# Chapter 3: The Underground Arena
Two days had passed since Lin Chen's encounter with May and Peter Parker, and his situation with the loan sharks remained unchanged. The construction work continued to provide steady income—forty dollars a day—but it was nowhere near enough to satisfy "The Fish" Torrino's escalating demands. Worse, his attribute absorption from the construction workers had slowed to almost nothing. The system's limitation was becoming a real problem.
Lin Chen walked through the grimy streets of Hell's Kitchen after another long day of diminishing returns at the construction site. The neighborhood was notorious for its crime rate and underground activities—exactly the kind of place where someone with his enhanced abilities might find more lucrative opportunities.
It was then that a poster plastered on the brick wall of an old warehouse caught his attention. The paper was weathered and torn at the edges, but the bold text was still clearly readable:
UNDERGROUND FIGHTER ARENA
[Challenge the Fighter!
Survive 3 minutes = $5,000
Defeat the Fighter = $50,000
Tonight Only - Hell's Kitchen Basement
No Questions Asked - Cash Only]
Lin Chen stared at the poster, his enhanced mental processing quickly calculating the possibilities. Fifty thousand dollars would not only solve his immediate problem with the loan sharks, but it would give him enough breathing room to plan his next moves. And given his current physical capabilities, he was almost certainly stronger and faster than any ordinary street fighter.
The address led him to a nondescript door in an alley behind what appeared to be an abandoned auto repair shop. The sound of shouting voices and the smell of cigarette smoke and sweat drifted from somewhere below ground.
"Are you here for the fights?" A gravelly voice asked from the shadows.
Lin Chen turned to see a burly man in a stained tank top emerging from a side entrance. The man looked him up and down with obvious skepticism.
"Yeah," Lin Chen replied, pulling up his hoodie to partially obscure his face. "I want to sign up."
The man laughed, revealing several missing teeth. "Kid, this ain't some high school wrestling match. People get seriously hurt down there. Sometimes they don't walk out at all."
"I understand the risks."
Still chuckling, the man shrugged and gestured toward a narrow staircase leading down into darkness. "Your funeral, kid. Registration is downstairs."
The underground arena was exactly what Lin Chen had expected—a converted basement with concrete walls, harsh fluorescent lighting, and a large metal cage dominating the center of the room. Folding chairs and makeshift bleachers surrounded the fighting area, filled with a crowd that looked like they'd crawled out from under various rocks throughout the city.
The air was thick with cigarette smoke, cheap cologne, and the metallic scent of blood. Somewhere in the crowd, money was changing hands as bookmakers shouted odds and took bets on the ongoing fight.
Lin Chen made his way to a folding table where a heavyset woman with multiple facial piercings was handling registrations. She looked up from her clipboard with undisguised annoyance.
"What do you want, kid?"
"I want to sign up," Lin Chen said, his voice steady despite the chaos around them.
The woman looked him up and down, taking in his relatively slim build and youthful appearance. She shook her head dismissively. "Sorry, sweetie. We don't have a lightweight division here. This is serious business, not some after-school activity."
A man standing nearby overheard the conversation and burst out laughing. "Little guy, if I were you, I would immediately turn around and go home. You're gonna get yourself killed down here."
Several other spectators joined in the laughter, pointing at Lin Chen and making jokes about his chances against the arena's fighters.
"But I want to participate in the challenge," Lin Chen reiterated, his voice calm despite the mockery.
The registration woman studied his face, looking for any sign that he was joking or having second thoughts. When she saw nothing but determination, she sighed heavily.
"Little guy, are you absolutely sure you want to do this? Because once you sign up, there's no backing out. You either last three minutes, get knocked out, or..." She made a throat-cutting gesture.
"Yes, I'm sure."
"Alright, your funeral. What name do you want on the roster?"
Lin Chen thought quickly. Using his real name would be foolish—especially if things went badly and he needed to disappear afterward. "Um... Masked Face."
The woman scribbled the name on her clipboard and looked up with something that might have been pity. "God bless this kid, 'cause he's gonna need it."
