Whispers of A Dead Empire

Chapter 71

"I fold." Alessia threw her cards down, along with Hector and Amari, and I chuckled evilly to myself as I reached out and pulled back the massive pile of chips. I felt a little bad about wiping them clean, but I enjoyed winning.

The chips scraped our gaming table as I pulled them backward and clattered all together as they fell into the small hole I made for them. "Shall we go for another?" I asked as I collected all the cards. Much to my dismay, everyone shook their heads. I wanted to be sad, but we have been doing this for the last few hours, so they were expected to want to be done. That and the fact I just cleaned the house.

It took them a bit to get the hang of the game, along with the proper use of the currency, but once they got it, the game went on pretty smoothly. I lost a few early, which was good. I wanted to get their hopes up and make them all in, so I could start raking in cash. Without a second thought, I quickly gathered all the chips and quickly started to count out everyone's winnings.

"Hector, for you, you win one hundred dollars even. Amari, you are up by one hundred and ten, and Alessia, you pulled in only fifty." I told them as I quickly counted the chips and distributed the cash. While they couldn't use it right now, I would have to start implementing ways shortly. I wonder if I could set up shop somewhere in here. That also means that I have to set up salaries and whatnot, and honestly, keeping track of it all sounds like a pain in my ass. Maybe if I could get kharon off of ferryman duty, I could change his position to the treasurer or something of the sort. It would be a lot safer than him dealing with adventurers every day. I distributed the money around the circle and saw that Alessia looked morose. "What's wrong?" I asked as I slid a fifty-dollar bill in her direction.

"I don't enjoy losing." She told me through a pout as she folded up the fifty and slid it into one of her pockets.

"Ah, when I first started playing this game, my chef cleaned me out once. I was devastated, but he taught me a lot that I know now." I told her as I quickly counted my earnings, which tallied up to well over three hundred dollars. If only my money had value here.

"It's still embarrassing." She told me as she huffed and crossed her arms."Yeah, yeah, yeah. "I told her as I tucked away my cash. "Just get good." I laughed as I stood up, and so did everyone else.

Alessia clearly didn't know how to react to my shit-talking, but really, it was fun to finally talk shit with people. Even if they were not totally alive. Ah, how have I missed this. It's been so long. I sat back in my chair in a mild euphoria for the first time in such a long time.

Alessia stared at the table with a frown on her face and her arms crossed across her chest. "Come on, Alessia, cheer up; it's just a game," I told her as I cleaned up the chips. The other two had already left the room, leaving us two behind.

"I know; it just isn't fair." She told me as she lounged across the table, with her head faced down. I could hardly hear her muffled voice."There there." I reached out and patted her back. I couldn't get over how cute it was seeing her looking so defeated. The poor girl must really take the loss pretty hard.

She sat there for a little longer as I neatly stacked all the chips up in all the spots. "Come along Alessia, I'm going to go work on some stuff." I gestured to her as I walked towards my office area. I had fun, so now it was work time. There was some stuff I needed to work on for the future of the domain.

I sat down at my desk and rifled through my notebook while Alessia shambled into my room, threw herself into her chair, grabbed one book that she likes to read, and sat there quietly brooding over her loss. I, on the other hand, fleshed out more ideas. Maybe I should make a central bank to help manage the cash and eventually place Kharon in some sort of management position. If I had some computers or something of the sort, that would be fantastic in keeping track of the cash flow. But here I am. It was times like this that I really wished that I had the technology. I would love to build some here if I could, but I had no idea how it worked outside of super-simplified basics.