Kenichi Sora's self-talk left the Crocodile across the ring bewildered.

He was holding back a stomach full of anger at the back of the ring, already crafting several sets of sufficiently brutal finishing moves in his mind.

There were only a few seconds left on the countdown.

Sora appeared quite relaxed.

He seemed "evolved," and the complex contradictions belonging to humans melded well with the data essence.

John didn't know what a completely digital soul should look like, but Sora now seemed real enough and hadn't lost any core abilities.

"Hmm..."

Sora had to make a sound when he was thinking, which seemed a bit amusing with an adult's body.

He snapped his fingers.

"I still need to do some..."

[...necessary adjustments.]

Sora raised his head, like a patient recovering from a severe illness, who hadn't basked in the sunlight for a long time.

He squinted his eyes in enjoyment.

With his visual system limited, his hearing was amplified.

What Sora heard was no longer the game-coded, audio-file-based sound effects calculated within an attenuation model, but the genuine randomness of countless people cheering, pounding, and roaring at the same time...

A physically heavy sound wave.

Such noises converged, beating on the eardrum of this body, causing an involuntary neural reflex, driving intracranial microcurrents to trigger a series of physiological reactions.

"Phew."

[Phew, I can't describe this moment...]

Before Sora could express his sentiment.

Toot——

Thud——

The second round began.

The siren shattered Kenichi Sora's reverie.

The essence of sound is vibration.

At this moment, there was an undeniable "epicenter" 2.45 meters ahead.

The Crocodile's legs suddenly exerted force.

Muscle fibers and joints functioned in tandem, unleashing terrifying power within the body.

His stride was being transmitted through the floor.

Sora stopped tilting his head back, and returned to a level gaze.

The dynamic power of Messiah's Eye was fully engaged, capturing more information.

The formulas John had previously hidden were now neatly organized, participating in this fight.

John had always known Kenichi Sora could fight, but seeing from his perspective now left an indescribable impact.

He had personally stood in the ring.

The Crocodile's explosive speed, irresistible force, and the tech-condensed monstrous body, each a nightmare to handle.

Near-range combat in the ring requires quick decisions within a very short time.

John could only struggle to cope.

But now, without activating Sianweistan, the Crocodile's actions were slowed several times.

[...parameter calibration...joint error...muscle group A2-1 region current activity...percentage of visual shake limitation...]

The data John couldn't understand appeared as simple as magazine counts to Sora.

The Crocodile's punching trajectory was preemptively mapped.

Sora didn't dodge awkwardly; he simply twisted his body into a suitable posture.

The specific distance was only a few centimeters.

A chiseled fist grazed past his cheek.

In the depths of Sora's Messiah's Eye, his pupil contracted into a delicate texture under the data's faint glow.

The Medusa series of Messiah's Eye was renowned as a "visual industrial art piece," favored even by clients with no combat needs for implantation.

John felt a touch of sentimentality:

First was Oulos.

Then was Kenichi Sora.

It seemed he had never seriously studied his own high-performance prosthetic body.

Several of the Crocodile's consecutive punches failed.

He kept changing his moves, also accumulating confusion.

John saw dozens of options, displaying the adaptation percentages of the Crocodile's changes in a holographic image.

"Good stuff isn't just about being fitted into the eye socket; you always need to make adjustments based on your habits."

Sora even had the mood for a chat.

The fine-tuning of prosthetic bodies is quite a popular business in the black market, with many skilled technicians demanding hefty premiums.

Kenichi Sora handled the task himself.

In just the time between the entrant tunnel and the ring, he had uploaded an entire suite of official software from the satellite into John's body, based on his own user habits.

This setup was too extreme for humans, only a digital soul like him could use it comfortably.

Shock appeared in the Crocodile's eyes.

He switched tactics, his body started to swing, and just like before, he began to crush the opponent utilizing the robustness of his muscle fibers.

Sora made responses or, to put it another way, filled in answers.

