CHAPTER 50: CHAPTER 50; ANOTHER ROUND OF RING FIGHTS 1

Tiny adjustments that would mean everything in a fight.

The scarred woman made her move first, lunging forward with a roar meant to intimidate them all.

"Let’s end this!"

"The sooner the better for us!"

Her seven companions surged forward in coordinated attack, moving to surround and overwhelm through sheer numbers.

But something was wrong.

The scarred woman’s lunge came in too high, her distance judgment just slightly off. Tank didn’t even have to dodge, she simply stepped inside the attack and drove her massive fist into the woman’s solar plexus with devastating precision.

Exactly where Shuyin had told her to strike.

The scarred woman’s eyes bulged. Her roar cut off into a choked gasp. She crumpled onto the ground, unable to breathe, unable to fight, her diaphragm spasming uselessly.

One was down already in less than two seconds.

Tattoo Arms came at Blade from the side, but her footwork was off by just a fraction, enough that Blade saw the attack coming with plenty of time to counter. Blade’s palm shot up in a perfect strike to the bridge of the woman’s nose, exactly as Shuyin had described.

The crack was audible even over the crowd’s noise.

Tattoo Arms screamed, her hands flying to her face as blood poured between her fingers. She staggered backward, blind and disoriented, effectively out of the fight.

Two were already down in four seconds.

Razor moved like liquid lightning, her smaller size suddenly an advantage. The woman coming at her reached too far, overextended because her depth perception was subtly wrong, and Razor drove her knee into the exposed inner thigh.

The woman’s leg buckled immediately, the large femoral artery bruising deep, the muscle going into shock and she immediately hit the ground hard.

Three down in six seconds.

The remaining five hesitated for a fraction of a moment, confused by how quickly their coordinated attack had fallen apart. That hesitation was fatal in such a fighting arena.

Tank caught one woman with a brutal strike behind the ear, that precise point where skull met spine. The woman’s eyes rolled back and she dropped like a stone, her brain temporarily short-circuiting from the impact.

Blade struck another’s floating ribs with a savage elbow, feeling them crack under the impact. The woman fell with a shriek of agony.

Razor swept the legs of a third, the woman’s balance already compromised by Shuyin’s invisible interference, sending her crashing face-first into the concrete floor with a sickening thud.

Four, five, and six were down.

The last two women, the ones who’d hung back slightly, who’d been meant to provide support, suddenly realized they were alone. Their six companions were on the ground, groaning or unconscious or curled into balls of pain.

It was in less than thirty seconds.

"What the heck?" one of them breathed, her earlier bravado completely gone.

Tank, Blade, and Razor advanced, their movements synchronized, predatory. They’d found their rhythm, found the strange advantage that had turned what should have been a brutal beatdown into a surgical dismantling.

The two remaining women tried to coordinate, tried to use their numerical advantage, but it was hopeless.

Their attacks were sloppy, telegraphed by depth perception that kept betraying them. One came at Tank with a wild haymaker that Tank blocked easily before driving her fist into the woman’s kidney, a precise, devastating blow that sent her to her knees, vomiting from the pain.

The last woman standing looked around at her fallen companions, at the three advancing fighters, and at Shuyin standing calmly in the center of the ring with her glowing jade eye watching everything with cold satisfaction.

"I surrender," the woman said, her hands raised, her voice cracking.

"No surrendering!" the warden’s voice boomed over the microphone. "Fight until someone can’t fight anymore! That’s the rules!"

The woman’s face went pale, but before she could even process the order, Blade moved in and struck her in the side of the knee with brutal efficiency.

The joint bent sideways with a wet popping sound. The woman screamed and collapsed, clutching her leg, effectively out of the fight without any possibility of continuing.

Eight women down.

It took them only three minutes and seventeen seconds from the moment the fight had started.

The ring fell silent.

The crowd fell silent.

Everyone, spectators, guards, the warden himself, sat frozen in stunned disbelief, trying to process what they’d just witnessed.

"What kind of a fight was this? He could see the eight women go down so easily... Everyone was left speechless...

They didn’t even have time to cheer, chat, or even talk about anything; everything had ended.

Those who had placed their bets on the eight women were speechless. They can’t even define what was happening.

Four against eight.

The four had been expected to be demolished, possibly killed in that arena. Tank, Blade, and Razor were tough, sure, but eight opponents working together should have overwhelmed them through sheer numbers.

Instead, it had been a massacre.

But not the massacre anyone had expected. There were no intense fights as they expected.

The eight women lay scattered across the concrete floor like broken dolls, unconscious, injured, completely defeated.

Some were trying to crawl away. Others weren’t moving at all. Blood pooled on the concrete, but none of it belonged to Tank, Blade, Razor, or Shuyin.

Tank stood over the scarred woman, breathing hard but barely winded. Not a mark on her.

Blade wiped a small spatter of someone else’s blood from her knuckles, her expression calm and uninjured.

Razor was bouncing slightly on her feet, adrenaline still pumping, but without a scratch.

And Shuyin stood in the center of the ring, her jade eye glowing in the spotlight, her expression completely serene, as if she’d just watched a mildly interesting performance rather than participated in brutal combat.

She hadn’t thrown a single punch to hurt anyone.

Hadn’t needed to.

The warden finally found his voice, though it came out strangled and confused. "Winner... winners... the four challengers!"