There had originally been exactly one hundred participants.
After the Joker had made an example of Number Thirteen by shooting him, ninety-nine of us remained.
I made my move quickly.
I slit the throat of one of the masked clown animators rather than some random civilian.
The remaining ninety-eight, driven by animalistic fear and laughing gas, did their best to cut their numbers in half.
The massacre was chaotic and filthy.
Yesterday’s office clerks stabbed each other in the stomach with clumsy, trembling hands.
Women grabbed each other by the hair and tore at each other’s ears with their teeth.
Knives snapped against bone and slipped through sweaty hands.
Three lucky bastards who had suffered seemingly nonfatal stab wounds still died right there on the concrete, simply from blood loss and shock.
Nobody wanted to die here, after all, and apparently the Joker’s people hadn’t bothered to stock any first-aid kits.
In the end, forty-seven people survived the first stage.
Forty-seven out of one hundred.
The arena looked like a localized branch of Hell had opened up here.
Dozens of melting, hissing corpses lay scattered across the floor, wrapped in clouds of pale-purple smoke.
The air was thick with a nauseating cocktail of fresh blood, burnt flesh, sweat, involuntarily emptied bowels, and the chemical sweetness of laughing gas.
The gas was slowly but steadily filling the entire studio, settling over our skin in a sticky film.
The scene was completely surreal.
Forty-seven survivors.
Every one of them was covered in blood, some of it belonging to other people, some of it their own.
They huddled against the cold armored walls, their hands trembling around blood-soaked knives.
And every face wore the same stretched, grotesque smile.
Some people could no longer hold themselves back.
They laughed openly, wetly, staring at severed fingers scattered across the floor.
Others quietly cried, smearing tears and dirt across their cheeks.
But with their lips stretched wide by the gas, it looked like some kind of twisted pantomime.
The contrast between their glassy, terrified eyes and those happy, bared teeth was enough to make me nauseous.
I wasn’t fooled by it, though.
The muscles in my face were cramping from the toxin.
It was forcing me to grin just like everyone else.
But that was where the similarities ended.
Inside, I was as calm as a concrete block.
Several wide openings suddenly opened in the arena walls with a metallic clang.
About a dozen clowns carrying medical stretchers briskly emerged from them.
Without saying a word, they efficiently loaded what had once been people, but now looked like acid-eaten chunks of meat, onto the tarps and carried them backstage.
The arena was cleared quickly.
Unfortunately, that did nothing for the smell.
The concentration of gas in the stagnant air remained unchanged.
The Joker hadn’t moved from his position at the railing throughout the entire cleanup.
He looked down at us like a child staring at an anthill he’d just poured boiling water into.
Every now and then, he’d giggle into his fist or mutter fragments of jokes into the microphone, jokes that apparently only made sense to him.
“And no-o-o-o-oow!”
His amplified voice slammed against our eardrums the moment the last pair of stretcher-bearers disappeared through the opening.
“We’re taking a technical break!
Half an hour of dancing!”
Disgustingly cheerful circus music immediately exploded from the hidden speakers.
It was loud, horribly dissonant, and completely surreal against the backdrop of fresh pools of blood.
The Joker was absolutely delighted with his own creativity.
“Dance, my darlings!”
He waved his arms like a conductor, urging us toward the center of the arena.
“Dance as if your pathetic lives depended on it!”
He paused.
“Oh, wait…
they do!”
No further motivation was necessary.
The moment someone in the crowd remembered the acid capsules, everyone started twitching.
We began to dance.
It was a pathetic, insane spectacle.
Forty-seven people smeared blood across the soles of their shoes as they awkwardly jumped and jerked to the rhythm of the idiotic music.
Their breathing accelerated.
Their faces turned red.
Their smiles grew wider.
Even crazier.
Some of the survivors couldn’t withstand the tension and the chemicals.
They broke into hysterical, nonstop laughter, continuing to dance like puppets with their strings cut.
I see.
I mentally snorted, methodically shifting my weight from one foot to the other so I wouldn’t attract the attention of the guards on the balconies.
Classic.
The purpose of this humiliating performance became obvious almost immediately.
Physiology.
The Joker wasn’t simply trying to humiliate us.
The laughing gas suspended in the air was entering our bloodstream through our lungs.
The more actively you moved, the faster your heart beat.
