Cyberpunk: Ultimate Cyborg System-Chapter 622: A Lucky Guy.

Sweat trickled down the pale white skin of his forehead, moving past his brow and down into his eye. In that moment, Oliver wanted nothing more than to blink and clear his blurry vision, but refused to do so, preventing his eyelids from coming down.

Though the blurriness, he saw a green spot zooming at him with incredible speed and quickly tilted his head, barely evading it. His newly acquired experience told him that more would follow, so he couldn’t afford to pay any mind to the faint itch on his cheek.

As he did his best to dodge and evade, the blonde guy could only wonder how he ended up in this situation and how stupid he was for getting excited at the beginning.

In the Red Oni’s underground floor, Oliver was trapped in a cage with his boss. The Cyberpunk had offered to teach him some moves, and just like a complete buffoon, he agreed with a wide grin on his face.

"You’re slowing down!" His boss said. "Don’t focus on just the hands!"

The next thing he knew, the world spun, and he almost fell on his side. Quick reaction allowed him to catch himself with his hands, sparing himself some pain, but he had to quickly roll away before a bare alloy foot almost stumped him. Sadly, he failed to evade the kick that followed, and his guts were almost squeezed out of him like ketchup from a plastic bottle.

"Oof..." watching everything from outside the cage, Riot’s face scrunched up as if he felt the pain himself.

"... Let’s take a short break."

The boss made his decision after noticing that his blond underling couldn’t push himself up anymore. The relief robbed Oliver of what little strength he was trying to muster, and he collapsed on the floor of the arena, not just from exhaustion, but also from fear of coming so close to having the beating of his life.

By the time he recovered enough to move, the idea of staying on his back and pretending to still be exhausted sounded quite appealing.

"Damn it..."

The click and whisper sent shivers down Oliver’s back, and when he heard the faint sound of shifting clothes, he realized that his fate had been sealed.

"Get up." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

Complaining wasn’t an option, and so he pushed himself up, taking a fighting stance. In the couple of months since he joined Inferno, Oliver learned that their boss can be both very chill and really terrifying at the same time. He couldn’t tell which side he was dealing with right now, but one thing was for sure—his boss was truly angry for some reason.

"Ready?"

Before he could offer a reply, the sparing match began. Oliver barely evaded the fist shot at his face, then quickly shifted his body, evading the knee thrust up at his stomach. He quickly lowered his head to evade a hook.

"You aren’t just torturing the kid for the sake of it, are you?"

Riot’s question crossed Oliver’s mind before, but he knew his boss wouldn’t do something like that. His Level 4 boss wouldn’t use his shiny bionic limbs to take his anger out on a poor Basic human, right?

The lack of reply alone made it seem like that was indeed the case, and the increased intensity of attacks made things worse. His boss was torturing him, purposely holding back to prolong his suffering. He shouldn’t have accepted the offer. What was he even supposed to learn from continuously getting beaten up?

"Alright, let’s end it here for today."

It took Oliver a moment to catch that last part, and because of that, his mind kept looking for the direction from which the next attack would come. When he finally looked at his boss, he found him frowning with his arms crossed.

"Have you had any training before?"

The question felt odd until he understood where it came from.

"Well, I wouldn’t call it training," Oliver replied. "I was in plenty of fights when I was living back in white hill, so..."

The truth was that he started a lot of those fights himself, hoping to test moves he learned from the movies he watched, but that was way too embarrassing to admit, even for him.

"And you’re really fit, too."

"I spend at least four hours in the gym every day,"

Though his chances of meeting an old master who would train him were next to none, Oliver still chose to build his body just in case a miracle happened. That way, he would be able to skip the tiresome first stages of the training montage and get straight to learning cool moves.

The boss continued to stare at him for a while, still wearing the same frown. Oliver was starting to feel uncomfortable, and he feared that he might be forced to go through another sparring match.

"What do you think?"

The question wasn’t directed at him, but at Riot, who was still watching from outside the arena.

"You’ve got to be kidding me," The big guy pressed his lips into a straight line. "I already told you it takes way too long."

"He’s already in good shape, and he has good reflexes." The boss relaxed his expression as he turned to look at him, and somehow that caused Oliver to shiver. "He would pick it up quickly."

"You can’t be serious..."

Riot’s annoyed comment only made things worse, but Oliver couldn’t bring himself to complain. The excitement he got from finally getting the chance to learn from a master -even if he wasn’t an old one- died quicker than a street rat leaping off one of the megacomplexes.

Once again, he found himself asking the question of what he was supposed to learn from the short sparring sessions they had just had. All he did was survive, and if he had gained anything, it would be the bruises that were bound to form from the attacks he couldn’t dodge.

"Well, aren’t you a lucky guy?" Seeing the sinister smile forming on his boss’s face, Oliver felt another chill roll over his body. "Forget movies. You will be doing all the fighting for real."

What in the world did he get himself into?