The moment the Joker emerged lazily from the shadows, whistling some annoyingly catchy circus tune as he leaned his hands against the railing of his platform, I stopped holding back.
My Breathing was pushed to its absolute limit.
The ash-gray, dead flesh of the Dread Knight knew no fatigue.
And Bane’s Serum was roaring through my veins like a chemical wildfire.
The combination produced something utterly absurd.
I could physically feel the space around me becoming denser.
The muscles tightly woven beneath my icy skin felt like steel cables.
Without exaggerating, with these three abilities active, my raw physical strength was now comparable to that of an average Amazon from Themyscira.
And in this world, that was a level of power that demanded respect.
For all his brilliant madness, the Joker was still physically an ordinary human being made of flesh and blood.
He didn’t even have time to blink.
I lunged.
The concrete cracked beneath my boots as I pushed off.
Air whistled around my body, and in the next fraction of a second I was already standing on the balcony.
My pale hand, covered in pulsing green veins, clamped around his thin neck, right beneath his purple collar.
The psychopath’s eyes widened comically in shock.
He tried to choke out a word, but I simply lifted him off the floor like a rag doll.
At that exact moment, the triggers inside my body activated.
A short, dull pop erupted at the base of my skull.
It registered as nothing more than a phantom ache and a moment of disorientation.
The bomb exploded, tearing apart part of the back of my head.
But to a technically dead brain that no longer depended on critical blood vessels, it was about as threatening as a mosquito bite.
Then the chemical capsule inside my stomach ruptured.
“Brrrgh.”
A thick, acidic belch escaped my half-open mouth.
A cloud of pale-purple laughing gas slammed directly into the Joker’s powdered face.
My new physiology had processed even that garbage and simply expelled the excess.
Just as I thought.
I’m going to be living happily ever after for a long, long time.
I grinned grimly to myself.
Still holding the struggling clown, I stepped backward over the edge of the platform and dropped toward the arena like a falling stone.
The landing was brutal.
The floor groaned beneath my increased weight, but my undead joints easily absorbed the impact.
I continued holding the choking Joker in one hand while summoning the Dread Glaive into the other through sheer mental effort.
The temperature inside the hall immediately dropped.
The massive weapon, forged from black metal and otherworldly malice, settled into my palm, releasing a thick haze of spectral energy that crawled across the floor.
Death had saturated this arena.
Now it was my resource.
Dozens of restless souls, torn apart here over the previous few hours, stirred and reached toward the blade.
Considering that I was now a higher-order undead being while they were little more than lingering fragments of consciousness, their loyalty to me became absolute.
Find the control panel.
The room with the monitors and buttons.
Kill everyone inside.
My mental command lashed across the spirits like a whip.
Dozens of translucent figures twisted by agony shot away without a sound, passing straight through the walls of the facility.
Would they succeed?
That wasn’t even a question.
These entities possessed a basic skill called Weak Possession.
It wouldn’t work against Batman or anyone else with an iron will, but the Joker’s ordinary technicians sitting behind control panels were another matter.
If I solved the remote detonator problem and saved the remaining eleven participants, I’d get another reward.
Simple.
Elegant.
I casually threw the Joker onto the nearest empty chair like a sack of garbage.
He coughed, desperately sucking air into his lungs.
I casually swung the Glaive, giving his guards an invisible signal.
Until that moment, the masked gunmen had remained frozen on their platforms, afraid to shoot because they might hit their boss.
Now…
Holy shit.
That was even easier than I expected.
The smoky silhouettes of the spirits rushed toward the gunmen.
The guards on the upper levels began screaming and stumbling backward from invisible enemies.
Some suddenly froze, their eyes becoming glassy.
Slowly, they raised their assault rifles beneath their chins and pulled the triggers.
Others opened fire blindly, slaughtering their own comrades in a panic.
The entire massacre lasted maybe forty seconds.
Feat Completed: Destroy the Joker’s Armed Gang.
Reward: 1 Gold Ticket.
There it was.
System inflation in all its cynical glory.
I was so far beyond these mercenaries in terms of power that the Gacha had essentially equated wiping out thirty armed men with the simple “first kill” Feat from the beginning of the run.
But Gold was Gold.
I wasn’t going to complain.
“AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Number Forty-Two, you really are full of surprises!”
The Joker finally caught his breath and erupted into hysterical, barking laughter.
He sat on the chair with one leg casually crossed over the other, making absolutely no attempt to escape.
Instead, he watched the bodies of his own men falling from the upper levels with genuine delight.
“Who did those idiots pick up off the street for me?!
You were absolutely right to gut them!
They were completely useless!”
“You all just got unlucky with your catch,” I muttered.
My voice, distorted by my dead vocal cords, sounded like stone grinding against stone.
I walked over to the nearest dead clown, disgustedly tore a couple of sturdy straps from his tactical vest, and approached the laughing psychopath.
“No, no, no!
You don’t understand!” the Joker protested, waving his hands.
His eyes burned with fanatical excitement.
“You can’t stop madness with brute force!
What you’re doing right now, this adorable little massacre, is all part of my grand—”
I silently shoved a dirty piece of cloth soaked in someone else’s blood into his mouth.
Then I tightly tied it behind his head.
The villain’s monologue ended in a pathetic muffled groan.
Fuck listening to these broken idiots.
While I methodically strapped his arms and legs to the metal frame of the chair, a notification appeared at the edge of my consciousness.
The first spirits I’d sent into the control room had returned.
They’d completed their task.
Feat Completed: Disable the control panel and save eleven innocent lives from death.
Reward: 1 Gold Ticket.
Another Gold.
Perfect.
“Stand against the wall and stay out of the way.”
I gave the surviving participants a cold look.
Because of my undead aura and pale, mutilated face, they looked at me with almost as much terror as they had shown the Joker.
“I’ll finish this shit, then we’re all getting out of here.”
Still giggling stupidly from the remnants of the gas, the survivors nodded frantically and shuffled toward the far wall.
One particularly energetic guy tried to slip into a dark corridor leading deeper into the facility.
Whatever.
He could be walking into another trap for all I cared.
He’d made his choice.
I wasn’t his babysitter.
A short jump that practically ignored gravity took me to the operator’s balcony.
I ripped one of the massive cameras out of its mounting, tripod and all, then jumped back down.
I positioned the lens directly in front of the restrained Joker and checked the red recording light.
The broadcast was still running.
I picked up the Glaive, drove its blade into the concrete floor, and sent several dozen spirits outward in a wide formation around the perimeter of the building.
Purely for reconnaissance.
Now I could start my own show.
“So, the Joker’s Games are under my management now?”
I stared directly into the camera lens.
In my right hand, I casually spun the hunting knife from the first stage at inhuman speed.
“In that case, I suggest we rename them Games with the Joker.”
I approached the gagged psychopath with the calm, measured stride of an executioner.
He struggled against the restraints, his pupils widening.
I didn’t bother dragging out the suspense.
A quick thrust.
The blade entered his right eye with a wet crunch.
Precisely.
Deep enough to destroy the eyeball and damage the optic nerve, but not deep enough to penetrate the frontal lobe.
I didn’t need him dead yet.
The Joker screamed into the gag, his entire body convulsing.
Thick blood ran down his white cheek from beneath the knife handle, mixing with his makeup.
“First eye down,” I said casually, brutally twisting the knife inside the socket before pulling it free.
“But don’t worry.
We’ve still got time.
And you’ve still got plenty of things I can cut off.”
I turned slightly toward the camera.
“Let Gotham watch its favorite psychopath fall apart live on television!”
Feat Completed: Hijack the Joker’s Show Broadcast.
Reward: 1 Gold Ticket.
Feat Completed: Inflict a critical, irreversible injury on the Joker.
Reward: 1 Silver Ticket.
Can’t drag this out.
The cold, calculating thought passed through my dead brain despite the fact that the Gacha was practically throwing rewards at me for every little thing.
This is the DC Universe.
This isn’t the kind of world where villains are allowed to suffer for hours.
Plot armor here is harder than adamantium.
I pulled the Glaive from the floor.
A short, clean strike.
The Joker’s left hand separated neatly at the wrist and slapped onto the concrete.
The psychopath thrashed against the restraints in agony.
“No hands, no candy, huh?”
I grinned at the camera.
“How’s that for a joke, clown?”
The System interface flashed at the edge of my vision.
