Cyberpunk: 2075.

Chapter 649, Section 63: The Gambler
"Without a doubt, the champion has been born!!!"

The commentator's hoarse roar exploded in the abandoned shopping mall, the echo crashing against the renovated cement walls, mingling with the deafening screams of the audience.

Under the spotlight, Razor Hughes collapsed to the ground like a steel tower that had been blown up. His blood-stained mouthguard slipped from the corner of his mouth, bounced twice on the ring, and finally came to rest in the pool of sweat and blood that was spreading.

"Three-time heavyweight champion! Razor Hughes!!" The commentator practically stomped his foot on the table, the microphone crackling with overload. "He's down! Down before our street champion! Jack Wells—this boxer from Haywood, from the KK team—proved with his fists that mercenaries can do more than just take down opponents on the street; in the boxing ring, he's just as formidable!! Look into his eyes! That's not the ecstasy of a victor, but the fury of a raging beast!"

The big screen repeatedly played the final moment: as Hughes' left hook grazed the air above Jack's head, how that hellish uppercut tore through the defense and shattered the champion's jaw at a forty-two-degree angle, razor blood splattered onto Jack's face, flowing from his brow bone into his eye socket, yet he still stared intently at the fallen giant, as if confirming the final outcome.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" The commentator ripped off his sweat-soaked tie, which traced a silver arc under the spotlight before clattering against the edge of the ring.

"Open your eyes and see clearly—starting tonight, this name will be flashing on every holographic billboard in Night City, on every odds table in every underground casino, and even on the world boxing rankings!"

"This isn't some shady dealing! It's not drugs! This is the most primal aesthetics of violence!" The commentator stomped on the commentary platform, knocking over half a glass of whiskey, the amber liquid sizzling on the control panel.

"Razor Hughes came back from Canada with his gold belt, thinking he could crush our wild dogs like ants? Ha!" He laughed maniacally, slamming his fist on the glass curtain wall, making the bulletproof glass vibrate. "Jack Wells told him with his finger bones—roses can't grow in Night City's concrete; it only breeds monsters pieced together from sheet metal and shards of glass. Even if Razor, who was once born in this city, wanted to conquer it again, he couldn't!!"

The audience seats were like boiling water cleaved by a sharp blade, exploding into two extremes.

On the left side of the stands, the burly men of the Animal Gang, their arms covered in tattoos, joined the poor of Taiping State in pounding their fists into the air. Their roars coalesced into a violent wave of sound, almost lifting the rusty dome of the abandoned shopping mall under the knowing smiles of the NCPD officers.

The right side, on the other hand, is like another world.

Gamblers in suits were tearing their betting slips to shreds, the white scraps of paper mixed with cold sweat falling from their stiff fingers.

A man wearing gold-rimmed glasses suddenly clutched his own throat with both hands—on his retinal projection, the blue pop-up window for "[Razor Hughes - Win Rate 87%]" was twisting and deforming, eventually solidifying into the blood-red words "[Debt Locked]", the red so glaring that it looked like blood seeping directly from his retina.

“No, that’s impossible,” his voice seemed to squeeze out from a rusty pipe. “Razor Hughes is a three-time heavyweight champion. Even if his opponent is Jack Mercenary from the KK Squad, how could he possibly win in a regular boxing match?”

The words suddenly caught in his throat, and the numbers twitching in the corner of his retina were expanding at an alarming rate: euros, mortgages, and even electronic signatures on organ donation agreements. His lips began to twitch uncontrollably, and his left eyelid twitched wildly like a broken camera shutter.

"Fraud! This is absolutely a rigged match!" His roar suddenly rose to a crescendo, his meticulously styled hair bristling like a startled hedgehog, with a few strands stuck to his wildly throbbing temples by cold sweat.

"Are you blind? That passive clinching in the second round! How could professional boxing allow a champion to back down voluntarily—" His fingers scratched in the air, as if trying to tear open an unseen veil of lies, "Razor Hughes definitely took bribes, he could have..."

Two shadows, like drops of ice water poured into boiling oil, instantly solidified into human form behind him. The hem of his black trench coat still carried the stench of the garbage dump outside—the forces that could operate in this lawless place naturally kept the most skilled hounds, those who roamed in the shadows. One of them patted the gambler's trembling shoulder with his gloved right hand, the leather rustling against the suit fabric like a venomous snake.

“Sir,” the monitor in the collar of his trench coat glowed with a pale blue light, “your scheduled debt restructuring advisor has arrived.”

The reflection from the gold-rimmed glasses suddenly began to shake violently.

The man opened his mouth, only to find himself experiencing a tingling sensation throughout his body. At the same time, he heard a faint buzzing sound from the back of his neck before the electric shock collar was activated.

"No waiting! I can still turn things around!" His pupils contracted to the size of pinpoints, and the frantically flashing red numbers on his retina suddenly turned into a countdown: [Forced labor dispatch procedure initiated: 00:59].

Oriona, a member of the NCPD's special operations team, watched coldly as a man in black delivered a precise uppercut to the gambler's liver, a move that could be considered accurate even in a match, causing the gambler to curl up on the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. One of the men in a trench coat pressed down on the gambler's back with one knee and injected a vial of sedative into his carotid artery, a movement as practiced as scanning barcodes in a supermarket.

“This is the third case.” Her eyes zoomed in, noting the fingernail scratches left on the concrete floor as the gambler was dragged away. “The bookmakers were pretty efficient tonight.”

As she spoke, a penniless gambler in the distance saw the plight of someone in the same predicament, his eyes gradually turned red, and his hands began to twitch involuntarily.

This signature symptom, which has been written into the special operations forces' training materials, caused the new recruit next to Oriona to instinctively reach for his sidearm, but Oriona gently blocked it with her prosthetic arm.

“Don’t waste bullets, rookie.” Oriona flicked non-existent dust off her uniform. “This kind of trash isn’t even fit for cyberpsychotics.”

To reiterate, cyberpsychosis requires exceptional skills to enter; someone as desperate as this isn't worth the NCPD's special operations team's attention.

The gambler, who was being watched by Oriona and the newcomer, gradually became on the verge of collapse. Finally, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the man in the black trench coat who was slowly walking towards him.

The gambler raised his hand, as if to draw his gun.

next second.

"We're watching this place closely, so don't cause trouble."

A clean, decisive punch from the Animal Gang sent this crazed gambler into a deep sleep.

(End of this chapter)