The rules really were brilliantly simple.
A twisted, sadistic version of the children’s game Musical Statues.
The Joker sings, we move.
We dance, walk in circles, wave our arms, do military burpees, or hell, we can just stand there and laugh hysterically.
But the moment the clown stops singing, we freeze.
We become statues.
Move?
Lose your balance?
Your leg cramps from the tension?
Goodbye, head.
Hello, faceless chunk of melting meat.
Probably the most boring, drawn-out stage with the worst loot so far, I calmly assessed as I rolled my stiff shoulders.
And I wasn’t wrong.
“Joker, Joker, you’re so stro-o-ong, Batman’s light is shining stro-o-ong!” the psychopath suddenly howled into the microphone, hitting every note horribly off-key.
He slapped his palm against the railing, making up this schizophrenic nonsense on the spot.
“You fly toward the signal’s ca-a-all, but there’s nothing on the wa-a-all!”
The survivors scattered, frantically starting to move.
I chose the most energy-efficient strategy possible.
I simply started walking in a slow circle, carefully controlling every step so I could plant myself into the concrete at a moment’s notice.
“It was all a traa-a-ap, but I’m clever, I figured it o-o-out!
I scared Gordon, booby-trapped the department, no doubt!”
The sharp, ringing silence hit my ears like a slap.
The microphone went dead.
Thanks to my enhanced Breathing, which controlled every muscle and tendon in my body, I stopped instantly.
It was like someone had paused a video.
No momentum.
No muscular tremor.
Absolute stillness.
Boom.
Boom.
Two wet, heavy pops sounded somewhere to my left and behind me.
Someone hadn’t managed to stop in time.
Maybe they’d slipped in a puddle of blood.
Maybe they simply couldn’t control a nervous twitch.
The headless bodies hit the floor with dull thuds.
Boom.
A second later, a third head exploded.
Apparently, the person had flinched at the sound of the corpses falling nearby.
Silence lasted for a long twenty seconds.
I stood perfectly still, feeling a bead of sweat slide down my temple.
Then the speakers came alive again, and the Joker launched into another verse of his deranged epic.
I stopped trying to understand his lyrics.
My brain, stimulated by oxygen and probably partially fried by the insane toxin, was frantically calculating how to squeeze a decent reward out of this miserable round.
Simply surviving would probably earn me a pathetic Silver Ticket for completing the stage.
Far too little.
An idea occurred to me.
I could materialize the New York rat from my inventory.
Send it running between the other participants’ feet when the music stopped.
The rat jumps onto someone’s leg.
They twitch.
The explosive goes off.
Boom.
No.
I firmly rejected the idea as I froze halfway through a step when the Joker’s song abruptly stopped again.
First, despite my severely atrophied compassion, I wasn’t some complete butcher who would deliberately murder innocent extras like that, even indirectly through a familiar.
Second, pragmatism.
A gray creature suddenly appearing out of nowhere and rubbing itself against my legs would inevitably attract unwanted attention from the snipers or the bastard sitting on the detonator.
Sure, I could try summoning it discreetly in the crowd or dropping it near the corpses, but what would I gain?
The Gacha would give me another Silver at best.
Knowing its spiteful nature, I’d probably get a Bronze for Minor Nuisance.
And I couldn’t activate Bronze Tickets right now because of the risk of stacking Curses.
Risking my head for a garbage Ticket that I couldn’t even activate?
Idiotic.
More pops.
Another two participants gone.
Five corpses in this round.
Five more deaths to go.
The Joker started singing again, this time something about dynamite, while I continued walking in circles, greedily scanning the arena for an opportunity to earn a Feat.
The attention needed to be on me.
I had to do something so insane that the System would recognize it.
My eyes landed on a melting corpse emitting a stream of corrosive purple vapor.
A woman.
At least, the remnants of her pink jumpsuit suggested that much.
Where her head had once been, a bloody crater pulsed ominously.
The Joker’s acid poured from her abdomen, eating through her skin, clothes, and the concrete beneath her.
Oh, hell no.
Not this.
My rational mind tried to object.
But the System-imposed Eighth-Grader Syndrome, combined with the laughing gas, was already whispering:
Do it.
Stand out.
Show them a real performance.
You’re the main actor here, not these gray little mice.
Deep breath.
Slow exhale.
