Chapter 563
Chapter 563: I, Joker (2)
Translator: Lonelytree
“internal combustion, gunfire, screams,” Gordon soon continued, “and only the bat can save you! The bat pities your fear and shares your hate… he shall reward your faith with villain’s blood!”
Like a fake prophet, the man played the role to his best. He was speaking with his face twisted in religious piety…
“Hail the bat!””Hail the god-king of Gotham!””hail to the bruce!” Echoes of such cries could be heard all over the city.
At the same time, the cg turned around.
And one could see… at the top of the castle, a solitary person with muscular body had opened his black wings and descended on the top of this city.
The man was dressed in a dark black batman suit and his whole body was wrapped inside the suit and only his mouth and nose were exposed. This bat suit had a few conspicuous differences compared to the original bat suit; number one, there was no utility belt around the waist; number two, the cape looked more like a pair of rising dragon wings; number three, on the chest of the suit, there was imprinted a neon yellow, incredibly conspicuous symbol of a bat.
“Faithful ones, I come before you without armies. My divinity rests on your faith.” The Bruce stood at the top of the citadel, flapped his cape, opened his arms and recited through the communicator that was attached to his lips, “Are there who would seize my sacred throne? This night any may challenge the bruce! It is your ancient privilege!”
“The crowd on the city quickly knelt down one after another, listening to the declaration of the God king of Gotham. The spotlights with different colored bat signals pierced into the night sky as if celebrating the man’s arrival.”
“Prove your right to dispute my descent from bruce wayne, the first batman god!” The Bruce continued to say, “Capture and kill one of the these resurrected enemies” Like every year before this, he started to describe the rules, “before I destroy them myself, thus earning the chance to slay me, if you can. In personal combat and become god!”
The narration intervened. “The crowd would be kneeling as the enemies were being hoisted from their cells, somewhere above my head.” In the image, the Joker, Harley Quinn, Two Face and Poison Ivy were all pulled out from the glass tubes. The middle part of their bodies were all bound by a metallic ring as thick as a steel chain, the ring was then connected to a metallic rope. At that moment, they were like puppets hanging at the end of a thread. They were picked up and respectively placed inside four different vehicles.
…
“On this solstice, pray to the bat for life!” The Bruce turned around to face these ‘criminals’ and said, “pray for mercy, pray for deliverance, pray for slaughter.” As he finished, the 4 criminals not far away were placed inside their own ‘vehicles’. The Joker was riding a modified car that was flattened and was triangular in shape. The back wheels of the car was large, even larger than the body of the car itself. There were four powerful spotlights in front of the car while the bumper bar was made into the shape of a large ‘mouth’, thus from the front, the car looked like a giant smiling face.
Harley Quinn’s car was of the same model at the Joker but the color of her car was a combination of red and black and there was no ‘giant mouth’ at the front of her car. Poison Ivy’s vehicle was a green hovering shuttle, the surface of the vehicle was painted with decoration of many different plants. It utilized the hover technology and thus had no wheel.
While the vehicle used by Two Face was… comparatively shabby. It was a mini flying machine, overall, it looked like a circular disk less than 2 metres in diameter. At most it could fit 2 persons. Two control panels about 1 metres tall each stood at the front of the disk, this was both levers to control the disk and a guard rail. But as simple as it was, at least this thing could fly so in a way, it had its own advantage.
“Some innocents must die to save the rest…” The Bruce’s lamenting words had reached the end, “Order shall be overturned that redemption may come. Cast your sins upon the evil ones that the bat might cleanse them. Now… let the carnage begin!”
“The four were catapulted to sites throughout Gotham City. The rules were simple. Kill The Bruce and be free while the whole city was chasing after you. No super villain had ever survived…” In the thunderous roar and ruckus, The Joker, Harley Quinn, Two Face and Poison Ivy rode their vehicles and drove off at four different directions. They rammed through the crowd and left a trail of blood behind them. They drove down the streets of Gotham and disappeared into the night. The introductory CG ended then. The next second, the players gained the control of their bodies.
“Main quest triggered. Survive in this chase and meet up with at least one of your teammates.” When Feng Bujue regained his sense, the quest details rang in his ears. But he did not have the time to go and look at the game menu because he realized he was sitting inside a speeding car with his hands on the steering wheel. “Your appearance had been turned into the appearance of the Joker in the perspective of the Npcs. There was a new item added inside the pocket of your vest.” Two system notice reminded him. At that moment, Feng Bujue already pressed on the brake. But the car did not stop… it did not even decelerate by a little bit.