Your blood circulated faster, your blood vessels expanded, and the toxin reached your brain much more quickly and efficiently.
I did the exact opposite.
Focusing on Total Concentration Breathing, I took strict control of my breathing rhythm.
I used short, measured breaths, deliberately slowing my pulse and lowering my heart rate to minimize the absorption of this crap and preserve at least some semblance of clear thought.
Outwardly, I continued jerking around with everyone else, pretending to be overcome with manic joy.
At the same time, while theatrically waving my arms around, I discreetly felt over my own body, paying close attention to every sensation.
The objective was simple.
Figure out exactly where the Joker had put the acid capsule.
One hundred people.
The procedure had been dirty, mass-produced, and probably performed in a hurry.
His clowns were unlikely to have carried out complicated surgical procedures that required time and sterile conditions.
I methodically checked my torso, neck, and thighs.
No stitches.
No lumps beneath the skin.
No painful spots.
There was only a dull, throbbing pain at the back of my head and a small scabbed abrasion.
A classic sign of blunt-force trauma.
Most likely, that’s how they’d packed us up before bringing us here.
Nothing unusual.
The conclusion practically presented itself.
The capsule was in my stomach.
They had simply forced us to swallow them while we were unconscious, or shoved them down our throats by force.
Unfortunately, as usual, I hadn’t inherited the recipient’s memories.
But that led to a second, far more important conclusion.
I seriously doubted this “death pill” was some high-tech miracle of engineering developed by Wayne or Luthor Industries, capable of independently monitoring the wearer’s vital signs while sitting inside the stomach’s highly corrosive environment and detonating when the heart stopped.
No.
That was far too complicated and expensive for a one-time show.
The control was obviously remote.
External.
Someone, probably an operator sitting at a control panel somewhere backstage, simply pressed a detonator whenever a participant broke the rules or died from a knife wound.
For me personally, this information didn’t change the situation dramatically.
I was still screwed.
But it was an important piece of the puzzle that I needed to account for when planning an escape.
If the signal came from outside, then it could potentially be jammed.
Or I could kill whoever was holding the remote.
Meanwhile, the fucking circus music abruptly stopped just as suddenly as it had begun.
About half an hour, just like he promised.
Punctual psychopath.
I surveyed the crowd.
People were breathing heavily.
Their faces were red and sweaty, their eyes feverishly bright.
Many could barely stand straight anymore.
They staggered around, giggling.
The gas had done its job.
Most people’s last remaining inhibitions were completely gone.
I continued maintaining the illusion, twisting my lips into an idiotic grin and occasionally letting out a nervous chuckle.
A familiar System notification chimed at the edge of my consciousness.
Feat Completed: Dance like an idiot because a psychopath told you to.
Reward: 1 Bronze Ticket.
Underwhelming.
Apparently, the fact that we’d been dancing literally on the edge of life and death wasn’t enough for the Gacha to care.
Sure, the Joker’s broadcast was probably being transmitted live across all of Gotham.
The audience must have been enormous.
But apparently, the System had judged the situation pragmatically.
Nobody had died during this stage.
No blood had been spilled.
I had simply been jerking around in a crowd of extras.
Nothing epic.
No “breaking the script.”
Hence the garbage-tier reward.
I slipped my left hand into the pocket of my oversized jumpsuit, materialized the Bronze Ticket, and tore it apart with my usual motion.
Name: Rat
Type: Familiar
Rarity: Trash
Description:
An absolutely ordinary, average gray rat.
Caught in the New York subway.
Carries fleas and eats garbage.
Yeah.
Pure, unfiltered garbage.
There was one positive, though.
This was my first System familiar in this run.
And even an ordinary rat that obeyed my commands could be more useful than some highly trained creature that might decide to bite my face off.
I’d leave it in my inventory next to the super sponge for now.
It could be useful for creating a distraction.
“That was simply faaaabulous!”
The Joker clapped his hands, leaning over the railing.
His laughter echoed through the studio.
“What expression!
What emotion!
What…
primal madness!
Hee-hee!
You are the greatest dancers I’ve ever forced to dance at gunpoint!”
He suddenly became serious.
The smile disappeared from his face as he swept us with a heavy, piercing gaze.
“But everything beautiful eventually comes to an end.”
He paused.
“And then…
something even more beautiful begins!”