Feat Completed: Inflict a critical injury on the Joker.
Repeated.
Reward: 1 Bronze Ticket.
The Gacha’s generosity was already drying up.
Repeating the same actions didn’t amuse it.
This wasn’t just a Gacha.
It was the Chaos Gacha.
It wanted variety.
It was time to finish this.
I raised the Glaive with both hands, lining it up with the struggling clown’s neck.
The next strike would be the final one.
And then a powerful, compressed blast of air slammed directly into my face.
A barely visible red-and-blue blur appeared beside me.
My attack, backed by the strength of an undead monster and Bane’s Venom, sliced through empty air with a whistle.
The chair was empty.
The severed restraints lay scattered across the floor.
“Fuck!
Fuck!
Fuck!”
I snarled through my teeth and immediately sent a mental command through the Glaive.
Take control of the Joker!
I raised my head.
The Joker, missing an eye and a hand, covered in blood but still alive, was suspended near the ceiling of the arena.
Superman was holding him gently by the shoulders as if he were carrying a fragile vase.
I didn’t show any reaction.
Internally, however, I tensed.
Several of my spectral entities had already plunged into the villain’s chest.
But…
Just as I’d suspected.
The Joker’s mind was such a sick, twisted labyrinth of chaos that the low-level spirits simply dissolved inside it.
They couldn’t find anything to latch onto.
The clown didn’t even flinch.
“Sorry, kid, but not on my watch,” Superman rumbled.
His deep, righteous, painfully calm voice echoed throughout the suddenly silent arena.
The Kryptonian slowly descended.
His heavy, sorrowful gaze swept across the dozens of corpses melting in acid, the pools of blood, and the surviving participants huddled against the wall in terror.
Then his stern gaze settled on me.
On the pale monster holding a blood-covered Glaive.
“I understand,” the Man of Steel continued gently, with almost patronizing sympathy.
“You have every reason to be…
angry.
What happened here is horrible.
But violence isn’t the answer.
Violence only creates more violence.
We have to rise above our baser instincts and let the law—”
“Shut the fuck up, you hypocritical bastard!”
My voice broke into an otherworldly, vibrating roar that rattled the remaining spotlights.
I pointed the Glaive directly at Superman’s chest.
Batman.
The mouse couldn’t make it in time, so he sent his attack dog.
Though honestly, that was painfully obvious.
“Why the hell didn’t Batman send you half an hour ago?!”
I pointed the blade toward the mountain of corpses.
“Where the fuck were you while we were cutting each other’s throats and swallowing acid?!
But the moment his precious, untouchable psychopath is about to die, suddenly he lets you off the leash!”
“Fucking hypocritical saints in spandex!”
Superman’s expression darkened.
His jaw tightened.
But I didn’t give him a chance to speak.
“What, you’re going to put this bastard back in Arkham?
A padded room with a television?!
Then he’ll get out a month later and kill another thousand people!”
I pointed toward the corpse-strewn arena.
“You know what, hero?
All eighty-eight bodies in this arena…
and every future victim whose throat that one-eyed bastard cuts…
they’re on your hands!”
“You’re no better than him.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You might actually be worse.”
Feat Completed: Slightly Damage Batman’s Reputation in the Gotham Region.
Reward: 1 Silver Ticket.
It works.
I grinned internally.
“Don’t throw around words like that, my friend,” Superman said, shaking his head.
There was such a concentrated level of righteous, forgiving morality in his voice that my dead stomach instinctively twisted.
“And please lower your weapon.
We’re not enemies.”
“Why the hell are you still here?”
I stretched my pale lips into the most grotesque, insane smile my new muscles could manage.
“Fly away before I change my mind and try to finish what I started.”
I deliberately released a thick wave of my Terror Aura, directing it straight at the Kryptonian.
Would it work?
Probably not.
But the message was clear.
Get the hell out of here.
Give me enough airtime to squeeze at least a Platinum Ticket out of this.
Superman sighed heavily.
His cape shifted despite the absence of any wind.
“We’ll…
talk later.
In a more appropriate and safer environment.”
He nodded at me.
Then, in the next fraction of a second, he simply vanished, disappearing into the air as a red-and-blue blur.
He took the mutilated, blood-soaked Joker with him.
