'Here it is!'
Reo's pupils contracted, locking onto Hiori the instant his body shifted. Reo knew the ball was about to move. His body angled instinctively, lowering his center of gravity, already preparing to seal off the one threat that mattered most—Isagi's run.
Chris pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with him, muscles taut, stride matching his every step, refusing to let him slip even a fraction of space.
Reo had seen this coming. Ever since Hiori had been subbed on, this outcome was engraved in his mind. Isagi and Hiori—two players with vision that bent reality.
Two architects with eyes that could redraw the field.
Separate, they were dangerous.
Together, they were catastrophic.
A terrifyingly efficient combination.
Reo's feet shifted, backpedalling as his brain split across layers of calculation. One eye on Isagi and Chris crashing forward, the other keeping track of Hiori as he danced free past Nagi on the left wing.
And then, Kurona.
Reo's peripheral vision snagged him, cutting a lane to his left, with Chigiri still in recovery, just a few strides too late.
The most logical outcome—the safest pass—was to Kurona.
The move Hiori should make.
But then—
The sound tore through the air.
Hiori Yo struck the ball.
'Here it comes!'
Reo's instincts flared, muscles igniting as his attention snapped to the sphere. He braced to intercept, eyes locked on its spin, its curve.
But in that instant, he caught it—just a flicker—the look on Hiori's face.
Exhilaration.
A spark of joy.
Reckless, unrestrained joy.
And then the shock hit.
The ball wasn't angling toward Kurona at all.
It cut inward like a blade, slicing through the teeth of congestion, threading straight into the heart of chaos—zeroing in on the one man who thrived in it.
The ball was aimed at Isagi.
'A through ball? Here?'
Reo's chest tightened. His pulse spiked, a chill of urgency shooting down his spine. He was already there—standing in the corridor where the pass would fall, ready to shut it down. His eyes locked, his body angled perfectly. And yet, Isagi was charging forward like a predator unleashed, Chris Prince breathing down his neck, refusing to give him a single inch of freedom.
"Am I entertaining enough now? Huh, you bastard!?"
Chris bark with an intense look towards Isagi as he ran alongside him.
He had challenged Isagi, but Isagi had straight-up refused after just one duel.
That wasn't—couldn't be it.
He needed more of Isagi.
At first, he didn't think much of it, but as the match had progressed for the past 5 minutes, the Star Change System, whose time ended just a moment ago, means his stay on the field will be until the play stops.
He would lose his chance to have this duel, to settle the score with Isagi.
Isagi has become someone important to him.
A little more important than how he sees most of the competition on the World Stage.
And this play ending without his win wouldn't sit well with the World's No.2.
The space was collapsing, shrinking into a battlefield of raw will and split-second decisions.
'This is where you want it, right, Isagi?'
Hiori's thought pulsed in rhythm with his pounding heart.
His mind had painted scenarios with frightening clarity—one option was obvious: keep the momentum alive by sliding it cleanly to Kurona, who was sprinting into space on the far side.
Another path was to just wait a little longer, thread the ball past Reo's positioning, and give Isagi the safer window to slip behind him. Both were efficient and optimal.
But then—he saw it.
Isagi's run wasn't angled toward safety. His eyes had already cut through the storm, staring Reo dead in the face even before Hiori's pass left his foot.
That gaze told Hiori everything: Isagi wasn't chasing the "best" route even now.
He never was.
From the bench, Hiori had studied him. The same truth became clearer—Isagi rejected convention.
Where others sought efficiency, he sought liberation.
His football was raw, arrogant, unpredictable, and yet…it was beautiful.
This wasn't the first time Hiori had felt this pull. It began back in the U-20 match, when Isagi's brazen choices cracked the shell of logic Hiori had been trapped in. It resurfaced in training, when he tried desperately to understand, to align himself with this maddeningly unusual striker. And now, here on the pitch with him, it reached its peak.
The way Isagi moved, the way he forced open impossible doors and demanded the world to follow his path—it enthralled Hiori.