Another theatrical pause.
“It begins with…”
The Joker dragged the moment out painfully, savoring the silence in which the only sound was the heavy breathing of the crowd.
“THE SECOND STAGE OF THE JOKER’S GAMES!”
Didn’t even give us time to catch our breath, the green bastard.
Judging by the terrified looks around me, most of the participants agreed.
The toxin was frying their brains, but it hadn’t completely erased their survival instincts yet.
The armored doors in the walls opened again with a metallic clang.
A silent line of clown animators marched into the room.
Each one carried two ordinary folding metal chairs.
They quickly arranged them in pairs across the center of the arena, facing one another.
Paired bullshit.
Classic survival-game social experiment.
I immediately understood what was happening.
“First, a little math problem!”
The Joker attracted everyone’s attention by tapping the microphone against the railing.
“There are exactly forty-six chairs here.”
He paused.
“And there are…
forty-seven of you.”
No additional command was necessary.
No starting gunshot.
The moment the drugged brains of the participants processed what he’d said, the crowd exploded.
People charged toward the center of the arena with animalistic, guttural growls.
They shoved each other, cursed, slammed elbows into one another, and scratched faces as they fought to claim one of the precious pieces of metal.
The laughing gas had done its job.
It had erased social boundaries, removed empathy, and amplified aggression several times over.
Hysteria completely shut down logical thought.
Nobody even considered the fact that, technically, there were enough chairs for almost everyone.
It was simply blind, animal panic.
I didn’t participate in the scramble.
I shook my head and calmly walked toward an empty chair at the edge of the arena that nobody had reached yet.
I sat down.
A balding man in his thirties, wearing a torn jumpsuit, immediately dropped into the chair opposite me.
He was breathing heavily, clutching a knife in his pale knuckles and staring at me with wide, unblinking eyes.
His lips were stretched into an enormous gas-induced smile.
The fight for the chairs ended in roughly a minute.
To my genuine surprise, nobody had stabbed anyone during the struggle.
Apparently, the instinct to “claim a seat” had been stronger than the instinct to “kill the person next to you.”
The Joker looked slightly disappointed by the bloodless outcome.
Still, the loser was quickly determined.
A thin, frail old man in his sixties.
Some bald musclehead simply threw him away from the chairs like a rag doll.
The old man flew several feet, crashed onto the concrete, and couldn’t get back up.
He lay on his side clutching his ribs.
But judging by the quiet, hysterical giggles coming from the floor, he was still alive.
For now.
“Ugh, how boring.”
The Joker twisted his painted lips in disgust.
“I expected more drama.”
He looked around.
“But don’t worry, my dear audience.
The stage itself won’t be boring!”
He raised the microphone.
“You have knives, right, my wonderful viewers?”
He grinned.
“Excellent!
Take them out!”
I hadn’t hidden mine in the first place.
The others reluctantly began pulling out the weapons they’d been given.
Most of the survivors shifted their attention.
Now they were staring at the partners sitting across from them with paranoid, calculating expressions, trying to figure out where it would be easiest to drive a blade.
Repeating himself isn’t the Joker’s style.
I comfortably adjusted my grip on the ridged handle.
“These wonderful little sharp things are your ticket to tomorrow!”
The madman on the platform happily twirled the microphone.
“But there’s a catch!”
He raised one finger.
“You are strictly forbidden from killing each other!”
He sighed theatrically.
“Alas.
Tragic.”
His grin returned.
“However, one person from each lovely pair still has to die.”
The crowd tensed.
“The rules are disgustingly simple!”
He pointed toward two contestants.
“One move, one piece of flesh!”
He gestured toward Number Six and Number Forty-Five.
“Let’s use this charming pair as an example!”
The two mentioned contestants, a gray-haired clerk and a woman wiping tears from her face, stared at the platform in primitive terror.
Their faces were distorted by unnatural gas-induced smiles.
“Number Six goes first.”
The Joker raised his finger.
“Let’s say he cuts off a finger.”
He made a chopping motion.
“Snip!
Goodbye, finger!”
He cheerfully gave a thumbs-up.
“Then it’s Number Forty-Five’s turn.
She has exactly thirty seconds to respond.”
He shrugged.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to fall behind, so she cuts off one of her own fingers too!”
He spun around.
“Then it’s Number Six’s turn again, and the timer starts all over.
