Chapter 429: Four-Corner Brawl!
Inside the Three Wolves sector gatehouse.
The mob was gathered three layers deep, shouting in a deafening, overlapping roar.
"Go! Jump him!"
"There's only one of him! Just ONE guy!!"
"Don't shoot, you idiot, he's weaving through our lines—you'll hit our own boys!"
"Quit thinking and gut the bastard!!"
The threats were bloody and loud.
Yet, even the thugs in the absolute front rank kept a cautious buffer of two or three paces from Ren Shiroki. None of them dared take another step forward.
The closer a man stood to Ren, the faster his mind churned.
What does this outsider want?!
Did he come to stop the riot? To play hero for the cops?
Is he trying to make a name for himself in the Ward?
Or is he after money? Turf?
The more they tried to calculate his angle, the more terrifying the silence became. Because if none of those answers fit, his motive was something far more primitive:
He had come purely to fight.
Not backed by a private military squad. Not running a calculated corporate plot.
Just a solitary, bare-fisted predator whose sole driving force was physical combat.
—This is insane.
A hundred fully armed syndicate enforcers and local killers... against one bare-handed kid?!
Was this really something a sane human being would sign up for?!
"Y-You bastard..."
After several jagged breaths, a few outlaws at the front forced their survival instincts down, stoking their rage to drown out their fear.
It made sense. No matter how monstrous Ren's presence was, he was still just one man. Cheap psychological intimidation could only carry him so far against men who killed for a living.
"Screw this!"
A scarred thug brandishing a combat machete spat into the dirt. "Our crew is big enough to fight a territorial street war in the Ward! Die, you freak!"
He charged, bringing the blade down in a heavy, two-handed vertical cleave.
Zip!
Ren didn't retreat. He vaulted forward, his torso spinning mid-air to slip the blade's trajectory by millimeters. In the same breath, his right fist snapped out in an explosive backhand counter!
BOOM!
The back of his knuckles crushed the thug's nose and front teeth. The man let out a wet, strangled shriek as he was blasted backward, crashing into the men behind him like a bowling pin.
"SHAA!!"
Ren didn't pause for the recovery frames. He roared, driving his momentum deeper into the cluster three paces ahead!
"Looks like your 'army' is getting in your own way, pal!!"
CLAP!
Ren planted his left foot square on the falling thug's face, using it as a biological springboard. His right foot rooted into the dirt as he whipped around, unleashing two rapid-fire drunken-style palm strikes!
Thud-thud!
The two thugs flanking from behind ate the half-clenched strikes flush. Their vision turned white as tears and blood sprayed simultaneously.
Men closed in from his left and right.
Ren swung his left elbow in a brutal Muay Thai horizontal slice, while his right palm carved through the air in a pro-wrestling downward knife-edge chop.
BAM! CRACK!
Sagat's lethal elbow torque fused with Zangief's crushing mass, both executed via [ENGINE: LINKED TIMING]!
It wasn't enough to simply know the moves. A warrior had to see the exact startup frame and deliver the exact kinetic answer!
"Aha!"
Ren's war cry cut through the din. In less than two seconds, four men were broken and down.
Seeing their forward line collapse, an outlaw in the second rank screamed, "Swarm him! Crush him with your weight!!"
SWOOSH!
Machetes, lead pipes, brass knuckles, chains, and combat knives—seven or eight men surged forward simultaneously, attempting to bury Ren under a wall of steel and flesh.
As they collapsed in on his position, Ren shifted his footwork. He didn't guard; his eyes tracked the messy spacing of the mob. He dropped his hips and swept his lead leg through the central anchor point of their advance.
WHACK!
By tripping the man at the geometric center of the charge, the entire swarm tripped over one another!
Clatter, clang, crack!
Chains swung wide, smashing into friendly skulls.
Thrusting daggers buried themselves into allies' tactical vests.
Machete swings stalled mid-air because the men were packed too tightly to drop their elbows.
A man lunging with a pipe accidentally speared his own partner in the kidney.
"Agh! My head!"
"Watch your swing, you moron!"
"Too crowded! Back up, back up!!"
An undisciplined human-wave attack, completely dismantled by a single low sweep!
Ren clenched both fists, shifting his weight into a tight, explosive stance.
[LUKE: TRIPLE STRIKE]!
BAM! BAM! BOOM!
Two more outlaws were blasted backward by heavy crosses.
Without letting his feet settle, Ren tightened his core, throwing his hips into a full 360-degree rotational leap!
[RYU: TATSUMAKI SENPU KYAKU]!
THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD!
North, south, east, west—four men in four quadrants were struck simultaneously by his spinning heels! Blood sprayed in a wide circle as their bodies were launched outward, bowling over another dozen thugs behind them.
Farther down the street...
The chaos at the gatehouse had naturally drawn the eyes of the Ward's residents. In The Inside, brawls, assassinations, and firefights were daily background noise. But a single bare-handed outsider waging war against a hundred-man outpost was a spectacle that defied reality.
