The Joker wanted to use Jigsaw's game to expose the darkest parts of human nature. Then, he'd stand before the game's creator and tell him that everything he did was pointless.
"Has everyone made up their minds? If so, I'm going to begin," the Joker said theatrically.
"No!" The delivery guy was in utter despair. But that despair pushed him over the edge. If he had to die—only to be turned into ground meat afterward—then he'd rather fight. He didn't want to die. So he made a choice: kill the guy with the colored hair. Kill him, and maybe he'd survive.
With a roar, he lunged at the colored-hair guy in a desperate attack.
Just as the Joker had predicted—mutual slaughter, no need for him to do anything. That's just how people are. Ugly. All the same.
Liu A'dou stood to the side, watching them fight. Killing someone barehanded wasn't easy—especially when neither had any real training.
This was street brawling at its sloppiest. Liu A'dou couldn't bear to watch. From the way they fought, it was clear both of them probably learned to throw punches back in middle school.
The colored-hair guy was obviously more ruthless. He kept aiming at the delivery guy's nose and eyes. Meanwhile, the delivery guy couldn't bring himself to hit the vital spots. In just a few moments, blood was pouring from his nose.
"You dare lay hands on me? Do you even know who I am? My dad has 100 ways to make sure you can't survive in Gotham City. You're dead, you hear me?!"
Punch after punch landed on the delivery guy's face, taking away his ability to fight back.
"Hit me? I'll show you! In this city, I'm one of the people you absolutely can't mess with."
The delivery guy was barely conscious, but the colored-hair guy didn't stop. He wanted to kill him with his own hands.
Blow after blow, fists soaked in blood—he kept going until the delivery guy was barely breathing. Then he stood up and turned to the others. "That's enough. You can throw him in the damn meat grinder now."
But no one moved.
The delivery guy was still breathing.
"Come on, do it. We're down to the last 50 minutes. Who knows what's in the next stage—but we don't have time."
Yet still, no one wanted to get their hands dirty.
"You bunch of hypocrites. I knew I couldn't count on you." The colored-hair guy was furious. "You don't want to play the bad guy, huh? But you're dirtier than any of us behind the scenes. Don't think I don't know what kind of shady crap you all do out there. You're just clinging to your fake respectability, you damn cowards."
Awkward silence. Because what he said was true.
He grabbed one of the delivery guy's hands. There was a moment of hesitation—but in the end, he hardened his heart and shoved the hand toward the gap in the metal box.
Some people craned their necks to make sure the process would go through. Others couldn't bear to watch, turning away in fear.
It was a brutal scene—bloody and enough to make someone's scalp go numb. Definitely not the kind of thing anyone wanted to see.
Just imagine it—a hand getting chewed up by a machine, flesh turned to mush, bones crushed into fragments, mixed with skin and hair, and splattered with fresh blood. Clumps of red pulp. Enough to make people faint. Some folks get queasy just from seeing blood—this was worse than a gunshot to the head. This would scare the soul right out of them.
Closer and closer—the delivery guy's hand was just about to say goodbye. But right then, Liu A'dou suddenly spoke up. "Hey everyone, come look! I've got the key!"
What?
Sure enough, the key was in Liu A'dou's hand, and the tempered glass was shattered all over the floor.
"How's that even possible?" They'd tried before, and the glass wouldn't break no matter what. And the space beneath it was barely big enough to hold the key—there was no room for any kind of leverage or movement to smash it.
"Who knows? Let's just open the door already."
The lawyer snatched the key and turned to Harry. "You really are our lucky charm."
The Joker's face fell in disappointment. He had been looking forward to a good show—this was such a letdown. Totally not fun.
The colored-hair guy let out a long sigh of relief. Killing someone was one thing. Killing them and grinding them into paste was something else entirely. If it wasn't absolutely necessary, he didn't want to do that either.
There were bad people, sure—but not many were as twisted as the Joker.
"Thank God," someone murmured. No one had to watch human sausage get made after all.
"Hurry, we're running out of time. Open the door!" No one wanted to stay in that room any longer. One after another, they poured into the fourth room.
"How could something like this even happen?" one voice said. "If I remember right, you were in charge of Room Three, Charlie."
"Yeah, but I've got no idea why it went down like that. The tempered glass shouldn't have been an issue."
"Mistakes like that only damage the reputation of Jigsaw's disciples." As if Jigsaw's followers ever had a real reputation to begin with.
"Luther, I know." Charlie sounded serious.
Luther and Charlie were second-generation disciples of Jigsaw. The Joker's use of Jigsaw's game to murder people was blasphemous to them. They had no choice but to step in and teach him a lesson—to make sure he understood that the Jigsaw game was sacred and not to be messed with.
Unfortunately, they didn't seem up to the task. Meanwhile, the Joker always managed to push the game into the darkest possible direction with just a few words. That was his talent—leading people into corruption.
"Maybe bringing the Joker in was a mistake," Luther muttered. "He's ruining our game. Look—there are still so many people who haven't faced punishment. It's a disaster. The Joker keeps finding ways to make them sacrifice one person to save everyone else. That's not the purpose of this game. We're supposed to make them confront their wrongdoings, realize they've been wasting their lives. That's Jigsaw's belief—not this nonsense where they keep offering up scapegoats. The Joker is using our game to make people worse. He's turning them into murderers."
As if they weren't murderers themselves. Maybe in their eyes, the motive behind killing mattered more than the act itself. They believed they were correcting the way mortals wasted their lives, reminding them that time was precious, that life should be cherished—and for that, killing was perfectly justified.
Those who died in the game weren't worthy of living in this world anyway. To Jigsaw's disciples, they were like God's filter—eliminating the unworthy.
"Don't worry," Charlie said. "We still have the fourth game. The Joker won't be able to pull any more tricks."
"Exactly. It's the fourth game. They've only got 30 minutes left. No time for hesitation now. Life or death—it's in their hands."
The fourth room had a whole new vibe. Ten complex-looking metal chairs sat in a dimly lit space. Other than the light that shone on the chairs, the rest of the room was in total darkness. It felt like outer space. Besides the chairs, you couldn't see a thing.
Was the final game just sitting around and staring at each other?
Whatever it was, sitting down seemed like the right move—after all, the organizers clearly wanted them in those chairs. Each chair even had a name attached to it, so everyone had a designated seat.