Hiori didn't fully understand why, but he didn't need to. All he knew was that no blueprint, no formula, no tidy diagram of plays could ever bring him this level of exhilaration.
A crooked smile stretched across Hiori's face as the realization hit.
What he wanted—what he craved—was to play side by side with this audacious scumbag.
And nothing else in the world could ever compare.
This guy sought audacity, the kind of impossible paths that forced him to claw through defenders and carve victory out of chaos. And Hiori…he felt nothing but joy in helping him achieve that.
That pass wasn't convenience.
It was a dare.
A side-quest thrown at Isagi before the main event of scoring, just to make the road bloodier, heavier, more thrilling. A ball delivered into a thicket of bodies, with Chris chained to his back and Reo in his path.
And as the ball sliced forward, threading into that merciless lane, Hiori felt his chest swell with exhilaration.
This was their football.
Isagi's expression mirrored Hiori's—alive—as he surged toward the descending ball. It curved inward, its arc narrowing into his path.
Reo had already lunged forward. Chris, towering at Isagi's back, pressed in with the brutal weight.
But Isagi didn't flinch.
Without wasting a breath, his own left palm shot up and pressed against Chris's chest. A shove—not to overpower, but to redirect. The contact jolted Chris backward just enough, halting the press, loosening the grip at his shoulder.
Isagi twisted that resistance into momentum. Using the recoil of the push, he launched himself upward, springing off his planted foot. Chris's fingers slipped from his shoulder as he rose into the ball's path.
Reo, reading the trap, skidded to a halt instead of charging in, his eyes narrowing. Ready to counter whatever insanity Isagi pulls out next.
In the air, Isagi's right leg whipped forward, his foot cutting toward the ball. Then, he angled his ankle, bending it just enough to curl the contact. The ball kissed the outside of his right foot—rolling, not straight, but snapping outward to the right in a sharp, defiant flick.
On the right flank, the ball dropped with pinpoint accuracy, right in the path of Kurona.
Kurona's first touch absorbed the ball into his stride without breaking rhythm.
The trio of Isagi-Hiori-Kurona were in total sync.
Kurona didn't even glance down. His entire being was tuned forward, his body leaning into acceleration.
The pressure was immediate.
Kunigami's heavy footsteps pounded the turf behind him, each one fueled by hunger, by the selfish instinct to rip the chance away for himself.
Right next to Kunigami, Chigiri was making his explosive sprint towards Kurona.
Kurona didn't flinch.
He pushed forward on the flank. The ball clung to his feet.
Kurona's eyes never left the path ahead. Every step screamed determination—to be Isagi's blade in motion.
Trying to get near the penalty box up front.
"Give it here..."
Kunigami's voice was a growl at his right shoulder, his footsteps slamming into the turf like war drums. His aura was suffocating.
On the opposite side, Chigiri streaked forward in a blur of red. His speed cut through the flank like a blade of wind. His eyes narrowing, ready to slice into Kurona's possession with one precise strike.
"…you braided shorty!"
Both voices, Kunigami's growl and Chigiri's snap, collided in Kurona's ears.
But he didn't falter.
Although he could feel their presence closing in from behind, he didn't let it affect him.
Kurona did not belong to Kunigami's greed, nor to Chigiri's pace.
He belonged to Isagi's plan.
"Can't do that..."
Kurona muttered under his breath, his tone low, resolute, even as both predators lunged. Their bodies crashed inward, seeking to strip him of the ball.
"...this one belongs to him."
Then—
"Stop! Chigiri!"
Reo's desperate yell cut through the chaos, his voice cracking with urgency. He had read it. But his warning came too late.
Because in that heartbeat, Kurona struck.
Both Chigiri and Kunigami lunged, but their prize was already gone. Kurona's heel slammed backward, a ruthless, cutting flick—sending the ball spinning away from their reach, ripping the ground from under their ambitions.
The move Reo had feared. The trap Chigiri had walked straight into.
They froze mid-tackle, momentum snapping against them like a cruel joke, as the ball soared away from the collision.