Breathing pushed to its maximum.
I redirected the flow of energy through my body, compacting my muscles to their absolute limit and reinforcing the natural protection of my skin.
Suppressing an instinctive wave of nausea, I abruptly changed direction and approached the mutilated corpse.
I bent down.
What the fuck am I doing?
That was the one sane thought still beating around inside my skull.
In spite of it, my face stretched into the widest, most fanatical smile of an absolute psychopath.
I moved quickly while the Joker was holding a high note.
The corpse’s left hand, slick with half-digested blood, fell into my right hand.
Its limp right hand landed in my left.
I suddenly lifted the dead woman off the floor and pulled her against me.
An aggressive, wet hiss filled the air.
The disgusting, sweet smell of melting human fat mixed with the sharp ammonia of the laughing gas and slammed into my nostrils, bringing tears to my eyes.
Thick acid soaked from the corpse’s clothes onto my jumpsuit, eating through the fabric in a second before burning into the skin of my chest and forearms.
The pain was hellish.
It felt like someone had pressed a red-hot iron against my body.
Without Breathing, I’d already be screaming and rolling around on the floor.
Fine.
Fuck it.
They told us to dance, so let’s dance.
While the Joker sang his stupid song, while my own flesh hissed and bubbled beneath the chemicals, while my common sense melted right along with it, I started dancing.
It was the most surreal and horrifying approximation of a waltz in the history of existence.
I spun around the arena, dragging the headless, acid-soaked corpse behind me and leaving a smeared trail of bloody purple sludge across the concrete.
Apparently, the sight pleased the Joker beyond words.
He leaned over the railing, eyes bulging, stretching his improvised song for another full minute while enjoying my personal little masochistic performance.
Then he abruptly shut up.
Right in the middle of the beat.
Right as I was making a wide circular turn.
Inertia is a heartless bitch.
My body, weighed down by the dead weight in my arms, desperately wanted to keep moving.
My muscles screamed.
My tendons stretched like steel cables ready to snap.
I poured every ounce of Concentration into my legs, driving the soles of my boots into the concrete.
Through sheer willpower and the System buff, I physically forced the laws of physics to give way, killing my momentum in a fraction of a second.
I froze like a statue.
Thin wisps of smoke drifted from the holes burned through my clothes.
The corpse in my arms hung limply, still eating away at my hands.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Three distinct, wet pops echoed through the arena.
Someone couldn’t withstand the tension of the pause.
Only two more deaths were needed to end the stage.
Please let the next song finish the quota.
Otherwise, my arms are going to fall off down to the bone.
“Forty-Two, pain-boy-y-y!” the Joker suddenly sang, changing the melody.
He pointed directly at me.
“I like your fighting spirit!”
I started moving again, continuing my monstrous necromancer’s dance.
My body burned as though I’d been dunked in boiling oil.
The acid was penetrating deeper into my epidermis, methodically eating through the barrier reinforced by Breathing.
My mind, intoxicated by pain, gas, and the Curse, began producing ideas that were brilliant in their sheer absurdity.
Hey, what if we tear off a tiny piece of the Super Absorbent Sponge from the inventory?
Throw it straight into Joker’s open, singing mouth!
The sponge will absorb all the saliva, all the blood, all the fluids in his body in a second!
He’ll shrivel up like a dried date!
Then we’ll just stand there and laugh!
Of course we’ll laugh.
It’s hilarious!
My lips stretched even wider.
A bubbling, hoarse laugh escaped my throat.
I was laughing at my own idea while the cold, detached part of my mind understood perfectly well that this wasn’t really me thinking.
The chemicals and the Curse were putting on a show inside my skull.
Had I gone insane?
Not at all.
I’d seen worse things.
I’d done worse things.
This wasn’t even remotely the level of existential insanity required to say that I’d finally lost my mind.
I was still in control.
The process had simply become a little…
Extravagant.
The pristine white bandages around my finger stumps had long since turned into a slippery, squelching mess of my own blood, corpse bile, and disgusting purple sludge.
That shit melted everything it touched.
My oversized clown jumpsuit had fused to my skin, becoming ragged strips of smoking synthetic material.
Chemical burns covered my chest and forearms, eating into the flesh.
The pain was exhausting, pulsing in rhythm with every heartbeat.
“Oooooh, dancing with the dead!
