The incandescent lamps lit up one after another, and the metal-plated walls reflected a cold light. Shadows slid across the walls like swimming fish. A figure stopped at the door. By the time he pushed it open and went in, there were already quite a few people in the conference room.
"Welcome, welcome." The figure standing at the head of the table was wearing a white lab coat. "Welcome to our last friend."
"Him?" A figure in a white Mecha had his feet propped up on the table, fingers interlaced in front of him, looking the newcomer up and down. "A younger version of you, Shiller. Really?"
"Why not?" he shot back. "Besides, I'm not expecting him to come up with any brilliant ideas. As long as he can do the grunt work, that's enough."
"That is interesting." A green-haired figure blew his nose and then started coughing loudly and violently. "I hate the smell of gunpowder on him. And what else? Marine Corps?"
"Don't start, you damned bastard. The last half hour has been nothing but your insane rambling, and you haven't offered a single useful suggestion. You're the one who shouldn't be here." A figure wearing a burlap Scarecrow hood said from his seat at the table.
"I really don't get you lunatics. Even in the century when I was doing the worst numbers, I wouldn't waste this much time on a question like this. Come on, Devils are on a schedule too!" A red-skinned, horned figure spread his hands.
"Ahem." The newcomer cleared his throat. He looked at the man at the table who looked exactly like him. "I'd also very much like to know why you called me here. What makes you think I'd join a Multiverse Evil Alliance, Greed?"
"There is no such alliance." Greed dug in his ear with a finger. "We're gathered here today for a great undertaking—making trouble for the Superheroes!"
"Oh——!!!" The cheers were enthusiastic.
Greed raised his hand to signal them to calm down. He turned back toward the door and said, "All right, come have a seat, agent. I really wasn't counting on you for the creative side. I'll tell you what you're doing later."
The agent said nothing and went to sit at the end of the table. He looked like he was quietly Listening, but in reality he was shutting his brain off, planning to skip straight to the part where someone called his name.
"Okay, let's get back to what we were discussing." Greed walked to the front of the table, braced both hands on the tabletop, and said, "So what style of dungeon are we building? Stark, you go first."
"I still stand by my opinion." Stark crossed his arms, a flash of light appearing in his light-colored eyes. "Of course it should be a finely crafted mechanical escape room, paired with a Robot Army—that's the only way you get real tension and thrills."
"The style has to be modern tech. This kind of interior design is pretty good," Stark looked over the conference room, then said, "The cold metallic texture and bright but warmthless lighting make people feel inhumanly distant—that's a form of Psyshock in itself. If you also add dangerous mechanisms with countdown timers and machine-gun turrets, plus constantly roaming Robot patrol Guards, even Batman would find it a headache."
"Vulgar." A voice came from the side.
Greed looked over there again and said, "All right, since Batman's been mentioned, I can tell you that he is indeed among the game's participants. That's where the difficulty of this level design lies. Joker, your turn."
"The slum, obviously." Joker grinned, twitched his nose, and said, "Nothing suits an escape better than a slum. Ramshackle houses, flooded streets, junkie corpses, children's bones, Mob and Heresy, criminals and Madman, sex, drugs, violence. You can find everything there."
"You're just sneaking in your own agenda, aren't you?" the red-skinned figure said. "Why don't you just say you want to build a Gotham straight up."
"And what's wrong with that?" Joker cocked an eyebrow at him. "You damned Devil who ruined all the romance of Death. The cruelest punishments you cooked up in Hell can't even compare to one toe of Gotham. No artistic taste whatsoever—just like you."
"We're talking business here, how did this turn into a personal attack?!" He slapped the table and shot to his feet.
"All right, Mephisto," Greed said, "you know he's not mentally stable. Don't stoop to his level."
"I don't agree with just transplanting Gotham wholesale."
Greed turned his head again toward the figure in the burlap hood. "What brilliant insight do you have, Dr. Klein?"
Scarecrow scratched at his hood and said, "This round's theme is escape room, right? We're not here to explore violent crime or showcase wealth gaps. The Gotham slum has rich content, sure, but it's an open-world map and kind of off-topic. And once we use it, it'll definitely turn into Joker and Batman's home field, which does look a bit like smuggling in his own stuff."
Greed nodded and said, "That's true. The level design this time is mainly linear puzzles, and the focus has to be on escape—story is secondary."
"Boring!" Joker gave a crisp verdict.
"But it's a two-player instance." Greed smiled. "And the two people in the party will definitely have a very good relationship."
"Oh?" Joker's eyes lit up again. "Who's Batman queuing with?"
"Definitely not you," Scarecrow cut him down. "He just said the relationship has to be very good. Do you seriously expect Batman to think you'd be any help to him in a high-difficulty run? He's not that stupid!"
"If I make a request to him, he'll definitely agree. Because if I stay here playing games, I won't be out in real-life Gotham making trouble for him. His poor little sweethearts will all get to live a bit longer. Why wouldn't he?"
