It turned out that the system's prompt was correct.
The smile would not disappear. It would only shift from one person's face to another.
Jude lay on the stage floor, bleeding from the gunshot wound to his chest, and started laughing.
Not hysterical laughter. Not mad cackling.
Just... genuine amusement. Weak. Pained. But real.
He held his stomach—partly from the bullet wound, partly from the laughter—and looked up at the Joker's face.
The expression he saw there was perfect.
Absolute fury. Complete outrage. The kind of anger that came from being the butt of a joke when you were supposed to be the one telling them.
And that made it even funnier.
Which made Jude laugh harder.
"Sorry," he managed between gasps. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. "I couldn't help it. Hahaha."
The sight of him—holding his bleeding stomach, laughing while his life drained onto the stage—made the Joker's face contort with rage.
His jaw clenched. Teeth grinding audibly.
He raised the revolver again. Aimed. Fired.
"Silly bastard!"
BANG.
Jude's body bounced like a salted fish that had been punched. The impact drove him several inches across the stage floor.
But he kept laughing. "Haha!"
Another shot.
BANG.
"Ha!"
Another.
BANG.
"Ha!"
The Joker fired like a madman. Methodical in his fury. Each shot placed with precision. Chest. Stomach. Shoulder. Chest again.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Jude bounced with each impact. His body jerking. Blood spreading across the stage in an expanding pool.
But he kept laughing. Weaker now. More pained. But still laughing.
Until finally, the Joker emptied his magazine. Six shots. All buried in Jude's torso.
Click. Click. Click.
The hammer fell on empty chambers. The Joker kept pulling the trigger anyway. Rage overriding basic firearm knowledge.
Everyone in the theater watched in absolute horror.
They'd seen the man on stage get shot. Turn into a sieve. His body riddled with holes. Dark red blood oozing from every wound, spreading across the floorboards in a lake of crimson.
And then—finally—he stopped moving.
Stopped laughing.
Just... lay there. Still. Silent.
Dead.
The Joker stood in the darkness, panting heavily. Chest heaving. The revolver still pointed at the corpse.
After a moment, he lowered the weapon. Waved dismissively toward the crowd of terrified comedians.
"No need to go on stage anymore," he said. Flat. Emotionless. "Intermission."
The moment those words left his mouth—intermission—every comedian standing behind the curtain felt their bodies give out.
The tension that had been holding them upright, keeping them functional through sheer terror, suddenly released.
They collapsed like wheat cut down in the field. Just... fell. Some caught themselves on their hands. Others went fully prone.
Their legs had gone weak without them realizing it. Muscles locked in fear for so long that they'd stopped working properly.
They lay on the ground like survivors of a shipwreck. Breathing in the air thick with the smell of blood and cordite and death. Their lungs burned. Their hearts hammered.
They were still alive.
Still alive.
They still had to perform later. The intermission wouldn't last forever. The Joker would call them back to the stage eventually, one by one, to tell jokes and probably die.
But the longer they lived, the more hope they had.
If the officers of the Gotham City Police Department arrived during this time—or, taking a step back, if that pointy-eared bat madman showed up—would they still be saved?
No one dared to say this out loud.
But everyone was praying desperately in their hearts.
Please.
Please let someone come.
Please.
The Joker reloaded his revolver methodically. One bullet at a time. The brass cartridges clicking into the cylinder with practiced precision.
Six shots. Six chambers. Six more chances to kill someone if they annoyed him.
He holstered the weapon at his waist and looked at the group of comedians on the ground. Their minds blank. Their bodies trembling.
It made him feel even more bored.
It's really not funny.
None of their jokes were funny. None of them had any meaning. Just desperate people trying to survive by telling stories they didn't believe in.
Hell, there was even some smartass who'd dared to disgust him with a Batman joke. Just thinking about it made him feel sick—
Then again.
That joke had been really targeted.
How did that guy know what the Joker was thinking? Among all the stupid people in Gotham City, there was actually someone smart enough to realize that Batman and the Joker were soul mates?
The thought was almost flattering.
Almost.
He turned his head and looked at the pile of corpses on the ground. The audience area was filled with bodies now. Dozens of them. Stacked like cordwood.
The idiot who'd made the Batman joke was already submerged in that pile somewhere. Impossible to tell which corpse was which.
He walked straight to the side door. Bored now. The entertainment had run out.
Reached out and pushed it open. Stepped through into the hallway beyond.
At that moment, one of the comedians lying on the floor turned his head.
Saw the Joker leaving.
Saw the door swinging closed behind him.
His face lit up with desperate hope. Joy. Relief so powerful it was almost painful.
He reached out and grabbed his companion's sleeve. Pulled. Whispered urgently.
"Hurry! Look! The Joker is gone!"
His voice cracked with emotion. "We should leave quickly too. He said there was a bomb in the theater—"
BOOM.
Before he could finish the sentence, the Joker—standing in the hallway outside, calmly closing the door behind him—pressed the remote detonator in his hand.
The explosion was immediate. Catastrophic.
The entire stage area of the comedy theater turned into a fireball. The blast wave expanded outward with devastating force, consuming everything in its path.
The actors on the side—collapsed, terrified, praying for rescue—were caught in the explosion.
