The Eminence in Shadow, Vol. 5 by Daisuke Aizawa and Touzai

Author:Daisuke Aizawa and Touzai [AIZAWA, DAISUKE and TOUZAI]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yen On
Published: 2024-07-23T00:00:00+00:00

“Dammit, we’ll get you for this!” wails Skel.

“B-but that’s impossible… Y-you cheated! You must have cheated!!” whines Po.

I grab the two of them by the scruffs of their necks and toss them out into the hallway. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. It’s late, so try to keep it down.”

“Hold on! At least let us play one more hand!”

“We can’t go out like this! Not on a loss!”

“Sorry, but I don’t have any use for guys with empty pockets. Good luck with your payments.”

After slamming the door shut behind them, I lock it.

I hear hushed murmurs come from the other side.

“How? After all that time we spent honing our cheating?”

“I can’t believe it. Did we seriously just lose everything?”

“Did we seriously just get cleaned out?”

“It seems so impossible, but here we are…”

“Dammit. Let’s go to Mitsugoshi and borrow some more money.”

I nipped all their attempts at cheating in the bud, of course, and as soon as they tried to cheat me, I gained the right to return their trickery in kind.

I gather up the winnings piled on my table and smirk.

“Looks like Skel and Po just became my new piggy banks. And I couldn’t have done it without you, Mitsugoshi Installment Payments.”

As soon as money flows from Mitsugoshi Bank to Skel and Po, I’ll be right there to scoop it up. That’s the law of the jungle for you.

“Hum-dee-dum, dum-dee-dum.”

I hum an idle little song to myself as I stash the money in my War Chest.

Then I turn and call out the window, “Sorry about the wait, Zeta. You can come on in now.”

A golden-haired therianthrope soundlessly appears in my room. “Happy birthday, Master.”

“Huh? Oh yeah, that’s right. I guess I’m sixteen now.”

Sure enough, the date’s rolled over. And whaddaya know, it’s my birthday.

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

Honestly, I don’t think that’s anything to be celebrated. I’ve only got about six hundred years of life in me, and now, one of those years is gone.

To think that I still haven’t become the perfect eminence in shadow yet. Human life spans really are fleeting.

“Do you not like birthdays?” Zeta asks me.

“They’re not my favorite, that’s for sure. Each one that passes means my life has that much less time left.”

“I get how you feel.” Zeta offers me a small, relaxed smile. It’s rare to see a smile so genuine out of her.

“Sometimes, it feels like life’s too short to achieve my goals.”

“Mm. I feel you,” she agrees again. Then she looks at me with a serious expression on her face. “I came to talk about something important.”

“All right.”

Is this about money?

Zeta’s done a lot for me, so I wouldn’t mind lending her a thousand zeni or so.

“You want eternal life, right?”

I give my answer instantly: “Yeah, of course.”

There’s a bit where I wait a hundred years for people to start forgetting about me, then reappear out of nowhere and have them all go, “Wait, is he that guy from the legends?” and with eternal life, I could run that bit as many times as I wanted. As long as I’m alive, I can push the reset button on my eminence in shadow setup over and over again.

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