"Hold on... is that kid really fighting the whole garrison alone?"
"Binoculars! New scopes smuggled from outside, only two hundred yen to rent!"
"Damn... the outsider isn't even losing ground!"
"Did he just say their 'numbers' don't matter? What's that supposed to mean?"
Among the watchers was an elderly man with a grizzled beard, a former Yakuza enforcer who had retired to The Inside after a botched hit decades ago. He puffed on a crumpled cigarette, cackling quietly.
"Heh... that kid is a true street combatant. Pure classical theory."
The old man blew a stream of smoke toward the sky. "Listen up, amateurs. It looks like a hundred against one. But in close-quarters melee, geometry is an absolute law. Without getting in each other's way, a maximum of four men can physically attack a single target at the exact same time."
"Four at a time..."
"If you can eradicate the four men coming from the four cardinal directions in a single beat, the enemy's numbers are completely irrelevant! A hundred men just means twenty-five waves of four!"
The old man grinned with yellowed teeth. "Taken to the theoretical extreme... if a warrior can master that tempo, he could fight all eight billion people on earth and never be overwhelmed!"
The young thugs around him looked skeptical. "Sounds like old-man fairy tales..."
"Heh, don't believe me? Rent the binoculars and see for yourself!"
For the spectators, it was entertainment.
For the outlaws trapped in the meat-grinder, it was hell.
BAM! CRUNCH! THUD!
Ren Shiroki was systematically dismantling them.
Palm-heels to the jaw. Low kicks to the knee joints. Headbutts caving in noses. Straight punches to the liver. Shoryukens splintering teeth. Side-blade kicks crushing windpipes.
Anyone who stepped into his space was eradicated within two frames, their falling bodies crashing into the men behind them.
Of course, numbers still carried physical mass.
Occasionally, a stray fist, an iron pipe, or a boot would bypass Ren's defense, slamming into his ribs or scraping across his face.
THWACK!
Ren rolled his neck to shed the force of a heavy right hook. Blood trickled from his split lip and his right nostril.
He didn't care. He stepped forward with absolute violence.
"SHAA!!"
[DRIVE IMPACT: SHOCKWAVE]!
DOOM!!
A devastating straight punch slammed into the gut of a mercenary, launching the 100kg man backward through the air to bowl over another five men.
"Hah... hah...!"
Ren panted, hot steam rolling off his skin. Sweat and blood mixed on his brow, dripping steadily from his chin onto the torn asphalt.
Zip!
Another heavy brute dove for Ren's waist in a desperate tackle. Ren brought his elbow down like an iron spike onto the back of the man's neck, breaking his posture, then hoisted the brute's arm over his shoulder and hurled him into the mob!
[RYU: SHOULDER THROW]!
CRASH!!
The brute crashed into the dirt, clearing out a temporary pocket of space.
Ren backed into the newly cleared lane, facing the remaining outlaws. He raised his fists, meeting their strikes head-on in an unrelenting exchange of raw violence.
Thud-thud-thud!
He took hits to the shoulders and ribs, but he did not yield an inch of ground.
One by one, outlaws collapsed around him, dragged away by their terrified comrades. Slowly, whether from sheer muscular exhaustion or creeping psychological paralysis, the mob's offensive tempo began to grind to a halt.
Both sides paused, gasping for air.
A bald, heavily tattooed outlaw—clearly a respected lieutenant in the camp—stared at the blood-drenched youth before him. His hands were trembling on the hilt of his machete. Cold sweat stung his eyes.
"Hey... outsider..."
The bald outlaw swallowed hard. "Do you... do you really think you're guaranteed to win this?!"
To everyone's shock, Ren Shiroki shook his head.
"Guaranteed to win? No way."
Ren bared his teeth in a wide, bloodstained grin, spitting a mouthful of crimson onto the dirt. "I'm not invincible. But... I'm not a coward who only fights when the odds are in my favor, either."
"I didn't come here to slaughter you all, and I didn't come to show off. I came because this place was Difficult."
Ren's single right eye flared with a sharp, crimson light. Two luminous trails burned through the dust, pulsing in time with his racing heartbeat.
"I'm staying right here... until this fight stops being difficult!"
His voice was hoarse, his throat parched, his limbs bruised and bleeding.
Yet, to the seventy-plus outlaws still standing, the youth looked colossal. His jacket had been torn away, leaving him in a shredded tank top that revealed a physique built of living iron.
Gulp...
One after another, the hardened killers of the Ward swallowed their breath.
The man standing before them was no longer an "outsider" to be lynched. He was an absolute Monster.
And this monster viewed them as his crucible.
The bald lieutenant lowered his center of gravity. His eyes cleared, the panic replaced by the grim focus of a man who realized he was fighting for his life.
"Kid..." the lieutenant muttered. "What's your name?"
☆☆☆
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