One hundred contestants.
Ninety-nine future corpses and one survivor.
A painfully simple equation of survival.
In his mad, theatrical generosity, the Joker had even been kind enough to personally explain the rules.
He paced along the edge of the stands, dancing to some inaudible tune playing inside his head while twirling a microphone he had apparently picked up from somewhere in the arena.
“Six games in total!” he sang, stretching his scarred, makeup-covered lips into a grin that exposed all thirty-two teeth.
“They’ll take place over the next few hours.
After each round, roughly…” He dramatically scratched his chin with the barrel of a revolver, where he’d even found that thing was anyone’s guess.
“Wellllll…
about half of you will be eliminated.”
His gaze swept across the crowd huddled together on the arena floor.
The psychopath clicked his tongue with satisfaction.
The smell of animal fear seemed to affect him like expensive perfume.
“The entire city of Gotham will be watching you!
The whole country!
You’ll become incredibly popular…” He paused dramatically.
“Posthumously!”
The Joker suddenly raised the hand holding the microphone like a preacher addressing his congregation.
“And just so my dear little mice have an extra incentive to run through the maze, I’d like to announce the grand prize!”
He spread his arms.
“The fulfillment of ANY wish the winner desires!
Sponsored by yours truly, the most generous man alive!”
A nervous gasp swept through the crowd.
Some of those naive, terrified idiots timidly looked toward the stands.
I could clearly see something ugly beginning to emerge through the fog of terror in their eyes.
Greed.
They believed him.
I, naturally, wasn’t fooled for even a second.
I knew the DC Universe well enough to understand the true nature of the creature standing beneath the spotlights.
That was one of the fundamental reasons simply killing him was a much bigger problem than it appeared.
The Joker wasn’t merely some lunatic with a clown obsession.
He was a concept.
A living, pulsating avatar of Chaos, woven into the very fabric of this reality.
Could he be killed?
Absolutely.
I could put a bullet through his head, and his body would die.
But the laws of this sick world didn’t tolerate empty spaces.
The moment one psychopath was removed, another, even worse one would eventually take his place.
Or some twisted combination of magic, science, or toxic waste would simply resurrect the original.
In DC, there always had to be a Batman.
And Batman always had to have a Joker.
That was the foundation.
A fundamental law of physics in this universe.
For the moment, however, the Joker wasn’t a concept to me.
He was simply a fat, green-haired target who would probably make the System shower me with premium currency if I killed him.
“Number thirteen!”
The Joker’s voice scraped across my nerves like metal.
He stared directly at the participant wearing the corresponding number.
The man was around forty, balding, soft around the edges, with a sweaty face and nervous, pig-like eyes.
He began trembling violently when a heavy, blinding spotlight dropped onto him from the ceiling.
I’d only just noticed the lighting equipment.
The show had clearly been prepared on an impressive scale.
“Since thirteen is your lucky number, buddy, you’ve been given the incredible honor of demonstrating my generosity!”
The Joker leaned forward, resting his hands on the railing.
“A wish.
Make one right now, and everyone will see that I keep my word!”
The man completely fell apart.
Sweat poured down his face as he gasped for air like a fish thrown onto dry land.
The crowd around him instinctively backed away, leaving the poor bastard alone in the center of the illuminated circle.
“I…” he began in a trembling, bleating voice.
“I want freedom!
I just…
I want to get out of here!
I want this madness to end!
Let me go!”
His final words came out as a high-pitched, hysterical scream.
“Of course.
Your wish is my command.”
The Joker casually shrugged and raised his revolver.
BANG!
The gunshot echoed through the enclosed arena.
A neat red stain blossomed across Number Thirteen’s chest, right over the ridiculous number printed on his jumpsuit.
His face twisted into an expression of complete confusion.
As the people around him screamed, the man collapsed heavily onto the concrete floor like a sack of potatoes.
He was already dead before he hit the ground.
“What is true freedom,” the Joker mused philosophically, “if not freedom from this weak, mortal flesh?”
