A faint smile appears on Phantom Ryoma's face as he calmly walks toward the corner. With every step, the mitt pads around his hands dissolve into blue particles and reform into boxing gloves.

His training clothes vanish, replaced by the same trunks and shoes Ryoma always wears on fight night.

"Alright. Three rounds."

Ryoma loosens his shoulders and arms. His feet bounce lightly from left to right as he settles into his usual pendulum rhythm.

At first, he expects Phantom Ryoma to copy every movement. Instead, the projection casually circles the ring with long, relaxed strides, posture low, both gloves remain hanging around stomach level.

Ryoma has seen this during previous sparring sessions, except back then it belonged to Miguel Cabello.

"I didn't ask you to spar using Cabello's database," he says, unable to hide the irritation in his voice.

The Phantom Ryoma only smiles. "You asked me to fight as Ryoma Takeda. And of all people, you should know exactly how Ryoma Takeda fights."

Ryoma's brow twitches slightly. Since his opponent refuses to close the distance, he has no choice but to take the initiative.

He begins stalking the Phantom across the ring with controlled pressure, taking careful side steps and constantly adjusting his angles exactly as he has learned to do against Cuban-style boxing.

The opening exchanges quickly settle into a familiar rhythm. Ryoma probes with jabs while the Phantom keeps changing angles just enough to prevent him from building his combinations.

By the second minute, the pattern feels almost identical to every session he has had against Phantom Cabello, constantly trapping the projection near the ropes.

Even then, it continues slipping every clean finishing shot. The Phantom keeps avoiding serious damage while casually throwing sarcastic remarks back at him between exchanges.

"That's it? I thought you were trying to knock me out."

He flicks out a probing jab, while deliberately leaving his right hand low. Ryoma bats the jab aside with his right glove and fires a straight left.

The Phantom dodges by ducking to his left, his right shoulder dipping low enough that Ryoma instinctively expects him to continue circling that way.

But the moment he sends a left hook, the Phantom ducks and rolls to the right, brushing Ryoma's back with the tip of his glove as he returns to the center of the ring.

"Come on," he says. "You're chasing the knockout so badly that you're forgetting to box."

Ryoma narrows his eyes. The movements, the rhythm, and the subtle traps hidden inside harmless exchanges all feel unmistakably Cuban boxing, almost identical to Miguel Cabello's style.

Yet something about it is different. Sparring against Phantom Cabello had never felt this difficult. He can still herd this version toward the ropes and corners, but once it reaches those positions, the defense becomes impossibly clean, leaving him with the unsettling feeling that he is chasing a version of himself while standing on the edge of the zone.

"He's so damn annoying."

Ryoma steadies his breathing and patiently resumes walking him down, applying measured pressure from mid-range while gradually forcing it toward the ropes.

As the available space begins disappearing, he changes gears, stepping inside behind a fast combination and forcing the fight into a tighter pocket.

The Phantom immediately shifts into a bladed Philly Shell stance, calmly catching, blocking, and parrying the combinations while rolling underneath the heavier shots and allowing several others to glance harmlessly off his lead shoulder.

Then the bell rings inside Ryoma's head.

Ding!

"Alright," Phantom Ryoma says, as if he heard it too. "Break time. Go back to your corner and get a minute of rest."

"Hey," Ryoma says before he can walk away. "Enough with Cabello's style already. That's not what I asked for."

The Phantom glances back over his shoulder, the same irritating smile still on his face. "This is exactly what you asked for. Or have you already forgotten why people call you the Chameleon?"

Ryoma watches him in silence before returning to his corner, resting both forearms across the top rope as he steadies his breathing.

He had asked for this sparring session because he could not accept that something calling itself Ryoma Takeda could fight better than him. He took this fight as a contest to prove which of them truly deserved that identity.

Yet after only one round, he realizes that the Phantom was never trying to prove its own existence. It was still doing exactly what the System was designed to do: forcing him toward a better version of himself.

After a moment, Ryoma finally calls out. "Answer me something first. Every time I sparred against Cabello, it always felt manageable. Are you saying your version is actually better than Cabello?"

The Phantom Ryoma shrugs. "We have no way of knowing how good the real Cabello truly is. When I project Cabello as your sparring partner, the result is limited to what you have observed. Observation can record movement, timing, and habits, but it can never fully capture instinct... or the intuition that creates creativity and flair."