As Lin Chen took his place in the makeshift waiting area for challengers, the sounds of violence echoed from the cage. The current fight was reaching its brutal conclusion as a muscular man with tribal tattoos delivered a devastating uppercut to his opponent's jaw.
"Ah, it hurts! My hand is broken, it's broken!" The defeated fighter's screams pierced the air as medical personnel—such as they were in this illegal operation—rushed to carry him out on a stretcher.
Lin Chen used his enhanced hearing to listen in on conversations around him, quickly piecing together the arena's system. The main attraction was a rotating cast of "house fighters"—skilled brawlers who were paid to take on all challengers. The current champion was someone called "Death Messenger," who had apparently been undefeated for the past six months.
As Lin Chen waited, he watched the subsequent fights with analytical eyes. His system provided a steady stream of attribute absorption as he observed the various fighters' techniques and physical capabilities:
**[DING! DETECTED: Combat Experience +0.02 from boxer's footwork]**
**[DING! DETECTED: Strength +0.008 tons from powerlifter's grappling technique]**
**[DING! DETECTED: Agility +0.03 from martial artist's evasion patterns]**
By the time his turn came, Lin Chen had absorbed enough additional capability to push his stats slightly higher:
[His Physical attributes, Pre-fight]
Strength: 0.393 tons, Physique: 4.1,
Agility: 3.62, Mental Power: 1.82
Special Abilities: Construction Knowledge (Intermediate), Combat Experience (Intermediate)**
More than four fighters had been carried out on stretchers during his wait. The crowd's bloodlust seemed to grow with each brutal defeat, their cheers becoming more savage as the violence escalated.
"Now we have the fifth opponent for Death Messenger tonight!" The announcer's voice boomed over the crowd through a crackling microphone. "Masked Face, where are you? Oh, my God, he looks so skinny! If Death Messenger hits him, will he be smashed to mud? May God bless him!"
The crowd's reaction was immediate and overwhelming:
"KILL!"
"KILL!"
"KILL HIM!"
The enthusiastic shouts resonated through the underground boxing ring like thunder. The primitive animal nature that lurked in the depths of human beings was on full display, civilized facades stripped away by the promise of violence and blood.
Lin Chen walked toward the cage amidst the crazy shouts, his enhanced senses taking in every detail of his surroundings. The metal bars were thick and rust-stained, the floor was concrete painted with what looked like permanent bloodstains, and the air inside the enclosure was stifling.
His opponent was already waiting in the opposite corner—a mountain of a man who stood nearly two meters tall. His steel-like muscles bulged with barely contained power, and his arms looked thicker than Lin Chen's thighs. This was truly a giant among men, someone who could probably break bones with his bare hands.
Lin Chen's system immediately provided a tactical assessment of his opponent:
[Name: Death Messenger]
├── Strength: 0.235 tons
├── Physique: 2.3
├── Agility: 1.3
├── Mental Power: 0.9
└── Abilities/Skills: Boxing Skills (Intermediate Level)
Despite the man's intimidating appearance, Lin Chen felt a surge of confidence. His own strength was nearly double that of his opponent, and his agility advantage was even more pronounced. The size difference was meaningless when you had systematic enhancement on your side.
"START!" The bell rang, and the crowd's roar reached deafening levels.
Death Messenger didn't waste time with posturing or trash talk. He immediately stepped forward, his massive frame moving with surprising speed as he launched a devastating right hook aimed directly at Lin Chen's head.
"Little brat, if you kneel down and beg for mercy, then help me clean this place afterward, I might be able to spare your life," he growled, pointing at his blood-stained boots with his free hand.
The crowd went wild at this display of dominance:
"DEATH MESSENGER!"
"CRUSH HIM!"
"MAKE HIM BLEED!"
Facing the frenzied audience and the approaching giant, Lin Chen appeared to freeze—a deer caught in headlights, overwhelmed by the situation and ready to accept his fate.
The surrounding audience screamed frantically, certain they were about to witness a massacre!
But appearances could be deceiving.
At the last possible moment, Lin Chen moved. His enhanced agility kicked in, allowing him to slip the devastating punch with fluid precision. Death Messenger's fist cut through empty air where Lin Chen's head had been just a fraction of a second earlier.