His voice boomed through hidden speakers in the walls, somehow forcing the entire crowd into immediate silence.
People choked on their own screams.
“He could have asked for my exclusive autograph,” the clown continued with an exaggerated sigh.
“But…
freedom is nice too.”
I wasn’t looking at the Joker.
I was looking at the corpse.
The dead man’s body suddenly convulsed.
It began to hiss, releasing a thick, disgusting yellow-green smoke.
His flesh started melting before our eyes, eating through his clothing and even partially corroding the concrete beneath him.
People standing a good thirty feet away suddenly began twitching.
Their faces twisted into unnaturally wide, horrifying smiles.
They covered their mouths, desperately trying to suppress the bubbling laughter forcing its way out.
“Oh, right!
I forgot to mention one tiiiiiny little detail!”
The Joker slapped his forehead.
“Each and every one of you has been lovingly implanted with one of my signature laughing-gas capsules!”
He spread his arms.
“Contestants in the Games are expected to participate actively.
We can’t have anyone sitting around doing nothing and ruining my ratings!”
His grin widened.
“Attempt to escape, sabotage the game, or refuse to participate…”
He made a little gesture with his hand.
“And the capsule goes pop!”
Now that’s seriously fucked.
I grimaced inwardly while maintaining a calm expression.
And here I was thinking the High Difficulty start had actually been relatively merciful this time.
I was wrong.
A hidden acid capsule inside my body was a problem that couldn’t be solved with a simple physical enhancement.
Fortunately, I hadn’t made any sudden moves at the beginning.
Experience had paid off once again.
“Well, now that we’ve taken care of the formalities, let’s begin the first Game!”
The Joker announced it with genuine enthusiasm.
With a heavy metallic grinding sound, sections of the arena’s armored walls slid apart, revealing the dark mouths of several tunnels.
The familiar bastards in clown masks and tactical armor marched out.
They weren’t carrying guns this time.
Instead, each of the ten clowns carried a wide metal tray.
Neatly arranged across each tray were hunting knives.
Ten clowns.
Ten knives per tray.
One hundred blades for one hundred contestants.
I didn’t expect to get my hands dirty this early.
“The rules are incredibly simple!”
The Joker spoke as though conducting an invisible orchestra.
“You walk over, grab a little knife, and kill…
well, anyone!”
He enthusiastically mimed slashing his throat.
“A cut across the neck, a knife through the liver, whatever you prefer!
I’m not picky!”
He clapped his hands.
“Kill someone?
Congratulations!
You’ve made it to the next round!”
He then wiped an imaginary tear from beneath his eye.
“Die yourself?
How tragic!
But that’s show business, folks.
You’re eliminated!”
My brain immediately latched onto his wording.
Kill…
anyone.
The Joker loved chaos, but he rarely lied about the rules of his games.
He also loved playing with words.
I took a short, incredibly deep breath and activated Total Concentration Breathing.
My lungs burned.
I physically felt the surge of oxygen flooding into my bloodstream, spreading through my veins like liquid fire.
My heart shifted into a faster, forced rhythm.
My muscles tightened like tightly wound steel springs.
My vision sharpened so dramatically that I could make out the texture of the fabric on the jumpsuit of the person standing three meters away.
Speed.
Strength.
Reaction time.
Everything rose to the absolute peak of what a human body could achieve.
If I’d understood the Joker correctly, and he hadn’t deliberately misspoken…
I really don’t feel like slitting the throats of these terrified idiots.
Why get my hands dirty with the extras?
I coldly surveyed the trembling crowd.
They were only just beginning to understand what they’d been ordered to do.
Without wasting another second, I separated myself from the crowd and strode toward the nearest clown guard carrying a tray.
“Oooooh, ladies and gentlemen!”
The Joker immediately perked up.
“There we have our first contestant stepping up to the chopping block!”
His voice was shrill with anticipation.
A spotlight instantly swung toward me.
