Chapter 232: Party: Bookworm (1/2)

As promised, the game was a standard poker game. Even before the hand was dealt, Arthur felt the mana swirl in the surrounding. Everyone was using their abilities.

As he sat there studying the players, Arthur noted a couple of things in his mind. To win this game, you need to be preceptive of who's using mana and who's not. Another aspect was that you need to know the opponent's ability.

Nera and glasses girl didn't know that he had a clue about their identity. As for Rae, she was glaring at him in such a way that he knew she would bite him if she had the chance. He doubted she would care if Arthur knew her ability or not.

To begin with, Arthur didn't know how would she win using her ability. As far as he could tell, her ability was mainly combat-oriented. However, that didn't exclude the possibility of her ability having other uses or that she had skills.

As for Jonah and Oliver, they were his teammates. Jonah's ability was a perfect fit if they could hide it well enough. As for Oliver… Well, he was a good distraction.

The cards were dealt, two for each player, before a white light appeared in front of Arthur. The words ”Two Points” appeared in front of him signaling that he was the big blind.

The points left his bracelet, reducing his 170 points by two. As he understood it, there was a base of one hundred points given to each student each month. Then came their ranking bonus, which was their ranking subtracted from two hundred and multiplied by two. Arthur's ranking was 165 so he got 70 bonus points. As for Jonah, he should have 482 points. Rae must have 494 points and Arthur didn't remember the ranking of the rest of them.

Their wealth was nowhere near enough, but Arthur was fine with that. He'd rather be a lucky or shrewd weakling than a strong top ranker.

'Well, I didn't do that good of a job at hiding my strength.'

That was a mistake that Arthur made, but he didn't want to mull over it. The right choice might have been to stay lower than that, but he would have made several compromises at the expense of his friends and his pride.

Arthur peeked at his cards. A two of Rose and a Guardian of Swords. It wasn't a bad hand, only that it wasn't enough to guarantee a win.

Their uniforms began fluttering as the wind that Oliver summoned rampaged around their table. The teacher and the others were annoyed as they could barely keep their hair still.

”Stop using your wind! We can see you using it clearly!” Rae said as she held back her hair.

”And?” Oliver asked with a laugh. ”I'm not cheating. They said we could use our abilities.”

Rae turned to the teacher but she only received a shrug in response. As her white scarf appeared and was about to beat Oliver to a pulp, the teacher raised her hand.

”No violence on campus. You will be punished if you violate the rules.” The teacher warned and Rae sat back down in annoyance as the wind kept obstructing her from sitting or seeing clearly.

Arthur smiled as he held tightly to his cards. Now, however, they were different. There was no two of Roses, only an ace of a Sword. What happened was quite simple.

Oliver was a distraction, Jonah would copy whatever good card he had and places his hand on it, and Arthur would have Ruki replace the cards through shadow space.

His plan was a bit faulty, as he thought of it on the spot. There was, after all, a two of roses card lying around in his shadow space. The reason that he didn't trade his bad cards with Jonah's good cards was simple.

He wanted a diverse assortment of cards. He could either get a flush or a straight using this method. Depending on the cards the flop, the turn, and the river showed, he would pull his cards accordingly.

Of course, there was no way to communicate with each other without being spotted. That's why there was a margin of error. Some of the cards that Jonah would give him would also be unsuitable to the ones he had, so it wasn't a perfect plan.

After everyone called Arthur on his bet as the big blind, the teacher dealt the three cards. The flop revealed a six of Books card, a two of Swords card, and an eight of swords. Arthur saw that Oliver's expression turned gloomy when he saw the cards.

Arthur switched his ace with the two in his shadow space before Nera activated her ability. Arthur saw her eyes gleam as if he was standing naked in front of her.

Nera, who was after Arthur, raised her bet by ten points. As for Rae, Arthur noticed that she seemed disinterested from the beginning. He guessed that she wanted to fold.