The bodies in the audience—already dead, but now obliterated completely—were vaporized.
The building itself shuddered. Walls cracked. The ceiling began to collapse.
If nothing unexpected happened, none of them would survive.
The Joker walked away from the theater. Bored. Disappointed.
No one here was funny anymore.
It wasn't until several minutes later that someone outside finally heard the explosion. Picked up their phone. Dialed.
"Hello? Is this the Gotham City Police Department? Please come to the stand-up comedy theater quickly! There's been an explosion!"
Inside the rubble, something moved.
A voice emerged from beneath the debris. Muffled. Angry.
"Damn it! That clown bastard is still so crazy! Using bombs to control the situation and even blowing up the building to watch a comedy show!"
Jude pushed himself up from the wreckage. Covered in blood. His voice incoherent—partly from shock, partly because he was choking on something.
Wait.
He spat. A candy came out. Then a toffee.
When did I—
Never mind.
He gradually untied the heavy chunks of debris that had been weighing him down. Shoved aside broken concrete. Splintered wood. Chunks of the collapsed ceiling.
Finally rose from the rubble.
His body was riddled with bullet holes. Six of them. Like a sieve. Dark blood still oozing from the wounds.
But as he watched, they began to close. Slowly. The skill still active for another twenty-three hours.
"What a pity about my clothes," Jude muttered, looking down at his destroyed sweater. The fabric was shredded. Soaked through with blood. "I quite liked this one."
At this moment, he looked like something out of a horror movie. Hardly any clean place on his body. Bullet wounds still visible on his bare skin where the fabric had torn away. Blood everywhere.
Hideous. Terrifying.
But alive.
"First, see if anyone survived."
The improvement from Intermediate Physical Fitness Enhancement was significant. At least when moving bricks and debris, it was quite smooth and quick.
Jude worked methodically. Cleared the area around the stage. Searched through the ruins for survivors.
The people who'd been killed by the Joker before the skill activated naturally couldn't be resurrected. They were dead. Gone. Nothing he could do about that.
His focus was finding the ones who'd been shot after he'd activated [I Didn't Kill Anyone]. According to the skill's effect, they would most likely be hanging onto life within the twenty-four-hour window. Not dead. Not quite alive. But saveable.
One.
He dragged a body from the rubble. Checked for breathing. Weak pulse. Still alive.
Two.
Another survivor. Barely conscious. Breathing shallow.
Three.
Jude pulled them out one by one. Reached into his inventory and withdrew something small. Colorful. Almost absurd in the context.
A fruit-flavored lollipop.
The magical healing candy that looked like something from a children's party but worked miracles.
Every time he pulled someone out, he would stick the lollipop into their mouth for a few seconds. Let the healing magic work. Then move to the next person.
One after another after another.
Finally, he placed them all on a cleared space. Away from the debris. Lined up like bodies in a morgue, except these ones were breathing.
That's right—he was using the lollipop again. Based on the principle of making full use of resources and being thrifty.
They were all breathing their last breaths at this point anyway. Almost no consciousness left. Half-dead already.
He guessed no one would have any objections to his methods.
At least they'd be alive to complain later if they wanted to.
When the sirens sounded on the street outside the stand-up comedy theater, it was five minutes after the initial report.
There was no doubt the GCPD had tried their best. Rushed to the scene as quickly as possible in a city where "quickly" was always relative.
Commissioner Gordon and his officers broke through the main doors into what remained of the theater.
They saw destruction. Rubble. Blood.
And in a cleared space in the middle of the chaos: a group of disheveled and bloody injured people lying together. Breathing. Alive despite everything.
"Quick!" Gordon shouted. "Get them to the hospital! Now!"
When Jude opened his eyes, he saw an unfamiliar white ceiling.
Fluorescent lights. Water-stained tiles. The particular shade of institutional beige that screamed "hospital."
"I'm at the hospital?"
At that moment, a familiar voice came from beside him.
"The doctor said you were lucky. Didn't suffer any serious injuries."
Jude turned his head.
Blond hair. Beard. Tired eyes.
"Commissioner Gordon?"
"Jude, a police officer, huh?" Gordon flipped through documents in his hand. Official reports. Medical files. "You were just transferred to Gotham yesterday, and you've already started working today?"
He looked up. Met Jude's eyes.
"I don't know how you've offended your superiors to be transferred to this awful place. But then again—since you're here, you might as well make the best of it."
Gordon sat down in the chair beside the hospital bed. He looked as exhausted as Harvey had. Dark circles under his eyes. The weariness of someone running on fumes.
"That perverted lunatic you met—the Joker—has been causing trouble in Gotham City recently. The police force is stretched thin. But you're a newcomer, and I don't intend to have you face that lunatic on the front lines again."
He closed the file. Set it aside.
"You'll be in charge of another assignment. Get some rest today and return to the police station tomorrow. We're shorthanded for guarding one person. This assignment isn't too dangerous, so you can fill in."
Jude felt a familiar sensation in his gut. The particular tingle that meant the system was about to give him another job.
"Who am I going to take custody of?"
"Another not-so-dangerous lunatic," Commissioner Gordon sighed. "A cooperating prisoner of the police department."
He paused.
"He's called—the Riddler."
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