“Of course we’ll talk!”
I shouted after him.
“Definitely!
Give me a call!”
Once I’d confirmed that the sky above the Depot’s ruined roof was clear, I turned sharply toward the still-functioning camera.
“No, seriously, did you guys see that?!”
I gestured angrily toward the camera.
“You all saw that, right?!”
And this time, my outrage was almost genuine.
“What the hell do these costumed heroes think they’re doing?!
He flies in after everything is already done, gives me a lecture, and then shamelessly steals my hard-earned trophy right from under my nose!”
“Unforgivable!”
With an effort of will, I dematerialized the Glaive.
I disgustedly kicked the blood-covered hunting knife lying on the concrete and dramatically punched my fist into my palm.
“But on the other hand, let’s think logically!”
I pointed toward the camera.
“Batman is responsible for this entire mess, right?
If he hadn’t been playing his little game of cat and mouse, none of this would have happened.”
“So let’s hold him responsible!”
I raised my mutilated finger toward the camera.
“But why question a city legend?”
I grinned.
“Let’s go directly after the man behind the mask!”
“Let’s go after billionaire Bruce Wayne!”
I froze, crossing my arms over my chest.
Then I waited for my triumph.
Mu-hahahaha!
How do you like that move, bastard in black Kevlar?
Didn’t see that coming, did you?
Your entire corporate empire is about to come crashing down.
One second passed.
Two.
Five.
Ten agonizing seconds of silence.
The glorious System notification I wanted never appeared.
I had just revealed Gotham’s greatest secret to the entire world.
For a Feat of that magnitude, especially considering that this Batman apparently had no problem using Superman as an emergency rescue service, the Gacha should have given me at least a Platinum Ticket.
But…
Nothing.
Where’s my Platinum?
My brain frantically cycled through the possibilities.
Maybe the clown’s equipment died and the broadcast was interrupted?
Or maybe…
Oh, fuck.
It finally hit me.
This was DC.
A multiverse with a thousand variations.
What if Bruce wasn’t Batman here?
Jason Todd?
Hell, what if Commissioner Gordon was running around Gotham in some ridiculous mech suit?!
I’d just made myself look like an idiot on live television.
I needed to save the situation immediately.
“Hahaha!
Just kidding!
Got you!”
I awkwardly laughed, desperately trying to maintain my dignity.
“But you know, Superman is pretty interesting too!”
I paused.
“Did I say Superman?”
“Oops, another slip of the tongue…”
“His name is Clark Kent.
He’s just an ordinary reporter from the Daily Planet in Metropolis.
He lives with…”
“Khaaa!”
I never got to finish.
The air exploded.
My heavy, dark-magic-infused body was ripped out of the arena with such monstrous force that I couldn’t even register the movement.
Now I was in the Joker’s position.
And Superman had taken my role.
His steel fingers closed around my throat.
The shockwave from our launch blew out what remained of the windows in the Depot.
Less than a second later, we had already punched through the cloud layer.
Thin, freezing air screamed around us.
“WHY?!”
Clark Kent roared directly into my face.
All traces of his previous calm were gone.
Superman’s eyes began glowing an ominous red.
And there’s my reward.
I smirked internally.
Feat Completed: Reveal Superman’s secret identity to the entire world.
Reward: 1 Platinum Ticket.
So the cameras were working after all.
I just guessed wrong about Batman.
Whatever.
The Platinum is in my pocket.
Now I just have to survive the anger of the strongest being on the planet.
“It was all because of your fucking hypocrisy,” I said calmly, without the slightest hint of panic.
I stared directly into his furious eyes.
His fingers squeezed my throat with the force of a hydraulic press capable of crushing diamonds.
An ordinary human’s neck would have snapped instantly.
But I was a higher-order undead.
I didn’t need to breathe in the traditional biological sense.
My lungs now existed primarily to maintain my System technique, functioning like bellows that circulated energy rather than oxygen.
So I could speak clearly despite the pressure on my throat.
“Now that the entire world knows who you are, you only have one choice.”
I stared him down.
“Go back down there and finish the Joker before he escapes and kills your family in Kansas.”
“But if those pristine white gloves of yours are really that precious…”
I smiled.
“You can leave the dirty work to me.”