'You there, Egoist?'
Kurona's thought flickered as he whipped his head back. Kurona's eyes gleamed, a sharp light flickering within them as the ball spun free from his heel.
And there he was.
Isagi tore into the path of Kurona's pass, his upper body leaning forward to reach the ball.
But he wasn't alone.
On his shoulders clung two giants—Chris Prince and Agi—bearing down on him from either side. Their arms brushed against him, their chests colliding with his frame, their strength pressing into his body as they surged shoulder to shoulder with him. Every ounce of their elite physicality screamed to pin him down, to crush his momentum before he could reach the ball.
But Isagi wasn't one to yield.
His legs digging into the turf, bulldozing through the weight crushing him on both sides. He refused to stop—not when the ball was there, spinning perfectly into his line of sight.
His teeth clenched, and his body radiated the sheer stubborn will of a man who cannot be stopped.
Chris's eyes widened in disbelief.
Agi's jaw tightened.
Together—together—they should have stopped him. Yet the more they pressed, the more shocking the truth revealed itself: they could only drag at his shoulders, tug at his momentum, slow him by the barest fraction.
But—
They could not stop him.
Isagi's body powered forward, shrugging off their desperate resistance, their grasping fingers slipping further and further behind. Every heartbeat pulled him out of their reach.
His face twisted into a grin as he got free from the crushing pressure, but as the ball rolled nearer, gliding into the perfect pocket of space in the right midfield.
His eyes burned with light.
"Let's finish this, Bastards!!"
A roar ripped from Isagi's throat like a battle cry, shaking through the stadium air—A declaration.
And in that instant, it became a command.
The words ignited Bastard München like a spark. Every player surged forward at once, their bodies reacting to Isagi's call as if pulled by an invisible gravity. Until now, only Kurona and Hiori had been moving to his rhythm, moving as his extensions on the field. But now—now it wasn't just them.
The entire team moved.
Every step became a charge toward Manshine's box. Every breath became a weapon in Isagi's arsenal.
From the right wing, Kurona cut inward to carve open the line, to be a dagger at Isagi's side.
Kunigami mirrored him, drifting into the same lane—not to support, but to steal. His broad frame angled to block any clean pass to Kurona.
On the opposite wing, Hiori streaked forward with smooth, fluid steps, his vision already unraveling the lanes ahead. Grim also tore down beside him.
The effect was immediate.
Manshine's defense jolted in panic, their shape fracturing under the sudden wave rushing down upon them. Their heads whipped between threats—Kurona, Kunigami, Hiori, Grim.
The uncertainty of who will receive this pass froze them in place. Their legs wanted to move, but their minds stumbled, trapped in the maze Isagi had spun in a single roar.
In that moment, the field belonged to him.
Isagi slammed his left foot beside the ball, the vibrations kicking up dust from the turf. The goal box stretched to his left, with a twist of his frame, he wound his body like a coiled spring. His right leg carved a violent arc, his upper body snapping in sync as he rotated through the motion of a leftward strike.
WHACK!
The sound of impact cracked out as Isagi's foot met the ball.
It shot off his boot in a searing line, slicing through the air with the force of a cannon blast.
Chris had lunged, but Isagi's timing was faster. The ball was gone before his stride could cut across. His head whipped toward it anyway, eyes widening as the reality slammed into him.
There was no chance of recovering his position, no time to sprint back into defense. His face hardened, jaw clenching into something ugly—because what he saw ahead wasn't just bad. It was dangerous.
Especially with Bastard München's entire front line pouring forward.
The ball tore through the midfield like a bullet, launched from Isagi's strike zone on the right midfield.
For such a long-range delivery, the speed was shocking, its trajectory screaming with lethal intent.
Every eye in the stadium locked on the ball's flight, searching—who would it find?
The attackers answered with movement. One by one, Kurona, Kunigami, and Hiori began to angle their runs inward, swarming toward the path of the ball.