“Ah~ As I have expected.” Feng Bujue appeared to be very calm. He had his eyes glued to the front and tried his best to control the steering wheel and analyzed the current situation that he was in. “This car has no brakes at all and…” He tried to move his shoulders. “The safety belt has strapped me into the seat…”
“For the bat!” Suddenly a human figure jumped before him. The man was standing in the middle of the road, shouting the slogan at the top of his lung with a religious fervor on his face. After seeing that, Feng Bujue did not respond in any particular way, he allowed his vehicle to continue moving forward and allowed that disciple to ram into his own Joker car.
Bang
The man was knocked into the air and landed on the side of the road. Several seconds later, he died on the spot. His body was lying in a pool of blood with a very grotesque pose. Some of the purple air leaking out from the front of the Joker’s car stained his body and it caused the dead man’s face to arrange itself into a ghastly smile as the man perished.
“Hmph… this is such an irony.” Feng Bujue had no pity for such a stupid man who voluntarily sought death. He scoffed under his breath. “Facing this kind of situation, the real Joker will never steer the car away. Therefore, the real super villain will be safe.” He shook his head. “Only the fake villain will try to avoid the innocent man and cause the vehicle to go out of control.”
At the same time, on the street right behind Feng Bujue, a bat mobile sped into view and stopped beside the body. The Bruce leaped out from the car and bent down to pick up the dead man’s body. He said darkly. “look here… we have the first victim of the Joker.” Naturally he was not talking to air. In this city, there was surveillance camera everywhere and there many floaters moving through the air capturing every moment.
“I will take revenge for this innocent victim, I swear!” The Bruce said confidently. His heroic claim was broadcasted all over the city, echoing through the streets of Gotham. Even Feng Bujue who was driving could see this through the big screen he was driving under.
“He he…” Brother Jue laughed. “If you dare to come, then I will dare to kill you…” When he spoke, he already took out WJQ-308 Military Shovel from his inventory. “But… if I kill you just like that, it will lack much necessary dramatic flair.” Obviously, in this scenario when none of his power was limited, Feng Bujue was not at all afraid of a boss at The Bruce’s level. The man in that moment was already starting to plan something else.
“Hmm… this strap is quite sturdy, isn’t it.” His mind churning with a plan, while his lips mocked. He held the steering wheel with his left hand while he held the military shovel with his right. He used the sharp edge of the military shovel to saw away the safety belt on his body… This was our Feng Bujue, a man who was used to doing many things at the same time. It did not take long for him to successfully escape from the constraint. He leaped into the air and burst out from the top of the speeding car. The car that lost its driver soon rammed into a wall and tipped over. But Brother Jue merely somersaulted through the air and used Void Steps to neutralize the inertia before landing softly.
“Okay… so what I need to do next is…” He stood at the middle of the street and looked around. There was no one else on the darkened streets but in the sky about 7 to 8 metres off the ground, there were floaters in the shape of vultures circulating the air.
“The Joker! Accept the judgement from the Bat!” Suddenly a roar erupted above him. Following that, a shadow wearing a batsuit dropped down from the sky grappling a rope and came right at Brother Jue.
“230 plus pounds, a normal suit, normal cape, mask and gloves. The muscle are all sewn on into the suit. He is extremely unagile, dumb and careless…” Just in that quick moment, these information had flashed across Feng Bujue’s mind.
“Hmph…” Feng Bujue scoffed derisively when he saw the man who landed. He did not even use any skill but merely turned his body to the side to avoid the kick from the man. When the man swung past him, Brother Jue conveniently hit the man on his waist.
“Ah!” The fake batman dropped down from the rope grapple and landed heavily on the ground. The pain that came from his waist almost caused him to faint. In comparison, the rough landing was not something that serious.
“Tell me, what do you plan to do?” Feng Bujue took several steps forward and walked to the man’s side. He looked down at him and said, “You think you can kill me? And then defeat the Bruce to become the new God?”
“Erm… Erm…” The fatty already did not know what to say. Perhaps he was suffering from internal bleeding or injured his spine or he was just frozen from fear.
“Hah…” Feng Bujue started to laugh for no reason. He lifted his head to glance at the floaters and then he bent over to utter to the fatty on the ground. “Look at the face of yours… Why so serious?” He looked right into man’s eyes that were overwhelmed by fear and continued, “Come, give me a smile.” At that moment, all the big screens over the city were broadcasting this situation (The edge of the screen were following the other super villains who were still escaping in their vehicles). Everyone was watching this scene, including the Bruce himself.
