It had already been one year and two months since Ji-hwan was dumped into the Badlands of this insane cyberpunk world.
It was also the third week since he’d buried a knife in the brow of a Biotechnica executive, picked up a three-star first-degree murder warrant, and crawled into this rotten sewer of Pacifica.
Clack.
The heavy iron door opened, revealing Mammoth’s private office tucked behind the VIP seating of the fight pit.
The man in charge of the arena, Mammoth, greeted Ji-hwan with a thick cigar clenched in his mouth.
"Oh. There you are, K. How’s your body holding up?"
"Fine. But why call me here right before the match?"
Ji-hwan answered flatly and shoved both hands into the pockets of his worn coat.
At the question, Mammoth exhaled a long plume of cigar smoke and looked at him in silence.
"This wasn’t something I meant to bring up yet, but... are you thinking of siding with the Voodoo Boys?"
At that name, Ji-hwan closed his mouth and kept a heavy silence for a moment.
Not long ago, he’d gone into the Maglev Tunnel, the Voodoo Boys’ sanctuary, to stop Marcus’s pursuit and struck a three-condition deal with their leader, Maman Brigitte.
He needed to gauge how much this old bastard had figured out about his movements.
"Why ask that all of a sudden?"
Ji-hwan broke the silence and asked back, calm as ever.
"Because this is the territory where our Animals and those boring bastards have been tearing each other apart over actual control."
Mammoth growled as he braced a hand on the desk.
"If you get tangled up with those rats, that’s a pretty inconvenient variable from my side. If you’re planning to crawl under them officially..."
Just as the conversation was about to sink into Pacifica’s bloody power structure, there was a knock at the door.
Bang, bang!
"Boss Mammoth! K!"
The guard standing watch at the arena entrance, a two-meter bull of a man named Bison, shoved the door open with a wheezing metallic rasp.
"It’s about time for the main event to start!"
The tension snapped. Mammoth clicked his tongue and ground out his cigar.
"...We’ll talk after the match. Go prove your worth in the ring first."
"Sure."
Ji-hwan turned without hesitation and left the room. He had no intention of joining any gang anyway, so this was just another annoying turf dispute to him.
Walking through the dark corridor, Ji-hwan loosened his body with a few easy stretches.
Because he’d burned through his life force, his regeneration was weak, like a faucet leaking a few drops at a time.
But separate from that, the vitality in his muscles was taut and full, and his concentration was cold and sharp, like he’d just woken up.
He emerged from the corridor and stepped onto the octagon ring surrounded by iron fencing.
Blinding lights poured down on him.
The arena, thick with the stench of blood and acrid illegal drugs, was already shaking under the frenzied cheers of criminals and Animals alike, as if it might collapse at any second.
Standing at the VIP railing on the arena’s second floor, Mammoth lifted a microphone and roared in a grotesque, vicious metallic voice.
"Kahahahaha!! You bastards! Today, a very interesting piece of trash rolled in here all by himself!"
As the crowd screamed themselves hoarse in a frenzy, a savage glint flashed in Mammoth’s eyes.
"The rules are simple! Only physical violence is law in this ring! Then... let the match begin!!!"
Tatatatang— the heavy bell rang out to signal the start.
Before the echo had even faded, Blackbull, his muscles swollen to the limit with the illegal synthetic drug Juice, launched himself forward with a beastlike roar. It was an overwhelming charge, like a giant armored train with broken brakes derailing and barreling straight at him. Every stomp of the brute’s feet made the iron mesh under the ring scream and shudder.
But Ji-hwan had already read that stupidly direct line of attack.
Thud-thump!
Rather than meet force with force, Ji-hwan lowered his upper body toward the floor and rolled in a curve beside the man’s path. Pale dust kicked up and scattered over his worn pants, but Ji-hwan’s eyes never left him for even a second.
Using the momentum of his turn, Ji-hwan sprang back up smoothly.
"You’re just dodging like a rat!"
Blackbull halted his charge, changed direction, and swung a fist the size of a pot lid.
Ji-hwan leaned back to slip the murderous blow, then used the spring in his waist to drive a lightning-fast straight punch into the man’s completely exposed abdomen.
Thud—!!
The strike landed cleanly. But in that instant, Ji-hwan’s brows twitched slightly behind the mask.
Rumble, zzzzt— it wasn’t the sound of flesh and organs being hit.
It was a chilling vibration, like he’d smashed his bare fist into a thick steel plate. Even Ji-hwan’s bones, tempered by breaking mountains, rang unpleasantly, and a sharp pain surged back up his arm.
"I thought he was just a solid lump of muscle, but he’s got subdermal armor layered under the skin."
Still, Ji-hwan ignored the tingling pain racing up his fist and pressed deeper into the man’s guard like a beast.
Fast, sharp, breathless punches poured down like rain toward the man’s chest and stomach, leaving him no room to breathe.
Pababak! Clang! Thud!!
Yet Blackbull took the entire storm of blows head-on and burst into a bizarre laugh, as if he didn’t feel a thing.
"Kahah!"
With even his pain receptors numbed, Blackbull grinned and swung a heavy counterhook loaded with all 220 kilos of his weight straight at Ji-hwan’s face.
Whoosh—!
A slicing sound sharp enough to crack a skull. Ji-hwan quickly pulled back the punch he’d extended and used his footwork to slip just outside the man’s arc.
"Hoo..."
Ji-hwan widened the distance and steadied his breathing, flicking sweat from his chin.