"Superman," Greed announced the answer. "Just as expected, right?"
"Oh, yes," Joker said with that mocking tone, "that big blue-eyed marshmallow, just looking at him makes me sick to my stomach. If he knew how wary Batman is of him, he'd probably cry and ram his head into the moon."
"He's no less wary of Superman than he is of you," Scarecrow said.
"What do you mean 'no less'? It's definitely more!" Joker started yelling again. "When it comes to Superman, Batman just prepares some green jelly beans. That's what you call precautions? But for me—oh, that's a whole different story."
"Can we stop going off on tangents every damn time?" Mephisto said, a bit displeased. "I have zero interest in your romantic history with Batman. Greed, if they keep disrupting the meeting, throw them out."
"All right, time to really get back on track," Greed said.
"Personally, I don't think the style matters," Scarecrow said. "Modern décor, ancient décor—whatever. Isn't the real key the design of the stages?"
"You said they're queued as a duo?" Mephisto looked at Greed. "And their relationship will be very good?"
Greed nodded. Mephisto's eyes rolled thoughtfully. "I've always compared love to a deadly poison and, at certain times, to a confession and a piece of incriminating evidence. That's interesting, isn't it?"
Joker had obviously thought of the same thing. He said, "Exactly. We shouldn't get hung up on style and form—the core is the content. We have to exploit the relationship between them. Human emotions are so grand, and so disgusting."
"What are you doing, singing an aria?" Stark said impatiently. "Let's get back to the practical issue. If we want to use their feelings to restrain each other, how do we design the stages?"
"That's your problem," Greed waved his hand. "My think tank, you've designed so many high-difficulty dungeons that the Battleworld players tremble at the mention of you. The raging curses in the comment sections are your glorious battle honors. I trust you won't let them down this time either."
"Of course—" They cheered again. Then Joker took the lead. He stood up, walked to the front of the crowd, and, as if performing, paced and spun as he spoke.
"Of all the ways to die, drowning is my favorite. I can't deny it's related to my little dip in the chemical vat. But that feeling of being cut off from the outside world, yet unable to breathe in your own little space of survival—that's fascinating. It's despair that makes you want to scream. But there's only water, water, and more water. The water seals everything in—language, thought, even life itself. It's wonderful."
"I like this plan," Mephisto was the first to speak up. "Though for more practical reasons. You damned lunatic got one thing right—someone submerged in water can't talk. That's much better than using some Supernatural Force to forcibly block communication."
"No communication right from the first stage? Isn't that a bit too intense?" Stark frowned. "No kind of gradual ramp-up?"
"Oh, come on!" Even Scarecrow couldn't take it. "This is a high-difficulty dungeon. They get a warning before they enter. We've designed so many dungeons, and I've never heard of a high-difficulty one that comes with a newbie tutorial. If we don't smack them hard at the start, they'll think everyone's a top-tier player or something."
"I agree with that," Greed said. "A high-difficulty dungeon should be hard from the moment you step in. It's a reasonable filter. If they can't get past the first stage, dragging their miserable lives into the later ones is just pointless suffering—they'll never clear it anyway. Better to crank up the difficulty from the start and weed out the newbies who just want a peek. That's actually very humane."
"An underwater puzzle isn't a bad idea," Stark said, tapping the table. "I really like combining water and electricity. We set up a mechanism—if they fail to solve it, we electrify the water. How about that?"
"And here I thought you had some conscience left," Mephisto looked at him. "Turns out that's what you had in mind."
"Conscience?" Stark glanced around and chuckled. "If I had a conscience, would I be working with you lot?"
"We can't dunk both of them in the water," Greed said. "Sure, we want to ramp up the difficulty, but not that way. I'd prefer to put one of them in the water and let the other go save them. Just tighten the time limit a bit."
"Still not hard enough." Joker tapped the tabletop. "Why don't we design a psychological trap? When people realize they're about to drown, their Instinct is to save themselves, so we give them a chance at self-rescue. But in reality, that's a one-way express train to Death."
"You mean…"
"If you haven't had professional training, your breath-holding time is very short. The more you panic and struggle in the water, the shorter that time gets. If you have no room to struggle at all, they might actually stay put. But if you give them some space to move—and more importantly, give them a tool that looks like it could save them—they'll march themselves right up to the guillotine…"
"Tsk…" Mephisto sucked in a cold breath. "Being able to work with you guys is my blessing. Sometimes I really don't know who the real Satan is."
Joker bared his teeth in a grin at him, then said, "Relax, this is only the beginning."
"Exactly," Scarecrow picked up. "I think we can add another layer of psychological trap. What if that tool is also the key item for the other person's puzzle? The Will to live makes people cling to their only tool. Will they be willing to hand their lifeline over to someone else?"
"My God," Joker was already lost in the fantasy, "I can't wait to see a few pairs of bosom friends and couples fall out over this. That scene is going to be absolutely delightful! Hahahahahaha!"