“Number forty-two!
The whole world is watching you!”
His grin widened.
“Everyone is dying to know who you’ll choose!”
He pointed dramatically toward the crowd.
“Old lady number nineteen?
She’s already got one foot in the grave!”
A different direction.
“Or perhaps teenager number twenty-six?”
He paused.
“Or maybe you’ll show some common sense and eliminate your competition, that sweaty mountain of muscle wearing number thirty-seven?”
The Joker kept talking without pause, deliberately ignoring the fact that several other people had been inspired by my example and were cautiously moving toward the other trays.
I wasn’t listening to him.
A quick glance upward.
Sniper positions.
The assault rifles around the perimeter were covering the crowd, but only one barrel was currently aimed along my path.
The firing angle was awkward.
If necessary, I could get off the line of fire in time.
I stepped directly in front of the guard wearing a crying Pierrot mask.
He stood completely still, holding the tray at chest level.
My hand settled around the ribbed handle of one of the light hunting knives.
My fingers tightened as I tested the blade’s balance.
Perfect.
I moved.
Whoosh.
The movement was so fast, accelerated by the oxygen boost, that an ordinary human eye would have registered little more than a blur.
I didn’t pick up the knife and retreat.
My hand simply shot forward and to the side, catching the blade in a reverse grip before immediately sweeping back in an arc.
The blade tore open the clown’s throat from ear to ear with a wet, crunchy sound.
A thick fountain of hot blood erupted from the severed artery, splattering across my sleeve.
The guard gurgled.
The tray crashed to the ground, knives scattering across the concrete.
He instinctively grabbed his throat.
The Joker’s voice cut off mid-sentence through the speakers.
Silence.
A thick, ringing silence broken only by the dying man’s gurgling.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the assault rifles above shift.
Their barrels were beginning to converge on me.
Danger.
But I’d already stepped behind the collapsing clown, grabbing the collar of his body armor with my left hand and using his large frame as a human shield.
If they started shooting, the first burst would hit him.
If they actually dared to fire.
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
The Joker suddenly exploded into wild, barking laughter.
He clapped his hands, leaning so far over the railing that he nearly toppled into the arena.
“Brilliant move!
Absolutely magnificent!”
He gestured toward me.
“Give this man a round of applause!”
His grin stretched impossibly wide.
“Number forty-two, you’ve demonstrated some wonderfully unconventional thinking!”
He pointed dramatically.
“You’ve passed the first Game!”
Of course he approved.
I released my grip.
The guard’s corpse hit the concrete with a heavy, wet thud.
“Those who’ve already passed, stand against the wall and stay out of everyone else’s way!”
The Joker immediately lost interest in me and turned his attention toward the bloodbath that was already erupting in the center of the arena.
I calmly walked toward the edge of the room, putting as much distance as possible between myself and the growing panic and screams.
That’s when I noticed the predictable consequence of my little improvisation.
A man wearing number 71, apparently inspired by my success, decided to copy my trick.
He rushed toward another clown with a knife.
Unfortunately for him, he didn’t have an oxygen enhancement.
The guard easily caught his trembling hand.
Then, without any unnecessary emotion, drove the blade into the man’s stomach.
Another corpse hit the floor.
It immediately began rotting and melting, releasing another wave of poisonous laughing gas into the stale arena air.
There were no freebies here.
I leaned my back against the cold metal wall and pretended to be paying close attention to the massacre unfolding before me.
Instead, I shifted my focus toward the edge of my vision.
There, in the corner of my consciousness, the Gacha’s system notifications were already flashing.
My short but spectacular performance had earned me a pretty decent haul.
Feat Completed: First Kill in a New World.
Reward: 1 Gold Ticket.
Consistency.
That standard Feat had remained unchanged through every previous Gacha patch.
The first kill in a new world always rewarded me with Gold.
Killing someone was still a psychological Rubicon for a normal human being.
A genuine mental breaking point.
A Feat.