To the defenders, it was a nightmare: too many targets, too many possibilities. The Manshine back line stuttered, slowed by hesitation, robbed of that single precious second they needed to react.
And then—another figure cut through.
Not just joining the attack, but tearing into it. His off-the-ball movement was razor-sharp, threading through spaces with efficiency. Each step was deliberate, each angle perfect, his frame gliding into the direct path of the incoming ball.
"Mark him!!"
The shout rang out from Manshine's back line, desperate and panicked.
Because the one they saw streaking into position—commanding the trajectory of Isagi's pass—was none other than Kaiser.
However, before the ball could even arrive in Kaiser's zone, two presence had already invaded his path—sliding into his line of fire.
Nagi and Reo.
They were there in perfect synchronization, shoulder to shoulder.
Reo had been the first one to see it, his sharp mind flashing with alarm the moment Isagi moved to the right midfield to receive the pass from Kurona.
Reo had sprinted back with everything in him, his body language screaming urgency. Nagi had caught that urgency, read the tension in his boss's movement, and without hesitation, had chosen to trust it.
That trust had delivered him to this exact moment.
Together, they had formed the barricade Kaiser would least expect.
But it didn't stop with them.
Like a tide snapping back to the shore, the rest of Manshine's defense collapsed inward. The seven blue shirts on the pitch all moved in perfect instinct, as if drawn by the gravity of Kaiser's presence.
Their formation tightened around the box until it became suffocating—a cage designed not to contain just anyone, but to shackle him.
The inhuman accuracy of his strikes, the sheer reputation he carried—it had forced their hand. They gave him no room, no space, no single breath of freedom to unleash it.
By the time the ball was closing into his path, the trap had already closed. Seven shadows hunched forward, blocking every conceivable angle.
Reo and Nagi stood directly in his lane, eyes locked with him. The others plugged gaps, sealing corridors, cutting off any possible passing lanes.
Every possibility was crushed. Every path was closed.
This wasn't just marking a striker.
It was a total shutdown of Bastard Münchens' offense.
The ball, fired from Isagi's foot with all the promise of devastation, now looked wasted—useless on Kaiser.
By the time he gets possession of the ball.
There would be nothing left for him. No clean shot, no outlet pass, nothing but the suffocating weight of Manshine's defense closing tighter by the second.
'Dammit..! I'll have to force my way… make an opening…'
Kaiser's thoughts roared inside his skull, burning through every calculation, clawing for any sliver of space he could exploit.
'I just need a small space…'
His golden eyes flicked backward over his shoulder, toward the right, where the ball curved inward—its arc slicing elegantly through the air, descending towards his path.
His teeth gritted, jaw straining as the thought tore through him.
'C'mon… give me something! Anything!!'
But then, in that fleeting instant—time betrayed him.
Amidst the blur of movement, his vision snagged on something. Something that froze the firestorm of his thoughts and replaced it with a cold, stinging silence.
Isagi.
Standing further back in the midfield, the orchestrator of the chaos, eyes locked not on Kaiser, but on the very ball Kaiser was chasing.
Kaiser's world stuttered, caught between rage and realization. All noise dulled, the defenders pressing around him blurred into the background.
All that existed in his mind were two things: the spinning ball, and Isagi Yoichi's grin.
At the same time, Reo's gaze was stuck on Kaiser. From the moment Isagi's pass arced into that lane, his mind had already written the outcome—block Kaiser, crush the threat, and turn defense into a swift counter.
He was ready, assured in the certainty of his read.
But then—something shifted.
Reo caught it in the split of a second, a change in posture, in presence.
The desperation that had been boiling inside Kaiser a heartbeat ago seemed to warp into something else.
His aura radiated a certainty.
Reo's chest tightened.
'What—?'
He didn't let the thought finish. Doubt gnawed at the edges of his conviction, unraveling the clean solution he had carved in his head only moments before.
He moved.
A sudden burst of speed ripped him from position, abandoning the fortress he had set to hold against Kaiser's shot.