A genre classic, an exquisite performance, aaand…” The Joker suddenly cut himself off in the middle of the song, right on a high note.
I froze against the concrete.
Boom.
Boom.
Two headless bodies collapsed simultaneously somewhere behind me.
“Forty-Two!
You’ve stolen my heart!
You’re my favorite now!” the psychopath shouted happily, announcing the end of the third stage.
As soon as the tenth corpse hit the floor, I released my numb fingers with a heavy exhale.
The mutilated woman’s body dropped to the ground with a wet thud.
Without wasting a second, I tore a relatively clean piece of fabric from the surviving part of her pants and frantically wiped the hissing acid from every part of my skin I could reach.
“Good boy!
That’s right, clean yourself up!” the Joker laughed from the stands.
“You’ve still got to surprise me in the fourth stage!
But for now…
intermission!”
He waved at us theatrically.
“You’ve got half an hour to cry, while I think I’ll go have some chamomile tea.
My throat is getting dry!”
He gave us another exaggerated little wave before disappearing into the shadows of his box.
Twelve of us remained.
A dozen out of one hundred.
The survivors collapsed onto the chairs that hadn’t yet been removed, releasing long, exhausted whimpers.
Ordinary clown cleaners immediately emerged from the openings in the walls.
They efficiently loaded the remains onto plastic stretchers and carried away the extra chairs, leaving exactly twelve seats in the arena.
No emotion.
Just cleanup duty.
I really hope that fucking chemical depilation was worth it, I thought grimly, throwing away the burned piece of cloth.
I focused my eyes and summoned the Gacha system log.
Feat Completed: Survive the third stage of the Joker’s Games on the brink of death.
Reward: 1 Platinum Ticket.
Feat Completed: Dance with a corpse.
Reward: 1 Bronze Ticket.
The Bronze was immediately worthless.
Activating it while risking another stack of Curses would be idiotic.
But the Platinum…
A Platinum Ticket for completing the stage through pain while deliberately making the challenge harder for myself?
Now that was a serious reward.
A Platinum Ticket opened a reward pool reaching all the way to Legendary rarity.
That meant the entire surreal, agonizing clown show with the acid-covered corpse had completely paid off.
The System understood what I’d done.
I slipped my mutilated hand into my pocket, mentally materialized the heavy, cold rectangular Platinum Ticket, and immediately tore it open.
Name: Dread Knight
Type: Trait, Race Change
Rarity: Elite
Description:
You are a Dread Knight, a member of the highest caste of intelligent undead created for war.
As a Dread Knight, you possess monstrous physical characteristics and practically unlimited stamina.
You require only energy to maintain your existence.
You gain the innate ability [Dread Blade], which greatly increases dark magic damage for you and your familiars, as well as absolute affinity with necromancy, darkness, and martial arts.
Weakness:
You receive critical damage from Light and Holy magic.
Holy fucking jackpot.
“Activate.”
I issued the command without hesitation, ignoring the warning about Light.
Gotham already had chronic problems with holiness.
The transformation struck from within instantly.
My heart stumbled in my chest, gave one heavy, booming beat…
And stopped forever.
A powerful, icy wave of concentrated decay, primordial Darkness, and tangible Terror erupted from my body, spreading across the arena like an invisible shockwave.
The survivors sitting nearby recoiled.
Their chemical smiles twisted.
Someone screamed, high and shrill, their voice cracking as they alternated between shrieks and hysterical laughter before literally crawling away across the filthy concrete.
Passive Terror Aura.
With an effort of will, I immediately suppressed the aura, pulling the icy horror back beneath my skin.
No need to provoke the snipers.
A race change was one of the most broken and overpowered categories in the Gacha because of how comprehensive it was.
It wasn’t merely a strength buff.
It rebuilt the very foundation of the body.
A demon, high orc, angel…
Any of those options would have solved some of my problems.
But the Dread Knight solved all of them at once.
I looked down at my hands.
My skin had visibly taken on a deathly pale, ash-gray color.
The bleeding from my finger and ear stumps stopped completely.
There was simply no blood left in me in the conventional human sense.
The remaining acid on my chest no longer caused any damage.
My dead flesh, infused with dark magic, simply ignored the chemical burns.
But most importantly, crystalline, icy clarity returned to my mind.
