Hell's Death Match

I'd scraped together five thousand the hard way and finally carved out a connection with Officer Park.

On top of that, I'd even gotten my hands on a smartphone — the kind of privilege only the real heavyweights inside Seoul Southern Prison were supposed to have.

For an EFD beginner, that was blisteringly fast progress.

Worth every miserable day of saving with five thousand as the finish line.

I did my best to ignore Crazy Clock's tantrum about how I ought to smash every last scrap of such primitive technology into dust, and headed back down to the basement floors.

Strangely enough, nobody picked a fight with me on the way. The first idiots who'd tried their luck had already given everyone a rough idea of what I could do.

"Now I can finally blow money like some trust-fund kid."

"I'm a convict. If those things collapse, isn't that a win for me?"

The thing never shut up, but every now and then it had a weirdly cute streak.

Not that this was the time to sit around debating the beauty of machines or the delicacy of artificial intelligence. I had more important business.

In EFD they used to say: if you want to spend your money legally, go to Cell Block H-088. If you want to spend it… less legally, go to Cell Block H-099.

I ran through the prison's layout one more time. Each basement floor held a hundred cell blocks. Underground 3rd Floor (B3), the very bottom, ran from H-001 to H-100. Underground 2nd Floor (B2) ran from H-101 to H-200.

If I'd been an ordinary convict, I would have started my miserable junior-inmate life in Cell Block ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠H-001. Being an Orange had dropped me right in the middle — Cell Block H-050 — which was how I'd begun my surprisingly cozy little prison career.

Anyway. Every floor had a handful of cell blocks that functioned as symbols. Block 1 was the starting line, a sign that the road to hell had officially opened. Block 100, all the way at the far end, was where they checked whether you were qualified to climb to the next floor.

Which raised an obvious question. Wouldn't Block 99, sitting right before that gate, have something equally loaded going on?

The prediction was dead-on.

"Wheeeeeeee!"

"Hell yeah! That's it! That's a real goddamn fight!"

"Hey! More beer over here! Pay first? Ah, fuck off — who said I wasn't paying?!"

I rode the elevator back down to the basement and started walking in a direction I would ordinarily never have gone — toward Cell Block 100. What I arrived at was Cell Block 99, and a different flavor of chaos was boiling over.

"I put my entire fortune on you, Inmate 56030! You lose and I'm coming for you tonight!!"

"Go! Turn that oversized lump of Flesh into ground chuck!"

"Jab, jab, hook! Weave with it! Work the footwork! Yes! That's it!"

Down here in the basement blocks, the environment was so sealed-off that without money or muscle you couldn't even blow off steam properly. This was one of the few places where convicts and the guards watching them could let that pressure rip.

In EFD it had been a kind of mini-game arena — a spot where a player could jump in and beat the hell out of NPC inmates in close-quarters brawls, or throw down in a blazing firefight hosted by the guards. There hadn't been a scrap of PvP, so fighting other users was off the table, but it had the feel of a training yard, a place for newbies to get their combat instincts sharp before they ever stepped into a Darkzone.

When players weren't using it as a gym, the NPC inmates were always in there pounding on each other, so the fact that it had taken on the look of an illegal underground fight club didn't feel the least bit out of place. The mini-game that had originally been for users only was now being enjoyed by the NPCs instead. In a way, this was the natural result.

"I'll take an order too."

"Oho, an Orange customer! Welcome, welcome! First time here, by any chance?!"

I crooked a finger, and some hustler who looked like a club tout came scurrying over and started bowing and scraping in front of me. His hospitality was so perfectly groveling it almost hurt to watch — but I knew that ninety-nine percent of the people locked up in this prison were garbage.

"You came running because I'm new, didn't you? First-timers are always the easiest to fleece in a place like this."

"Haha… you've got a sense of humor, sir."

"Cut it. Just looking at this, you've converted the entire cell block into some kind of fight club. That about right?"

"This is Dead or Alive, the pride of the lowest floor. Buy an admission ticket and you can go inside to watch all kinds of games up close — or, like everyone else out here, you can take it in on the screens from the common area. Plenty else to enjoy besides!"

"How much for a ticket?"

"Standard Edition is one million won. Extreme Edition is three million. Special Edition is five million. VIP Edition is ten million."

"And the difference?"

The existence of separate tickets was identical to EFD. The difference was that users had gotten to use this place for free. Every time one of those little EFD 10th Anniversary updates slipped past my knowledge like this, a strange little thrill of anticipation crept in.

"The Standard Edition is only valid for a week, and once you're inside you have to put at least one million won on one of the fighters. The Extreme Edition lasts a month, and you don't have to bet if you don't want to. Special and VIP are both locked in at one year, but the number and scale of the complimentary perks jump massively depending on the tier."

The ones with money would just buy Special or VIP so they could swagger around in front of the broke convicts. Anyone who actually wanted something to do would grab Extreme.

Standard Edition? That was bait — a product for genuine gambling addicts and dopamine junkies.

Good thing I love dopamine.

Anyway. Win it back and we're even~.

"One Standard."

"Standard, was it? Here you are!"

I'd called him over like I was somebody, then bought the cheapest ticket in the house. He had every right to be annoyed. The oily little tout just kept his salesman's smile plastered on and punched me out a ticket anyway.

It looked like a disposable transit card. The idea seemed to be that you tapped the old IC chip embedded in it against a reader at the entrance and got waved through. It was a relic that had no business existing in the 2040s, and yet down here it was in wide, cheerful use. The contradiction was almost charming.

