Fiancée

Anne quickly became the center of attention at the gathering.

Most of the attendees at this gathering were Gorgia University students, all classmates who had enrolled in Black Moon Year 33, with only a handful of invited "outsiders."

As an "outsider," Charlotte tactfully chose to keep a low profile. He sat down in a corner of the banquet hall and casually took out his diary to study it.

There were two things he always carried with him, never letting either out of his sight: the Vampire Hand Axe and his predecessor's diary.

It was not convenient to cultivate Bloody Glory on an occasion like this, so Charlotte opened the page containing the Labyrinth of Agmiras. Perhaps because he had studied it for so long, he had gained a tiny bit of insight.

As Charlotte was further analyzing the first Agmilas Labyrinth diagram, a man approached with a flash of white teeth and a smile. "I'm Andre, a third-year student at Gorgia University like everyone else. May I ask your name, sir? Would you be interested in playing cards with us?"

Charlotte smiled faintly. "Charlotte, a graduate of Sheffield University. I'm not very good at cards, so I'd better not."

Andre did not back down. Two or three more young men soon gathered around, joining him in urging Charlotte to participate. Their warm invitation made it hard for Charlotte to refuse. After declining a few times, he could only agree.

The moment he sat at the card table with Andre and the others, he sensed that something was off. Still, he pretended not to notice anything and began the first round with a smile.

The cards Andre and the others played were called Takuro Cards. There were one hundred and forty-four in total. The best cards were the Nine Great Righteous Gods cards, the only permanent trump cards in Takuro Cards. The other trump cards differed in every deck, though most depicted famous figures from the Old Continent: kings, fierce generals, renowned scholars, bizarre evil gods, and various auxiliary cards. The game itself was not difficult, but it had many doubling mechanics, so the gains and losses after a single round could often be enormous.

For that reason, Takuro Cards were popular only among nobles and the wealthy. Knowing how to play them was even considered a symbol of status.

Charlotte Mecklen had always been skilled at card games. Now that he had recovered his memories, he did not seem rusty at the table.

After two consecutive rounds, Charlotte had lost one Flor and twenty Centimes. Rather than becoming annoyed, he grew even calmer and more composed.

This group of young men was cheating!

They had probably heard from Belina that Charlotte earned a considerable salary and had recently bought a mansion worth two hundred Écus, which gave them other ideas.

But when it came to cheating, how could Charlotte, a mathematics graduate, be inferior to these "amateurs"?

Not to mention that he had the Eye of Insight.

After testing them for two or three rounds and confirming the young men's greed, Charlotte deliberately tossed out some bait. Then he let the game settle into a deadlock. Though he lost more often, every few rounds he would get a "particularly lucky hand," usually winning back most of his stake in one go.

After more than twenty rounds, Andre saw that the gap between wins and losses remained small and became slightly anxious. He signaled several companions, then said with a smile, "The stakes are too low. There's really no point continuing like this. How about we raise them?"

Charlotte readily agreed. After the stakes were raised, his "luck" seemed to take a sudden turn for the worse. He lost more than ten hands in a row, already dropping over seventy Flors.

When Charlotte acted as if his losses had made him see red and proposed raising the stakes again, the young men were delighted. They readily agreed in perfect tacit understanding. But this time, Charlotte's luck abruptly turned blazing hot. After more than a dozen hands, he not only won back all the money he had lost, but also made nearly thirteen Écus and six Flors. The young men's faces went pale from their losses. They simply could not understand how, despite cheating together again, they could still play the cards into such a result.

After winning the final hand, Charlotte said with a beaming smile, "Sorry, I need to take Miss Anne home. She has to be home before dinner."

There was nothing to criticize about that excuse.

After all, the Brittany Family's rules were famously strict. No one dared stop Anne from returning home late.

Having shaken off the gambling, cheating young men, Charlotte walked over to Anne and said, "May I have the honor of escorting Miss Anne home?"

Anne smiled faintly and bid farewell to several female companions. As she left the banquet hall, she said softly, "Andre and those people are terribly annoying. They often lure people into card games at school, then cheat together to swindle them out of their money."

"Still, none of them have advanced to Transcendence."

At that, Anne gave a sly smile. As a Dream Walker, she had long noticed the card game. Seeing Charlotte look completely confident of victory, she had not said anything to stop him.

Charlotte could not help laughing. "Miss Anne, you can be quite ladylike sometimes."

Anne covered her little mouth, but her crescent-shaped brows could not hide her smile.

She had spent the entire afternoon making idle chatter with people, and she had actually been rather stifled. But seeing Charlotte sweep the table and win until Andre's group went pale, she suddenly felt that today's gathering had been quite interesting too.

Though Anne was bold, she truly did not dare let Charlotte escort her home. Instead, she took Charlotte back to Champs-Élysées Avenue Number 58 herself before reluctantly saying goodbye and leaving.

Charlotte watched Anne's carriage depart, feeling quite relaxed as well.

Although he had delayed himself by a day, he believed it would not affect his efforts to resolve his current predicament.

If he ultimately failed to deal with the threat of the two evil gods, it would not be because of today's date.

Over the next several days, Menilman Soumei did not come to work.

Charlotte was never late, but he took great delight in leaving early. His dates with Anne Brittany became frequent to an astonishing degree, and their relationship quickly warmed.

Outside of his dates, he did not neglect serious matters. He returned to the university several times and consulted several of Sheffield University's most learned professors, but none of them were familiar with labyrinth studies. His research into the Agmilas Labyrinth still made no progress.

As for the Vampire Secret Scroll, he did not even dare mention it. Summoning an evil god meant facing the stake!

If he ran to Sheffield University, under the Goddess's protection, and eagerly announced that he had summoned a vampire evil god, the professors would personally help him build a pyre.

Fortunately, his cultivation of Bloody Glory advanced with each passing day, and the date on which the vampire evil god Carnstein would descend was repeatedly postponed, letting him breathe a slight sigh of relief.

The Empire's postal system was quite efficient, and Charlotte soon received a piece of good news.

After receiving his younger brother's written promise to renounce his inheritance rights, Charlotte's elder brother, mindful of their brotherly bond, enclosed a Savings Union deposit certificate worth five hundred and fifty Écus with his reply and gladly agreed to help dissolve the engagement.

His brother's reply also contained some news: that fiancée had decided to make a personal trip to Strasbourg to sign the formal annulment documents with Charlotte face-to-face.

The day after receiving the reply, Charlotte had a particularly pleasant date with Anne. They watched an opera, then took a public carriage home.

Charlotte strolled leisurely into the alley and, at his doorstep, unexpectedly saw a very pretty girl sitting on the steps of Number 58. She looked slightly disheveled, with even some dust on her forehead. Her lovely brows were faintly furrowed, and she was clearly in an extremely foul mood.