Call the Next One
Cuong Thuc, MC of the DOA Fight Club, flashed a bright, open grin wide enough to put his teeth on full display—white as a bowl of pho noodles.
Looks like I'll be making some blood money for the first time in a while.
Four years now since he'd crossed over from Vietnam, lived as an illegal, gotten his hands dirty, and unluckily caught a five-year sentence that dumped him in this hole. One more year and he would have walked free. But a broken nose always breaks twice—and sure enough, his status had been converted to death row.
If he was never getting out anyway, he might as well make himself the snake's tail in this pit. He snuck a glance up at the sponsors watching from the VIP seats, then worked the crowd even harder.
The fewer guys who walk out of here on their own two legs tonight, the fatter my incentive check!
Cuong Thuc announced the proceedings through a vocal-cord implant modified to throw a stadium-filling voice without a microphone.
"All right! I'm going to count to three! If our new winner, Flesh, chooses to walk away from his winning streak right here, then the people who step into the ring—in order—will start a brand-new death match! Mr. Flesh! Are you going to throw your sponsors' hopes in the dirt and quit your streak in this place? Do that, and you might at least walk out of here with all your limbs attached!"
Flesh, who had already put Inmate 56030 down, slowly surveyed his surroundings with a face painted in blood. There looked to be more fat on him than muscle, and even a slight turn of the head set his jowls quivering—but that quiver worked as a kind of terror all its own, the fear of sheer mass. A few spectators who had hopped the fence in a rush of atmosphere suddenly recovered their reason and folded right back down.
Judging by the look of him, Flesh had no intention of giving up the streak.
"All right! Count starts now! Three! Two! One—!"
"I'll enter Hell's Death Match."
"Yes! Mr. Flesh has just declared his intent to participate! However, since he has already beaten Inmate 56030, he only needs four consecutive wins instead of five! I trust nobody has a problem with that. Right?"
Boos of protest rolled through the crowd from every direction. He did not care. If anything, he slapped at his own slabs of fat with fists like smoked hams, as if to say the confident ones should come up first.
"All right, now taking challengers! Is there anyone who wants to be the first to snap Mr. Flesh's glorious winning streak? Oh—I'm already seeing people who couldn't wait!"
This time Cuong Thuc swept the seats with a look that carried the distinct flavor of a man shopping for the next sacrificial lamb. Atmosphere mattered in a show like this, but staging mattered just as much.
"I'll do it."
Of course.
Of the dozens of dopamine junkies who had already crossed the fence, one man was first to vault up onto the blood-soaked floor of the ring.
Whew! Jackpot right out of the gate.
The instant Cuong Thuc confirmed the man who'd climbed in was an Orange, he almost let the corner of his mouth curl up without meaning to.
The genuine article—someone who had committed a killing offense out in regular society, taken a death sentence, and walked in wearing it before every inmate in this place started getting converted. On top of that, nothing jagged about the face, no visible traces of illegal implant work. And he was definitely not some half-brained addict who could no longer function day to day.
Prime merchandise, through and through.
Cuong Thuc did not bother dragging it out. He threw a hand straight up.
"The rules are simple! No help from outside parties, and no unapproved implants or drugs smuggled in—just beat the other guy!"
"There a time limit?"
"No time limit! But if you stall on purpose and kill the mood, the organizers will issue a warning. Don't forget that every last person in this crowd paid blood-money to watch a fight."
"That's enough."
Something odd tugged at Cuong Thuc as the Orange answered so coolly. He hurried himself out of the ring.
Flesh had already tasted blood. He was not going to leave a sacrificial lamb alive for daring to interrupt his streak. He hadn't personally carried out the execution on Inmate 56030—but this man, he would finish with his own hands.
So why doesn't it feel like that Orange is going to lose?
Ah, well. Whoever won, all that mattered was a fight that split heads open and left the customers happy.
"LET THE MAAAAATCH…… BEGIIIIIN!"
The gong crashed.
From here on, the noise would not die down until one of them was dead—and until the floor was painted in a fresh coat of blood.
What does a person actually need—what qualities, what virtues—before they get to call themselves a veteran?
I know the title is not something you receive just for logging a long time in a game. Some people play for ten years straight and stay hardstuck in the gutter ranks. Some people hit Challenger rank one in a single year.
So the way I see it, a veteran is a hardcore gamer who not only holds a comprehensive knowledge of the game in question, but can apply that knowledge however they want, whenever they want.
There was a stretch where, whenever I got bored of PVE, I'd kill time setting new records in the minigames.
Fastest clear. Highest score. Never lose once. Collect every reward. All of it.
I had been obsessed with a game called EFD since my school days, and I had a degenerate streak that went well past simply playing—I wanted to savor every last system, one piece at a time.
This was one of those things.
"Hey, Flesh. Those artificial muscles you've got dressed up as fat? Pretty solid performance, huh?"
"……"
The man wearing that insult for a name hiked his eyebrows at the mockery and settled into a stance. Between the massive frame and all that sagging skin, the pose should have looked ridiculous. It did not.
What sloshed around inside him was not ordinary fat. It was artificial muscle packed in until it looked like fat. Focus the nerves on a chosen part of the body, and muscle that had been lying loose as jelly suddenly locked up hard as stone, granting monstrous strength and durability. That was how he had dismantled Inmate 56030, a pure striker, so easily.
It meant nothing to me.
The body parts he'll concentrate on are obvious anyway.
The only people who got caught in that sudden hardening were the ones who didn't know he had stuffed himself with artificial muscle by the fistful. If you already knew—the way I did—the countermeasure loaded just as easily.
"I had a little hope because you were an Orange, but it looks like you don't have any special abilities or implants. Taking you down is going to be so boring I'm disappointed already."
