The Sensation Returns
Late in the fourth round, Geum Hyuk stepped toward the center of the ring, and every stride carried a certainty that had been nowhere to be found through the first three. He was no longer giving ground. The fighter who had been eating jabs just to measure distance had vanished without a trace.
Right foot. Half a step.
The instant Seo Minjae's toe shifted on the canvas, Geum Hyuk's upper body was already tilting — as if he had predicted the movement before it happened. His body answered before the punch had even left the glove.
The jab sliced through empty air.
A slip.
Shoulder. Five degrees.
This time a left straight came screaming in on a sharp trajectory. Geum Hyuk rolled his head smoothly to the right, sliding outside the punch's path as naturally as water flowing around a stone. The only thing that reached his ears was the hiss of a glove splitting air. Not a single shot landed clean.
"......!"
Seo Minjae's pupils trembled. Confusion flickered across his face.
He's reading my movements...?
Three years as East Asian Champion. His jab and his straight had been honed through thousands of spars and real fights, forged in blood and sweat. He hid his timing, mixed in feints to bait a reaction, and shifted his rhythm into something unpredictable. That was how he had broken so many challengers.
And tonight, in this very moment, every last one of those techniques was missing.
How was this even possible? The kid who had been getting battered one-sidedly through three rounds — how could he suddenly do this? It was as if an entirely different being had taken his place in the ring.
This rate of adaptation doesn't make any sense.
There was no time to think. Geum Hyuk cut in sharp.
A step-in. The instant his right foot planted outside his opponent's lead foot, the angular advantage of the fight flipped completely. It was the textbook position an orthodox boxer was supposed to take against a southpaw.
But knowing the textbook in your head and executing it with your body in a real fight were problems of an entirely different dimension. Nine out of ten orthodox boxers got their feet tangled and their rhythm shattered the moment they stood in front of a southpaw. The unfamiliar mirror angle scrambled the brain, and the body moved on its own.
Geum Hyuk didn't have so much as a speck of that confusion.
Lee Woojin's brain had spent over thirty thousand hours analyzing the stances of a hundred and forty-eight characters, and that data was being perfectly realized through Geum Hyuk's body in this very moment. How to beat a southpaw? He could do it with his eyes closed.
A body jab. Geum Hyuk's left hand shot out like lightning, spearing Seo Minjae's ribs.
"Kh—"
Seo Minjae dropped his elbow on instinct, covering his liver. A reflexive defensive motion. But in that instant, a fatal gap opened in the guard protecting his face.
Right straight. Geum Hyuk's right hand exploded forward, loaded with the rotational force of his hips.
Thud!
A heavy impact, and Seo Minjae's head snapped back. His pupils lost focus for a split second.
"WOOOOO!!"
The crowd boiled over like a blast furnace, pouring out explosive cheers.
"Geum Hyuk!! Geum Hyuk!!"
"Yo, was that a counter? Or did he just throw first?"
"Who cares, that was insane!! Is that even a person?!"
Seo Minjae staggered backward. It wasn't enough to put him down completely. A boxer needed many qualities, but a strong chin was essential among them — the durability to take a shot and stay standing. Seo Minjae had been born with that.
But he was hurt. For the first time in this match — no, perhaps for the first time in years of fights — he was genuinely shaken.
Geum Hyuk didn't chase.
Hwang Jinsu stared from the corner, baffled. Shouldn't he be swarming him in a situation like that? This was the golden window, the moment the opponent was hurt — why was he stopping?
But Geum Hyuk had his own clear reason.
It's still only round four.
Energy management. Fight pacing. Seo Minjae was hurt, but he wasn't broken. Force a rush here, run the tank empty, and he could get reversed in the later rounds. He knew better than anyone that an East Asian Champion wasn't the kind of opponent who'd fold from a single punch.
It was the same in the game. How many times had dumping a combo meter early gotten you flipped in the late rounds? Pouring on attacks with no stamina management and eating a comeback loss — that was amateur hour.
I'll weather it through round five and break him for certain.
The bell rang. End of round four.
Geum Hyuk rolled his shoulders and headed back to the corner. Hwang Jinsu squeezed water from a sponge onto his face, speaking urgently.
"Hyuk, you've got the momentum now. You saw his eyes glaze over, right? Go into the fifth and finish him for sure."
Geum Hyuk nodded in silence. Honestly, he didn't need Hwang Jinsu's advice. A perfect plan for round five was already complete in his head.
Seo Minjae's weakness is the body.
A common trait among outboxers. They poured so much into footwork that core training tended to get neglected. Seo Minjae in particular had reacted violently when a punch found his liver. You could tell just from how his guard had collapsed off a single body jab in round four.
Slow him down with the body. The moment the guard drops, go for the head.
Simple, but certain. No fancy techniques required. Just execute the fundamentals faithfully.
The bell rang for the start of round five.
Seo Minjae moved first. This time the pattern was clearly different. He didn't throw jabs rashly, circling to hold the distance while watching Geum Hyuk's movement.
Playing defense.
An obvious choice. After getting genuinely hurt late in the fourth, his confidence would have cracked. The fear of throwing rashly and eating another counter — of it being over — would have made his body shrink in on itself.
But...
If that's how he wants to play it, that's better for me.
Geum Hyuk advanced without hesitation. Relentless pressure. He narrowed the distance obsessively, shrinking Seo Minjae's circling range bit by bit — occupying the center of the ring and driving his opponent toward the ropes. Classic pressure fighting.
Seo Minjae tried to slip left. Geum Hyuk cut him off with a sharp cutoff step. He tried to go right. Blocked again. Every escape route was sealed, as if Geum Hyuk were reading his movements a move ahead.