The fact that killing had long since become as routine for me as brushing my teeth didn’t matter to the System.
The algorithms were impartial.
A cold sense of satisfaction spread through me.
If this reward remained unchanged, then the other classic “firsts” should still be intact too.
First rescue.
First destruction.
First large-scale act of Chaos.
All of them should come with generous rewards.
Feat Completed: First Stage of the Joker’s Games Completed.
Reward: 1 Silver Ticket.
Another classic.
The so-called “Starting Event” that the Gacha almost always threw at me on High Difficulty.
A multi-stage slaughterhouse with progressively increasing rewards.
Experience suggested that completing the second stage would earn me Gold.
Remaining the sole survivor at the end could probably earn me Platinum.
But the truly massive reward would come from something else entirely.
Breaking the system.
Going beyond the scenario it had presented me.
And given the shitshow currently unfolding around me, that meant killing the Joker.
The Gacha would probably also reward me generously for saving all one hundred hostages.
But let’s be realistic.
With an acid capsule dissolving my insides at the push of a button and my current arsenal consisting of one single breathing enhancement, pulling off something like that wasn’t exactly practical.
Feat Completed: Pleasantly Surprising the Joker.
Reward: 1 Silver Ticket.
Another notification appeared.
There were the hidden bonuses for interacting with named, plot-relevant characters.
Shame I hadn’t received a consolation Bronze Ticket just for being in the same room with him.
Then again, I was already participating in his Games by default, so it wasn’t exactly surprising.
All right.
We’ll open the two Silver Tickets first, then move on to Gold.
The law of increasing rarity.
An unspoken rule among every experienced gambler.
Without changing my relaxed posture against the wall, I slipped my left hand into the pocket of my baggy jumpsuit.
My right hand still held the blood-covered knife.
For some reason, nobody had taken it away from me.
That was clearly intentional.
Weapons were probably left in our hands for one simple reason.
They were supposed to keep cutting.
I cast a short, cold glance toward the stands.
The Joker was leaning so far over the railing that he looked ready to fall into the arena.
Half his body was hanging over the edge as he greedily absorbed the spectacle below like a starving vulture.
Ordinary people, managers, clerks, students, all screaming as they stabbed one another with steel, slipping through pools of blood and choking on their own dying laughter from the poisonous gas.
And that bastard was enjoying every second.
Watching his body twitch with ecstasy, I finally and irrevocably confirmed my intention.
The moment I figured out how to deal with the capsule inside my own body, I was going to blow his brains out.
I simply couldn’t stand people like him.
Some people on the other side of comic book pages found these characters charismatic, deep, frighteningly attractive.
In reality, they were just rabid dogs.
Their supposed “genius” existed almost entirely because of absurd plot armor and an author willing to bend the story around them.
The first Silver Ticket materialized inside my pocket.
I tore it open blindly.
Name: Super Absorbent Sponge
Type: Item
Rarity: Common
Description:
A sponge capable of absorbing approximately 1,000,000,000 liters of water.
Do not attempt to understand the laws of physics or ask why its size and weight remain unchanged regardless of how much liquid it absorbs.
Just use it.
An item.
Wonderful.
Except it was obviously not going to help me survive here and now.
And I probably wouldn’t have any practical use for it in the foreseeable future unless the Joker suddenly decided to drown us all in a shark tank.
I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second and instinctively reached toward my inventory.
It wasn’t a System window or a hologram.
It was more like an intuitive spatial sensation at the very edge of my consciousness.
A localized pocket of nothingness connected directly to my essence.
At the moment, a ridiculous bottomless sponge floated there all alone.
Basic mechanics.
Still unchanged.
All right.
Let’s keep going.
Second Ticket.
I repeated the same process.
A mental command.
A characteristic tearing sound.
Name: Dread Glaive
Type: Item
Rarity: Rare
Description:
A heavy glaive from another, dead world.
Capable of summoning projections of restless spirits by draining the owner’s own life force.
