She called it cleaning, but all she did was wave the broom around like a sword.
She had filled the room with dust and chaos. Chen Xu collected the tableware from the tripwire, ready to return it to the kitchen and get breakfast while he was at it.
After he enjoyed a maid's attentions as she washed and groomed him, a kitchen helper brought him a plate of egg-dipped fried bread, with premium bacon, lightly charred, sandwiched between the slices.
The wicked life of the nobility was corrupting his already fragile will.
"Look, Sleeping Beauty finally got up." Geralt was already fully dressed and having tea with the baron in the drawing room.
"Ha ha, very funny." Chen Xu took a bite of bread and asked, "When are we leaving?"
"When Fringilla gets up." The White Wolf sighed. This was why he generally avoided working with women.
Never enough sleep, and never enough sleeping together.
"In that case, how about a game of Gwent?" Chen Xu pulled his pitiful deck out of his armor.
The baron said his wife was missing and he was in no mood, but the White Wolf was happy to play:
"Why not?"
The wager for the first game was five crowns. Neither knew how good the other's deck was, so both bet cautiously.
They exchanged decks to shuffle, then each drew ten cards. At this point, they could replace two cards from their starting hands.
Geralt replaced nothing, clearly having drawn a good hand, while Chen Xu had nothing but low-strength units and weather cards.
He tried replacing two cards and got a [Decoy] and yet another weather card.
Great. Five weather cards out of ten. He had almost drawn every weather card in his deck, and four of them were duplicates.
Chen Xu did not give up. He tried trading his weather cards for Geralt's unit cards, but a few spies from his opponent crushed him outright.
For the second game, the White Wolf doubled the wager himself and still won easily.
This time, Chen Xu had even drawn all six weather cards.
"Tsk, tsk. Man, what kind of luck is that?" The White Wolf happily pocketed the coins, ostensibly comforting him but actually mocking him.
Was this the effect of my weakened luck? Chen Xu could not help wondering.
As the third game began, he watched Geralt's hands shuffle the cards out of the corner of his eye.
The card faces flashed past, easily caught by his reaction stat of fourteen.
Geralt merely cut the deck casually, yet somehow all the high-strength unit cards ended up at the very bottom. If Chen Xu had not known the White Wolf's character, he really would have thought he was cheating.
He drew his ten starting cards. Another losing hand.
"Fringilla?" He suddenly looked toward the door.
As the baron and the White Wolf instinctively turned their heads, Chen Xu swiftly swapped a weather card in his hand for the [Decoy] at the bottom of the deck.
[You have learned the skill [Cheating] Lv. 1]
Flicking, shuffling, gathering, dealing, stealing, switching, concealing-useful or otherwise, it all flooded his mind.
"Why isn't she down yet? Why don't you go hurry her along?" He rubbed his swelling head and spoke as though nothing had happened.
Geralt gave him a baffled look. "No, no, no, you don't understand! Trust me, the more you hurry a woman, the slower she gets. Just play your cards!"
He had more or less figured out Chen Xu's deck. It was pure garbage.
He had two spies in his hand this game, and each spy let him draw two extra cards. Victory was practically guaranteed. This money came far more easily than witcher contracts.
I don't understand? Looking at that money-grubbing, womanizing face, Chen Xu had been holding back his irritation for a long time.
He had only intended to cheat his way to one small win, but it looked like he had to show his opponent the dangers of gambling.
With two Decoy cards in hand, he could easily have taken his opponent's spies for himself, yet he deliberately wasted one on a useless ordinary unit.
"You sure are damn good at cards!"
Even the baron could not bear to watch. Could an idiot like this really save his wife?
By now, Chen Xu had lost twenty-five crowns. He activated [Deception], holding his breath to redden his face and suppressing his instinct to blink until his eyes became dry and bloodshot.
He doubled the wager again himself, looking like a genuine gambler.
"Why not double it again? Forty crowns!" Geralt wanted him to recognize the difficulty and back down.
He was disappointed in Chen Xu now. In his more than ninety years of life, he had seen far too many people gamble away everything they owned.
