Morder gasped as if the air had been pulled out of him. The stab was extremely delicate, its precision terrifying, to the point that even the passing wind seemed to avoid him.
He stared at the dagger with trembling eyes, yet he did not notice a single drop of blood coming out of his wound. He slowly looked behind him, shaking his head, and saw the clown standing with a strange stillness.
Then it moved its head as if it were a puppet, placing each finger at the sides of its mouth, drawing a wide, artificial smile.
"Seems there's no escape… but that's fine. A stab is better than losing limbs."
As he returned his gaze to the table, a strange disturbance struck him, causing his nose to bleed—and his cheek as well…
'What is—' His eyes widened in shock, as if he had already understood what was happening to him.
'Poison… the dagger has filled my body with poison. How many times have I been poisoned since I came here…'
He bit his lips hard, due to the weakness and the unnatural things happening to him.
The audience whistled, some of them cursing Morder… since he had won this round without losing any limb to be offered to them as a gift.
"The first round has ended without the loss of any limb, and I see the audience is not satisfied… so we will raise the level of excitement a little." The mystery spoke in a manner similar to a circus performer preparing for the next act.
"A little?! Nonsense." Morder spat chunks of blood onto the ground, but they fell on the knight's foot, prompting him to strike Morder in the stomach.
"Ghh… man… damn it, it fell near you by accident, but if you consider it an insult, then take it that way." Morder gave the knight a grin, showing his bloodied teeth.
The clown moved, its motion strange, as if someone was controlling it… Morder noticed and slightly raised his head, but he found nothing, no way to determine what was moving it.
'Its movement… its expressions… they are closer to a puppet. But there is no proof I can rely on.'
The clown placed its right hand on the table, taking a writing posture, and began to move it, carving something.
As it wrote on the table, Morder noticed drops of blood moving toward the clown's hand. He shook his head wildly to figure out where they were coming from—only to realize they were being pulled from his wound.
'Is it using my blood to write? Everything here is… creative.' he muttered sarcastically to himself.
The clown finished what it had written and returned to its place. Morder looked at what was carved on the table, and the phrase read:
[Mr. Cliff, the writing on the paper contains many differences, as if it was written with distorted and strange strokes. In your opinion, who do you think the killer is?]
New words appeared beneath the old ones:
[The one with uppercase and lowercase letters, the one with unreadable handwriting, or the one with colored writing.]
Morder closed his eyes and opened them again from the overwhelming philosophy and linguistic manipulation that made his mind stop thinking—it did not clarify or add any small detail that could help him.
"Damn it, who told you I was a philosopher or a mystery writer…"
An hourglass appeared out of nowhere and fell onto the table… and the terrifying part was that its sand was red. Stranger still, it was moving downward quickly.
"Adding the element of time, hm. So this is the excitement you were talking about."
He narrowed his eyes, his mouth trembling, and continued speaking as he analyzed the words:
"Time is passing quickly, so let's set aside useless talk and focus."
"It seems this is a message found at a crime scene, or perhaps in a place meant to delay investigations… anyway, the only thing that came to my mind is that the writer of this paper is one person."
He lifted his head from the table and began searching around the room until he noticed three pillows on the bed. He leaned forward to take a closer look and found that each pillow carried something symbolizing three different types of lines.
"I think I found the first clue."
Although he managed to find the first clue, time was closing in, as it had already reached the halfway point.
"Damn it, time is making my mind shut down. What a ridiculous addition. I need to throw a solution—but not in a random way."
He gritted his teeth as he examined the pillows, hoping to find something that wasn't shared between them.
Morder noticed that each pillow had a different form or position on the bed. The first was closer to a hexagonal shape, the middle one was oval, and the last was diamond-shaped.
Then the poison began to take effect, distorting his vision, even causing him to see hallucinations such as events from the prison or a cathedral.
'Not the right time for the symptoms to appear now.'
He forced his vision back to normal and looked at the time. Only a small amount of sand remained. He was shocked and began shaking his leg violently.
Before he could move his mouth, the sand finished falling… and the cathedral bell rang, announcing that the given time had ended.
Morder swallowed, waiting for what would happen to him.
"I don't know, but cutting a fin—"
The knight drew his sword from its sheath, and with precise speed, severed Morder's right hand, then returned the sword to its previous position.
Morder could only watch the blood scattering onto the ground before his shocked eyes, lowering his gaze as he looked at his severed hand.
"Ghhhhh…!" He screamed from the depths of his heart, the pain overwhelming him. He couldn't tell whether the suffering came from the poison in his body or his severed hand.
He began to pant as if he had run a twenty-kilometer race. The pain was unbearable… and in his miserable state, the mystery spoke in a cold tone:
"Oh, how pitiful… it seems time has caught up with you."
Morder wasn't even listening. He was drowning in pain, unable to comprehend that he had lost a part of his body.
'I'm trying to process what just happened… but is this truly the end?' he muttered to himself as blood flowed from his mouth.
"Don't be afraid. We have reached the final stage of this annoying gamble… but this stage is somewhat delicate, so your correct choice will be the key to escaping this hell."
As he looked down, he noticed that his hand had been taken by another ruined hand, one covered in wounds and torn apart.
'It seems someone didn't place a bet… but stole my hand instead. What wonderful luck.'
The lights went out for a few seconds, then came back again… Morder slowly opened his eyes. His vision wasn't sharp, but he focused on the corpse tied to the movable bed, and two other figures sitting at a table with sacks covering their faces. Each had a different sack—one bloody, the other gray.
'Isn't this the same corpse from that first room? What is it doing here?' he muttered while gasping.
Then, a severed hand appeared, writing on the table…
Morder looked at what was written, narrowing his eyes which were struggling due to the poison's effects, yet he tried hard.
[He, the killer, who, bloody sack, with, fool, gray sack, or.]
"Word arrangement, huh? My body and mind aren't helping me think… but getting out of here, even missing a piece, is a blessing."
"The killer is who…" Morder stopped forming the sentence because it didn't feel grammatically correct. His vision itself was disturbing him, but choosing correctly would be a golden victory.
"The one with the bloody sack…"
"The one with the gray sack…"
"The killer is the one with the sack…"
He kept trying over and over, and after five minutes, he finally reached the correct answer:
"Who is the killer—the one with the bloody sack, or the gray sack?"
"Finally, I managed—"
He didn't finish his sentence, as the poison began to tear through his body…
"…"
He raised his head and looked at the two figures before him, beginning to analyze the situation:
"The bloody sack could be considered the killer, but what proves that? Most likely, it's someone who helped the corpse, which caused their clothes to be stained with blood. As for the one with the gray sack… I bet he's the culprit. No killer would display blood and reveal himself."
He thought for a few seconds, until his eyes lit up with realization:
"The killer is the one with the bloody sack."
The knight moved behind them and removed their sacks… and the shock appeared. They were nothing but dolls, with exaggerated expressions drawn on their faces, as if mocking Morder no matter what answer he chose.
"What?!"
The mystery laughed loudly. That laughter, to Morder, was the peak of manipulation—he had been analyzing nothing at all. He had been deceived.
He bit his lips hard, and blood began to flow heavily over his body from anger and the deception he had been subjected to.
"My dear, I'm sorry, but I wanted to play with you a little… but would you like to know who the real killer is?" Her tone was filled with cunning and unexpected amusement.
She removed the sack from the corpse's face… and Morder's eyes widened in shock. He hadn't expected this at all—it was the corpse of the priest he had killed.
"That's right, my dear… there is no killer in this room, only a butcher."
The mystery appeared behind him out of nowhere, whispering near his ear:
"You are the butcher, my dear."