Usogui - Vol. 43 Ch. 465 - His True Ally

[Takoshi]

Foreshadowing shenanigans aside, it has been an epic

With this, most of the mysteries of the game has been solved! Except...

1) Going by Lalo's nature, I find it unreasonable that he will die easily. If Usogui was able to revive after 3 seconds of drowning, I'm sure Lalo would be able to do so as well and try to kill Baku in the end.

2) Since Baku is well, Baku, he would have probably planned for it ahead.

Finally getting to the conclusion of the arc! How exciting!

 

[caitsith]

Can't believe Baku hit that table 25 times 😂

 

[belkrax]

Considering what Lalo pulled the last time he lost... Well, I guess he is more limited now, but I expect some fuckery.
Fukurou burned his own face, that's Baku levels of tactics. I hope he makes it out alive of this. Wouldn't call it a good guy, but he is decent enough and I'm buying he loves Kakerou after this recollection.

The Hal scene was heartwarming, really.

 

[Rooster]

@RapidLord I'm pretty sure Baku just choose the name Hal for him.

I don't know guys... Hate to be the party pooper here, but for me, this is too much of a stretch. .
1. Usogui had no way of knowing if the morse code will actually reach Hal. Is steel really that good of a sound conductor that it carries it for one whole floor? If it were a pipe of some sort, then maybe..
2. On top of that, the way Souchi recovered his memories.. Usogui had no way to predict that. Yet he bet on Hal recovering his memories, which he knew Hal didn't do in any of their previous face offs (including surpassing the leader gamble).

You add those two together and you get an event with extremely low probability. Sure, Baku bet on events with seemingly low probability before, but there was always good basis for it. Usually it came down to reading the opponent (like with Suteguma). This is not of that sort.

Wel.. It is what it is.


EDIT: Heh, I thought about it some more and wow, I was actually able to make way more sense of it than I expected (Spoiler tagget for length):

Spoiler

Let's begin with #2: Baku didn't have to bet on Hal recovering his memories. He was simply betting on him to get the message "Hal 36". After all, he got it once before

Now #1 is harder to make sense of: After all, Baku really had no way of knowing how the upper floor is situated, therefore he really had no basis for believing the message actually reaches Hal. So it really was a crazy gamble. But at the same time, he also loses nothing with trying it (unless he decides to go with different scenario, which I cover below). Then I remembered Kaji's train of thoughts in chapter 454:
https://mangadex.org/chapter/869518/5
https://mangadex.org/chapter/869518/6
https://mangadex.org/chapter/869518/7

So if Baku didn't believe the message reaching Hal, didn't reserve 25 for the last round, but used it in the 4th round instead (and consider that Baku reserving air was indeed just a bluff) there are two possible situations:
1: Lalo only bets Ante and Baku loses
2: Lalo bets more and Baku wins

Baku going with #2 would be essentially be him betting on Lalo not reading the situation correctly and calling/betting in the 4th round. Let's say Baku decides to go with this, but instead of betting right of the bat, he does more Baku-like move and sneakily checks, baiting Lalo to bet something and than raises him. Rings a bell? That's right, we sort of got this situation from Lalo's perspective in chapter 456. Remember that panel which confused the hell out of us?
https://mangadex.org/chapter/879847/11
https://mangadex.org/chapter/879847/12

Imagining that, Lalo didn't took the bait and bet just 1 Air Bios. If the author really included this to show what would happen if Baku chose to go this way, then holy shit! That's crazy!

So basically instead of believing in Lalo's "weakness" Baku decided to believe in Hal's strength and go with a crazy gamble with very low probability of success. But to quote Tokuchi Toa: "Low probability means, it's not 0".

To sum it up, from normal persons view, Baku was in a desperate situation and decided to rely on some crazy luck to achieve victory.
But from Baku's point of view, it was just another gamble

So I take it back, great job on authors side and also, thank you for the chapter, Team Duwang!

 

[a2j04vm0]

@chrischewie
https://i.imgur.com/FzRZtEo.png
He thought Baku was making mnemonic.

 

[frdrgn]

@Fusha thanks haha didnt think someone would remember or even see the comment

 

[idle_af]

I hope you're wrong @catx3 because I don't want to see Hal "die" again, this time probably for good if that's what you're saying Hal is trying to imply..

EDIT: I'm not sure who the fuck it was but I remember someone calling 36 -> 25. Probably @Veshv. Too disappointed with my theory going to shit to bother scouring the comments section. Grats to whoever called it

 

[Lithe]

...I don't know anything about Morse Code, but even in Japanese, it's actually romanization? Another funny language quirk, would make sense if they adopted it.

Seriously, Manabe fucking popped the air bios and somehow the focus is still on the code afterwards. How quiet can 80L of compressed air suddenly exploding be?

I don't want to call it stalling, but I certainly hope we got Baku's perspective next chapter or so. I'd like to know how much he gambled on this and how much he could be certain of.

I actually hope he banked on his luck 'cause the better opponents should call for it, and Lalo was doing very well (even if I'm a bit salty we hardly got to see any of it until the end).

 

[Veshv]

@Lithe
Since Lalo still has 10 (?) Bios left to work with, maybe we'll get some explanations from Baku's end while he waits on those to be used up. I'd like to know exactly what he was sure of as well, since for everything to play out as well as it did is on another level of absurd. Though I guess it feels that way because it was essentially out of Baku's hands.

@Rooster
I think Baku didn't choose Hal's name for this Ban. Hal did it himself for some reason. Without that factor, there is nothing (that I can recall) that hinted up until this point that Leader could get his lost memories back. So while it was an extreme gamble, Baku had to at least have that foothold to work off of.

 

[Rooster]

@Veshv If you ask me, it's way more crazy to think that the message will actually reach Hal under those circumstances than believing he will understand that "HAL it's 36" means 25, even without him recovering his memories.

 

[chrischewie]

Something I found poetic about the way this arc is ending is that it ends with Hal again playing Poker against Fukurou, but this time both dominates Fukurou as well as endures the death by shooting to after he recovers his memories.

Originally, Hal wanted to play against Fukurou as a gamble to see if he wanted to stay as Hachina/Hal or to go back to Souchi. Young Hal lost the gamble, and also lost his memories and reverted to Souchi for a number of years.

But now, coming back full circle, he came back as Hal + Souchi combined to take down Fukurou in a game of poker, a beautiful parallel of the game they played many years ago.

@Rooster

I agree with you that the bigger bet is that the message will actually reach Hal, but I think it's risky for a few other reasons:

1. What if Hal heard it and wasn't sure whether it was from Usogui, or a trick from Lalo? From Hal's point of view, he's not sure who the message is coming from. After all, Lalo could be sending false messages to try and waste Hal's time or trick him.

2. Hal received the message after the calamity happened in Round 3. Given that, how did Hal know that the 36/25 card was Usogui's _last_ card that he was saving for Round 5? I think it would've been very reasonable to also interpret the message to mean that 36 / 25 was the card Usogui wanted Hal to make in Round 4.

@a2j04vm0

Hmm, I remember that Lalo misinterpreted it, but it seems out of character for someone who has otherwise displayed intelligence on-par with Usogui/Hal. It wasn't like Usogui set up a ruse for Lalo when he was pounding on the tables. It was super straightforward.

 

[a2j04vm0]

@chrischewie
1. Hal only has to calculate and see if 26 consumes 25's necessary cards or not. If it does, unless Lalo gets so lucky that he sends a number perfectly matches their signal, then it must be sent from Baku.
The most risky part of this plan is whether Hal can get his memory back, that's why Baku called it a miracle.
2. If Baku wanted Hal to make 25 in the 4th round, then he could just play it in the 4th round. There were only 2 rounds left, if he wanted Hal to do something, it could only be "saving cards for the 5th round."
3. Lalo didn't know Fukurou and Hal were on the 2nd floor at that time, so he wouldn't suspect that Baku was communicated to someone + Baku did carve something on the table as misdirection.

 

[Rodimu]

sending a Morse code puzzle underwater to a man with amnesia under extreme torture who must find the hint and come up with an counter-attack ? it's too much...sorry but lalo had the upper hand

 

[silentshot]

Beautiful.

Sako TOSHIO Sensei absolutely punches.

 

[marcyvq]

You guys that predicted this are too amazing

 

[Heap]

crazy, also that readers actually figured these out

 

[Expiry]

Nice

 

[Somelonelyguy000]

Oh my god.. The foreshadowing is crazy

 

[LovetoYuu]

This is too ridiculous that I had to make a mangadex account just to express it.... Holy shit, salute to team duwang for peak scanlation