Chapter 4: Gambling on Luck

“Hey! Where are you taking me?” Oulando snapped back to his senses and quickly turned his head toward the black man driving.

But the chatty driver who had been babbling the whole trip had now completely changed his demeanor. He drew a pistol, pointing it at Oulando’s forehead while still driving with one hand.

“Stay quiet, kid. Hand over all your money, or I’ll blow your head off. That would mean I’d have to wash the blood out of my car—bad for you, bad for me.”

Faced with the menacing glare, Oulando trembled from head to toe, almost ready to fling open the door and leap from the moving car.

But in that instant, everything froze again. Before he could act, the Novice Guide forcibly pulled him into a time-stop state. In front of Oulando, countless interfaces flickered nervously, reflecting his own anxiety.

The interfaces merged to form the Guide’s face. He seemed rather unconcerned, perhaps because he had seen too much of this sort of thing in his life.

“Calm down. Don’t panic. Remember, you’re a superhuman now. A pistol means nothing to you—nor does a rocket launcher, for that matter. You must get used to facing all kinds of danger. This is nothing. You have countless ways to handle this crisis.”

Soothing words from the Guide finally brought Oulando back from his fright. He took deep breaths, itching to punch the frozen driver, but then remembered that the time-stop only affected his own mind.

Finally, Oulando held his fist over the black man’s head for some time before asking, “What should I do now?”

“Normally, you could summon a character. For a goon like this, one minor character would be enough. Or you could let a character possess you—the substitution technique from your Ninja Card is perfect for this. But right now, your only character is searching the Micro World. Summoning it would interrupt the search, which would be a shame,” the Guide considered.

“Instead, why not check your inventory and equipment to see if there’s anything useful? For example, that gun—”

Before the Guide could finish, Oulando had already activated the Item: Coin of Fate.

He then forcibly exited the time-stop, returning to the car. In the ear of the Guide, only one sentence echoed: “Guns are useless now; the one being threatened is me. The only way out is to gamble on luck. I am the Knight of Fortune, after all—my name is Oulando.”

The instant he returned from the time-stop, a blaring horn exploded in Oulando’s ears. A giant red-painted truck and trailer appeared out of nowhere in the opposite lane.

The black driver, convinced that no one ever drove this stretch of road, had been arrogantly steering with one hand and pointing a gun with the other, eyes glued to Oulando’s every move. He never noticed the truck.

When the horn sounded, he was instantly dumbfounded. It was too late to swerve—the massive truck barreled straight toward them.

He jerked the wheel and tried to swerve the taxi past, but the truck driver was also reacting, twisting his own wheel and forcing the cab’s path to be blocked. The trailer behind the truck had no such luck. As the truck cab veered, the trailer disconnected, the container skidding sideways and smashing directly into the taxi.

The driver had only time to scream before half of his car was flattened, both man and machine crushed to pulp, while Oulando remained completely unscathed—not even a hair out of place.

Staring at the gun-wielding arm left behind, Oulando realized the man was finished. He crawled carefully out of the wreck and was amazed to find his luggage had been flung from the trunk but landed on the road not far away, still intact and barely dirtied.

“So this is what absolute luck looks like,” Oulando sighed. “I’m starting to like this game.”

At that moment, the Guide’s voice echoed by his side, “You do realize you could get yourself killed playing like this, don’t you?”

“Of course,” Oulando replied. “It’s our family motto—when there’s really no other way out, bet on luck.”

“Which ancestor of yours said that? That’s some nerve.”

“I did,” Oulando answered, picking up his luggage.

By now the truck driver had jumped down—a man of over two hundred pounds, but surprisingly nimble. He ran quickly to where the container had fallen, glanced at the crushed remains of the black driver, then hurried over to Oulando.

“Kid, are you all right?” he asked loudly.

Oulando shook his head. “I’m fine, sir. In fact, I should thank you. You saved me. I’ll testify for you—it was the robber’s reckless driving that caused this.”

“That’s good, just as long as you’re all right. Wait, what did you say? Robber…”

With such a major accident, the police arrived quickly. A patrol car pulled up, and out stepped two officers—a man as hefty as the truck driver, and a blonde woman in her thirties.

They began by photographing the scene, then tested the truck driver for alcohol, and started calling for tow trucks and other services.

As promised, Oulando explained everything: how he’d just gotten off a plane, been picked up at the airport by this man who then tried to rob him, and described in detail the man’s actions and his reaction to the truck’s sudden appearance.

Cameron, the truck driver, kept nodding in agreement to confirm the story.

The two officers were instantly flustered. They’d come expecting only to handle a traffic accident, not a robbery—and the case sounded familiar. After a brief discussion, they radioed for backup, and soon the scene was swarming with seven or eight police vehicles.

Oulando and Cameron were gradually pushed to the periphery, left to watch as the police collected evidence.

Eventually, the officers seemed to discover something significant and repeatedly called for more support, pushing both Cameron and Oulando even further from the site until they were finally ushered out entirely.

The two officers who’d arrived first were at least considerate. The male officer poured them both a coffee, while the blonde woman whispered, “You two are really lucky. The man who died may have been the taxi robber who’s been committing crimes lately. We’ve been trying to catch him for ages but never found a clue.”

Oulando wore a smug grin. “I told you—I’m lucky.”