His instincts screamed at him, muscles acting faster than reason—because something felt wrong.
Terribly wrong.
Isagi passing to Kaiser had been shocking enough from the start.
But this obvious?
No.
That wasn't him.
Reo's chest tightened as a bad premonition pressed down, heavy and suffocating. He tried to deny it, tried to bury the absurd thought curling in the back of his mind.
But it wouldn't leave.
He remembered the moment—the tiny slip, when Isagi had glanced at Kaiser before even sprinting toward Kurona's pass. That was the clue Reo had used, the "mistake" that gave him the read, the reason he thought he had cracked Isagi's plan.
But—
What if it hadn't been a mistake at all?
What if it had been a glance placed there on purpose, bait dangling on a hook meant for him?
The possibility burned through his skull like fire.
No one plans this far. No one plays like this.
No one but—
His eyes widened, breath catching in his throat.
No one but him.
The absurd possibility felt real.
Too real.
And under its crushing weight, Reo's body abandoned logic. He lunged forward, throwing himself at the ball as it descended—desperate to smother the unknown that Isagi might have unleashed.
Behind him, Nagi's eyes widened.
"Reo..."
His voice broke in disbelief, watching his partner vacate the stronghold they had just built.
To Nagi, it made no sense.
Reo was the one who had unintentionally dragged him here, the one whose urgency pulled him into the perfect shield against Kaiser's strike.
And now, in the most crucial second, Reo abandoned it all.
Reo didn't look back.
The uncertainty was too much for him to handle.
He lunged toward the ball as it landed on the turf.
However, it didn't matter as his uncertainty became a fact.
The ball had a backspin.
The backspin clawed into the grass, tugging the ball backward.
It bounced—and rolled perfectly, devilishly—into Kaiser's path.
Reo's pupils shrank as he landed on the ground where the ball had just been a moment ago.
He was late.
And there, waiting, was Kaiser.
The ball bounced in front of him. His body slid into the stance so naturally, without any stutters or second doubts.
His golden hair catching the light, eyes gleaming wide, Kaiser looked… stunned.
Reo held his ground, refusing to be lured in again. He focused on the same single purpose—to block Kaiser's shot, even if it meant throwing himself directly in the ball's path. He would not be baited twice.
The ball, dragged backward by the viciousspin Isagi had laced into it, skidded to a perfect halt at the edge of Kaiser's range.
For a brief instant, Reo's heart sank.
The backspin that should have complicated the shot died away at the last second, settling the ball with uncanny precision right where Kaiser wanted it.
A showcase of just how precise Isagi's techniques were.
Then, Kaiser made his move.
His right leg swung in a fluid arc, but instead of striking with the inside of his foot, his boot curved outward.
Reo's eyes widened—he had already shifted his body to cover the inside strike. His weight betrayed him, dragging him the wrong way. He hadn't seen this coming.
The ball leapt off Kaiser's boot with a vicious whip, soaring toward the left side of the pitch. Its flight wasn't straight—it rose sharply, cutting through the air with a strange, unnerving spin.
'Bend!'
Kaiser commanded in his head, his eyes locked on the spiraling ball as it avoided the fortress which was made to him contain him.
He could feel the rotation biting into the air, twisting reality itself around its axis.
All it needed was time.
Just enough distance for the spin to take hold, for the shot to reach its critical point. Then, the bend would snap, dragging the ball back toward the goal in a curve no defender could predict, no keeper could prepare for.
It was the shot he had obsessed over, trained for, and failed to perfect under pressure. A technique too demanding to ever attempt in the chaos of a real match.
But now, standing in the glow of Isagi's pass—a pass that delivered every condition necessary, placing the ball at the exact spot, with the exact weight, and the exact pace—Kaiser felt it.
The impossible was possible.
His ultimate weapon.
Kaiser Impact— Magnus.
.
.
.
.
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[A/N]: We've officially hit Chapter 98 on Pa7re0n! If you're hungry for more content, come read ahead and join the community there as it helps me a lot.
Thank you for sticking with the story!