“Do you not understand me?” Seeing the lack of response from the man, Feng Bujue pulled out a gun from his pocket (This was the object that he obtained when he entered the scenario) and pointed the barrel right between the fatty’s eyes.
“Cough… Erm…” The fake batman was at the verge of tears but he still forced himself to give a twisted smile. The ironic thing was… at that moment, he was still wearing that homemade batman mask.
“He he… that is more like it.” Feng Bujue said with satisfaction, and then he straightened himself and put the gun away. The man was suddenly relaxed from the taut tension and his mind finally snapped and he sunk into unconsciousness…
Brother Jue shrugged with a smile. And then he lifted his head to look at the floaters. “My super villain friends, listen carefully!” He shouted at the top of his lungs, “The… stood at the Peary Gates. His face was worn and old; I was old enough to know that your heart was a train … that the doors to your sanity were hanging on their hingers.” After he uttered these few sentences, he turned and left. In most scenarios, the conversation between the players and the NPC would be translated so that the latter would understand them but… in that case, the two sentences that Brother Jue recited made no sense at all to the characters inside the scenario. But then again, for them The Joker would never say things that make sense anyway…
…
At the same time, three different people in the city…
Harley Quinn who was played by Ruoyu was still trapped inside her car. Her situation was similar to Brother Jue from a few minutes ago. Her car also could not break and the safety belt was locked. And her solution was similar to Feng Bujue as well—she choose to use her blade to cut away the safety belt. But in comparison to Brother Jue, Ruoyu was not as good as him in splitting up her attention. She had to control the speeding car and saw off the safety belt at the same time, it took her longer than Brother Jue. Furthermore… it was indeed rather inconvenient using Holy Seal inside the car. That was not a military shovel that could be folded up to only 24 centimetre, it was a long blade about 1 metres tall. If she was careless, she might accidentally cut herself.
Laughing Soul was doing slightly better. Since she had a military dagger, when Feng Bujue was reciting his poem, she had already escaped from the hovering shuttle. After that, she cleverly escaped into the underground sewer and temporarily escaped from the camera’s surveillance.
And finally, our Xiao Tan… was in the worst situation. First, even though his vehicle could fly, there was a height limit and he could not fly that high; secondly, the thing was moving too slow, it could only go up to 40 kilometres per hour at its maximum speed; third… both of his hands were tied to the two welded steel levers and his ankles were tied to the bottom of the flying saucer with steel chains. Based on these descriptions, we knew that Xiao Tan temporarily would not be able to reach into his inventory to obtain any item so he could only dart around the city in his flying saucer.
And the worst thing was… he was trapped inside a rather crowded part of the city. There were a large number of crowd on the street and both sides of the buildings. Some of them were in citizen gears while others were in fake batman and batgirl costume. These people surrounded and blocked Two Face’s way and used many different kind of homemade weapons (Very little people of them possessed firearms on them) to attack Xiao Tan.
…
And now we shall return to Brother Jue…
After Feng Bujue rushed ahead for a while, he stood next to an electrical box by the side of the should.
“Hm… this should do the trick.” He mumbled as he took out the godlike weapon, military shovel again. In two to three hits, he successfully knocked the box open. Then, Brother Jue did something extremely surprising—He removed his gloves and reached his hand into it…
“Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah—” It was unclear what the man touched but there was a bright spark and the man was bounced backwards. The hand that touched the electrical wire was singed and a burnt scent drifted out his body. After he landed, he even convulsed for a while on the ground. But several seconds later, Feng Bujue struggled up from the ground. Without a twitch to the expression on his face, he put the glove back on and allowed those bloody flesh to stick together with the glove. Those who were watching this… were shocked beyond belief.
[Very good… this kind of burn will not cause a continuous bleeding effect, the worst is already over.] Brother Jue thought to himself. [But I have lost a surprising amount of Life Points. Even though I have pulled back as fast as I could, I still lost 50 percent of my Life Points…] He licked his dry lick. [But if I do the same thing in real life, I would be dead several times over already…] He was not wrong, if he replicated the same thing in real life, he would not even have the time to pull back his hand and even if he did, in that one second… it was enough to shock a grown adult to his death.
