The Unbreakable Body
One.
Two.
Three.
"......"
A voice reached him. And with it, something he had missed more than he had ever admitted came flooding back — the lights, the smell, the temperature, the coarse grain of canvas against his skin. The roar of the crowd. The heat of an arena boiling over.
Lee Woojin opened his eyes.
A ceiling. The ring lights were so bright his face scrunched up on its own.
Four.
Five.
A ten-count was ringing out.
...What?
His body was heavy, soaked through with sweat. The taste of blood filled his mouth. His jaw throbbed, the deep, ringing ache of a punch that had landed clean.
"Get up! Hyuk!!"
Someone was screaming themselves hoarse.
Hyuk?
Lee Woojin turned his head. Beyond the ropes, a man stood in the corner — a bear of a physique, hair cropped short, a sweat-soaked towel slung over one shoulder. A middle-aged man whose face Lee Woojin knew.
Grizzly Hwang Jinsu.
Geum Hyuk's trainer. A face he had seen dozens of times in the story mode of Fighter of Legend.
"Geum Hyuk!! Get up!! Are you even hearing the count?!"
Hwang Jinsu gripped the ring ropes and bellowed.
Six.
Seven.
Lee Woojin's mind raced. The ring. The lights. The roar. A ten-count. Hwang Jinsu. And standing in the opposite corner—
...Seo Minjae.
The moment he confirmed the other fighter's face, everything clicked into place. An opponent from story mode.
Lynx Seo Minjae. East Asian Champion. The finest outboxer Korean boxing had ever produced.
That strange message from earlier surfaced in his mind.
Synchronization Rate: 99.97%
Transfer
No way... then...
Eight.
Lee Woojin looked at his palms.
Red boxing gloves, gold stitching, initials embroidered into the leather. Geum Hyuk's signature gloves — the ones he had seen thousands of times in the game.
Did I... enter Geum Hyuk's body?
He moved his hands, slowly.
...!
Something was different. Was a body supposed to move this smoothly?
This body...
Lee Woojin took stock of himself. He extended an arm. Light. No resistance in the shoulder at all. Elbow, wrist — everything was sound. He twisted at the waist and felt his spine rotate as naturally as breathing. He put weight into his legs and found them solid, dense with living muscle.
So this was Geum Hyuk's body.
A body that doesn't break.
Exactly as the game had described it. Geum Hyuk was a born beast — a character gifted with an innately formidable physique.
"Nine!"
The referee's shout rang out.
Lee Woojin — Geum Hyuk, now — planted a hand on the canvas. The moment he stood, a current ran through his entire body.
Light.
Impossibly so.
The real Lee Woojin had tensed up just stepping into a ring. The fear that his body might shatter at any moment had always been there, trailing him like a shadow.
But now he didn't have to worry about that. This body would not break. He could swing with everything he had, as much as he wanted.
Good.
His mind went clear. The character he had piloted from behind a monitor for five years. The one whose frame data he had memorized, whose combos he had drilled, whose opponents he had learned to read — over thirty thousand hours of it. He was inside that character now.
And the opponent was Seo Minjae.
Seo Minjae. Nickname: Lynx. Current East Asian Middleweight Champion. Style: perfect outboxing. Stance: southpaw. From that left-hander's mirrored angle he stabs out a right jab and finishes with the left straight. A genius of distance. When an opponent charges in, he slips away on the backstep and the pivot and plants a counter. A nightmare for an infighter.
Thirty thousand hours of data replayed in his mind.
Against a southpaw, the right foot goes outside. Plant it outside his lead foot and you take the angle. Slip the left straight to the right. Slip left and you're stepping into the punch's path.
This was not game knowledge. These were techniques the boxer Lee Woojin had carved into himself with blood and sweat — techniques his glass body had never let him use properly in a real fight.
And now the two had fused into one. A gamer's knowledge. A boxer's skill. Geum Hyuk's body.
This.
The corner of his mouth lifted on its own. The original Lee Woojin did not smile like this. Calm and cold — that had always been his style. But now the muscles of his face were moving however they pleased.
Geum Hyuk surged to his feet.
The crowd stirred. Seo Minjae narrowed his eyes and watched him.
Geum Hyuk opened his mouth.
"Kyakya."
...?! What the hell just came out of my mouth?
He couldn't stop it. Geum Hyuk's body rolled out the next line on its own.
"Shit, that actually hurts?!"
Hey. Hey, hey. I don't talk like that.
Seo Minjae's brow shifted, barely. The change in his expression was almost nothing, but Lee Woojin caught it.
He's interested.
The East Asian Champion. The king of the southpaws. A character like that had started to pay attention.
"You can still stand."
Seo Minjae's voice was even, carrying that particular ease of his. Like the outboxer who ruled distance, he was watching his opponent's reaction.
"Don't get cocky."
Geum Hyuk settled into his stance.
The referee raised a hand and waved the fight back on.
Seo Minjae moved first. A sliding step that closed the distance, the fluid footwork unique to an outboxer — and then the right jab. A southpaw's right jab was the mirror of an orthodox fighter's left, a fist coming in from an angle the body did not know by instinct.
Lee Woojin slipped to the right.
Fast.