The laughing gas still hanging heavily through the studio no longer affected my dead brain.
Biochemistry was irrelevant now.
As for the bomb in the back of my head…
If I activated Breathing at maximum tissue density and injected the vial of Venom into myself right now, the directional blast would probably do little more than scratch the inside of my skull.
As for the laughing-acid capsule in my dead stomach?
I didn’t even need to worry about it.
There was no digestion.
The threat was gone.
And that was exactly what I intended to do.
Under the stunned gazes of the clown gunmen on the upper level and the surveillance cameras watching everything, I calmly pulled the sealed vial of fluorescent green liquid from my pocket.
I tore the metal seal off with my teeth, tilted my head back, and drained Bane’s serum in one gulp.
Not a single one of them moved, I coldly noted as I looked toward the balcony.
No surprise there.
The Joker was king and god here, and god had decided to take a break.
The participant their boss had just publicly named his favorite had pulled a strange vial from his pocket and drunk it.
Well…
Apparently that was normal?
Who in their right mind would shoot the boss’s new toy without direct orders?
Oh, yeah, guys.
This is completely normal.
The serum hit my dead system.
I physically felt my muscle fibers swell, becoming harder than steel.
Thick veins immediately bulged beneath my ash-gray skin, pulsing with a poisonous green glow.
Heavy, aggressive power churned inside my chest.
The strength of a higher undead, multiplied by a super-steroid and accelerated by my oxygen-based breathing technique.
The next stage of the Games would be the Joker’s last.
He wanted entertainment?
He craved Madness?
Of course I wouldn’t disappoint the audience.
I was going to turn this finale into a real SHOW.
The last three hours had blurred into one continuous stream of data, encrypted signals, and cold analysis.
Sitting in the dim cockpit of the Batmobile, parked in a blind spot between old warehouse hangars, he methodically sifted through Gotham’s digital garbage.
The Joker’s Games.
Another bloody performance.
Another attempt by the clown to prove to the city that madness was simply a matter of applying the right stimulus.
The counter on the tactical display accurately recorded the casualties based on intercepted fragments of the broadcast.
Eighty-eight dead.
Eighty-eight lives ended for the sake of a sick joke.
Batman knew the Joker too well to entertain any illusions.
Nobody would walk out of that maze alive.
His task was to pull at least those who were still breathing away from death.
And finally, the system produced a match.
The harbor district.
A huge, rusted-out old freight depot, listed in every city registry for demolition, had been converted into an arena for deadly games.
A holographic projection of the building, reconstructed from the Batmobile’s sonar scans, glowed an ominous red.
As befitted a paranoid psychopath who didn’t want his show interrupted before the climax, the Joker had turned the perimeter into a minefield.
Thermal imaging detected tripwires, hidden C4 charges attached to the support columns, and motion sensors.
The number of armed guards stationed throughout the upper levels also made Batman grit his teeth.
There was no way to get inside quickly and quietly, neutralize the criminals, and evacuate the hostages.
Any open confrontation would cause the Joker to simply blow up the building along with everyone inside.
He would have to route through the eastern ventilation shafts and manually disable the sensors.
That would cost precious minutes.
Which meant someone would inevitably die during the upcoming fourth stage.
Necessary sacrifices, he reminded himself with cold pragmatism.
The mantra had long since become part of his armor.
You couldn’t save everyone when every second mattered.
Everything was about reaching the source of the threat, disabling the detonators, putting the Joker back inside his concrete box in Arkham, and giving Gotham at least a few months of peace.
Sacrifice a few now, prevent thousands of deaths later.
The Dark Knight’s mathematics were brutal.
But they worked.
The trade was acceptable.
Except…
“Sir.
The fourth stage has begun, and…
I’m afraid something is happening in the arena that defies logic,” an anxious voice came through his helmet’s communicator.
Batman flinched almost imperceptibly.
The digitized voice of Alfred.
The real butler had died two years ago.
Using Victor’s technology and the archives of the Batcomputer, Batman had created this AI, preserving the memory of the man who had served him faithfully.
The artificial intelligence imitated his mannerisms perfectly.
But Batman could always hear an elusive metallic coldness beneath the voice.
The Joker’s live broadcast instantly appeared on the display built into Batman’s visor, intercepted by the AI.
Batman narrowed his eyes.
