Even the people watching were stunned.
As mutters of "People this lucky should just die already" rose around them, Yuto hurriedly dragged Tohru out of the prize area.
He had a feeling that if he stayed any longer, the crowd might actually gang up on him.
That kind of luck was hardly surprising, though.
He had Hestia's blessing on one side and the lucky coin Eris had given him on the other.
When it came to any game or activity that involved gambling, chance, or blind luck, Yuto simply was not going to lose.
Tohru wallowed for a while, then forced herself back onto her feet.
She refused to believe it!
Was her luck really that terrible?
Unfortunately, after trying several more raffle booths and egg-smashing stalls in a row, she only grew more depressed.
"Tohru, these are all designed around terrible odds on purpose. Not winning is normal," Yuto said, trying to comfort her in front of one stall.
The owner overheard that and immediately looked displeased. "Now hold on, customer. Egg smashing is all about luck. How can you say the odds are rigged? Just a little while ago someone won a very nice figure and made all their money back. If you don't win, that just means your luck's bad, okay~?"
That speech froze Tohru on the spot, crushing the dragon girl all over again.
Yuto frowned slightly, pulled out a bill, and said, "I'll do it."
"Sure!" the stall owner said at once, brightening up.
He loved customers like this—the ones who could not swallow their pride and had to challenge the game!
Yuto took the mallet. He didn't even bother to aim, swinging three times in quick succession.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Grand prize. Grand prize. First prize.
The owner's face went green.
"My prizes," Yuto said, holding out his hand.
With everyone around them staring, the owner had no choice but to painfully hand over the best figures on display.
Just one of those figures was worth the cost of smashing ten or more eggs!
He had come to the convention hoping to make a decent profit, but with one round, he had already ended up in the red.
Taking the prizes, Yuto led the two girls away from the stall. "Tohru, don't be upset anymore. Here, you can have these two. Let's go try something else, okay?"
There were three figures in total.
He handed two to Tohru, and at last she brightened up again, hugging them happily and turning them over in her hands as if she could not bear to let go.
Her personality was childlike to begin with, bad moods never stayed with her for long.
With a faint smile, Yuto then held out the last figure to Utaha.
"Hm? For me?" she asked, genuinely surprised.
"Yeah. I don't know much about figures, so you can have the last one."
"All right, then. I don't really collect figures either, but since it's from you, Kamisaka-kun, I suppose I'll reluctantly accept it." The corners of her lips curved upward.
She was obviously pleased.
"If that's how you're going to put it, maybe I won't give it to you after all."
"No!" He had only teased her a little, and she immediately panicked. With her cheeks puffed up, she looked exactly like a little steamed bun.
Yuto laughed under his breath and let the matter drop.
The three of them wandered on until they finally found a game that suited Tohru perfectly: a punching strength machine.
If you hit hard enough, you won a prize.
The crowd around it was almost entirely made up of men, all talking loudly among themselves.
When Tohru said she wanted to try, they kindly stepped aside.
In their eyes, she was just a girl trying something for fun. Quite a few of them were even thinking about chatting her up afterward.
Then Tohru rolled up her sleeves and threw a single punch.
The record shattered.
Not only did she break the highest score in the machine's history, but she drove it straight to the very limit of what it could display for a human.
The staff froze.
The crowd froze.
Even the men who had been planning to flirt with her stood stiff and speechless.
Yuto snatched up the prize and immediately dragged the still-cheerful dragon girl away before anyone could fully process what had happened.
"Boss, did you see that?!" Tohru exclaimed proudly. "That was only a tiny, tiny bit of my strength! Aren't I amazing?"
Yuto nodded with a complicated smile. "You are, yes. Tohru is amazing. Which is exactly why we should leave right now."
He dragged her a good distance away before finally slowing down and letting out a breath.
"I have a feeling some very strange rumors are going to come out of this convention after today," Utaha said from beside them, still a little out of breath.
Yuto could only smile awkwardly.
Tohru, meanwhile, was still glowing with pride.
That one punch had completely wiped out all the frustration and gloom from earlier.
Luck? Probability? What were those compared to one good punch? As expected, dragons were the strongest!
Just then, a loud voice rang out ahead of them.
"All right, everyone! We've finally reached the last stage of our live cosplay contest! Now let's see who our final winner will be!"
A crowd had gathered around a stage, with a host standing in the center.
"It's so lively! Boss, let's go watch!" Tohru said brightly.
Unable to refuse her enthusiasm, Yuto nodded.
When they reached the crowd, he frowned slightly and took Utaha's hand.
There were too many people, and he didn't want her getting shoved around.
The girl at his side instantly flushed red, but she didn't have the courage to protest.
"It's crowded," he said quietly. "Don't let go."
"Mhm." Her answer was barely above a whisper.
Her cheeks were red as a sunset, her eyes soft and trembling like water. She looked so beautiful it was almost unfair.
"To the side, please, to the side~" Tohru chirped as she moved ahead, lightly parting the crowd with her hands.
She barely touched anyone, yet a path somehow opened all the way to the front. No one even seemed to notice that anything strange had happened.
Following close behind the dragon girl, Yuto and Utaha reached the very front row with no trouble at all.
The moment Yuto looked up, he saw the various cosplayers onstage in their extremely revealing outfits.
'Whew.'
'Those clothes are really— No, wait. Those boots are really—'
Utaha pinched his palm sharply in annoyance.
When he turned to look at her, she only answered with a silent glare.
Yuto chuckled softly and tightened his grip on her hand, causing Utaha's thoughts to instantly go to pieces.
"With that little clothing, one breath from me would be enough to kill them all," Tohru remarked in the calm, matter-of-fact tone of a dragon.
Yuto immediately broke out in a cold sweat.
Then the host's voice rang out again.
"All right, our next contestants are a duo! Please welcome the Dark Greatswordsman and the Earth Tyrant Dragon!"
Yuto went still.
Dark Greatswordsman? Earth Tyrant Dragon? Why did those names sound so familiar?
With grand music blasting through the speakers, the pair made their entrance.
The moment he saw them, Yuto nearly swore out loud.
Ainz. Rimuru.
What on earth were those two doing? How had they ended up entering the cosplay competition too?!
"Hello, everyone. I am the Dark Greatswordsman." "Hello, everyone. I am the Earth Tyrant Dragon."
Ainz and Rimuru struck a pose together, and the crowd immediately erupted.
"Whoa! That armor looks amazing! It's just like the real thing!"
(Dude, you've got that exactly right. It is the real thing.)
"That swordsman is freakishly tall! There's no way that's human!"
(Nope. Not human is correct too.)
"That Earth Tyrant Dragon is insane! Just standing here, I feel like I'm looking at a real monster!"
(Well, strictly speaking, that was also true.)
Listening to the excited chatter all around him, Yuto had so many complaints he didn't even know where to begin.
"And next, they'll be giving us a special skills performance!" the host continued.
Onstage, Ainz and Rimuru were far from finished.
Before the eyes of the entire crowd, Ainz drew the two enormous swords in his hands and began swinging them in broad, powerful arcs.
The blades howled through the air so fiercely that no one could doubt they might cut a person clean in half.
Then Rimuru breathed fire.
With a roar, flames burst from the mouth of the monster he had become, blasting forward like a living flamethrower.
The audience exploded.
"WOOOOOOH!!! THAT'S INSANE!!!"
"Now this is real cosplay!!!"
"OHHHHHHHH!!!"
"This is what men's dreams are made of!!!"
The cheers crashed over the stage like a tidal wave.
And right there in the middle of it all, Yuto could only stare in disbelief.
That really was some unbelievably realistic cosplay!
...
At the final awards ceremony, Ainz and Rimuru took first place exactly as everyone expected.
The moment they came offstage, they were swarmed by fans asking for autographs.
From that day on, the Dark Greatswordsman and the Earth Tyrant Dragon began spreading through the cosplay scene.
Later, the two of them would become something close to legend.
People talked about the impossibly realistic, ultra-high-end costumes, the dazzling swordsmanship, and the unbelievable fire-breathing performance.
Rumors flew everywhere.
And because the two of them disappeared afterward, never showing up again, those rumors only grew stranger and stranger with time.
At that moment, though, after turning down invitations from countless studios and cosplay groups, the two of them finally returned to Yuto and the girls.
They had spotted the three of them from the stage earlier, but there had been no time to greet them.
"Well, Kamisaka?" Ainz said, his tone thick with excitement. "What did you think of our performance?" The black helmet completely hid his expression, so there was still no way to read his face.
"Wasn't it amazing?" Rimuru added, just as thrilled. "Even I thought that last bit where I breathed fire was incredible!"
Yuto sighed, but in the end, he smiled and nodded.
The truth was, neither of them had broken the rules he had laid down at the start.
Yes, they had made a huge splash, but they had not caused any actual trouble, so he decided not to hold it against them.
The moment they got his approval, both of them became even more excited.
"We should enter a contest like this again next time, Rimuru!" Ainz declared, looking at him with all the seriousness of a man announcing a sacred vow.
"Ohhh, absolutely! Next time let's team up again, Ainz!" Rimuru cried back with equal passion.
Ainz extended his hand. Rimuru extended one claw.
Clang.
Hand and claw met with a metallic ring, the sound of a claw scraping against an armored glove.
Both of them were, after all, very real.
Yuto let out another sigh.
Next time... if he had guessed right, they were already talking about the massive Comiket event later on.
"Boss, I can perform too!" Tohru announced brightly.
She hadn't really understood what had happened just now, only thinking that Ainz and Rimuru going on stage looked fun.
Raising her hand high, she declared, "I can breathe fire too! I'm really good at it!"
Yuto tilted his head and stared at her.
She patted her chest proudly and... it bounced.
His mouth twitched.
He looked as though he wanted to say something, but in the end, only sighed.
Never mind.
That discussion could wait for another day.
After that, they continued enjoying the convention together.
Ainz and Rimuru bought an absurd amount of merchandise—life-size body pillows, posters of pretty girls, every kind of figure imaginable, and stacks of doujinshi.
By the time they were ready to leave, each of them had a large bag in each hand, with even bigger body pillows strapped across their backs because they had run out of room.
That only made the two of them stand out even more.