Ryoma's expression turns serious. "So Phantom Cabello never had the real Cabello's sugar. But just now... you did. Where did that come from?"

The Phantom spreads both hands. "This is you. So naturally, everything comes from you. We possess complete data on Ryoma Takeda, including your instincts, creativity, and the version of yourself that appears once you enter the zone."

"Can you also enter the zone? And stay completely clear-headed while inside it?"

"Of course. I don't rely on emotion or instinct the way you do. I simply execute the data I have been given. As long as the information exists, I can reproduce that state perfectly while maintaining full awareness."

Ryoma shifts his eyes toward the timer inside the System interface. A few seconds later, the bell rings inside his head once again.

"Then show me. Fight me while you're in the zone."

The Phantom Ryoma smiles faintly. "Are you sure? I'm afraid your brain won't appreciate what comes next."

"Just show me," Ryoma replies. "I want to see it... the version of Ryoma Takeda in his most ideal form."

The Phantom nods amusedly, walking out of his corner with both gloves hanging loosely at his sides, his posture relaxed and a faint smirk on his face, an expression that should not exist inside the zone.

But the sight alone reminds Ryoma of the version of himself that dismantled Jade McConnel. A chill runs through his body as goosebumps spread across his arms.

Refusing to let that instinctive fear control him, Ryoma moves first, moving with the measured rhythm of Soviet boxing.

But the Phantom does not react. He simply watches the punches come, moving his head and upper body by the smallest margins while allowing the gloves to brush past without ever landing cleanly.

Ryoma quickly abandons the approach. He closes the distance, shifts into the Mexican pressure, and begins driving forward with compact combinations, throwing one short punch after another in relentless succession.

Even then, the Phantom refuses to give ground. And the smile on his face only grows wider.

"This is so much fun..."

He remains planted, calmly catching, blocking, and parrying while slipping and rolling through anything that breaks past his guard.

With perfect timing, he disrupts Ryoma's momentum by bumping him backward with his lead shoulder, creating just enough space to attack.

And his rhythm changes instantly, the relaxed posture remains, but his hands explode into Paulo Ramos' machine-gun offense, forcing Ryoma to retreat behind a tight guard.

Dug. Dug. Bugh. Thud. Dug. Dug. Dug. Dsh. Dug. Thud!

Ryoma tries to reset with pendulum steps, the same movement that had repeatedly disrupted Ramos' timing.

But the Phantom simply abandoned Ramos' style and seamlessly transitions into the peek-a-boo stance Ryoma himself used against Liam O'Connell.

Ryoma tries keeping him outside with compact straight punches, but every attack disappears into subtle slips and tight rolls before the Phantom suddenly bursts forward behind a rapid pendulum barrage.

The pressure pushes Ryoma dangerously close to the edge of the zone himself. His instincts begin taking over, then he throws a counter.

The Phantom unexpectedly catches the glove with his left and immediately drives a straight forward. Ryoma dodges it by inches and fires back.

The Phantom rolls underneath, and sends a hook. Ryoma slips and sends another straight, only dodged by another roll.

"Hohoo… You almost got me there."

For the next several seconds, neither man can touch the other. Their movements blur together as both fight while inside the zone, every attack answered by an equally precise slip, roll, or counter.

Yet despite moving with the same impossible speed, they wear entirely different faces. Ryoma's eyes remain razor-sharp, his expression cold and focused, while the Phantom grins with manic amusement.

"This is it…"

"Keep it tight, Ryoma!"

"Tight. Tight. Tight!"

Neither gives ground for long, their footwork carrying them across every corner of the ring in sharp compact bursts until scarcely a patch of canvas remains untouched.

The exchange continues at a frantic pace for nearly half a minute before the Phantom Ryoma suddenly changes.

Instead of matching Ryoma's tempo, he begins switching angles and stances with the loose rhythm of Cuban boxing. It forces Ryoma to reset after every punch and denying him the chance to build a combination.

Driven by unrestrained urge to connect just a single punch, Ryoma tries to overwhelm him anyway.

But the instant he commits to the follow-up, the Phantom smoothly shifts again into southpaw, and…

Dhuack!

The perfectly timed jolt counter crashes into Ryoma's face.

His head snaps backward from the impact, his balance disappears, and his body backward onto the canvas.

"So?" the Phantom says with an amused smile. "Was that what you wanted to see?"