Thirty seconds to make your choice!”
The problem is that absolutely everyone could die from shock and blood loss.
I calmly evaluated the situation.
Of course, the Joker understood that.
That was the entire point.
“The loser is whoever first passes out, falls from their chair, refuses to cut themselves, or…
dies!”
The Joker spread his arms.
“As for the winner, well, I’ll be generous and provide professional medical treatment!”
He paused.
“Oh, and one more thing.”
His gaze slowly shifted toward the unlucky old man still lying on the concrete.
It moved with the deliberate weight of a tank cannon.
“I don’t have enough hands to stand here with a stopwatch over every single pair.”
He smiled.
“So…”
The click of his fingers against the microphone sounded like a gunshot.
The old man’s head exploded like an overripe watermelon struck by a sledgehammer.
Blood, skull fragments, and gray matter sprayed across the concrete, splattering the legs of the nearest participants.
The headless body twitched once and went still.
“There’s another little surprise hidden inside those empty skulls of yours.”
The psychopath grinned hungrily, savoring the dead silence that descended over the arena.
So that’s where that dull, throbbing pain at the back of my head came from.
I grimaced, instinctively suppressing the urge to touch the abrasion beneath my hair.
Everything finally clicked.
Besides the acid capsule in our stomachs, they’d implanted explosives at the base of our skulls.
And the worst part?
The Joker had merely snapped his fingers.
He hadn’t pressed a button on a remote.
He hadn’t given a voice command.
That meant the specialist controlling the Dead Hand activation protocol was physically somewhere else.
Watching us through the cameras.
Now I had confirmed facts.
Now this is starting to feel like genuine High Difficulty.
My pulse jumped, but I immediately brought it back under control with my breathing technique.
“That’s right!”
The Joker’s voice boomed through the arena.
“Time starts now!
Cut yourselves!”
He threw his arms wide.
“Prove that you deserve the right to breathe my air!”
His voice rose into a manic shriek.
“Prove that you deserve to become the Champions of the Joo-o-o-oker’s Gaaaames!”
An earsplitting, disgusting ship’s horn tore through the arena.
The stage had begun.
I didn’t waste even a second thinking.
Breathing control.
Oxygen flooded my brain, suppressing fear and sharpening my reflexes.
My right hand moved quickly and precisely.
The blade swept through the air.
There was an unpleasant crunch as cartilage was severed.
My left ear dropped onto the concrete between the chairs with a wet slap.
Blood immediately streamed down my neck, soaking into the collar of my jumpsuit.
Feat Completed: Be the first person to make a move and cut off a piece of your own body.
Reward: 1 Silver Ticket.
The gamble paid off.
The System rewarded initiative and brutality.
A Silver Ticket in exchange for a piece of cartilage that didn’t affect my combat ability and that I could easily restore later through countless different methods was an incredibly profitable trade.
The Chaos Gacha was full of options involving regeneration, biokinesis, and healing.
And the DC Universe itself had more than enough ways to reattach an ear or grow a new one.
Redirecting the focus of my Breathing technique, I deliberately slowed the blood flow around my left temple.
The blood stopped pouring and became a lazy trickle.
There was pain, but it was muted and controlled, pushed somewhere to the edge of my consciousness.
The man sitting opposite me went pale as if someone had already drained a liter of blood from his body.
He stared at my face.
Blood-covered.
One ear cleanly sliced off.
A wide toxin-induced smile stretched across my lips.
And, most disturbing of all, my eyes were completely, inhumanly calm.
His laughing-gas-addled brain was only beginning to understand that thirty seconds were already ticking away.
Now it was his turn.
Feat Completed: Pleasantly Surprise the Joker.
Reward: 1 Bronze Ticket.
“Number Forty-Two!”
The psychopath screamed into the microphone, his voice drowning out the screams of pain beginning to erupt throughout the arena.
“My boy!
You’re surprising Papa Joker again!”
The System only gave me Bronze this time for “surprising” him.
Logical.
I’d exhausted the limit.
Next time, if I wanted to impress the Gacha through this clown, I’d have to do something fundamentally insane or completely outlandish.
I watched my opponent.
At the sound of the Joker’s voice, he’d finally snapped out of his stupor and was now nervously running the blade over his fingers, unable to bring himself to make the first cut.