Greatly enhances any abilities related to soul manipulation when used as a focus.
Now we’re talking.
Pulling a solid Rare item from a Silver Ticket was lucky.
Getting something this powerful for close combat was an outright gift.
In theory, combining the physical enhancement from Total Concentration Breathing with this otherworldly glaive would allow me to slaughter the guards, reach the Joker, and end the show right now.
I had enough strength and speed.
But…
That fucking acid.
One press of a button on the clown’s remote and my intestines would turn into foam.
For now, the glaive would have to remain in my inventory.
No need to draw attention to myself.
I mentally reached for the final ticket.
The Gold Ticket settled into my pocket.
Its cardboard-and-foil texture tore apart with slight resistance.
Name: Heavy Weapons Specialist
Type: Trait
Rarity: Rare
Description:
Weight is reliability.
The heavier the object or weapon you hold, the physically stronger you become in proportion to its weight.
You completely ignore any debuffs, agility penalties, and inconveniences caused by using weapons whose size and mass exceed your natural physical capabilities.
A Trait.
And a Rare one at that.
Most importantly, it had incredible synergy.
Activate.
I gave the command mentally.
A barely noticeable wave of warmth passed through my body.
The System had updated my status.
Yes, passive Traits could be toggled on and off at will.
That functionality hadn’t always existed.
I remembered one of my previous runs when the Gacha had simultaneously given me the aura Absolute Affection and the Trait Primal Terror.
The resulting System conflict had nearly torn me apart.
Meanwhile, every NPC I encountered had been left standing there in complete confusion, unable to decide whether to worship me or run away screaming.
Fortunately, the Entity had released a quick hotfix and added an activation/deactivation toggle.
After mentally reviewing my loot, I was more than satisfied.
Yes, I hadn’t received a direct solution to the poisonous capsule problem.
But my combat potential had increased exponentially over the past five minutes.
I turned my heavy gaze back toward the arena.
Hell in miniature.
The corpses of the dead hissed and bubbled, releasing thick yellow smoke.
The air reeked of burnt flesh, blood, and excrement.
The surviving contestants, high on the laughing gas, were finishing each other off while laughing hysterically, slipping through pools of their own blood.
And towering above all of it was the Joker.
With a gigantic, unnatural grin plastered across his face, he conducted the chaos, occasionally shouting sarcastic remarks into the cameras and turning a mass murder into a prime-time talk show.
And I doubt we should expect Batman to show up anytime soon.
I watched as a heavyset woman drove a knife into some poor clerk’s eye.
By the unwritten laws of the genre, the Bat will only bother showing up at the last possible second.
The climax.
And he’ll probably be busy saving Gotham from some dirty bomb instead of rescuing the last survivor from a slaughterhouse.
Besides me, twenty-two other people were currently standing against the wall, breathing heavily and trembling.
The winners of the first round.
For this bloody stage to end, someone on the arena floor still had to kill twenty-eight more losers.
After that, we’d be left alone.
If I continued playing by the rules, and with my current collection of abilities, surviving these Games would be no more difficult for me than going out to buy bread.
I still had five more games ahead of me.
Plenty of time to find a way to extract or disable the acid, break the scenario, and put the green-haired director out of commission.
This is exactly why I hate universes where the center of reality is nailed to a handful of key figures.
I stared grimly at the Joker.
Everything always works out for them.
At the last possible second, they miraculously dodge the bullets.
There’s always another ace hidden up their sleeve.
And a deus ex machina falls out of the bushes exactly when the plot needs one.
For all I knew, besides the acid capsules in our stomachs, this paranoid bastard might have implanted explosive microchips in our necks.
He could have simply forgotten to mention them for the sake of a surprise later.
I needed to be prepared for anything.
Meanwhile, the number displayed on the scoreboard hanging above the stands changed.
The number of contestants who had passed the first stage had reached thirty.
I wouldn’t have to wait much longer.
Death worked quickly here.