On the foundation of absolute prediction and microscopic control, he made one response after another.

The Crocodile's whip leg swung past John's temple.

The two-hundred-plus-pound body rotated back into a kick, its intimidation comparable to a hydraulic rescue tool.

But it still missed.

The Crocodile wasn't frustrated; at the end of what seemed like an exhausting move, his ankle joints suddenly touched the ground, exerting force as he pivoted and raised his knee.

This was an extremely dangerous move, one that had been lethal to many ring fighters before, made possible only through Isaac Military Industry's high-tech prosthetics.

It was hard for a normal person to predict.

However, Sora captured the torque changes of the ankle, widened the distance, turning the Crocodile's charging strike into a ridiculous leap in place.

From who knows which punch... 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

The roaring grandstand felt like it had cold water poured over it, a certain horrifying emotion rapidly spread.

The Crocodile turned into a fool.

His last leap looked very much like a clumsily unbalanced move, desperately trying to cover up.

Ha ha.

Laughter came from somewhere in the arena.

The Crocodile lifted his head in horror, his face full of shame and anger, trying to locate the source of the voice from the shadows behind the spotlight.

He scanned with his signature fierce glare.

"Wow, don't disrespect me!"

Sora was shocked.

He clapped his hands, grabbing the Crocodile's attention, and then pointed towards the audience. "Dumbass, you couldn't even touch me, yet you have time to bare your teeth and threaten me?!"

The Crocodile was utterly infuriated.

The high-tech steel prosthetic limbs clashing around "John" were incessantly tearing through the surrounding air.

Each sweep wished to smash his head to pieces.

Always slightly off!

The audience snapped out of their initial shock, beginning to shout towards the other extreme in frenzy.

The announcer was also stirring things up.

"Holy fucking hell, look at that, our mercenary Mr. was just a punching bag a few minutes ago, now he's dancing with our Crocodile!"

Even the most amateur audience members could see John was toying with Reagan.

In the VIP box above the central ring.

In the layers between the surging audience and the giant holographic projection on the dome, behind one of the numbered floor-to-ceiling windows.

Bone Shards leaned against the railing, observing the changes in the ring below with a smile.

Beside him stood that forever-present girl, one custom leather banded hand wrapped around Bone Shards's neck, while the other played across the intricate tattoo on his chest.

Their floor-to-ceiling window was in transparent mode.

Every VIP in the box, as well as the audience at the front end of the ring, could look up and see Bone Shards.

He took a glass of wine, interestingly gesturing gently towards the opposite booth, revealing a smile.

Across the bustling ring.

Behind an opaque window on the other side.

The Isaac Military Industry's VIP box was silent.

The Operations Manager was standing by the floor-to-ceiling window.

His golden prosthetic eye glowed faintly, the ear lamp signal was on, indicating the communication was normal, someone or some people on the other end of the phone were talking.

The manager saw Bone Shards' action, but the high-end drink in his hand hadn't been lifted for a while now.

Aside, behind this Isaac Military Industry Executive stood a massive number of people.

Two software engineers, a hardware configurator, a prosthetic hardware tuner, a fighter's agent, and three secretaries present on behalf of the board members.

They all kept a fixed gaze on the ring below.

The equipment on Reagan Patrick, the Crocodile, was the new prosthetic limb set to be launched.

Especially those legs!

They're the most high-end prosthetics this quarter, incredibly flexible in narrow spaces, able to link from foot to Achilles tendon upwards, proportionate to a bouncy ball.

The initial results were indeed outstanding.

The Crocodile crushed his way from the beginning of the season to now.

The project team had perfected it to the third cycle using the data they collected, and winning the championship could have allowed them to release and market it in the perfect warm-up environment!

But now things weren't looking good.

The Operations Manager was the first to retract his gaze from the ring.

He fought the urge not to look at their boxer being spun around down there, his face cloudy with anger as he received John's personal information.

"A street mercenary!?"