But this was nothing like the game. Far faster than the frame data he had memorized. He got out of the way, but only just — the glove grazed his cheek.
Pop. Pop-pop-pop.
Seo Minjae's jabs came in a string, ranging shots, each one carrying an edge. They were jabs, but not the kind you could afford to eat. Geum Hyuk's upper body swayed and slipped them.
I still need time to get used to this.
He had the game knowledge. He had the boxer's technique. But this body was brand new. Knowing something in your head and putting it through your limbs were not the same thing.
Seo Minjae's left hand came around. A straight.
To the right!
Geum Hyuk's body reacted — half a beat late.
Thud.
It clipped his temple and sank in. Not a clean hit, but more than enough. His brain shuddered in his skull.
"Ghk."
"Geum Hyuk!!"
Hwang Jinsu's shout cut through the noise.
Seo Minjae came after him. He was an outboxer, but he was nothing like those cowards who only boxed for points. He had a killer instinct, and when a chance opened he did not let it go. The right jab rattled the guard, and a left hook came in behind it.
Geum Hyuk got his hands up. He blocked it with his arms, but the shock traveled down into the bone.
He's strong.
The East Asian Champion lived up to the name. Honestly, he was more than the name.
He was being pushed back. Clearly, unmistakably pushed back.
Jab. One-two. Backstep. Jab again. Seo Minjae was a textbook. He managed the distance and piled up points in one direction, cutting Geum Hyuk off with a jab whenever he tried to step in, sticking to him with his feet whenever he tried to get out.
Round one. Round two. By the time the third round ended, Geum Hyuk's face was swollen an ugly, blazing red.
"Hyuk, you okay?"
In the corner, Hwang Jinsu splashed water over him and asked.
Geum Hyuk didn't answer. He was grinning instead, wide and bright.
"Hyuk?"
"I'm fine."
Geum Hyuk opened his mouth.
"I'm starting to see it."
"See what?"
"The timing."
Hwang Jinsu's eyes went wide. The kid who had done nothing but eat punches for three straight rounds — and he was saying that?
But Lee Woojin meant it.
I can see it.
Seo Minjae's jab was fast. But it had a pattern. The jab came the instant the right foot took a half-step forward. The left straight came after the lead shoulder rotated about five degrees. Three rounds of getting hit had been enough to map it — the gap between the game data and the way the man actually moved. He had carved that gap into his body.
Geum Hyuk's body learns fast.
The game's setting surfaced in his mind. Geum Hyuk was a wild genius — a character who grew stronger the more he fought, the type that evolved in live combat. And that setting was applying here, in reality.
Round four.
The bell rang.
Seo Minjae came forward the way he always did, ranging the distance, his steps easy, the movement of a man who had controlled every second of this fight so far.
Right jab.
Geum Hyuk swayed his upper body and slipped it. This time it wasn't close. An easy weave. The jab cut through empty air.
Seo Minjae's eyes flickered, just slightly.
What?
Same timing. Same jab. But the way he dodged it had changed.
Jab. Missed again. Jab. Jab. Both punches carved through nothing but air.
He adapted? In three rounds? Is that even possible?
Seo Minjae was the East Asian Champion. He had fought countless strong men. He had seen boxers who grew in the middle of a fight. But this was a different dimension. The Geum Hyuk from three rounds ago and the Geum Hyuk standing in front of him now looked like two completely different fighters.
Left straight. Seo Minjae went for the kill shot.
Geum Hyuk's body dropped. A duck. The straight hissed over his head, and in the same breath Geum Hyuk stepped inside.
He's coming in?!
Seo Minjae tried to take a backstep. Too late. Geum Hyuk's fist drove forward — a hook aimed at the liver.
WHAM.
"Ghhk—!!"
Seo Minjae's knees dipped. It had sunk in perfectly. When a punch buries itself in the liver, the body folds on its own.
Geum Hyuk did not let it go. Left hook.
THUD.
Seo Minjae's upper body rocked. He didn't go down. An East Asian Champion's durability was not that cheap. But it was a first. For the first time in this fight, Seo Minjae had been hit clean.
"WOOOOO!!"
The crowd detonated.
"Geum Hyuk!! Geum Hyuk!!"
"Did you see that?! Just now!!"
"Seo Minjae got hit!!"
Geum Hyuk laughed.
"Kyakyakya."
Ah, shit. There it is again. That cheap laugh.
But he couldn't hide it. Something was boiling up from inside his chest. Was this Geum Hyuk's instinct? A thirst for the fight. A beast's blood.
Good.
For the first time, Lee Woojin surrendered himself to Geum Hyuk's emotions.
Seo Minjae put the distance back between them.
...He's growing.
He stared at Geum Hyuk with eyes that could not quite believe it. Through the third round this kid had been getting dominated — couldn't read the jab timing, ate the straight like he had nothing for it. And now? He was reading the timing, closing the distance, hunting counters.
Growing in real time?
Eighteen years in boxing. Three years holding the East Asian title. He had seen countless geniuses. But never this. No fighter in his life had changed this much inside a single match.
Cold sweat ran down his spine. A sensation he had never felt in eighteen years on the canvas. Alongside the instinctive sense of danger, a strange emotion lifted its head — awe, at a talent so overwhelming it didn't seem real.
This kid... what the hell is he?