She knew?! Isabella’s gesture made it impossible for Adek to object to her obvious cheating. If he did, she’d immediately retaliate by pointing out the markings on the side of the cards. But how did she figure it out?
Isabella’s accurate maneuver would only be possible if she knew which cards she and her opponent were holding, at least to a certain extent. Did that mean she used Adek’s markings? He considered that possibility, but those scratches were impossible for a human to perceive. Then, he noticed something on the marked cards. There were tiny red blots on the opposite side of his own markings. This deck was something he’d originally taken from one of the castle’s rooms. There’d been many small stains on the cards in the first place, but now that he thought back on it more carefully, he didn’t remember this red kind.
Isabella chuckled as she rubbed her thumb and index finger together.
Now I get it: that’s her nail polish!
Those red blots were Isabella’s refined red nail polish. By rubbing two of her nails together, she could shave small pieces of it off and stick them in slightly different parts on each card.
Isabella had started cheating even before Adek.
“I never once believed you would face me in an honest fight,” Isabella said with a chuckle.
“I can see that now. You acted the same when you suspected I have a stockpile of lives or that I have a second skill. You’re a deeply distrustful person, aren’t you? Not just when it comes to this game, but in your everyday life as well. It must be hard to live a life where you’re suspicious of everything and everyone.”
“I don’t mind it. The me who couldn’t face reality died twenty-five years ago,” declared the queen of politics, unconditional monarch of a world rife with trickery, as if such a life was only natural. “Moving on, you’ll be losing three times the value of that ten of spades. Have at him.”
“Dammit!” Adek screamed in pain as the monster took a substantial chomp out of his body. The experience left him panting for a long while.
“Now you also have one foot in the grave. Tell me, how does it feel?”
Adek looked at his body while trying to adjust his breathing back to normal. The hand holding his card had mostly disappeared save for its fingers. If he took a look in the mirror, he’d see that more than eighty percent of his body had gone up in smoke. “This...is the first time, the very first that I’ve been pushed this far.”
Through the combination of Adek’s unrivaled skill, his thorough preparations, and excellent luck, he’d never been cornered, even in honest games. This fiend, who’d made countless others teeter on the verge of death, now found himself in their shoes. He was left with a measly 14 points. It wouldn’t take a direct hit to guarantee his death anymore; losing a normal round could also seal the deal.
“Hah... Ha ha... Ha ha ha ha...!” Thrown in a situation like that, Adek laughed. He wasn’t trembling in fear or overcome with rage. No, this was his most sinister bout of laughter so far. “Nice, how nice. This is the ultimate showdown. I can’t get enough of it! Now, before we begin the next round, let’s return the cards to normal. I wouldn’t want to throw a wet blanket on the finale of this wonderful battle. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course not. Go ahead,” Isabella replied with a nod. This wasn’t a proposal she could turn down, as she was also guilty of marking the cards.
“You and I will both cast repairing magic on the cards at the same time. That way, no one can pull any tricks in the confusion of the moment,” Adek suggested, earning another nod of approval from Isabella.
Adek and Isabella poured mana into the cards in tandem, restoring them to their original form. They didn’t remove just the nail polish blots and scratches, but also the stains that had been on the cards before the start of the game. The deck was now as good as new.
“Let us begin our final confrontation, as both of us stand on the edge of death’s abyss,” Adek said.