The first game began.
All the round tables slowly descended to the ground, and what rose in their place were slender oval tabletops. The ends of the ellipse were each marked with different symbols, representing the identities of those who should stand there.
Those with a bye had no table, but no staff came to instruct them where to stand; seeing this, those with a bye found the matchups they were more interested in and stood beside them.
Some participants in the match-ups were dissatisfied with this, feeling it might interfere with their own actions, but the organizers did not intervene, and the vast majority of people dared to be angry, but did not dare to speak.
Since they had boarded the ship, the atmosphere had been very off. Although a death game should be serious and tense, today's game was even more eerie on top of that.
Shiller observed the changes in the room. After a moment of stunned stillness, people began to search for their corresponding symbols.
He saw the woman who had approached him earlier walk to one side of a table. Shiller put away the aerosol can he was holding and slipped through the crowd without a sound, heading towards her from behind.
The sound of the wind brushed past his ears, the din of the crowd becoming more and more distant, rippling waves of blur appeared around his field of vision, which only made that long dress become clearer and clearer.
But just as Shiller approached from behind the woman at an angle, he saw a figure standing opposite her—even though the figure was masked, Shiller recognized him as Oliver Queen.
Shiller shifted his gaze from the woman's back to Oliver, and the second before he focused, the clear part of his vision was once again shrouded in fog.
Oliver's state at this moment was eye-catching enough.
When Shiller concentrated his attention, the already blurry scene within his vision became even more indistinct, and everything's contours began to ripple.
The silver-haired bank president, who brushed past him on the left, had a whirlpool collapsing from the center of his mask's nose until it swallowed his entire face. His obsessive focus on his life achievements ignited the fuse of greed, and his desire for more power bit into and tore apart his spirit, eventually driving everything into the abyss and landing him here.
The young lady, who hurried past behind him, had a huge black hole floating above her heart, with a man's head spinning and crying inside. After not getting the desired outcome, she chose to turn her love into a murderous rage. However, she was far from being as resolved, her terror and regret irrecoverable, she could only hope in a flimsy legend.
Standing in the corner of the room, the bent old woman caught by a baby's hands gripping her throat had indulged in her role as a mother for a lifetime. When she lost her children, she lost everything, unable to control or exercise the rights of motherhood, which drove her to an unmatched frenzy, making her willing to give her all to become a mother again.
In Shiller's vision, everyone in the room began to transform; their eyes, their brains, their hearts, every part of their bodies wrapped with countless emotional shadows. Men, women, the elderly, children, the passersby who had long vanished from their lives, manipulated them in this way, guiding them, and then slowly killing them.
Everything was so clear and evident, plainly visible.
Shiller saw countless hands gripping Oliver tightly, some pulling him down, others pushing him upwards, veins bulging on their backs, muscles tensing red on their arms, all exerting their utmost effort, trying to pull Oliver in their direction.
But about Oliver himself, Shiller only saw the anguish in the struggle, his spirit emitting steady ripples of light, with nothing obstructing his vision ahead, and his heart still beating vigorously.
Shiller took a breath of the aerosol; the illusions dissipated, and people's faces returned to normal. Yet Oliver appeared exceptionally frenzied and weak, as if cornered with nowhere to run, placing all his hopes on this gamble in desperation.
Oliver's number was Gunfish 1; the Gunfish mask and the shape of a gunfish were the same with a streamlined body that partly covered the face, a powerful tail blocking the chin and neck, and above was the gunfish's most characteristic long snout, giving each participant numbered as Gunfish the appearance that their head was topped with an antenna.
Perhaps for the sake of compositional balance, the parts of the vertical Gunfish mask that revealed the eyes were not two holes, but a horizontally elongated rectangle connecting both eyes, thus allowing one to observe more of their gaze.
Oliver's eyes were sunken, surrounded by countless indistinguishable wrinkles. Years of wilderness living gave him a face that was more mature than his age, but now it looked even older and more tired.
His eyes were no longer as bright as usual but were obscured by an indescribable haze, becoming grim and fearsome, and looking at people from the top of his eyes with lifted eyelids added to his exceptionally frenzied appearance.
At this moment, his eyes were fixedly staring at the woman in front of him, as if he wanted to dissect her with his gaze, but the woman just stood still, even taking the time to adjust the lace on her cuffs.
Both challenger and challenged knew each other's identity, but others were unaware of their feuds and grievances. Those with a bye often chose the more dramatic matches to watch; in short, those they thought might be public figures they had just seen, curious about whom these stars had offended and what their fate would be.
In contrast, Oliver and the woman were not particularly outstanding, neither famous nor with significant contrasts in their images, hence almost no one came to watch them, and Shiller didn't go either.
