There is no blood, no physical damage, no broken nose or split lip. Yet the pain flooding through Ryoma's mind feels completely real.

Ryoma's face twists in agony as a muffled groan escapes his lips. The color drains from his face, cold sweat beading across his forehead.

As he plants one hand against the canvas and tries to push himself up, a sharp sting shoots through the bridge of his nose.

A thin stream of blood drops on the canvas, brought on not by the punch itself, but by the overwhelming strain assaulting his mind.

The Phantom sits down cross-legged beside him.

"You better nor force it. Stay down."

"Shut up... you talk too much."

The Phantom lets out a quiet chuckle. "Does it really hurt that much? Or is your pride hurting even more after losing like this? Come on. Don't take it so personally. At the end of the day, you didn't lose to somebody else."

He taps his own chest with a thumb. "I'm still you."

"I said shut up!" Ryoma groans. "Stop saying you're me."

"Alright, alright." The Phantom raises both hands in surrender. "I'm not you. I'm just a projection created by the System inside your head. Since this projection removes all the flaws that come with being human, it's only natural that I'm better than you."

He shrugs. "Think of me as a hypothesis. The most ideal version of Ryoma Takeda that you could one day become."

"Enough already... You're only making my head hurt even more."

The Phantom chuckles. "Need me to call an ambulance?"

Ryoma doesn't answer. For the first time in a long while, he feels utterly hopeless. His pride has taken such a crushing blow that he can't even bring himself to open his eyes.

He had fought with everything he had for more than two minutes, yet not a single punch had landed cleanly.

***

Nearly half an hour passes before the pain becomes bearable, though the lingering pressure never fully fades.

Ryoma lies flat on the canvas with one forearm draped over his eyes, waiting for the pounding inside his head to subside.

He remains motionless for a few more minutes, until a thought abruptly cuts through the haze.

"…Right. Elliot's fight."

He sits up again, and another wave of dizziness washes over him.

"Easy, easy" the Phantom says. "There's no need to force yourself."

Ryoma ignores him. He climbs to his feet, slips through the ropes, and slowly steps out of the ring.

"I almost forgot today's his title fight."

The thing is, he had planed to leave for Nagano in the morning and watch Elliot's world title fight together with everyone at the training camp. But everything involving Kenji and the Cruel King Army has thrown his schedule into chaos.

With no chance of making it to Nagano now, he heads into the management office, grabs the television remote, and switches on the flat-screen mounted against the wall.

"Please don't tell me I'm too late."

The first channel isn't it. The second immediately cuts to the live broadcast from the sold-out O2 Arena in London as the fight has already entered the middle of the eighth round.

Ryoma clicks his tongue. "Damn... I already missed seven rounds."

Elliot appears firmly in control. His trademark Soviet-style rhythm remains as composed and economical as ever.

But with Malik Okoye already bruised, exhausted, and spending almost the entire round defending himself, Elliot noticeably increases the pressure.

"Okoye's corner won't like what they're seeing," the British commentator says. "Against someone as disciplined as Graves, you simply can't spend this much time reacting."

Another crisp jab sneaks through the guard before the right hand follows.

Dsh! BHUAK!

Then a short left hook lands immediately afterward.

BAM!

Okoye's head snaps violently from side to side while Elliot calmly changes angles, picks his openings, and dismantles the defense without wasting a single movement.

Dsh!

Dug. Dsh! Bugh! Dsh!

Dug. Dug. Dsh! Dhuack! Bugh! Pam!

After several unanswered shots land cleanly in succession without a single meaningful response from Malik Okoye, the referee quickly steps between them. He catches Okoye with one arm while repeatedly waving the other high above his head.

The O2 Arena explodes. Thousands of spectators leap to their feet as the British commentator nearly has to shout over the deafening celebration.

"It's over! Elliot Graves is the new WBC World Champion!"

"After months of uncertainty following Jean-Pascal Roy's decision to vacate the title, the WBC finally has its new champion!"

Ryoma can only stare blankly at the screen, finding the fight has ended almost as soon as he started watching.

"…That's it?"

A beat later, the broadcast rolls two replay highlights. The first shows Elliot scoring a knockdown in the seventh round. The second comes early in the eighth, only moments before Ryoma switched on the television.

"Oh... so he had just gotten back up?"