“I’ll handle it.”
“Free of charge.”
“You…”
Superman’s voice rumbled with barely contained rage.
“You fucking psycho!
You sick bastard!
You just destroyed my life!”
“My peaceful life!”
“And the Joker destroyed the peaceful lives of hundreds of families today!”
I didn’t look away.
“Why do you think your right to a peaceful life is more important than their right to live, Clark?”
Superman had no answer.
His jaw clenched so hard I could hear his teeth grind.
He continued staring at me with a dark, exhausted expression, balanced right on the edge of losing control.
“Well?”
I deliberately provoked him.
“Are you going to kill me?”
I already knew the answer.
If this run ended because a furious Kryptonian snapped my neck, it would be the most spectacular failure of my career.
But I knew his psychology.
“I am above that,” Clark finally said, his voice low and filled with suppressed fury.
A blurred movement.
Gravity grabbed me again.
He returned me to the center of the blood-soaked arena just as quickly as he’d taken me away.
My boots struck the concrete.
Feat Completed: Provoke and survive Superman’s anger.
Reward: 1 Bronze Ticket.
Even the Gacha agreed that the risk had been minimal.
Just a worthless Bronze Ticket for flying around with the Man of Steel.
The System apparently didn’t believe this version of Clark was capable of killing me.
Noted.
“You’re not even going to evacuate us?”
I raised an eyebrow dramatically at the hero hovering above the arena.
“My authority in Gotham ends here,” the man replied coldly.
His eyes had already lost their focus.
He was clearly lost in heavy thoughts about what he was going to do now that the world knew about reporter Clark Kent, Lois, and his parents.
It’s fine.
ARGUS will help.
Or Batman can activate witness-protection protocols.
They’ll have options.
Interesting.
Does this timeline already have a full Justice League?
If so, an orbital station would probably be safer for them anyway.
There was a sharp whoosh.
The caped figure vanished completely from the radar.
“All right.
Fuck him.”
I dusted off my acid-burned jumpsuit.
“We’ll handle this ourselves.”
I turned toward the trembling survivors.
“Follow me.
Don’t fall behind.”
I materialized the Glaive again and sent a fan of spirits ahead to sweep the corridors for any unexploded “surprises” the Joker might have left behind.
As I led the procession of lucky survivors forward, I methodically tallied everything like an accountant balancing the books.
I hadn’t received the biggest reward.
The one for finally killing a named, key psychopath.
Superman had ruined that for me.
But objectively speaking, I’d still done pretty damn well.
One Platinum Ticket.
Three Gold Tickets.
Two Silver Tickets.
Two Bronze Tickets.
I’d put the Silver and Bronze Tickets away in the deepest corner of my inventory.
Activating them now would be suicidal.
The four higher-tier Tickets, however, would bring my total number of activations to fifteen.
And that created another problem.
After those four activations, I’d be only five Tickets away from triggering another System Curse.
I was ninety percent certain that the debuff would increase in severity with every new batch of ten Tickets.
Next time, I probably wouldn’t get away with an harmless Minor Curse.
The Gacha might give me rotting flesh.
Blindness.
Or some kind of aura of absolute bad luck.
Fortunately, I’ve already laid the groundwork for my next Feats.
I allowed myself a slight grin.
Thanks to the Joker’s cameras and my big mouth, half the planet was probably going to become interested in me.
Government dogs from ARGUS.
Fanatics from the League of Shadows.
Lex Luthor’s Legion of Doom, assuming it existed in this timeline.
Maybe even Black Adam.
I’d just exposed Superman’s identity and attempted to deduce Batman’s.
I’d also demonstrated a fraction of my abilities.
I’d become a walking target.
And targets of this caliber always ended up at the center of major events.
It was the perfect foundation for generating new, truly massive Feats.
But that was a problem for the future.
For now…
For now, I needed to collect my rewards.
Maybe I’ll finally get my ears back.
I chuckled as I slipped my hand into my pocket.
Activating Tickets was an intimate process.
Not something outsiders were supposed to witness.
The more unknown cards I kept hidden up my sleeve, the longer I stayed alive in any world.
A classic strategy.
One I’d tested for thousands of years.
Let’s start small.
Three Gold Tickets first.