Jack had quite the excited expression on his face. Seedy struck a pose from behind him, pointing several vines at Max while seemingly laughing at him.
In turn, Max returned his gaze back to the rusty scalpel.
"I... I guess I have to do this myself."
He held onto the scalpel with shaky hands. It took a while, but the shaking gradually calmed down. Ever so carefully, he put the blade just above the top of his nose bridge. A deep frown formed on his face, the ends of his mouth trembling. He closed his eyes tightly before shoving the scalpel into his nose once more.
Practically immediately, he began screaming once more. He lost the strength in his arm for a moment, leaving the scalpel to dangle for a brief time. However, in the next second, he grabbed tightly and pushed down even harder, causing a rather disgusting squelching sound to come from him. It was intermingled with various cracks as Max's nose bent in ways it was obviously not meant to.
It looked awfully similar to the skin of an apple as someone used a peeler on it, not only the redness but the shape too.
Tears were streaming down Max's face as he continued pushing down again and again. His screams quickly became muffled, like he had a stuffy nose. But to be more accurate, it was because the scalpel was directly blocking his nasal passage.
At the very least, it was a testament to the progress he made, passing already half of what he needed to get through.
His entire face became red like a beet, while his exposed wound was already starting to turn purple, presumably because it was infected. His eyes glazed over in the tears as they slowly opened.
Despite already getting over the worst of it, Max seemed quite out of it, just letting the blood run down the sides of where his nose was still attached. His lips parted ever so slightly to mumble softly.
"Mom..."
His grip tightened, tilting the blade slightly before he ripped off his nose. There was a decent amount of the flesh still stuck to the lower part of where his nose was, with the bottom covered with uneven marks.
"Ahh.... Ah... aaah...."
His jaw hung open as he cried in pain, letting the blood leak down into his mouth. He looked worse for wear, to put it bluntly. One of his hands covered his face, making him look an awful lot like Maverick. As for the other hand, it slowly reached out to pick up his nose, which looked just like a lump of red mush.
After bending over the table, he was just barely able to dump it into the machine before collapsing back into his seat.
Although he was very clearly in pain, there was also a sense of relief on his face, albeit hard to see through considering he was covering it. He slowly closed his eyes, trying to calm himself down, and as he did-
"Sorry, but you didn't deposit enough of what can be considered your nose to fulfill the punishment requirements."
Although nobody was talking beforehand, an even deader silence spread among the players as they stopped moving, with some not even daring to take a breath. It was already a rather horrifying thing that Max had done, yet it still wasn't enough.
Naturally, the person in question wasn't all too happy about it.
"Wh-What?... No..."
His voice sounded quite funky, but nobody laughed. Well, almost nobody laughed.
"Hahaha! Isn't that great? You can have even more fun now! I'm so jealous of you, nobody can complain that you're going too far!"
Jack started laughing, and even for the standards of someone that was excited, his laughs lasted a little bit too long. Seedy imitated that laugh, though it came out more incoherently and sounded more like a hoarse cough.
Brian similarly let out a muffled laugh with his mouth closed.
"You are still quite fortunate. In the past, if a person did not remove their entire nasal passage, which was far more than just the nose out front, it wouldn't have been accepted. An incredibly large number of people ended up getting taken by The House from this, prompting them to make new rules and lighten the requirements. Now, you only have to remove the entirety of the nose that appears on your face."
Despite his eyes already being bloodshot and covered with tears, it was easy to tell that he had begun crying again.
Still, despite that, he picked up the scalpel that had been completely stained red and slowly removed his hand from his face, revealing the large wound and cavernous holes where his nose was missing.
With a violently shaking hand, he brought up the scalpel once more.
Several people were surprised by the seemingly unfaltering determination of some shy kid. However, this time he was groaning and sucking in breaths through clenched teeth. Despite what he theoretically had to do being much less than usual, it still seemed much harder than before.
With great conviction, he was able to put the scalpel onto what remained of his nose.
It appeared even more painful this time from how much his face scrunched up as he winced. In one swift motion, he pushed the scalpel downwards, eliciting a cry of pain. Unfortunately, other than a bit of blood, his flesh remained stubbornly stuck on.
Without a proper place for the blade to nick into and penetrate, it was going to be hard to cut the remaining bits off. Even if the scalpel was incredibly sharp, it still wouldn't be that easy.
And unfortunately for Max, it was dull.
Desperately, he tried again, this time taking more care and trying to do it slowly.
"Ah... AAAAAHHH... AAAAAAAA-"
Other than slightly bending the flesh, it remained on. It wasn't as though it wouldn't budge. However, it was slippery like a cockroach, especially with all the blood. By this time, instead of just being bloodshot, the white part of his eyes had turned completely red.
It became unclear whether what let him continue to push on was pure willpower or frustration or both. He used his free hand to pinch what little was left of the flesh on his nose, despite how much it caused his eyes to water further.
Then, he began pushing down with the scalpel together.
Incoherent sounds of pain were coming from him. His mouth was closed, but it kept spluttering like he was trying to spit something out. Even then, it was still not working all that well.
He pushed down again and again. If nothing else, he was slowly making progress, but the process was not only slower but more painful than when he was cutting the grand majority of his nose off.
"AAAAAH... AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH-"
Yet, by some miracle, he was able to cut off a decent chunk of what remained.
Though the bad news was that he directly passed out, collapsing face first on the table. The blood pooled on the table, but while his neighbors started to panic, the blood strangely stopped before it got too close to the side, not even seeping into the green fabric as one might expect.
The invisible walls still affected Max, even if it was just his blood.
After a rather lengthy silence, Emily was the first to speak up.
"Is he... going to be ok?"
Brian kept the same smiling expression as he answered that question.
"Mostly likely not. It appears he fainted from shock. Even if he were to miraculously wake back up, all of the adrenaline would be gone. Meaning he'd likely pass out again, and even if that wasn't the case, it would be almost impossible to muster the willpower to continue."
Jack clapped his hands several times while bouncing to his left and right, alternating which foot he leaned on, with Seedy imitating him. This was rather unsettling to Emily, especially since she assumed that he must've been a good person due to the connection to Mia.
Of course, he didn't exactly act in the best faith earlier, ripping off Maverick's nose as punishment. However, there was still a degree of ambiguity that could make it plausible for those actions to be reasonable.
That wasn't exactly the case for what was essentially celebrating someone's death.
"Why are you... so excited?"
Jack tilted his head to the side, keeping the bright smile on his face.
"Because he was able to have so much fun. Look at him! Imagine if he couldn't have all of that fun, that would be super terrible! Dad told me that avoiding something bad is something to be happy about."
Emily was rendered speechless since she simply could not make sense of or follow his logic. In the end, she only gave a small no before pushing all of those events past her.
"I... want to take my winnings and go."
As those words came out of her mouth, she suddenly disappeared, leaving the others to sit there and wait.