The crowd's cheers faltered into confused murmurs. That had looked too easy, too precise to be luck.
Death Messenger was genuinely surprised by the evasion, but he didn't hesitate. Professional fighters learned to adapt quickly, and he immediately followed up with a powerful kick aimed at Lin Chen's midsection.
What surprised the giant even more was Lin Chen's response. The younger man simply twisted slightly, his enhanced reflexes making the telegraphed attack seem sluggish and predictable. The kick missed by inches, causing Death Messenger to stumble slightly as he overextended.
As his opponent fought to regain his balance, Lin Chen's system provided another boost:
[DING! DETECTED: Strength +0.16 tons from observing professional fighting technique]
[DING! DETECTED: Agility +0.2 from analyzing combat movement patterns]
The crowd had gone mostly silent now, sensing that something was wrong with their expected massacre. Death Messenger was supposed to be dominating this scrawny challenger, not missing with basic attacks.
"What the hell?" Death Messenger muttered, his confidence beginning to waver as he reassessed his opponent.
Lin Chen didn't give him time to think. Moving with speed that seemed impossible for someone his size, he closed the distance between them and delivered a precise uppercut to Death Messenger's solar plexus.
The impact was devastating. Lin Chen's systematically enhanced strength, now approaching half a ton of lifting capacity, concentrated into a single punch that lifted the much larger man completely off his feet.
Death Messenger's eyes went wide with shock and pain as he felt ribs crack from the impact. He crashed to the concrete floor of the cage, gasping desperately for air that wouldn't come.
The arena fell completely silent. The crowd stared in disbelief as their undefeated champion writhed on the ground, clearly defeated by someone who looked like he should have been working at a coffee shop rather than fighting in underground tournaments.
"WINNER!" The announcer's voice cracked as he tried to process what had just happened. "MASKED FACE!"
The silence stretched for several more seconds before exploding into chaos. Half the crowd was cheering for the unexpected upset, while the other half was screaming about fixed fights and demanding their money back.
Medical personnel rushed into the cage to attend to Death Messenger, who was still struggling to breathe through what appeared to be several broken ribs. They loaded him onto a stretcher with the same efficiency they'd shown for his previous victims.
Lin Chen stood in the center of the cage, barely breathing hard from the brief encounter. His system had absorbed additional attributes even during the short fight, and he could feel the improvements settling into his body.
The registration woman approached him with a metal briefcase, her expression mixing disbelief with grudging respect.
"Well, I'll be damned," she said, opening the case to reveal neat stacks of cash. "Fifty thousand dollars, as promised. Kid, I don't know where you learned to fight like that, but you just made yourself a lot of enemies and probably a few friends."
Lin Chen took the money without comment, quickly counting the bills before closing the briefcase. Fifty thousand dollars—more money than he'd ever seen in one place.
But as he prepared to leave the arena, his mind was already working on his next problem. The loan sharks had claimed he owed them fifteen thousand dollars after three years of payments on what had originally been a five-thousand-dollar loan. Even after paying back over five thousand dollars, they insisted the debt had grown due to compound interest and various fees.
Lin Chen had no intention of continuing this cycle of exploitation. He'd initially planned to pay them something to buy time, but now that he had real money and real power, a different solution suggested itself.
The loan sharks had taught him an important lesson about predators: they only respected strength. It was time to turn that lesson back on them.
As Lin Chen left the underground arena with his winnings, he was already planning his next moves. That guy "The Fish" Torrino had given him one week to come up with money. That deadline was tomorrow.
But instead of arriving as a desperate victim begging for more time, Lin Chen would be coming as someone who had transcended their ability to intimidate or control.
The loan sharks were about to learn that their latest victim had evolved into something far more dangerous than they could imagine.
[HOST STATUS]
├── Strength: 0.553 tons
├── Physique: 4.3
├── Agility: 3.82
├── Mental Power: 1.89
└── Special Abilities: Construction Knowledge (Intermediate), Combat Experience (Advanced)
Tomorrow would mark the end of Lin Chen's time as prey. The predators were about to discover what it felt like to be hunted.