Brazil: Criminal Empire - Chapter 140: A Serious Challenge (Patreon)

Rock casually reached into the drawing box held by one of the staff members and pulled out a ball.

Number 3.

That meant he would be the second fighter to enter the ring.

He would face whoever won the opening match of the Demon King Arena Challenge.

"That's pretty early in the lineup. If you can finish your fights quickly, you'll save a lot of stamina..."

As soon as Ezio saw Rock's position, he began explaining the best approach to the challenge.

Generally, the later a fighter entered, the better.

By that point, whoever had remained in the ring would already have burned through some of his stamina.

Going in fresh against an exhausted opponent naturally gave the newcomer a much better chance of winning.

For anyone entering early, however, the best strategy was to end each fight as quickly as possible.

Finishing an opponent in overwhelming fashion also created a psychological advantage. The longer the winning streak continued, the more pressure the next fighter would feel before even stepping into the cage.

That confidence also made it easier to fight freely and execute techniques without hesitation.

In underground fighting, even the smallest detail could decide whether someone lived or died.

Drawing the No. 3 position gave Rock almost no advantage.

But if he could crush his opponents quickly enough, every consecutive victory would add to the pressure on whoever came next.

Once he had completed five fights, he could stop whenever he wanted.

There had once been a fighter who reached eight consecutive victories.

Unless he had been determined to chase the prestige of ten straight wins, he could have walked away after the eighth fight with a huge payout.

By the time he had passed his sixth opponent, the fighters coming after him had already started hesitating under the pressure of his streak.

By the ninth fight, if exhaustion hadn't caused him to make a mistake that his opponent seized upon, his record might have gone even higher.

Christina watched as Tarcísio wrapped Rock's wrists.

That strange feeling surfaced again.

At this point, she wasn't even sure whether she wanted Rock to win or lose.

Ezio was both nervous and excited.

He had a feeling Rock might set a new record tonight, but he was equally worried that something unexpected could happen along the way.

If Rock won more than three fights in a row, the Gracie family would essentially recover the money he had taken from them.

Every victory after that would mean another substantial profit.

With that much money at stake, whatever Rock had done to the Gracie family before no longer seemed important.

That was also one of the main reasons Julio had gritted his teeth and sent Christina over personally.

The final 3Vs3 match was won by a group of fighters who looked almost like triplets.

Two members of the losing team appeared to have died on the spot.

The third was carried away on a stretcher, barely alive.

After one bloody fight after another, the entire arena had descended into frenzy.

The earlier matches had at least paired fighters of roughly similar size.

The Demon King Arena Challenge had no such restriction.

No rules. No weight classes. No requirements.

The only condition for victory was that the opponent completely lose the ability to continue.

You might see two massive heavyweights tearing into each other.

Or you might see a 45-kilogram fighter facing a 136-kilogram monster.

Since the order of entry was decided by random draw, the winner stayed in the cage while each subsequent fighter entered according to his number.

That made it almost impossible to predict who would ultimately face whom.

And that uncertainty was exactly what made the dark web betting market so volatile.

Rock's profile had already been posted on the dark web and displayed in the betting stream.

When Ezio uploaded his information back at the Gracie family estate, Rock hadn't yet prepared his hood.

So his promotional photo only showed his heavily muscled back.

The only obvious detail was that he was an extremely well-built man.

His fight record, however, stood at zero wins and zero losses.

As far as the underground fighting scene was concerned, he was a complete newcomer.

Experience showed that newcomers like him weren't necessarily weak.

Some were extremely capable.

The problem was that many underestimated just how brutal underground fighting could be.

A large number were eliminated in their very first match.

Most of them never stepped into another ring again.

Before long, the profiles of Fighters No. 1 and No. 2 appeared on the television.

No. 1 was a huge white man covered from head to toe in tattoos.

His nickname was "Armored Car."

No. 2 was a Black man every bit as massive.

He had almost no tattoos, but the hard, gleaming muscles beneath his skin made it obvious that he was dangerous.

His nickname was "Black Tiger."

Both men stood over 1.9 meters tall and weighed more than 100 kilograms.

The very first fight of the Demon King Arena Challenge would be a clash between two giants.

Ezio's expression tightened as soon as he saw their profiles.

These were exactly the kind of opponents the Gracie family had hoped Rock wouldn't encounter.

Rock himself weighed more than 90 kilograms.

But against men this large, the extra ten or more kilograms of body mass could become a serious obstacle in a fight.

Ezio couldn't help glancing toward Rock in front of the television.

Even with the hood covering his face, his exposed eyes remained completely calm.

Then Ezio glanced toward Christina.

The beautiful young woman known as the Gracie family's "Red Rose" was staring wide-eyed at the screen.

Growing up in a fighting family, Christina understood enough about fighter statistics to know what those numbers meant.

Whether No. 1 or No. 2 won, Rock would be facing an extremely difficult opponent next.

Would his niece really be free after the next fight?

Ezio found himself remembering what Rock had said to Christina earlier.

He still found it strange.

Rock had told her that if he died, she would be free.

And despite having Christina brought directly to him, he hadn't seemed eager to do anything with her before the fight.

If that was the case, what had been the point of the Gracie family forcing Christina to come in the first place?

Ezio knew Christina had already begun to resent Julio and the Gracie family for what they had done.

But neither Julio nor the family cared very much about that.

They had provided Christina and the other young women in the family with extremely comfortable lives.

When the family needed something from them in return, they were expected to contribute.

In their eyes, that was simply part of maintaining the family's influence and ensuring its continued growth.

If any of the girls tried to resist because they believed the family favored them too much to act against them, there was a simple solution.

Cut off their financial support.

Without the family's money and protection, they would quickly learn how little influence they actually had on their own.

If Rock failed to walk out of the cage tonight, Christina would simply be taken back by the family and kept as leverage for some future situation.

And Rock's gang wouldn't escape consequences either.

The Gracie family would retaliate.

At that point, recovering what they had lost would only be the beginning.

They might even take advantage of the situation to seize control of a genuine criminal force for themselves.

Meanwhile, inside the octagon, the announcer introduced both fighters and their records in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.

Then the bell rang.

The two giants charged straight into each other.