"You think I can't afford it? A hundred crowns!" Chen Xu slapped the table. The baron opened his mouth to dissuade him, but Geralt interrupted:
"Two hundred is fine by me. The question is, do you have it?"
Smack! Chen Xu unfastened Gram and slapped it onto the table. "Vesemir offered me three hundred crowns for this sword, and I didn't sell it. Win, and you can take it."
The intricate energy circuits on the blade constantly emitted pure white light.
Even the baron could not resist picking it up and giving it a couple of swings:
"You've really lost your head. How can you gamble with a treasure like this? Here, I'll lend you two hundred crowns."
A look of regret seemed to cross Chen Xu's face as well, and the White Wolf caught it keenly:
"No. The sword. Today, I'm going to teach you a lesson." He seemed to have found Chen Xu's weak spot. "My collection happens to be missing a legendary steel sword. This one barely qualifies. I'll value it at two hundred and fifty, then."
...I suspect you're insulting me.
The wager settled, Chen Xu took Geralt's deck and began to shuffle.
Letting a cardsharp shuffle your deck was less straightforward than simply handing him your money.
Chen Xu did not go too far. He left Geralt one spy, followed by all three weather cards and one hero. The rest were siege units.
The hand his opponent had shuffled for him included rain and Scorch, enough to wipe out all the siege units in one go. He did not even need to tamper with his own deck.
He had already arranged exactly what order his opponent would play his cards in, how he would lose, and which round he would lose.
Geralt's expression gradually shifted from faint mockery to utter confidence, then a frown, then bitterness, and finally a blank face.
He had his mutations' resting bereaved face effect to thank. Otherwise, Geralt of Rivia's lifelong reputation would have been ruined in an instant.
"Very good. You won, but you haven't earned my approval."
The white light of the Axii Sign flickering at his fingertips now and then made Chen Xu's heart pound:
"How about we forget it? Cards are just for fun. I was only joking."
"No, no, no. A bet is a bet. This is my second lesson for you." Geralt gave a kindly threatening smile, turned to the baron, and forced a few words through his teeth:
"Well, Philip, lend me some money."
A pile of gleaming gold Novigrad crowns sat on the table. Chen Xu resisted the urge to bury his face in it and swept it into his pocket with his arm.
The White Wolf had already been on the verge of exploding, but seeing Chen Xu pocket the money without even counting it eased his anger somewhat:
At least the kid knows how to behave.
In fact, with Chen Xu's brain, even if the pile had been twice as large, he could have counted it at a glance.
"How about another game?" he asked cautiously.
"..." The White Wolf glared at him, unwilling to say outright that he had no money.
Fortunately, the striking, beautiful sorceress finally came gracefully down the stairs.
She seemed to have just bathed. Her face was slightly flushed, making her skin look even more delicate. She secretly pinched the White Wolf's backside and ordered:
"Let's go waste our precious time helping this wife-beater find his wife!"
The White Wolf liked falling into women's hands, and Chen Xu carried little weight, so Fringilla was clearly in charge of the wife-finding squad.
Her original plan went like this:
Since this commoner named Pro knew where the baron's wife Anna was, the three of them could strike straight at the heart of the enemy, slaughter the three Crones, and take Anna back by force.
Once the caster died, the curse would break on its own.
The White Wolf disagreed. That morning, he had discovered a hidden chamber beside the kitchen. Inside was a shrine Anna had set up for the Crones, with a holy book introducing the Ladies of the Wood placed upon it:
"She Who Knows"
The book naturally contained exaggerations and falsehoods from believers, but an ancient faith of this local, legendary stature was by no means easy to deal with.
Moreover, this was a death curse. He was uncertain whether it would dissipate with its caster's demise, and he was not fully confident he could lift it himself.
Although the baron had promised to share his information about Ciri regardless of whether they succeeded, witchers had always been taught to give their all.
The safest method was to negotiate with the Crones and have the casters release Anna of their own accord.
Seeing the witcher act as though he faced a formidable enemy, Fringilla looked displeased and turned instead to the "decisive and ruthless" Chen Xu:
"What do you think?"