I quietly slipped my left hand into my pocket.
Bronze first.
Name: Yellow Chocobo
Type: Familiar
Rarity: Common
Description:
An incredibly intelligent riding bird from the world of Final Fantasy.
Hardy and as fast as a horse.
Possesses powerful legs for self-defense.
You receive a breeding pair, male and female.
Another familiar?
And what a familiar…
Giant yellow oversized ostriches in the middle of grim Gotham?
The surrealism of the Gacha at its finest.
Objectively, though, these were far more useful than a New York rat.
At the very least, they were transportation.
I’d leave them in my inventory for now.
My opponent meanwhile squeezed his eyes shut.
He pressed the blade against the base of the little finger on his left hand.
With a wild smile forced onto his face by the gas, he pulled the knife toward himself.
Crunch.
Instead of the scream of pain I’d expected, the man let out a hoarse, bubbling, completely insane laugh, spraying saliva everywhere.
The gas was acting like shitty anesthesia, replacing his natural reaction with something completely different.
The bloody finger rolled across the floor.
My turn.
Breath.
Deep inhale.
Slash.
My second ear landed beside the first with a soft thud.
Blood covered the right side of my face and neck.
Symmetry restored.
The man had only just opened his eyes and was still cradling the stump of his little finger.
He stared at me in such shock that even the toxic smile on his face faltered.
He had clearly expected me to take the cheap route.
Instead, I remained completely calm, ignoring the warm blood running down the back of my collar, and activated the Silver Ticket.
Name: Flask of Venom
Type: Item
Rarity: Uncommon
Description:
A sealed flask containing a dose of Venom.
An extremely potent, fast-acting steroid that dramatically increases physical strength and muscle mass.
Duration: 12 hours.
Side effects: severe exhaustion after the effect wears off, intense withdrawal symptoms, and an irresistible urge to break people’s backs.
New dose generation timer: 24 hours.
Oh.
Bane’s Venom.
Getting the iconic DC super-steroid while actually being in the DC Universe?
Ironic.
And extremely useful.
Combined with my Breathing technique, the effect would be devastating.
With this stuff pumping through my veins, I wouldn’t be afraid of thirty clowns with assault rifles.
I’d tear them apart with my bare hands.
The only downside was that Venom didn’t solve the detonator problem in the back of my skull.
Yes, my metabolism would accelerate, and the acid in my stomach might not kill me instantly.
But explosives that turn your brain into paste don’t give a damn about the size of your biceps.
No.
It’s still too early.
I mentally ordered myself to put the injector into my inventory.
With this combination, I could charge the platform right now.
Fast and hard, one jump.
I’d snap the Joker’s neck before he could blink.
Then, one second later, the operator at the control panel would press the button.
And I’d be left without a head.
The world was far too interesting.
This starting event had turned out to be more than a generic slaughterhouse.
It was a decent test of endurance.
Throwing away the opportunity to squeeze every possible advantage and Ticket out of this situation would be stupid.
THERE WILL BE CHAOS!
A tiny, almost imperceptible effort of will.
I allowed the smallest grain of my true aura, the aura of a self distorted by thousands of reincarnations, to leak into reality.
For a moment, the air between us became dense and oppressive, like the atmosphere before a thunderstorm.
The gas-induced smile on my face widened on its own, stretching into the hideous, inhuman grin of a predator cornering its prey.
The man across from me shuddered from head to toe.
The influence of the laughing gas faltered when it collided with pure, primal terror.
The panic in his eyes crystallized.
He finally understood.
He wasn’t sitting across from another frightened hostage.
He was sitting across from a monster who was actually enjoying the game.
He gave a desperate little sob.
Then he transferred the blood-slick knife into his injured left hand.
He squeezed his eyes shut until his teeth creaked and, with a muffled groan, sawed off the little finger of his right hand.
My turn.
A slash.
The ring finger of my left hand hit the concrete with a dull thud.
Even street-level amateurs know basic anatomy.
I calmly analyzed the severed finger.
Losing the little fingers severely affects grip strength.
Without them, you can’t properly hold a sword or a heavy handgun.
The ring finger, on the other hand, is expendable.
Yes, it’s more painful and more difficult to cut through, but it’s the more practical choice.
I raised my eyes toward my opponent and gave him an inviting nod toward the eight fingers he still had left.
The game continued.