It had only been a few exchanges, but he’d already seen the bastard’s weakness clearly.
"His upper body is loaded with subdermal armor and reinforced bones, but the footwork in his lower body is badly rattling under that weight. Ordinary tendons and bones that stopped getting upgraded because he ran out of money."
Ji-hwan confirmed the one crack that could bring down the solid wall. He drew in one more deep breath, then let a cold smile spread behind the mask.
And the next instant.
Ji-hwan completely dropped both raised guards.
With every muscle in his body fully relaxed, he stared straight at his opponent and began walking forward with the easy pace of someone out for a stroll in a park after dinner.
"...What, what the hell?"
Blackbull’s face turned bright red with humiliation and rage at the absurd sight of a man walking up to him completely unguarded.
"You punk, are you looking down on me right now?!!"
The atmosphere outside the octagon, where everyone was watching the bizarre scene, froze over in an instant.
"Holy shit, that skeleton bastard dropped his guard completely?!"
"Guess his punches weren’t landing, so he lost it. He’s scared and giving up!"
Disappointed groans poured from the spectators. Even Mammoth, looking down from the VIP railing on the second floor, frowned at Ji-hwan’s unreadable behavior and let out a metallic rasp.
"Tch... maybe I expected too much."
The moment everyone thought Ji-hwan was about to die, Blackbull, trusting his overwhelming defense and strength, swung his full-power left hook like a cannonball to finish him off for good.
No escape. At the exact second the crowd sucked in their breath, expecting blood to spray.
Whoosh—! Just before the murderous wind pressure touched Ji-hwan’s face, his upper body bent fluidly like reeds in the wind, letting the brute’s violent momentum slip past by a hair’s breadth.
Dropping his guard hadn’t meant accepting death. It was to maximize [Body Enhancement], stripping every unnecessary bit of tension from his muscles.
The heavy fist that should have smashed his face instead brushed Ji-hwan’s cheek by a sliver and slid deep over his shoulder into empty air.
"...Huh?!"
Blackbull’s eyes went wide as he lost his balance from the missed swing. In that opening, Ji-hwan slipped into his body like a ghost and clamped down on the thick forearm and collar caught over his shoulder like steel tongs.
The weight difference was threefold. A normal human would have been crushed under that horrifying mass. But Ji-hwan exploited the man’s leaning center of gravity and charging momentum without mercy, curling his back and waist in deep.
"Hup!"
With a short shout, explosive power burst from Ji-hwan’s lower body.
The giant body lifted into the air off Ji-hwan’s shoulder, then a brutal throw that defied physics slammed into the octagon.
Kwaang!!
The ring floor shook as if it had been hit by a bomb. Blackbull, his entire weight thrown backward and his back driven into the cement floor first, coughed out all the oxygen in his lungs with a grotesque metallic sound.
"Kh, kuhheuk...!!"
The impact rattled his bloodshot eyes like crazy.
But Ji-hwan didn’t allow even one second for him to recover.
Before the aftershock in the ground had even faded, Ji-hwan bounced off the floor and climbed onto the man’s back like a beast.
Then he stretched out both arms like a snake, wrapping them tightly around the thick neck that wasn’t covered by subdermal armor and choking it without a gap.
A perfect rear naked choke.
"K, krrrk...!"
The man thrashed, then began clawing like a beast at Ji-hwan’s forearm, the one squeezing his throat with thick fingers.
Riiip, ssskkk—!
"Kkh..."
Skin tore open on Ji-hwan’s forearm where those hands scraped past, and red blood burst out.
But even through the horrific pain of flesh being ripped open, Ji-hwan’s arms around the man’s throat didn’t move a single millimeter.
"Kheeeugh..."
Blackbull’s face, starved of oxygen, turned bright red and then began to drain into a bizarre bluish hue.
The strength in his thrashing grew visibly weaker, and the thick fingers waving in the air gradually slackened.
"I..."
Ending in miserable despair, his eyes rolled back white.
The thick hand clawing at Ji-hwan’s forearm finally lost all strength and dropped limply to the octagon floor.
Unconscious. A perfect submission.
"..."
A short, cold silence fell over the bloody octagon.
A thin human with no chrome had slipped past a murderous charge, slammed a giant to the floor with a brutal throw, then finished him with a choke.
The crowd held its breath, replaying what they’d just seen in their heads.
Breaking the silence was the arena referee’s shrill voice through the mic outside the ring.
"Th-the winner! The overwhelming winner of today’s debut match is... K!!!"
The moment the declaration shook the underground, the gang members and spectators who had been booing Ji-hwan just moments ago erupted into wild cheers.
In the center of the ring, under the mad roar and beastlike praise, Ji-hwan quietly released his arms from the unconscious man’s throat and stood up.
He flexed the bloodied forearm that had been torn open, then looked down indifferently at the giant collapsed on the floor.
After that, he turned his back on the beastlike approval pouring toward him, shook blood from his arm, and without hesitation opened the iron gate and left through the dark corridor.
Waiting staff rushed in and began dragging away the body of the fallen black bull.
Amid the madhouse of noise, Mammoth watched everything from behind the dark glass of the second-floor VIP room and let out a low stream of smoke from the thick cigar in his mouth.
"...His movement’s a lot better than last time."
Back when Ji-hwan had first rolled into the underground, his body still carried a rough, overstrained feel.
But the movement he’d just shown in the ring was different.
Every unnecessary tension in his muscles had been stripped away, leaving him light as the wind, and when he locked onto his opponent, he was as hard as steel.
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