However, neither the representative of the Don Family nor the representative of the Raymon Family exposed this in front of Cyrus because they smelled an opportunity from him.

"Alright, if you are not robbed in the subsequent bidding turn, we will believe you and accept the cooperation. So... what do you want us to do?"

"If the three of us cooperate, I suggest that we always keep the amount of money in our treasuries equal, just like right now."

"Huh? Why?"

"It is very simple. If one of us is discovered and has their treasury robbed, we can help each other by robbing each other’s treasuries."

Cyrus gave an example.

Suppose in a certain turn, Cyrus had just put a large amount of gold coins into the treasury, causing the treasuries of all three to be balanced at 100 gold coins each, and the risk of being robbed in the next turn emerged.

At that time, one of the remaining two would participate in the bidding in the next turn to gain the right to rob the treasury; this person would rob Cyrus’s treasury, meaning the distribution of money in the three treasuries would be 100 - 150 - 50.

In this case, if someone intended to rob Cyrus’s treasury in the following turn, they would only get 25 gold coins, and Cyrus would only lose 25% of his gold coins. He might not even be robbed at all.

Then, Cyrus would only need to "rob" back the treasury of an ally who had robbed him previously, making the distribution of gold coins in the three treasuries 100 - 75 - 125, a much smaller gap to compensate and equalize.

In general, besides trapping other players by increasing gold coins, they would also constantly rotate gold coins internally to minimize losses.

However, the representative of the Don Family immediately pointed out a massive loophole in this strategy: the amount of gold coins in hand.

To stop those who intended to rob the treasury in the next turn, they would be forced to bid within a hypothetical range of 40 to 50 gold coins in the case where the amount of gold coins in the treasury was 100 like that. Only then would the robber see no profit and back off.

However, from the perspective of interest perception, this was a mistake.

Because if the winner of the bid had offered that much money, everyone would think that this person was going to put the money into the treasury, turning that person into a new target to be robbed. In this case, the 150 gold coins in this player’s treasury would be at risk of having 75 gold coins stolen; not only would it not reduce the damage by half, but it would increase the damage received by one and a half times.

Another issue was that the gold coins in a player’s hand were limited.

"No, it won’t be like that," Cyrus replied.

"The amount of money in our treasuries is kept secret; for example, at this moment, even if the actual situation is that each of us has 100 gold coins in the treasury, others might not think so."

"Therefore, we only need to reduce the amount of gold coins in the bid to a price range they might think of; that way, the possibility of being robbed will decrease significantly."

For example, although it was true that Cyrus had 100 gold coins in his treasury, because of the previous confusing concealment turns—just like the current turn where "no one knows Cyrus put 20 gold coins into his treasury"—when it came to the turn where he bidded with many gold coins, the amount of gold coins he stored in there, in the eyes of other players, would be lower than reality, for example, 50 gold coins.

In this case, if any player wanted to rob Cyrus’s treasury, then that player or a group of players would have to limit the output of gold coins to under 20 gold coins to make a certain profit. Therefore, one of the two remaining allies would only need to place a bid of about 20, or even lower, when the ideal profit margin would be about half of the robbed gold coins, which is around 13 gold coins.

Hearing Cyrus’s presentation, both other players could not help but fall into deep thought, because the strategy he presented was, in some ways, similar to the strategy of restricting other players set out by the representative of the Zento Family, though not as certain, because Cyrus’s strategy still required all three of them to continuously pour more gold coins into their treasuries, making their situation increasingly dangerous later on.

However, they did not expose him, once again.

"After turn 7 concludes and you are not attacked, we will consider this proposal. However, the rotation of money is unnecessary."

Having said that, they both turned to leave, completely failing to see the slight smirk from Cyrus behind them.

In truth, what Cyrus intended to do was very simple: if Faith had to aim at robbing his treasury to close the trap, then he just had to create a situation so that Faith would not choose him but choose someone else instead.

This originated from the Sword Family itself; even if Faith were to "lose legitimately" in a game guaranteed by Commander-in-Chief Kanzax, even if the possibility was only 1%, Cyrus did not want to bear the wrath of the Sword Family.

These were a bunch of lunatics that should not be provoked.

Faith also had the status of a student of Kanzax Academy as protection, as well as being a direct bloodline of the Sword Family, but Cyrus and his family did not have such useful things.

Therefore, to ensure safety while also fulfilling the agreement with the Bethel Family, Cyrus exploited the very strategy of the Zento alliance.

Previously, Cyrus had guessed the reason both the representative of the Raymon Family and the representative of the Don Family dared to reveal themselves was that the representative of the Zento Family had ensured the safety of the treasuries with a restrictive strategy. At the same time, the amount of gold coins in the treasuries of the two players acting as bait was two gold coins higher than the other two players in the alliance; it didn’t look like much, but in a situation where input gold coins were restricted, this was the profit to compensate for the risk.

However, the game had now changed.

With the previous situation, where all factions restricted output spending on bidding, plus Cyrus’s reappearance, all factions were now aimed directly at the goal of accumulating gold coins to seize the "mutton" at the end. And once they were accumulating, they would naturally restrict robbing smaller profits, which could potentially turn their own empty treasuries into targets for retaliation and waste resources.

And of course, if everyone only accumulated, the result would be easy to see; so not only accumulating gold coins but also cutting down the opponent’s gold coins was necessary. And because each winning bid could only cut one turn of receiving money—that is, 10 gold coins—the number of gold coins in the bidding would be restricted even lower.

But if they were drawn deep into this race, the players would not be able to see another hidden layer of benefit: the current situation was extremely suitable for slowly stockpiling gold coins in the treasury, while outwardly camouflaging as being in a monetary race.

For example, a player puts out 8 gold coins and wins the bid. Because of the previous turns, other players would unconsciously assume that this "small" sum would not be put into the treasury but used for something else to optimize benefits. But what if this "optimization" was not optimal at all?

That was the problem; information was like a black box sealed from beginning to end; even the most "reasonable" speculation that this player had attacked another player to cut income would have nothing to truly prove it, and could only be closest to the truth.

And this "closest" was sometimes ten thousand miles away from the truth.

And that appointment just now, while it looked like a normal alliance proposal, was actually Cyrus implicitly pointing out to these two the deeper logic of the game: that stepping on each other to stand the highest was not necessarily the optimal choice, but moving far ahead while no one was paying attention was.

But if it were only like this, how could Cyrus be sure that Faith would not target him anymore? After all, choosing any of the three targets was the same; furthermore, Faith knew he would likely fail when trying to rob Cyrus’s treasury, which had almost become a fixed fate.

And to change this fate, Cyrus would turn himself into the least appetizing fat sheep.

In his original plan, he would turn himself into the most appetizing fat sheep; this would be intentionally shown by "putting a significant amount of gold coins into the treasury" every few turns.

But with the latest situation as it was now, Cyrus would not do that anymore. Instead, he would switch to transferring gold coins into the treasury in a trickle.

Meanwhile, both the representative of the Raymon Family and the representative of the Don Family, because they both belonged to the Zento alliance, had a basis to go big with lower risk.

However, how could Cyrus be sure? That those two players would become more "appetizing" sheep than him? The answer was: deception.