“Phew…” After Feng Bujue was shocked, he stretched lazily and moaned with satisfaction. The next second, his expression suddenly changed. 5 to 6 golden glows suddenly flew out from his hand. Every one followed a very accurate trajectory and they all took down a moving floater.
…
“What just happened there?” The Bruce looked at the image that turned into static and asked darkly. By then, this ruler of Gotham had already returned to his castle and stood inside a room that appeared to be a control centre. The wall on his right was filled with monitors. In this room, you could see the image and video transferred back from the many cameras and floaters around the city.
Several workers in uniform (the uniform looked rather similar to the outcome of the first generation Robin, there was even a R symbol on their left chest) were busy working the monitors. They were inspecting various data and reporting the finding back to the Bruce.
“Did… he just fired a gun?” The man who called himself Gordon and who looked like Gordon quickly suggested. He was standing to the side of Bruce, holding his master’s batsuit and cape.
“I do not think so….” The Bruce said, “Even if those light rays did come from a gun, but… how do you explain the whole situation with the electrocution?”
“We have already manufactured him into the Joker, he is now a madman, who knows what he is doing?” Gordon said.
“I think I do,” A man at the side chimed in. It was a bald old man, he wore a pair of spectacles and had on an earthly brown research coat. He was Professor Klibon, The Bruce’s most important underling. Currently, he was using a small device to inspect the Bruce’s physical condition (That was why The Bruce had removed his suit and his cape).
“This man must be very clever… he realized that he had a tracing chip inside his brain but he also realized that he had no condition and method to remove the chip himself…” Professor Klibon said, “Therefore, he chose the method of direct electrocution…”
“I believe the professor is not wrong, before he destroyed those floaters, we have already lost the tracing signal that should have come back from him…” A worker at the top turned back to reply.
The Bruce instantly added, “So in other words… we have completely lost his location?”
The room sunk into silence.
“Ha… ha ha ha ha…” The Bruce suddenly started to laugh wickedly. Then he turned to ask Klibon. “Are you done with the inspection? How is the result?”
“erm… perfect rhythm in the new heart. No sign of rejection in the other transplants.” Klibon replied.
“Very good, Klibon. Give me one burst of hyper stimulant.” Bruce said as he turned his gaze to the monitors on his side. “Keep the ‘Joker’ for last then. I will first go and deal with Two Face to please the mob outside first.”
After a bunch of back and forth, Ruoyu finally struggled loose from the safety belt. Just as she was about to push open the car hatch and jumped out, a tunnel appeared right before her. And inside the tunnel, there was a ‘batmobile’ which had been lying in ambush started to rush out from the opposite side. Of course, instead of the actual batmobile, this was just a fake one that had been modified and painted black. Other than the meaningless batwing decoration on the top of the car and the sides of the car, it was no different from a normal citizen’s car.
“Damn it! Henry, catch her!” Inside the car, a fat woman dressed up as Batgirl shouted at her husband. Henry was a man about 50 plus with a small moustache. He was wearing also a homemade batman costume but at least he looked more like the real thing compared to the one whom Brother Jue face. “Qie… If your brother had done a better on’ this tub…”
“Don’t start in!” The fat woman shouted. “We can win this! My astrologer says so!” They, were a duo who attempted to challenge the Bruce. Every year there would be idiots who came out to try, even if they had somehow luckily killed one of the super villains, they would fail at the last challenge. But these kind of people would not go out of extinction—challengers always lose, but the poverty in Gotham convinces some fools to try.
“Quick! The tunnel is only large enough for one vehicle. Catch her before the tunnel, she will have to stop!” The fat woman ordered loudly inside the car.
Her husband, Henry could not be more annoyed by her. “You wanna drive? Then drive!”
“I can’t shoot and drive both, you nitwit!”
“Don’t call me that!”
“Hey! Wait… what’s going on?”
“She does not seem to halt… oh! My god!”
It was not that Passing Rain did not want to brake but the vehicle that she was in did not have that function at all.
KRAASH—Bang!
After a consistent crashing, bumping and flipping later, the vehicles rolled over to the side of the road and the cars themselves blasted into pieces.
“Phew…” Ruoyu crawled out from her own car and inspected the game menu. “I only lost 20 percent Life Points from that…” She took several steps forward to move away from the carcass from the vehicles that had already started to burn. “Without even realizing it… I have already become so much stronger than a normal person in real life?”
“Demon! Devil!” At that moment, the fat lady’s screaming curses came from behind Ruoyu, “My henry’s dead!”