This time was entirely different from when she had blocked a blow with her forearm. Rhea's shoulder drove straight into Boca's abdomen with terrifying kinetic force. Even a bruiser of his sheer physical mass absorbed a brutal shock to his internal organs.
Yet his resilience was absurd. Gritting his teeth against the sudden wave of nausea, Boca ignored the trauma, lunged forward with his long arms, and clamped his hands around Rhea's thigh.
With a roar, he heaved upward, using brute leverage to rob her of her center of gravity and send her crashing hard onto the canvas.
"Die!"
Boca bellowed, interlocking his thick arms to form a blunt-force club, bringing his elbows down like a pile driver straight toward Rhea's spine.
If that blow landed square, even a body conditioned by years of grueling athletic training would suffer a catastrophic fracture.
At the razor-thin margin of safety, Rhea's instincts took over.
Before the iron blow could connect, she whipped her torso sideways, executing a fluid, desperate roll that narrowly dodged the lethal strike. The heavy elbows smashed into the empty mat, splintering the reinforced wood beneath.
Scrambling back to her feet, Rhea planted a foot on the top turnbuckle, intending to punish his overextension.
Because of her superior agility and the lingering damage to his abdomen, Boca struggled to track her speed. She launched herself off the ropes, raining a flurry of strikes down upon him. Yet, due to the massive disparity in their raw weight classes, her initial attempts to pin him failed; Boca's brute strength simply shrugged off her initial locks.
The succession of punishing hits triggered a feral rage in the massive brawler. Catching her mid-stride, he hoisted her clear off the canvas, gripped her ankle, and slammed her into the floor with the violent, looping motion of a child throwing a ragdoll.
BOOM!
The impact reverberated through the mat, bouncing her frame twice off the reinforced, shock-absorbing floor.
Without those specialized mats, that single impact would have shattered her skull into paste. Even with the padding, Rhea felt the breath explode from her lungs. A blinding wave of agony shot up her spine, leaving her limbs feeling leaden and unresponsive as Boca's heavy hand locked like a vise around her ankle.
Red-eyed and frothing at the mouth, Boca loomed over her. With a guttural roar, he hauled her upward, hoisted her across his massive shoulders, and locked her into a vicious, back-breaking torture rack.
He hooked one hand around her thigh, clamped his other forearm beneath her chin, and forced her spine backward against the curve of his neck.
"Drink!"
As Boca's arms strained under maximum tension, Rhea's spine began to arc backward past its natural physiological limit. If she didn't tap out immediately, he was going to snap her in half right there on national television.
The visceral horror of the hold sent a shockwave of adrenaline through the packed arena. Many female spectators in the front rows instinctively covered their faces, while the male gamblers roared with savage delight, their bloodlust stoked by the raw exhibition of violence.
The deafening applause only spurred Boca further. A twisted, sadistic grin split his masked face as he continued to wrench his arms backward.
In the front-row VIP seats, Yamato grabbed Ornn's sleeve, her knuckles turning white. "Ornn! Is Rhea going to be alright? She needs to tap out—why isn't she tapping out?!"
"Watch," Ornn murmured, his eyes locked onto the ring. His right hand drifted naturally toward his waist, resting near the hilt of the forged weapon transformed from the King of Beasts. If Rhea failed to break the hold, he was prepared to leap into the ring the moment the bell rang and bind the Lion King's regenerative properties to her body.
Up in the second-floor luxury box, "Junkrat" Hammy stared at the unfolding carnage with a cold sweat breaking out across his neck.
That's not what we rehearsed, Hammy thought, panic rising in his chest. I didn't pay him to cripple her! And where the hell is the referee?!
Hammy's confusion mirrored Rhea's own internal realization.
When Boca had first locked her in, Rhea hadn't panicked. She had assumed this was simply part of the agreed choreography—she would endure a brief display of dominance before the referee stepped in to signal the end of the round, allowing her to gracefully take the predetermined loss.
Why isn't the referee stepping in?
Under normal underground wrestling protocol, when a competitor was trapped in an indefensible submission hold and unresponsive, the official was supposed to immediately step in to check consciousness and count the seconds.
Yet the referee stood frozen near the corner post like a statue carved into the canvas, completely ignoring her plight.
This isn't the script!
The realization hit her like a bucket of ice water. There was no safety net. If she maintained her passive mindset to preserve a fake narrative, she was going to die in this ring.
The searing pain in her spine cleared away the last dregs of hesitation. Rhea's teeth bared in a fierce snarl.
No more games.
With every ounce of remaining strength, she wrenched her arms upward, aligning her elbow with robotic precision, and slammed it down with a thunderous blow against Boca's exposed jaw.
CRACK!
The sickening sound of fracturing bone echoed cleanly across the silent gaps in the crowd.
Boca shrieked, a mixture of blood and shattered teeth spraying across the mat as a coppery stench filled the air.
"Bitch! I'll break you into pieces!"
Boca's face twisted into an unrecognizable mask of rage. He refused to release the hold, pouring every fiber of his remaining strength into snapping her spine once and for all.
Looking down at the frenzied, unhinged brute beneath her, Rhea understood the grim truth: the match had been hijacked. There was no fake ending left—only survival.
Shifting her focus, she gathered her remaining explosive power into her free leg.
With a hoarse shout, she kicked upward, driving her heel violently into Boca's back while simultaneously driving her elbow downward for a second time.
The combined forward-and-back leverage shattered Boca's center of gravity. His massive frame buckled, toppling forward onto the mat.
Yet Rhea paid a heavy price for the counter. Using her leg as a fulcrum to trip him meant taking the brunt of his collapsing weight directly across her shin.
As a veteran grappler, she instantly recognized the diagnostic sensation: her tibia had fractured under the pressure.
She didn't have the luxury of screaming.
Gritting her teeth until her gums bled, she wrestled her crushed calf free from beneath his bulk and hoisted herself up on a shaking, unstable leg.
If they want a real fight, she thought, her eyes flashing with cold, hard fury, I'll give them a massacre.
She hooked one of Boca's arms between her thighs, locked her hands around his opposite shoulder, and channeled every last drop of her remaining stamina. With a primal roar, she hauled the massive brawler bodily into the air, flipped him over with staggering velocity, and slammed him spine-first into the canvas.
Before he could recover, she dropped her full weight onto his chest, pinning his throat with one forearm while aggressively folding his leg back toward his face in a brutal, bone-crushing stretch.
Her signature finishing hold—the Torrent Bomb—was locked in.
---
Advance chapters on- p@treon . com/ Snooze_01
use 'a' instead of @
Starts at minimum of 5$.
Enjoy.
---