He approached the table where Bruce and Rhomann were facing off, and Rhomann gave him a dark look, saying, "Stand back, and don't talk."
Bruce took a small step back, distancing himself a bit more.
Shiller nodded, then looked at Rhomann and asked, "What's the grudge between you two?"
"He wanted to steal my life," Bruce immediately said. "He doesn't understand why we started at the same point but ended up differently. He wanted to be me, but he failed."
Rhomann let out a sharp, cold laugh that successfully drew the attention of others, and he said, "Bruce Wayne, the richest man in the world, the renowned Batman, do you all think that's all there is to it?"
"No," Rhomann said, leaning on the table with both hands and speaking in a low voice, "he's also a damned murderer, a psychopath, and a sadist. He manipulated a little girl, killed another who should have had the same fate as him. Remember Elliot?"
Bruce's eyes suddenly changed, and in Shiller's field of vision, those blue eyes gleamed with specks of red, and a tide of black surged from the bottom of his heart, spouting forth until it flowed from his features, dark as the night, red as blood.
"That was his own fault," he said.
His voice seemed distant, as if coming from afar. The black tide that flowed from his features extended tendrils and turned one head after another. It greedily sucked in everyone's attention, turning this into a performance to vent his malignant nature.
Everyone's gazes were manipulated to look over here in an instant, because of the familiar name that often rang in their ears, and also because of Rhomann's shocking accusation and Bruce's response that wasn't quite a rebuttal.
"Elliot, like you, was nothing but a voyeur who only knew how to lurk in the darkness and spy on others, a thief who wanted to snatch away others' lives at every moment. The funniest part is, I gave him a chance to replace me, but he couldn't even handle one ten-thousandth of my life."
Bruce's eyes and mouth opened and closed, the black tide ebbing and flowing between his features, almost swallowing all traces of his appearance, making him look like a skeleton from the tomb.
The spread of the black tide went farther and farther, more and more heads turned, and the tendrils reached into their eyes and mouths, sucking out the blood-red vitality, drawing their time and energy into the heart, and then pumping it out with low, powerful rhythms until the entire person turned blood-red.
When looking across, Shiller saw the noose around Rhomann Sionis' neck; he had been hanged, pale and weak like a sheet of paper. Shiller scanned every crease but couldn't find an ounce of anger or strength – just a poor puppet.
Shiller thought, maybe this was exactly why Bruce first attracted everyone's attention, for if the mastermind was among the others, he would surely pay attention to the situation here.
In Bruce's eyes, the words, gestures, and expressions of the people spelled out why they were paying attention to this place. As soon as someone turned their head, the answer would be revealed.
But Bruce didn't get what he wanted. The attention that flowed into his blood along with the black tide, wasn't filtered by the throbbing heart to yield the information he sought, either none of this was the answer, or the mastermind was better at disguising than he anticipated.
Shiller inhaled another breath of the misting agent, and both the black and the pale dissipated.
The Orca's mask wasn't the specific shape of a fish, but rather a shuttle shape, wide in the middle and narrow at both ends. The widest part on either side had two white patches similar to the eye spots of an orca which, when placed on a human face, looked like white blush, bizarre and laughable.
The atmosphere between Bruce and Rhomann grew increasingly tense. Just then, an employee wearing a crab mask came over, placing two decks of poker cards on the table, followed by 10 Gold Coins for each.
The Gold Coins still bore the Trident pattern in the center, the exact match of the old man's mark on the forehead, and they jingled on the table like a devil tolling the bell in the hearts of the greedy.
"The gambling poker game you are about to play is called 'God and the Believer'," the employee explained. "The rules are very simple. Each person holds a deck of cards, and you toss a Coin to determine the roles of God and the Believer."
"Each round, the Believer sacrifices 3 of their cards to God, and God decides whether to bestow 1, 2, 3, or 4 cards to the Believer. After ten rounds of sacrifice, the sacrifice ends. Each side blindly selects 10 cards from their own deck, flips them one by one to compare sizes. The one with the most wins, and the first to flip a Wong directly wins."
The employee placed a Metal bell that would ring a crisp note in the center of the table and said, "Push the cards to sacrifice here. Hands must not cross the line. Push cards to bestow here. Hands must not cross the line. No physical contact is allowed throughout the process, nor can you show cards to the other player during the sacrifice. After the sacrifice ends, both hands leave the table, and I will flip the cards."
"All bystanders must not touch the table or the participants and must remain silent throughout. Violators will be declared losers immediately."
"Now the game begins. Both parties enter their chips, with a minimum of one coin and a maximum 'all in.' Once the deal is done, there's no turning back."