Flesh was disappointed!
And the instant the monologue ended, he lunged at me in a surprise charge, throwing out an arm with outrageous reach. The force riding that fist as it carved through the air would have pulverized a concrete wall. If it landed.
"Born tall, solid frame, so you packed on the weight and inflated the hide as far as it would go, right?"
I tipped my head just enough to let the punch scream past, wind pressure clawing at the air, and kept talking. Dodging alone has no style, so I hooked a fist up into the arm as it missed and drove the shock precisely into a gap in the artificial muscle.
A heavy, meaty crack.
"You hung an artificial pancreas and a bunch of digestive organs off yourself and ate like a pig to get those muscles, didn't you. What'd you pack on, two hundred and fifty kilos?"
"Shut your damn mouth!"
This time the arm came around horizontal, thick as a windmill blade. If it had connected, my head would have burst like a ripe watermelon.
A vicious whoosh skimmed the tip of my nose. I felt the wind and, with the keen eye this excellent body came with, read the motion he would take next.
"When all that prep was done and you went to find Ted Chan, what face did he make when he slid you the contract? Was he grinning? Or did he look at you like something lower than an animal?"
"You little rat bastard…!"
Thud. Thud.
Flesh stopped caring about the load he was putting on his own body and started throwing punches at me without discrimination. I didn't waste motion trying to dance away from all of it. I slipped each attack by the slimmest margin I could manage and fed him a counter whenever the opening appeared.
Muscle looks tough against outside impact, but hit it when it's contracted to its limit and it damages just as easily.
A dull knock. A sharp crack.
He shoved a fist in, hungry to bury it in my gut; I kicked the incoming arm up with a knee, changed its line, spun a full turn, and dropped a heel into him like I was chopping down through wood. However durable his body was, however much protection those artificial muscles gave him, the damage ticking up steadily was not something he could do anything about.
Not that he seemed to have noticed the load building in the muscle at all.
"Rat-shit little attacks like that don't work on me! The last guy trusted that fancy technique of his too—and I turned him to pulp!"
See? Overflowing with confidence.
He used the enormous elasticity of the artificial muscle camouflaged as fat under all that loose skin, contracting and releasing in a continuous cycle. In plain language, he had dropped defense, rest, and evasion entirely and committed to a pure offense build.
Even the ones who rebuilt themselves with illegal implants usually didn't do anything this stupid. Flesh, though, gave the distinct impression he had packed artificial muscle into his brain as well, and simply did not care.
Which only made him more fun to play with.
"The rat isn't me. It's you. I mean—you're the one who volunteered to be Ted Chan's lab rat."
"SHUT THE HELL UUUUP!"
A thunderous crash.
As if finally admitting that simple pinpoint punches were never going to touch me, he hoisted both arms high and smashed them straight down. I felt the reinforced concrete and alloy plating that made up the arena floor split with a long, ugly crack. In raw power, he was probably in the same neighborhood as a Growler, one of the primordials.
Not hard to guess what role they would have given him in the Darkzone they half-force people into.
I flicked a chunk of rubble up with my foot as lightly as a soccer ball, then buried it in his face with a shot every bit as flashy as anything my brother ever pulled.
A wet crunch.
The stone lodged in Flesh's already filthy, blood-caked face. He could wrap everything from the neck down if he wanted. The skull was another matter. Artificial muscle could not cover that.
"Ghh—?!"
So you finally feel pain. What a repulsive bastard.
"You're a grown man. Don't get as touchy as a teenage girl. It's obvious you've been getting used wherever you go—useless bulk, more strength than you can handle, and a stupid brain. If anything, I'm on the side that pities you."
"You son of a bitch—!"
He decided to deny me any room to run and force a point-blank brawl, using the wrecked floor to close the distance in a single surge. Planning to settle it here? Not a bad call. It just happened to be a bad result, because the opponent was me.
"Tsk."
Dancing around on broken ground wasn't easy for me either, so I gave him the distance he wanted. That did not mean I was about to match him strength for strength. I know this body's limits better than anyone.
"THIS IS THE EEEEND!"
The moment I closed in so obediently, he bellowed like the win was already his. He came at me with both arms thrown wide, ready to crush me in a bear hug, and the momentum was so ridiculous he looked like a truck flooring it to reincarnate some novel protagonist into another world.
If I sent this clip to Han Mincheol TV, what'd they score the fault ratio?
I'm calling a clean one hundred to zero. No discounts.
A grinding screech of metal.
A heartbeat before that hypermass flattened me, I wrenched free a sheet of alloy plating that had been half-torn out of the destroyed floor and hoisted it like laundry pulled off the line. They'd said no outside help and no unapproved gear. Nobody had said I couldn't use the environment.
So this is legal.
The sharp edge of the plate lined up exactly under his jaw. Going for the nape might have seemed more certain—but those livid artificial muscles had already turned his neck into something out of a strong-beast catalog, so I didn't have a choice.
"You think a cheap trick like that is going to—"
"Of course not."
Like I'd ever throw an NPC-level cheap trick as a straight line.
In the sliver of time he turned his head to slip the rising plate, I was already moving the way my sixth sense told me to.
Aiming for the other part of the body that, like the skull, you cannot pack with artificial muscle.
A nauseating crunch.
"AAAAAAGH, FUCK!"
"That sadistic bastard!"
"That's the kind of shit that gets you a death sentence?!"
"Holy shit! I'm hurting just watching!"
I'll put it plainly.
Something precious shattered. A critical hit landed clean.
That was enough.
A heavy, final crash.
Exactly as everyone expected, Flesh went down like a hog gone slack.
This is what happens to an idiot who leaned too hard on his gear.
I planted a foot on Flesh where he lay, slowly turned to take in the crowd, and flicked my fingers.