Harem Quest: From Trash to King-Chapter 97: Our Executives Won.

The fight seemed to go in Leon’s favor for a while. He cornered Sam, put in heavy punches, kept a tempo that made Sam’s attempts clumsy. Sam lunged for grips and came up empty more than once. Leon taunted with light jabs and lefts that landed just enough to sting without letting Sam find his hold.

"Come on, come on," Arthur muttered from the side, watching more than fighting for the moment. "Give him a real go."

Sam’s hands worked like traps, his fingers trying to find fabric, skin, belt. He smelled of adrenaline and a cheap cologne. The fight was getting ugly for him; every missed grab was a small cut of confidence. The crowd’s voices rose and fell with every swing.

Then Sam did something that only made sense when you were desperate. He threw dust into Leon’s eyes—fine grit that painted the air and stole vision. It was a small, rotten trick, but effective.

Leon staggered, blinking, and Sam seized the chance. He lunged, and with a quick, practiced movement he locked Leon’s arm and spun, a 360-degree suplex that slammed Leon to the ground with a violent poetry.

Sam rolled and grinned. "Gotcha, bug," he said, triumphant, voice rough but proud as he wiped his palm on his pants like the move was the only thing that mattered. He stood as if he’d already won.

Then Leon spat. The move didn’t land hard, but it was the kind of spit you expect from someone who had been underestimated. "Yo, bitch. I’m finally serious now."

Leon got up and something in his posture changed. He stopped making jokes. His eyes went hard the way they do when a man decides the limit has been reached. It was like flipping a switch. He moved with a new purpose, no more dancing or baiting. He loaded his shoulders, tightened his core, and then hit.

What followed was a storm. Leon’s combos came out like a metronome that had suddenly speeded up. He moved his feet, pivoted, and delivered tight, powerful strikes that smashed through Sam’s attempts at grips.

Sam tried to counter, tried to use judo to redirect, but Leon’s punches were heavy and constant. For a minute it felt like Leon had folded the space around Sam into a trap.

Fifty hits in a single minute — they looked like a blur: hooks, uppercuts, body shots, quick seismic punches that kept Sam from breathing. Sam’s knees buckled. His arms went slack, the judo forgotten as each hit demanded more and more. Finally he crumpled, not dramatic, just a body conceding to muscle and will. Unconsciousness took him gentle and complete.

Maya’s shout cut the air like lightning. "OUR EXECUTIVES ARTHUR AND LEON HAVE WON THE FIGHT AGAINST SAM AND KAI! THE LEFT AND RIGHT HANDS ARE FINALLY DOWN!"

The room exploded in noise, some cheers, some stunned silence, all braided together. People who had been holding their breath found it at once. Aiden whooped somewhere, Daniel laughed, and even Arthur let a small smile breathe out of him like someone admitting he was human.

Leon stood over Sam for a moment, breathing hard, chest rising and falling with the aftershocks of effort. Blood and dust and spit marked his face like badges. He wiped dust off his clothes with the casual air of a man who’d done this before and knew how it would feel.

Kai groaned as he tried to lift his head. He met Arthur’s eyes again, not with anger now but with a strange, tired respect. Both men were bruised—Arthur’s cheek cut, Kai’s ribs raw—but neither looked like they would regret the damage.

Around them, the team regrouped. Ryan leaned against a pillar, palm pressed to his side where the pills had worn off and real blood and sweat took over. He watched his friends with a kind of quiet pride that wasn’t flashy.

He had been the engine in his own way, but this was about more than one person. This was about how they moved as a unit when it mattered.

Maya was laughing now, half-cried, half-hysteric, the kind of noise that comes from not knowing whether to feel relief or fear. "They did it. They really did it."

Aiden checked Sam for a pulse with quick, professional hands even as he muttered complaints about the mess. Daniel flopped down near the crates and started narrating the fight like a commentator who had found his calling. Leon clapped Arthur on the back once, a solid, uncomplicated contact that said more than words.

Arthur looked at his teammates, at the men he’d just beaten and the men who had stood up beside him. He thought of the gym duel that had never ended, of training nights and the small debts you build with other people by showing up when the fight is ugly.

His unreadable face softened, not into openness but into the quiet of someone who knew the future would ask for more and who felt ready to meet it.

Kai pushed himself up slowly. He wiped blood from his mouth and offered Arthur a small nod, not an apology, not a peace, just an acknowledgment. It was honest in the way a storm is honest: it hurts, it ends, and you count the cost.

Maya’s voice came again, softer now, "We’re not done. But this helps. A lot."

"You gonna be okay?" Leon asked Arthur, his tone less casual than usual.

Arthur shrugged, the motion simple. "Yeah. I’m fine." He looked at Kai, at Sam, at the room full of people who had just been tested. "We did what we had to."

The taste of victory was not sweet. It was metallic and warm, like the copper tang of blood under the tongue. It was relief, deep and slow, the kind that comes from surviving something that could have killed you. They had won a fight that mattered. They had shown the West High crew that their right and left hands could be cut off and the body still stand.

Outside, sirens might come, or reinforcements, or silence. Inside, they had a moment to breathe and to tally the cost. Leon helped Sam into a sitting position so medics could check him later.

Kai was escorted back to his group, not as a defeated king but as a man down for now. Arthur’s hands were still shaking a little, the old tremor from pushing himself past the line where fear lives.

Ryan stepped forward and put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. It was steady and small, and Arthur let it be. They all stood in the aftermath like people who had walked out of a storm and were learning how to live with the memory of thunder.

Maya’s shout had become their chorus: not of triumph alone, but of a group that had found a way through. They had made a dent in the West High crew’s plan. They had proven something to themselves. For now, that was enough.

Arthur lifted his chin and looked at Kai one last time as the other retreated. There was a plan forming behind that unreadable face — not fully formed, but present, humming like a low engine.

He turned back to his team and let the smallest smile cross his lips. It was not a celebration. It was an agreement: we keep going. We finish what we started.

Around them, the room smelled of sweat, blood, and dust, but also of something warmer: the tight, rough scent of people who had chosen each other when things got ugly.

They had fallen into the kind of bond that you earn in corners like this. It would hold them, or fail them, but it was real now.

Maya leaned in and shouted again, quieter this time but with fire, "Everyone okay? Check yourselves."

They checked. They counted. They tended wounds. They said stupid jokes and mean things to make the fear go away. Each small human thing put a stitch in the raw place the fight had left.

By the time they were done, the room looked like the map of a battle — bruises and bent furniture and the soft, slow breathing of men who’d pushed themselves to the edge and come back.

They had won the night, not because it was pretty, but because they had outrun the alternative. They were bruised. They were tired. They were together. That was enough.