This bastard......!
Cold sweat began beading on Seo Minjae's forehead. His footwork was being shut down. For an outboxer, locked-down footwork was as good as death. If you couldn't maintain distance, outboxing itself became impossible. It was a sniper with an empty chamber.
With Seo Minjae's legs tied down, Geum Hyuk stepped into range.
Jab. Jab. Body hook.
Thud! Thud! WHAM!
Three punches chained together in rhythm, hammering Seo Minjae's body.
"Ghhhk!!"
Seo Minjae's body folded in agony. Another punch had found his liver with surgical precision. The liver was one of the most sensitive vital points in the human body. A clean shot and the strength drained from your legs; even breathing became hard.
"Block!! Minjae!! Get your guard up!!"
The trainer in the opposite corner screamed himself hoarse, his blood running cold.
Seo Minjae clenched his teeth and tried to clinch — the last refuge of a boxer in a pinch. Wrap up the opponent's body, shut down the punches. A desperate choice to stop taking more shots.
Geum Hyuk slipped the clinch with ease. He created distance himself before the referee even had a chance to step in and separate them.
Getting tied up in a clinch and burning stamina for nothing is a loss for me.
In a clinch, both fighters burned energy at roughly the same rate. Worse, it would give Seo Minjae time to catch his breath. That wasn't what Geum Hyuk wanted.
Forward again. He never let the pressure off.
Jab. Straight. Body.
Thud! Thud! WHAM!
It was one-sided. A complete, one-sided massacre. Through three rounds, Geum Hyuk had been the one getting overwhelmed by the East Asian Champion's presence. Now the tables had flipped completely.
Midway through the fifth, Seo Minjae's movement had visibly dulled. Accumulated body damage had made his feet go leaden, heavy as stone. The sharpness of his circling was gone. The spring in his step was dead.
Now.
The moment he'd been waiting for had arrived. Geum Hyuk dropped his stance.
A duck.
Seo Minjae's reflexive jab whistled harmlessly over his head. At the same time, Geum Hyuk cut sharply inside — inside his opponent's range, the most dangerous distance, and the most lethal.
A left to the body, loaded with every ounce of hip rotation.
WHAM!!
The punch detonated on Seo Minjae's liver.
"Ghk......!!"
Seo Minjae's knees buckled.
"Guhhhh...."
The shot had buried itself perfectly. Pain tore through his entire body, and the strength drained from his legs.
I can see it.
In that instant, time seemed to slow. His body moved before his brain could give the order — the killer instinct of a predator that had locked onto its prey.
Geum Hyuk's right hand began to rise from the floor.
Knees. Hips. Shoulder. Every muscle gathered into one fist.
The rebound of his knees, the rotation of his hips, the explosive drive of his shoulder — the power of every muscle gathered into one and loaded into the end of his right fist. The blow that rose from below lifted Seo Minjae's chin. His head snapped back. The focus vanished from his eyes.
BOOOOM!!!
A bursting sound like a firework exploding shook the entire arena. Seo Minjae's feet left the canvas. His body lifted into the air. A perfect clean hit. The human body couldn't absorb the impact — it launched him.
Thud.
Seo Minjae hit the canvas. He didn't move. Not so much as a twitch of an arm.
The referee rushed over.
"ONE!! TWO!!"
The ten-count had started, but it was essentially meaningless. Seo Minjae was completely unconscious, his eyes half-open, showing no reaction at all.
The referee waved his arms wide.
"STOP!! STOP!!"
Fight over.
"WAAAAAAAH!!!"
The arena exploded. The stands boiled over in a frenzy as thousands of people leapt to their feet, screaming until their throats tore. Cheers loud enough to go numb in the ears swallowed the ring.
"Geum Hyuk!! Geum Hyuk!! Geum Hyuk!!"
"He knocked out Seo Minjae!!"
"Insane!! He's insane!! That's a TKO!! A TKO!!"
"Did you see that just now?! Body shot into the upper!! How is that even possible?!"
Geum Hyuk stood in the center of the ring, fists still clenched. Sweat dripped from his chin. His breathing came hard and ragged.
His heart was pounding like mad. It felt like the blood in his entire body was boiling. A thrill ran from his fingertips to his toes. Every sound in the world receded, and only the beat of his own heart rang in his ears.
I won.
Not in a game. On a real ring, with real fists.
The sensation he'd lost five years ago. The rush of his own fist connecting clean with an opponent's chin. The feel of bone meeting bone, transmitted through the glove. That absolute certainty, in that one moment, that he was the strongest person in the world — that no one could beat him.
He was feeling it again. The sensation he'd hungered for for five years.
"Kyahahahaha!!"
Laughter burst out of him. Geum Hyuk's signature cheap, wild laugh — a delinquent's laugh, reckless and unrestrained — but this time it was real joy, welling up from Lee Woojin's own heart.
Hwang Jinsu vaulted onto the ring and threw his arms around Geum Hyuk hard.
"Hyuk!! You did it!! You actually did it!! You beat the East Asian Champion!!"
"Kyakya, obviously."
Geum Hyuk answered with a grin.
This is just the beginning.
Story Mode, Chapter One. The event where Geum Hyuk defeated his first major opponent on the professional stage.
In the original game, it had been a decision. He hadn't been able to put Seo Minjae away, scraping out a razor-thin 2–1 split decision after a point fight that went the distance. But this time, the result was a TKO. An overwhelming victory.
It's diverged from the original.
He didn't know exactly what that meant yet, but one thing was certain. In this world, Geum Hyuk could become stronger than he ever was in the original — with a gamer's knowledge, a boxer's technique, and Geum Hyuk's talent, all fused into this one body.