier triple bet.
The people at the table were immediately shocked. That confident smile, that arrogant way of pushing the money—could it be that this round really was triples?
Even the dice shaker panicked. Could it really be? He trembled as he opened the dice cup.
"One, four, two. Small!"
"That scared me. A small—I almost got tricked."
"With that momentum I really thought the king of gamblers had arrived."
Everyone thought Vane was going big, but it turned out he pulled a big flop.
Especially the dice shaker—he was a professional. Even though he couldn't roll whatever he wanted, he could still control an approximate range. He could control over sixty percent of the big-or-small outcomes, which was how the casino guaranteed profits.
Vane's move made him doubt his own technique a little. The emotional whiplash was really hard to take.
The gambling continued. The momentum of Vane's betting grew stronger and stronger. A few times he scared the others half to death, but in the end it was always: looks fierce in operation, looks disappointing in results.
"Is this guy crazy? He keeps losing money and he's still this happy."
"Don't follow his bets. This guy's unlucky as hell."
When the dice shaker saw that most of the people at the table were betting the opposite of Vane, he decided that as long as Vane bet first, he would try to roll the number Vane had bet.
Under this inexplicable behind-the-scenes manipulation, Vane's money actually started increasing again. The people present rose and fell with the results—sometimes ecstatic, sometimes slapping their heads in regret.
Whether he lost or won, Vane always maintained that air of a gambling king.
The reason he kept that confident aura was that he was slowly starting to sense the dice shaker's presence. Even with his eyes closed, in complete darkness, he could sense a rough outline of the dice shaker.
Grasping that outline, the other party's movements gradually became clear. Very quickly, in Vane's dark perception, the other person turned into a white stick-figure silhouette.
This was definitely the sign of getting started with Observation Haki. He had practiced Armament Haki for so many days without getting started, yet coming to this casino, in not much time at all, he actually got started with Observation Haki first.
All you can say is: you plant flowers with care and they won't bloom; you plant willows without meaning to, and they grow into shade.
With a preliminary grasp of Observation Haki and gradually becoming proficient, this was the main reason Vane's momentum kept growing. In reality, betting on the dice was just random, purely for fun, making everyone else jumpy.
Three hundred thousand Belly went up and down, and in the end fifteen hundred thousand remained—no, one hundred fifty thousand remained. It should have been all lost, but because too many people bet the opposite of Vane later, he won some back instead.
Vane's Observation Haki perception also expanded from one person to a whole group.
In his perception, most of these people's auras were vague white stick-figure silhouettes.
"Not playing anymore."
Vane grabbed the money on the table. The others thought this masked guy had lost too much and was in pain. In fact, in Vane's perception, a guy with a somewhat different aura had appeared.
...
"Really boring. I don't know where this casino found those guys—two hits and they're down, and it made me lose a lot of money."
A guy who was obviously a pirate walked out from somewhere, surrounded by a few lackeys… This casino should have an underground area. After all, on the surface it was just a one-story building. If there was more space to expand, it could only be underground.
Vane followed behind him and walked out of the casino.
He had already recognized him: a pirate with a bounty of 28 million, "Three Hands" Doko. Two meters tall—he was a decent target.
The inner circle of Bliss Street wasn't a good place to make a move, so Vane kept following him.
Probably because they had lost quite a bit of money in the casino, the Three Hands pirates didn't have money to go have fun in other districts. Instead, they headed straight for the harbor of Bliss Island.
A lot of ships were docked here, and pirate ships took up quite a large portion.
"Damn it! One day I'll be able to buy the biggest pirate ship too."
Doko's pirate ship was relatively small, the kind you could buy for two or three million Belly. If it had been used longer, you could even get one for a million. It was about the same size as the Going Merry.
Doko being able to make it to a bounty of 28 million meant he was pretty decent among low-tier pirates. The reason he was "cramped" on this small ship was because of his gambling habit.
Every time he grabbed a sum of money, he would run to Bliss Island to gamble. His luck was bad, and every time there wasn't even much left for the crew's food.
This time was the same. The money was lost clean again, so he could only head out to sea and do a few jobs.
"Stop sleeping! Stop fucking sleeping! Do you still want to work or not!"
"Hurry up and raise the sails. We're going out to sea to rob."
"Huh? Didn't you say this time we'd buy some weapons first before going out, Captain? Don't tell me you lost all the money again?"
"Are you questioning your captain's decision?! What's there to worry about with money? Just go rob again. Go squat on the main shipping lanes and hit small merchant ships. If that doesn't work, go raid towns."
Some crew members supported the captain's idea. The violent factor was deeply etched into their genes. A small part of them, however, were dissatisfied that the captain kept spending all the funds.
Some felt that if the pirate crew kept going like this, it wouldn't develop at all.
Others felt that the captain spending all the money by himself was outright selfish, so they voiced their protests.
"You bastards don't know how to be grateful to your great captain at all. You even dare to talk back to the captain! Throw them all off the ship!"
Many captains couldn't tolerate opposition from their crew, even when the captain's own behavior had serious problems.