Chapter 432: Pankration
CRASH—!!
The lead thug took two heavy punches square to the chest and jaw, his body
launched backward into his comrades like a human cannonball, knocking half a
dozen men sprawling into the dirt.
"Hah..."
Ren Shiroki exhaled a slow plume of steam from between his teeth. Faint wisps of
heat coiled off his bandaged right fist.
"—?!"
The sheer presence radiating from him was suffocating. The remaining outlaws
froze in their tracks, unwilling to step into the meat-grinder.
"Holy hell..."
Watching from near the shattered wall, the bald lieutenant with the cast
muttered to Himuro Ryo, "Is this guy seriously going to fight all the way to the
end? Suppressing a hundred armed killers through raw victory?"
Himuro didn't answer immediately. He took a drag from his cigarette, staring at
the cratered pavement in awe.
Ren rolled his neck until his cervical spine cracked like dry kindling. He shot
a casual glance over his shoulder at the two men behind him, offering a faint,
easy smirk.
"Winning alone isn't enough," Ren said. "You have to impose absolute Force.
Those are two completely different things."
"Get what I mean?"
"From here on out... it's just an honest brawl."
Crrr—
Ren planted his boots, shifting into an entirely new guard.
Feet spread well wider than shoulder-width, knees bent into a deep, grounded
squat—a broad base with an ultra-low center of gravity. His fists were raised,
but held half-relaxed rather than tightly clenched. His elbows flared outward,
forearms coiled like heavy springs, putting his upper-body mass and back muscles
on total, unashamed display.
His core braced tight. His spine held neutral and locked.
The stance looked primitive, almost savage.
The bald lieutenant blinked. "Hey, Himuro... is your boy really trying to win a
gang war with nothing but caveman brute strength?"
"No," Himuro replied, his eyes narrowing as he analyzed the frame.
As an undefeated Kengan veteran who had studied styles across the globe, Himuro
recognized the mechanics beneath the surface. Ren's posture looked crude at a
glance, but the micro-tensions vibrating through his tendons told a different
story. It was loaded with dynamic, stored kinetic energy.
It was an authentic, ancient battle stance.
"Shiroki-kun's style is heavily technical," Himuro muttered, ash falling from
his smoke. "He's not the type to rely on blind power."
"That posture is an evolution of a specific martial art."
Himuro pieced it together. "Rather than relying on brute force... he's using an
ancient combat art designed to weaponize brute force with maximum efficiency.
Direct, brutal, and lethal."
Himuro remembered the historical manuals he had browsed in Giinokuniya's private
archives. Ren's stance overlapped with ancient illustrations of combat from
antiquity.
First: Pankration—the ancient Greek martial art. A brutal synthesis of boxing
and wrestling, forged for total battlefield eradication, founded on the
principle of breaking an opponent using nothing but one's own flesh and bone.
Second: the tactical logic of the Roman legionary. Short, lethal thrusts
designed to drive heavy impact straight through armor into vital organs,
treating the fist like a gladius.
And woven beneath both was the framework of modern underground striking.
In other words: Ren had taken the ancient roots of Pankration, layered it with
Roman gladiatorial logic, and synthesized it into his own personal rhythm!
This is Ren Shiroki!
Himuro grinned around his cigarette. "Honestly... brawling in a lawless dump
like this with that kind of style... he looks like a gladiator dropped into the
Colosseum."
Ren maintained his stance.
With every measured breath, he felt the kinetic energy coiled within his muscle
fibers growing clearer, down to the microscopic cell.
The ink-wash smoke churned violently behind him, shaping itself into the
towering, glorious form of the warrior-woman.
Height: 203 cm. Weight: 122 kg.
Colossal, yet devoid of useless bulk. Massive shoulders, an iron-plated torso,
and limbs thick as marble pillars, balanced by a silhouette of athletic,
statuesque power. Her fiery red hair was shaped like the crest of a centurion's
war-helm. Deep, amber eyes burned with glorious passion beneath high cheekbones,
accented by a small beauty mark beneath her left eye.
Her name: Marisa!
Both an heir to the ancient traditions of Greek Pankration and a rising jewelry
designer, she possessed a boisterous, golden spirit paired with an exquisite
appreciation for beauty.
Her style was an ancient synthesis: using forearms as shields to smash through
guards, and driving fists forward like heavy short-swords!
{Hahaha!}
Marisa clapped her heavy, armored gauntlets together, booming with approval at
Ren's execution.
{Splendid!}
{In the ancient tongue of Hellas, the word 'Pankration' means 'All Powers'!}
{A style that conquers the foe using nothing but the naked vessel of the human
body—the most ancient combat art known to mankind!}
{If you desire to know what it means to be 'Strong,' there is no path more
direct than this!}
Marisa grinned, her voice carrying the thunder of an arena:
{Hold that line, boy! UNLEASH EVERYTHING YOU HAVE!!}
Ren raised his fists level with his eyes. He stepped forward, his boots crushing
gravel.
