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Nanana’s Buried Treasure Volume 4 Extra Story 1.1.1.13

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“TRANSLATOR:Foxsunes/EDITOR TheNix”

  With Tensai’s consent and D’arc nodding, we hurriedly obeyed Nanana’s wish and shuffled the cards in turns.

「It seems like you’re pretty easily triggered by cheating, so I guess you really hate that sort of thing?」Tensai asked, while I was taking the first turn at shuffling the cards.

「Well, that’s right. I mean, cheating is against the rules after all. That’s absolutely not a good thing.」

「That’s certainly true, but it just seems to me as if you get a little too worked up over it.」

「Hmmmm, is that so? ……Aah, but I’m not saying anything about other things, you know.」

  I hurriedly finished up shuffling the cards and handed them to D’arc on my left.

「Other things?」When Tensai tilted her head and asked that, Nanana-chan nodded.

  Yes, the agreements and restrictions of the game, what we call the rules, are absolute and I’m the type of person to protect them. However, beyond that you are free to do whatever you like. People who follow the rules can do things that seem to be unfair, but that’s a fine judgement.

「That is…. are you talking about what Juugo and D’arc did when they teamed up?」

「Yeah. If you ask me, that was completely acceptable. Well I mean it’s certainly not something that can be called fair play, but it’s not exactly against the rules either. In my perspective, that was a splendid strategy. Tactics that slip through the loopholes in the rules are excellent ways of winning. They should be applauded, not opposed. At least that’s what I think.」

「That’s so deep.」Tensai laughed and received the deck of cards from D’arc, who was done shuffling.

「However, the crap that Juugo pulled just now is something I won’t allow. That was not a strategy or anything like that. It went against the fundamental rules of the game. This kind of behavior is nothing but a disgrace to the game.」

  She was glaring daggers at me. For the second time, I whistled and looked the other way.

「I see what you mean.」Tensai smiled the tiniest bit, then handed Nanana-chan the pile of cards.

  Nevertheless, Nanana-chan really made a good point there on what made for a good game. Normally someone wouldn’t think that far, I guess this could be expected of someone who is only held by the chains of law, called Nanana’s rules?

「Nanana-dono, could it be that you like a good game?」

  I guess she thought the same as me. For Tensai to ask something like that.

「Yes, I love it! I wanted to go up against the people from the past, and challenged the ruins they left behind all over the world one after the other. I devastated gambling halls throughout the world from the front to back. Though, I also won too much and the prize money put a noose around my neck.」

  By the way, the ghost talking about these scary things died when she was just 18 years old. Nanana-chan left behind her fortune, Ryuugajou Nanana’s buried treasure, in unknown locations. It’s said that the current value is several hundreds of billions, perhaps even trillions. I think I caught a glimpse of the origins of such a great fortune when I heard her talk.

  After hearing Nanana-chan’s argument, Tensai nodded understandingly.

「I understand your reasoning quite well, Nanana-dono. If that’s the case, I think I will be able to win against you.」Tensai had a sinister grin when she answered this, and Nanana-chan laughed.

「I’m looking forward to it, Tensai-chan.」

  Nanana-chan finished her shuffling and the deck of 54 cards returned to my hands once again. And then, the last game of the very long-lasting best out of 50 Daihinmin tournament was about to start.

  Then I skillfully dealt the cards, which had been shuffled by all of us, to D’arc, Tensai, Nanana-chan and myself, in that order. Of course I was not able to cheat. There was no mechanism that I could use to do so, and Nanana-chan was purposefully staring intently at my hands with all her might. When I finished dealing all of the 54 cards, everyone checked what was in their hands.

「Ahem…..*cough* *cough*」

  Uh, who was that? Who is the idiot pretending to cough, but failing miserably and coughing for real instead? I instinctively raised my head and saw that the perpetrator was Tensai. My eyes opened wide with what she did next.

  To my surprise, with her left hand, the one she was not using to hold the cards, Tensai was starting to twist and turn to touch her body in all kinds of places. This was something I remembered. These were the hand signals that me and D’arc were using before to let each other know what our hands contained.

  One 4, two 5’s, two 7’s, one 8, two 10’s, one J, two K’s, two 2’s, one joker. Those were all of her 14 cards.

  Next, she also sent information about the symbols of each of the cards. While I was confirming all of that, I was just baffled. How did Tensai know our sign language when we didn’t even tell her about it? There could only be one answer. Up til now during the game, Tensai had been deciphering our sign language! This was her ever so amazing insight and strength of deduction. As a self-proclaimed master detective, she definitely possessed those skills. Of course she also had plenty of regrettable faults as well though.

  When I received all the signs from the great detective. I proceeded to also send her my own signs. I was going to go along with Tensai’s plan, to turn this battle around.

  One 4, two 6’s, two 8’s, three 9’s, two Jacks, two Kings, one two; a total of 13 cards.

  There was no mistake that Tensai’s plan was going to be “All three of us work together to defeat Nanana-chan”.

  Daihinmin is a game where the cards are first divided into 4 piles. At this time, it isn’t known who has which cards. To get far in this game, deducing the cards that another is holding is an effective strategy. With that train of thought, me and D’arc worked together by telling each other about our cards. When the two of us teamed up, we would know 50% of the initial set-up of the game. However, what when three people work together? If three people exchange their information, it becomes possible to know 75% of the cards that are dealt. And logically with that, the remaining cards are bound to be the ones in Nanana-chan’s hand. In other words, when three people work together in this game, you can know for sure exactly which cards everyone is holding. What you need in order to win are “luck” and “skill”. And, because in this game of Daihinmin we also had the extra “restriction” rule, the already strategy-heavy game was becoming even more of a battle of tactics.

  In short: regardless of how many strong cards you possess at the beginning, according to your containment strategy, you have a chance at recovery.

  Actually, when I worked together with D’arc, the two of us had taken up the spots above Nanana-chan a couple of times already. However, we just hadn’t been able to make her end up as the very last on the list.

  Tensai was thinking that, by us all working together, we could devise an even more effective strategy than when it was just me and D’arc working together. By working together with three people, we could take control of the game as well as possible.

  First, we would know all of the cards that everyone was holding in the game. Then we could use that information precisely in a way that would help us back each other up while we were disposing of our cards. Not once would we let Nanana-chan take the lead and we would win perfectly. This was no longer a “game” that we played for fun. It was just a plan in order to completely seal off one other player.

  If we cannot win with luck, we will win with strategy.

  Yes that made sense, this is the way it should be. This way, Tensai would definitely be able to win. It would not be a mere dream to make Nanana-chan take last place. A perfectly sly strategy, but in no way was this cheating. Nanana-chan would also acknowledge that this would be perfectly in the gray area of tactics that can be used.

  Nanana-chan will have no choice but to admit her defeat if we use this strategy: it would be the perfect kind of defeat.

 There is no doubt this scheme would be the quickest way to success.

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