"Looks that way," the Phantom Ryoma replies. "After two knockdowns in two rounds, the referee wasn't interested in letting him absorb a third."

Ryoma quietly clicks his tongue. Watching a live broadcast gives him no way to rewind, study the early rounds, or analyze how Elliot built the victory from the opening bell.

He immediately leaves the office, retrieves the phone he left beside the bell, and searches YouTube for the fight highlights, only to find that nothing has been uploaded yet.

With a disappointed sigh, he returns to the office just as the broadcast transitions to the championship ceremony.

Elliot stands in the center of the ring beside Sergei Volkov. Together they raise the WBC championship belt high above while the crowd continues celebrating the birth of a new world champion.

Ryoma watches in silence. For a brief moment, a trace of envy stirs within him, the kind no professional boxer could honestly deny.

Just moments ago, he had been thoroughly outclassed by something claiming to be himself. Now, Elliot had beaten him to another milestone, becoming a world champion before he could.

But the feeling fades almost as quickly as it comes, replaced by genuine happiness.

"...Damn. He really did it."

***

The following day, thousands of miles away in the United States, Hugo Ramirez remains in federal custody while awaiting extradition to Japan. Inside one of the detention facility's secure visitation rooms, he sits across the reinforced glass from Dominic Bowman, both men already holding the telephone receivers.

"Fucking useless," Bowman grunts. "He was supposed to take the damn belt. Instead, he folded the moment someone actually pushed him."

His face looks noticeably worn. Dark circles hang beneath his eyes, the tension written across his expression makes it obvious he has barely managed to close his eyes since last night.

"Now Elliot is holding the belt instead," he adds, shaking his head in frustration, "and every calculation we've made just went straight into the trash."

Ramirez says nothing. He simply watches Bowman through the reinforced glass, his expression flat, eyes cold.

"It's been over a month since the purse bid," Ramirez finally says. "And this is the first time you show up? And instead of telling me how it went, you sit there crying over Mercer."

Bowman blinks, completely caught off guard. "...What?"

"I know why you are all avoiding me," Ramirez says. "You wanted to keep your distance so none of this splashes back on you. Fine. I understand that."

His eyes narrow. "But what the hell is this? The moment things go bad for you, suddenly you remember I exist?"

"Go bad for me?" Bowman repeats with a frown. "I didn't come here to complain. I came because I thought you should know what's happening out there."

"And you've done nothing but talk about your problems, motherfucker," Ramirez hisses. "What about Cabello's purse bid? Did you take it to Las Vegas?"

Bowman hesitates before letting out a tired sigh. "...We lost. The kid won it. Cabello's fight is going to Tokyo Dome."

Ramirez's eyes sharpen. He stares at him for a second, unable to process what he has just heard.

"How?" he growls. "There were four of you. Four. And you still couldn't beat one snot-nosed brat? Give me a fucking break. At this point, I'm starting to think none of you ever intended to finish his career."

"We did try," Bowman shoots back. "We put fifteen million dollars on the table. Fifteen fucking million. And you know what he did? He beat us with fifteen million... and one dollar."

Ramirez's face twists into complete disbelief. "...Are you fucking kidding me?"

Bowman lets out another weary sigh. "And there aren't four of us anymore. That fucking Jackson... I'm willing to bet he's the one who leaked our bid to the kid."

Ramirez's brows knit together. "...Jackson?"

Bowman gives a slow nod. "And Tokyo Dome? The kid got it by partnering with NSN."

Ramirez's jaw gradually tightens until the muscles along his face begin to twitch. Veins slowly rise around his neck as the realization settles in. It isn't merely another failed plan, but someone from inside had stabbed them in the back.

He lowers his head, breathing slowly through his nose, trying to suppress the rage threatening to boil over.

"That son of a bitch..." he mutters, his fingers curling tightly around the telephone receiver. "I'll make every one of them pay for this."

Bowman doesn't respond to the threat. Instead, he changes the subject.

"When are they sending you to Japan?"

"About a week from now. Why?"

Bowman exhales. "Look. We've already lost control of both the WBO and WBC. There's no point pretending otherwise. So... treat this as our last conversation for a while."

Bowman smooths the front of his suit, looking as though the conversation has reached its end. A second later, however, he quietly reaches for the receiver again.

"Accept this defeat for now," he says quietly. "If everything goes our way, you could be out in three years. Then we'll decide what to do about them."