The expected scene of panicking hostages wasn’t there.
Instead, the center of attention was the Joker himself.
The clown was sitting on a chair in the center of the arena, firmly tied to it with scraps of belts and pieces of other people’s clothing.
A gag had been roughly shoved into his mouth.
He was desperately trying to make a sound.
His bulging, frantic eyes contained none of their usual amusement.
Instead, they were filled with primal, genuine shock.
The camera shifted angles.
The concrete floor around the stands was littered with dozens of bodies wearing clown masks.
The guards had been completely slaughtered.
And standing directly over the bound psychopath was the person responsible.
Participant Number Forty-Two.
Batman immediately pulled up the man’s file on his visor.
Charles Kirkman.
Thirty-two years old.
A typical office clerk employed by a logistics company.
No military history.
No criminal record.
An ordinary gray man.
But the person currently standing in the frame had nothing in common with that clerk.
The psychological profile disintegrated before Batman’s eyes.
Like a predator, Batman processed every detail.
Unnaturally pale, almost ash-gray skin.
A completely relaxed stance that was nevertheless ready to explode into action at any moment.
In one hand, the subject casually twirled the bloodstained knife he’d acquired during the first stage.
In the other, he held a massive glaive emitting dark smoke.
The weapon was clearly not of this world.
How had he obtained it inside a sealed facility?
Magic?
Teleportation?
A metagene?
“So the Joker’s Games are under my management now?” the voice of “Charles” echoed throughout the arena.
There wasn’t a trace of fear or influence from the laughing gas.
Only cold, mocking confidence.
He looked directly into the camera, as though he could see Batman himself.
“In that case, I suggest we rename them Games with the Joker!”
Without wasting time on a long speech, the young man stepped toward the restrained villain.
A short, blurred movement.
The hunting knife plunged into the Joker’s eye.
The psychopath thrashed against his restraints, releasing a muffled, bubbling howl through the gag.
Blood splattered across the clown’s costume.
“First eye down,” Number Forty-Two calmly remarked, twisting the knife.
“But don’t worry.
We’ve still got plenty of time, and there’s plenty left to cut off.”
He smiled.
“Let Gotham watch its favorite psychopath fall apart live on television!”
He’s going to kill him.
The thought inside the Dark Knight’s head was detached, cold, precise…
And for some reason, incredibly irritating.
It wasn’t pity for the Joker.
The Joker deserved death more than anyone on this planet.
But Batman viewed the situation strategically.
This “Charles” was an anomaly.
A lethally dangerous anomaly playing by its own rules.
If Batman broke through the roof of the depot and jumped into the arena right now, his appearance would become a trigger.
The anomaly would simply chop off the Joker’s head with that glaive out of spite, right in front of millions of viewers, just to prove its superiority.
Then it might kill the others as well.
Batman’s usual methods of stealth and speed wouldn’t be enough here.
The opponent was too fast and already within striking distance of the target.
Estimated time for Batman to fall from the roof: 3.2 seconds.
Time required for the glaive strike: 0.4 seconds.
He would still need minutes to reach the depot.
The equation didn’t work.
Heavy artillery.
A scalpel that strikes faster than the blink of an eye.
Batman’s left hand moved to the sensory panel on his gauntlet.
A short encrypted command bypassed the communication satellites.
A moment later, a familiar, calm voice came through his earpiece.
“Yeah?”
“Clark, I need your help,” Batman said without hesitation, never taking his eyes off the broadcast where the anomaly was preparing another strike.
“The coordinates and video feed are already with you.
The objective is to disarm the subject with the glaive and isolate the Joker.”
“Got it.”
Clark’s voice immediately became deadly serious.
“Give me thirty seconds.
I’m over the Atlantic.”
Batman ended the call.
Yes.
If anyone in the League could solve this surgical problem without unnecessary bloodshed, it was Superman.
Barry was faster, of course, but the Flash often acted too impulsively.
And getting him on the phone while he was constantly moving was a gamble in itself.
Clark, however, was as reliable as gravity.
Batman started the engines.
The Batmobile roared to life and tore toward the depot.
The Joker cannot die here.
Not now, the heavy thought passed through his mind.
We are not judges or executioners.
If this city watches one madman publicly execute another without consequence, Gotham will believe murder is a solution.
And I will not allow that.