"GYAAAAAH! My money! My moooooneeey!"

"It's the Great Depression! Ruuuun!"

"Heh-heh… hick! This is a dream! There's no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠way that bastard goes down that cheap! My money… then what happens to my money?"

"Ah, your money? Just pay it back nice and slow, as written on this IOU. A hundred percent monthly interest."

"O Magic Conch, will I ever be able to pay off this debt?"

In the span of those few seconds a match had already ended. The ones who'd just mainlined a historic moonshot of dopamine were weeping tears of joy. The ones on the other side of that coin were already hard at work on some very literal reality-avoidance.

"Lunatics."

These were people who couldn't even afford the cheapest Standard ticket, and nobody had put a knife to their throat and told them to bet on a fighter. They'd still dumped their entire net worth on the table. Were these things actually human?

I left the freshly ruined lives behind me and stepped into the fight club proper, where the heat made the chaos outside look tame. Sweat, booze, the stale reek of old cigarettes, and — the finishing touch — the thick smell of blood. Everyone in that death-soaked room was praying, with one voice, for somebody's victory and somebody else's defeat.

"Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!"

"The hell are you doing?! Cut his throat and let's get this over with!"

"Inmate 56030, put that all-time bust of a JOAT in the dirt already!"

"No! My brother's gotta start working a second job in the cell tonight!"

"Heh. About to get his skull caved in and he's talking about a second job."

Outside had been the losers of the bottom rung — no money, no guts. In here, the place was packed with psychos who had both cash and skill and had walked in on their own two feet because they were still starving for a rush. They'd even split the stands by floor like the Roman Colosseum, so you could tell at a glance who'd bought which grade of ticket.

In short, it was the kind of room that could give you a psychiatric diagnosis you didn't have when you walked in.

"And there it is! Today's Death Match, bout one, is officially over! Sadly, Inmate 56030 and his winning streak will no longer be joining us here at the DOA club! Aren't you all heartbroken?"

"Heartbroken my ass, you son of a bitch! Give me my money back and I'll cry with you!"

"Buuurp. Ate your money. I'll spend it like a dog and send you a review."

"So what happens to Inmate 56030 now? Shredded ending again?"

"We've done that too many times. Maybe he gets auctioned off this round. Or if he catches a miracle and lands a sponsor, there might even be a losers' bracket."

"So we might get to watch a money fight for the first time in a while?"

I slipped through the happily roaring convicts and worked my way up to a decent seat near the front. Shoving inmates out of my path wasn't even work if I felt like it, so claiming a good spot was easy.

"Hey, you little shit, who do you think you are, cutting in line— ghk?!"

Every so often a friend with no situational awareness needed an elbow in the solar plexus and a complimentary escort to the back row. If you wanted a front seat, you needed the strength to match it.

At last I had a clear, open view of the bloodstained ring. That was when I caught the MC getting a whispered tip from one of the staff.

"Ah— my apologies, everyone! Under ordinary circumstances, this is where we'd 'process' the loser and move on to the next bout. But it seems our sponsors are hungry for ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠something with a little more punch! Which is why!"

The MC made a huge, theatrical fuss of it and gave the winner's shoulder a light clap. Flesh was still basking in the leisure of victory.

The second the MC broke the news, the crowd that had been starting to cool off caught fire all over again. Nobody cared anymore whether Flesh, the winner, executed the defeated Inmate 56030 or not.

Registered fighter or paying guest sitting in the stands — the moment you walked into that cage, a brand-new tournament began.

The sudden spike in heat made me casually crack the Adam's apples of the two idiots shrieking on either side of me, just to shut them up. Even then, the roar filled the vast indoor space so completely it started to hum in my bones.

This Hell's Death Match was clearly a different animal from a regular death match.

Not a clean one-on-one. The winner keeps taking challengers, and only walks out alive if he can string together five straight wins. Yeah. That earns the word hell.

"Of course, if we just said we were starting a Hell's Death Match, nobody would bite! Yes, I know! Which! Is! Why! We have prepared a reward to match!"

The MC threw up his hands in a gesture built to wring a cheer out of the room. The ceiling split open, and a massive glass case, locked in place by iron chains, began to descend.

Something inside the transparent box was throwing off a golden light. The organizers were kind enough to blow it up as a holographic projection so even the people in the cheap seats could see what they were looking at.

You've got to be kidding me.

For a second there, I almost screamed like the rest of them without even meaning to.

Sure, they'd changed the format — but this was still a sandbox where bottom-feeders came to slap each other around. And they were offering Prototype Liquid Nanobots to anyone who could risk their life and win five in a row?

Were these people drowning in money? Or were they just that confident nobody would ever actually walk out with the prize?

"The Hell's Death Match will run from this moment… until exactly midnight tonight! Which means you've only got six hours left on the clock!"

A six-hour time limit. Inside that window, a stampede of convicts with their eyes rolled back, throwing themselves at the cage like animals. Either you punched through all that bad luck and locked in five wins early, or you dragged it out with nothing but spite and grit and survived the full six hours.

The difficulty was absurd.

Then again — if I make the absurd work, where's the problem?

I grabbed the fence separating the stands from the ring and vaulted it in one motion.

Dozens of dopamine junkies just like me had already beaten me to it. I didn't care.

I was going to chew through every last one of them anyway.