Chapter 0:

The Punch that Nobody Believed

Lost Age World : I'm a Boxer

Volume 0

Chapter 0 : The Punch That Nobody believed

Two hundred people came to watch Venom Fang win.

Tanaka Riku was the only one who didn't know he was supposed to lose.

The crowd noise was a living thing. It vibrated through the cheap folding chair and up his spine as he stared at the *Lost Age*character select screen

"Dude, you actually signed up for the Kanto Open?" His friend's voice crackled through his earpiece from somewhere in the front row. "Venom Fang's ace is in your bracket, you know that?"

Tanaka smiled and locked in his pick.

The Boxer.

A close-range brawler with no flashy combos, no screen-filling ultimate, no ranged poke. Just two pixelated boxing gloves and a single devastating skill called *Power Strike*. One massive punch on a ten-second cooldown. The kind of character tier lists ranked dead last with a sad face emoji next to his name.

Lowest win rate in the game.

Lowest pick rate too.

Murmurs rippled outward from the front rows. On the massive overhead screen, his loadout appeared for everyone to see:

- *Muay Thai Headband* _(Helmet Slot)_: Grants the skill *3K* — two brutal knees followed by a ground slam.

- *Plain Boxing Shorts* _(Armor Slot)_: Carries the skill *Uppercut*, a lightning-fast rising blow.

- *Trinket*: The most absurd item in the entire game — a tiny sports drink bottle labeled *Running Man*, with the skill *More*, which simply reset the cooldown of his last-used skill.

No meta armor. No S-tier trinket. Just a boxer and his water bottle.

His first-round opponent stepped up. A Lancer main from Team Venom Fang. Pure reach, relentless zone control. The perfect counter to everything Tanaka's brawler wanted to do.

The match began.

For fifteen straight seconds, Tanaka didn't attack. He weaved. His boxer slipped between lance thrusts like a man dodging raindrops. Three years and four thousand hours had carved the timing into his bones, distilled into pure evasion.

The Lancer's player gritted his teeth. This wasn't just dodging. This was taunting.

One wrong sidestep and half his health bar would've disappeared.

Then the gap appeared.

Tanaka dashed in. *Uppercut* connected. The Lancer staggered. Knee, knee, slam. *3K* landed clean. Before his opponent could recover, Tanaka popped the trinket. *More* reset *3K* instantly. Knee, knee, slam again. The Lancer's health bar evaporated.

*Perfect victory.*

Silence. Then a confused, almost offended wave of applause.

Tanaka pulled off his headset and exhaled. His hands were trembling, but not from nerves. Something deeper. Joy, maybe. The pure, stupid joy of making the character you love work when nobody believed it could.

He won the second match. Then the third. Each time the crowd grew louder, their disbelief fermenting into something like awe. By the semifinals, people were standing. A boxer main — a *boxer main* — in the top four of a sanctioned tournament. It didn't happen. It couldn't happen.

But it did.

During the break before the finals, Tanaka retreated to the rest area behind the stage. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. His mouth was dry. His pulse hammered. Someone had left a row of energy drinks on the table with a small printed sign: "Compliments of Venom Fang. Good luck, competitors."

He grabbed one without thinking, cracked it open, and drank half in three gulps.

The taste hit him. Metallic. Bitter beneath the artificial sweetness.

Tanaka set the can down and frowned. Then something lurched inside his chest. Not anxiety, not excitement, but a wrongness so fundamental it felt like his ribs were collapsing. He coughed once. A bright red splash of blood hit the white tabletop.

"What...?"

His knees buckled. He caught himself on the table's edge, staring at the crimson splatter, then at the energy drink, then at the Venom Fang logo printed neatly on the label. His vision tunneled. His thoughts came slow and strange, like trying to think underwater.

He managed, voice fraying, "Just... for a game?"

The floor rushed up to meet him. He heard shouting somewhere far away, someone screaming for an ambulance, the distant roar of a crowd still chanting for a finals match that would never happen. The fluorescent light above him became a white point, then a line, then nothing at all.

Tanaka Riku died on a concrete floor behind a gaming stage at twenty-two years old.

And then he opened his eyes.

Sunlight hit the red leather gloves first.

Not fluorescent light. Real sunlight. Golden, almost aggressive, pouring through wide wooden shutters.

The air smelled like smoke and roasting meat and something floral he couldn't name. He was lying on a straw mattress in a small room with stone walls, and every single part of his body ached like he'd been reassembled slightly wrong.

He lifted his hands. All he saw was red leather.

Boxing gloves. Red leather, laced tight around his wrists, exactly as they appeared on screen down to the scuffed knuckles and faded stitching. He flexed his fingers inside them and felt something pulse. A warmth traveled up his forearms and settled in his chest like a second heartbeat. A name rose with it.

*Power Strike* Ten seconds. He didn't know how he knew. He just did.

The door creaked open. A young woman with auburn hair and a leather apron peered in, holding a wooden ladle like she was prepared to use it as a weapon.

"Oh, you're awake," she said, her eyes widening. "You've been out for two days. Fell right out of the sky into my cabbage cart." She paused, studying him. "Tournament's in three weeks, you know. The Duke of Ashenmere just wagered the entire eastern province. Everyone's preparing." Her gaze dropped to his gloves, and her expression shifted to something between pity and concern. "Are you... a boxer?"

Tanaka looked at the gloves. He looked at the stone walls, the impossible sunlight, the world that smelled and breathed and existed in a way no game ever could.

He was inside *Lost Age*

And somehow, impossibly, he had been given a second life.

"Yeah," he said quietly, curling his fists inside the gloves. "I'm a boxer."

***--

=== WILD LOADOUT ===

RIKU - "THE BOXER" MAIN [LOST AGE: RANKED]

Server: Global | Rank: Top 100 | Class Rank: #1 Boxer

Playtime: 8,760 Hours | Win Rate: 89% | Build: Off-Meta Handicap

Character Design: Short black hair, red eyes, serious glare to camera

Gear Visual: Red boxing gloves, red-white-black boxer shorts, white-red shoes

Weapon: Boxing Gloves - Common Tier [Birth Weapon]

└ _Power Strike_ | 10s CD | +250% DMG | Single-hit finisher