It is unclear whether the weather is meant to be like this, or if Gotham itself harbors some kind of mysterious force.

  Whenever heinous crimes otham is always struck by torrential rain, adding a chilling yer of terror to a city already shrouded in evil.

  For example, tonight, the Joker orchestrated a massacre targeting the Maroni family at one of their bars.

  "Damned bastard!!!"

  Sal Maroni, the current head of the Maroni family, is sitting in his office, repeatedly throwing things within reach to the floor in a fit e.

  However, if anyone were standing behind him, they would notice that the back of his suit is pletely soaked.

  Not from the rain outside, but from the cold s from his body.

  Only he knows that he had inally pnned to visit the bar where the attack took pce to meet with a t.

  It was only because the t had a st-minute emergend couldn't make it to Gotham that he celed his pns.

  But what if the schedule hadn't ged? If he had gone, he might have ended up as a headless corpse ihat bar.

  "Joker... Joker... Joker! And the Jang... they want to climb over the Maroni family to rise to power, don't they?"

  Sal Maroni is furious, but he knows that it's now time for them to react.

  The Joker is no longer just a madman. Even the Gotham Police Department knows that, through his successful killings aain alliahe Joker has attracted followers and formed the Jang.

  If he tio turn a blind eye and dismisses these attacks as the uable as of a madman, his position will be at risk.

  Once his authority wahe Fale family won't hesitate to take down the Maroni family.

  "Iigate! Find out where the Jang is hiding. If the Joker wants to climb over us to gain power, we'll give them war!"

  ......

  While Maroni is pnning his furious retaliation, at the bar, Gordon is leading a team of officers to du iigation.

  "Is it still pying cards?"

  In Gordon's hand are four pying cards, all without exception from the Jang. This firms that the four massacres targeting the Maroni family over the past two days were all carried out by the criminal known as the Joker.

  "Captain Gordon, four of the victims were police officers."

  "Take me to the se."

  Gordon has never uood why the Joker spared him in the past, but for now, he has no choice but to set aside those thoughts. He followed his subordio the se.

  At the entrance, a decapitated corpse lies, the cause of death being a cle shot to the head from a high-powered firearm.

  "Modified firearms... with that kind of power."

  Gordon murmured to himself. A on capable of shattering a person's skull with a single shot—such power is on par with a sniper rifle. The Joker's danger level is far beyond the absurdity of his criminal antics.

  The sed body was also decapitated, the skull crushed by a heavy object.

  Gordon immediately thought of the rge man listed ielligence reports, whom the Joker refers to as Solomon Grundy.

  The third body was a suicide, with a shard of a gss bottle being the on.

  Gordon looked around at the bar, nearly pletely soaked in blood, with severed limbs and broken arms scattered everywhere. Killer Croc wasn't just a killer—while murdering, he also ed parts of his victims. Though life with the Joker was no longer as grueling, his habit of biting into people during a fight hadn't ged.

  "Given the se, it's not hard to uand how someone could go mad and give up resisting."

  Not only the police officers who withe massacre firsthand, but even those iigating now, seeing the horrific state of the pce, had faces as pale as ghosts.

  Even Gordon, whose resolve was typically unshakable, wasn't doing well. His stomabsp;ed tinuously, and if he weren't f himself to hold it together, he would have thrown up by now.

  "This is the st body, Captain—Officer William."

  "William?"

  Gordon's heart sank. bining the deaths of the three officers from earlier with this final one, Officer William, he finally remembered—these were the same officers who had been part of the small group that had once sent him to Maroni thugs.

  But at this moment, Gordo no sense of revenge fulfilled. Instead, he : Could this really be a ce?

  He gnced once more at William's body.

  There were ernal injuries, but his mouth was stuffed with multicolored dies.

  These dies were highly adhesive, and William had suffocated to death from the blockage caused by these sticky dies, uo breathe as the sweet taste slowly led him to his demise.

  "Stickier than glue!"

  One of the officers picked up a dy from the floor, and it took both fingers siderable effort to pull the dy apart.

  Gordon then noticed the dy residue on William's fingers.

  It was clear that after the Joker had stuffed William's mouth with dy, he had simply left.

  William, still alive at the time, must have tried desperately to remove the dies with his hands but was uo. In the end, he succumbed to death, caught between the hopelessness and the sweetness in his mouth.

  But now, Gordon had no time to dwell on the Joker's cruel methods of murder, as he himself was filled with dread.

  Had the Joker killed these people because of him?

  Did the Joker know that these people were responsible for his plight?

  Why had the Joker dohis?

  No matter how he thought about it, Gordon couldn't shake the feeling that being targeted by someone like the Joker was never a good sign.

  He had the sehat there was an even rger spiracy brewing, ohat was slowly unfolding.

  Though it was just a gut feeling, his ability to survive all these years had been based on that very intuition, bined with a bit of luck.

  "Joker... Joker... what is it that you truly want to do?"

  ......

  The man Gordon had been mumbling about, Reid, had already returo his Alfred persona and was back at Wayne Manor.

  As for Killer Crod Solomon Grundy, it was the Joker who had recruited them, not Alfred. They naturally had their own base of operations within the Jang.

  '49%, huh? Why won't it go up any further...'

  Since Alfred's card and the Joker's soul have merged, pying as the Joker essentially means pying as Alfred as well.

  The as taken while pying the Joker, when looked at closely, all seem to be Wayne Enterprises, which allows Alfred's role pying pertage to rise.

  This is the expnation provided by the system.

  However, if Reid were to expin it himself, he would say that Alfred has gone dark, transf into the maniacal, ughing version of Alfred.

  "Yes, that's the most fitting expnation."

  Soul bonds, reition—Reid couldn't care less about those things. As long as the expnation makes sense and doesn't leave out any crucial details, how it's expined doesn't matter. After all, only he knows the truth. Why plicate it?

  "But..."

  Reid snapped back to the present, his eyes now focused on the map of Gotham City in front of him.

  "There's just one final step left."

  **

  **

  **

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