Seeing the scarred youth advance alone, the outlaws felt their guts churn.
"Get him!!"
The front man screamed, swinging a heavy iron pipe in a vicious downward
diagonal arc toward Ren's skull.
Zip!
Ren dropped his hips to the absolute floor. He raised his right forearm in a
horizontal wedge, batting the descending steel pipe aside before it could build
momentum.
In the same continuous motion, his left fist coiled back, pulling a line of taut
tension through his lats.
"SHAA!!"
With an explosive roar, he drove a devastating shovel-hook straight into the
thug's ribs and liver!
[DRIVE IMPACT: GLADIATOR]!
BOOM—!!
The strike hit like an artillery shell. The thug vomited a fountain of blood as
the kinetic shockwave blasted him clear off his feet, bowling over four men
behind him in a tangled heap of shattered ribs and screams!
Men swarmed from his left and right.
Ren answered with two savage crosses, his fists carrying the weight of
sledgehammers. The final attacker took a driving front-kick square to the teeth,
leaving the tread of Ren's sole stamped into his broken face.
BAM! BAM! CRACK!
Punches, kicks, parries—moves that any street brawler could theoretically throw.
Yet Ren executed them with a level of focus that turned basic mechanics into
high art. The speed was blinding; the torque was horrifying.
From the sidelines, Himuro and the bald lieutenant watched in grim fascination.
They realized Ren wasn't toying with them anymore. He had kicked the door open
and stepped into the furnace.
He was actively seeking the hardest, ugliest path. He was throwing himself into
the crossfire, completely ignoring the massive numerical disadvantage.
THWACK!
A stray heavy punch slipped through and clipped Ren's cheek, drawing a spray of
blood from his nose.
Ren didn't blink. He rolled his neck with the impact to shed the force, stepped
inside the man's pocket, and drove his palm-heel upward into the thug's chin.
CLAP!
Teeth splintered. The thug collapsed, writhing and shrieking in the dirt.
"Hah... hah...!"
Ren panted, steam rolling off his shoulders.
Himuro frowned from the sidelines, calling out through the smoke, "Shiroki! No
matter how insane your gas tank is, you can't outlast a hundred men in a
straight brawl of attrition!"
Whoosh!
Ren shook the sweat from his bangs, grabbed another charging thug by the arm,
and hurled him twenty feet across the yard with a thunderous [RYU: SHOULDER
THROW]!
"Not enough...!"
Ren's single right eye flared with crimson light.
"This is nowhere near enough! This isn't 'Difficult' yet! PUSH ME TO THE
REDLINE!!"
"The only way to evolve is to take it past the limit!!"
The declaration sounded completely unhinged. Yet hearing it made Himuro shiver,
a chill creeping down his spine.
As an insider born in the gutters of The Inside, Himuro had mentally simulated
how he would fight if he were leading the mob against Ren.
Attrition? Ambush? Swarming?
There were plenty of tactical options.
Yet Ren's roar shattered the foundation of those calculations. Every one of
those tactics relied on the premise that the mob held the Advantage.
The moment the mob realizes they aren't winning... the advantage evaporates. And
when that happens, the battle is decided!
Himuro's eyes tracked the outer perimeter of the mob.
Dozens of thugs had stopped advancing. Several in the back had already dropped
their weapons, edging backward toward the shanties in sheer terror.
Between the men Ren had broken and the cowards abandoning the line, nearly half
the garrison had collapsed mentally. The mob's momentum was rotting from the
inside out!
"I see..." Himuro murmured, tapping his cigarette. "Smash the head of the snake,
then systematically extinguish the courage of the rest with overwhelming
violence..."
"That's how you break a hundred-man garrison solo."
Himuro took a slow breath. "It's over."
Then, his expression hardened, his silver hair catching the morning wind.
"Or rather... the warmup is over."
"The scum who get baited by foreign syndicates to start riots are just
second-rate fodder. The real monsters of the Ward don't bother with petty mobs."
Himuro looked toward the crumbling tenements in the distance.
Among the shadows, several new silhouettes had gathered. They stood apart from
the crowd, silently observing the bloodbath at the gatehouse.
The bald lieutenant followed Himuro's gaze and stiffened.
"Damn... the local heavyweights of the Three Wolves sector. Those bastards
usually keep to themselves."
"They're too proud to let an outsider stomp across our turf without paying the
toll. They're moving."
The lieutenant spat on the ground.
"One versus a hundred is done."
"Next up... it's one versus the entire Three Wolves sector!"
Himuro clicked his tongue, a cold, predatory smirk spreading across his face.
"Scale... syndicates... territorial pride... In the end, it's all just noise."
"It's just a street brawl."
"Just men throwing fists."
☆☆☆
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