“Aren’t you a hasty one?” the clown spoke with a wide grin.

His eyes curved into thin lines, as if he had just found a new toy.

Without waiting for any reply, he spun the wheel again with a flick of his wrist.

The metal rang softly as it turned faster and faster.

“Ringa ringa ring, ring ring… ringa ringa ring, ring ring…” he sang in a playful, off-beat voice.

He moved along with the spinning wheel.

His body swayed side to side like a child lost in his own game.

The bells on his hat chimed with each small motion.

The wheel slowed down bit by bit, the clicking sound growing louder in the quiet tent, and not long after the arrow gave one final tick…

It stopped.

“Guess~!”

“Ohh, it’s a guessing game?”

The clown chuckled, tilting his head as he looked at the word the arrow had landed on.

His smile stretched wider, as if he already knew how this would end.

“What kind of game is it?” Vivian asked calmly.

He wrapped a strip of cloth tightly around his left arm, pulling it hard enough to slow the bleeding.

His fingers remained steady, even as fresh blood soaked into the fabric.

He could have used mana to stop the blood. But this was not a simple cut.

It was a clean loss of the arm.

Forcing mana to seal something like that was not easy at all.

The skin at the stump could not just close like a small wound.

It needed proper stitching and time.

Both of which he clearly did not have right now.

So the only thing he could do was tie it tight and move on.

“Don’t worry, it’s not difficult,” the clown said with a careless shrug, as if they were not standing in the middle of a deadly game.

Then he snapped his fingers.

Pop!

With a light popping sound, a small table appeared right in front of them, as if it had always been there.

It was covered neatly with a clean white cloth that looked oddly pure in this strange circus.

On top of it were three upside-down glasses.

Beside them were three small balls,one red, one yellow, and one green.

Their colors were bright and easy to see, even in the dim light.

“You just need to guess which color is under which glass,” the clown explained in a light tone.

He tapped one of the glasses with his finger, making a soft tick sound.

“If you get it right, then you don’t have to cut anything more, and you can move on to the next game,” he added.

He leaned forward slightly, his eyes watching Vivian closely. “Do you understand now?”

Vivian gave a short nod.

His face was calm. His breathing was even, as if the pain from his missing arm did not matter at all.

“Kekeke… I like you,” the clown giggled, clearly amused.

He picked up the glasses one by one. His fingers moved with strange smoothness.

“No hesitation at all. Whenever I call other participants, they always stop and think.”

“Or they get scared. Or they try to find a trick,” he said, lightly tossing one of the balls in the air and catching it again.

“But you are very different…”

His grin widened, showing more teeth.

“I like you a lot.”

The clown laughed for a bit. His shoulders shook as soft giggles slipped out.

Then he suddenly straightened.

He clapped his hands once, his grin widening.

“Then let us start the game!”

He moved at once.

He placed the three balls under the glasses with quick, smooth motions.

Each glass covered one color, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

Then his fingers began to dance across the table.

“Ringa ringa ring, ring ring… ringa ringa ring, ring ring… ringa ringa—” he sang in a cheerful tone while shuffling the glasses.

His hands moved faster and faster.

The glasses slid over the cloth with soft scraping sounds.

Then he suddenly stopped mid-song.

His eyes widened slightly, as if he had just remembered something.

“Oh! I forgot to mention,” he said, lifting one finger as he looked at Vivian with a playful smile, “this game will be played only once, understand?”

“Yeah.” Vivian nodded.

His face didn’t change at all.

There was no fear. No tension.

No sign that he had just lost an arm or that his life was at risk.

His expression was blank. Still. Almost like a doll placed there just to watch.

His eyes were calm and empty, as if nothing around him truly mattered.

He stood there like everything happening was distant. Like none of it could reach him.

Like a puppet without strings.

Yet—

He was far from one.

“As expected… I can learn more about emotions in this space,” he thought quietly

His mind was steady.

His face showed nothing, not even the smallest flicker of change.

Since the last game, he had already started to understand.

The questions.

The wrong answers.

Even the punishments.

Everything had meaning.

Everything was teaching him something.

And all of it was slowly opening a path in front of him—

The path of mastering emotions.

“Ringa ringa ring, ring ring… ringa ringa ring, ring ring…” the clown continued.

His voice was light and rhythmic.

His hands kept moving, shuffling the glasses back and forth in quick patterns.

He switched their places again and again, never stopping for even a second.

“Where is the ball? Why can’t you find the ball?” he sang in a playful rhyme.

His laughter mixed with the sound of the moving glasses.

His eyes shone with mischief.

The movement went on for a while, fast, confusing, almost impossible to follow with normal sight.

Then—

It stopped.

The glasses came to rest.

Silence returned to the table.

The clown slowly lifted his head, his grin stretching wide as he leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping into a soft, excited whisper.

“Now, heaven’s child…” he said, tapping lightly on the top of one of the glasses.

“Tell me… where is the red one?”

“The middle,” Vivian spoke without even waiting for a moment.

His voice was flat, clean, and steady, as if the answer had already been decided long before the game began.

“Ohoh… aren’t you a confident one?” the clown chuckled.

His lips curled upward as he slowly reached for the middle glass.

His fingers hovered over it, teasing, dragging the moment longer than needed.

“If you want, you can change—”

“The middle,” Vivian repeated.

No pause.

No shift.

Just the same answer, like a fixed line carved into stone.

“Ah, whatever, it’s your hand on the line!”

the clown shrugged, his grin widening as he lifted the glass just a little, stopping halfway as his eyes flicked toward Vivian again. “You sure~?”

“The middle,” Vivian said again.

The same tone.

The same stillness.

Like a broken doll repeating the only words it knew.

“Ok!” the clown suddenly pulled the glass away.

Bingo!

Beep!

For a split second—

There was nothing.

Then—

“It’s not red… it’s black!”

Under the glass, instead of red, a small black ball sat quietly, its dull color standing out against the white cloth, wrong in every way.

“Kekekekekekek—!” the clown burst into laughter.

He clutched his stomach as his shoulders shook wildly.

“It’s cheating, cheating, cheating! You might call me a cheater, but it is what it is!”

He giggled to himself, clearly enjoying his own trick.

Vivian stared at the black ball.

His eyes didn’t change.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t argue.

He didn’t even question it.

He simply looked.

As if the result didn’t matter.

As if the answer didn’t matter.

As if winning or losing had no weight at all.

The clown slowly calmed down, wiping a fake tear from the corner of his eye as he straightened up again, still smiling.

“Now then~ since you lost the round, you must give me one—”

Chink!

A sharp sound cut through the air.

Before the clown could even finish his sentence, Vivian’s sword moved in a single clean motion, fast and precise…

His right leg fell.

Blood spilled out at once. It was heavy and dark.

It spread across the white floor. The sharp smell filled the air.

His body swayed slightly from the sudden imbalance.

Yet—

His face did not change.

Not even a single line.

No pain.

No anger.

No regret.

Nothing.

He stood there, now with one arm and one leg gone, his body unstable but his presence unmoved, his grip on the sword still firm as ever.

“Start the next game.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep