Kuroko's Basketball template: the king of slacking off, Shohoku's strongest sixth man.

Ayako slammed the magazine against the wall.

Pointing to the prominent, bolded headline above, his voice rose in anger.

"Look at what their coach said!"

"Shohoku is nothing but a bunch of lucky rabble; it's a miracle they even made it to the quarterfinals."

Ayako muttered through gritted teeth.

"Their redhead in the paint is just a clown who can only jump around."

"Number 11 is just a lone wolf who doesn't know how to work as a team."

"As for that number 16 who's been hyped up to the skies, he's nothing but a fake, overhyped by the media!"

The moment the words left his mouth, the atmosphere on Xiangbei's side plummeted into an abyss.

A deathly silence.

But beneath this silence lies a volcano about to erupt.

Akagi Takenori clenched his fists tightly, his knuckles making a terrifying cracking sound.

A destructive rage ignited in those copper bell-like eyes.

Mitsui Hisashi lowered his head, his shoulders trembling slightly.

He then let out an extremely violent, cold laugh.

"Are you trying to bully us?"

Mitsui clenched his wrist. "It's been a long time since I've heard such a suicidal remark."

The anger on Miyagi Ryota's face disappeared.

Instead, there was a cold calm.

He turned his head and stared at Ono, who was sweating profusely.

"luck?"

"You will soon find out what real hell is."

……

Meanwhile, in the shadows on the other side of the passage.

Matsumoto, the coach of Urayasu Commercial, was calling the starting players to a corner and giving them final instructions in a low voice.

He was completely unaware of the rampaging energy that had spread from the Xiangbei side.

"Listen up, the tactical objective for the first quarter is their number 10, Sakuragi Hanamichi!"

Coach Matsumoto stroked the stubble on his chin, his eyes filled with malice.

"I've seen the video. That kid has a terrible temper and gets angry easily."

"Give him more physical contact at the start, and be more stealthy in your movements!"

"As long as we provoke him and make him commit an offensive foul or a technical foul, Shohoku's offensive rhythm will collapse directly."

"Break their rhythm, that's our way to victory!"

Several of Uraya's starting players immediately exchanged knowing smiles.

And in the Shohoku team.

Sakuragi Hanamichi yawned widely.

He ignored the tense atmosphere around him and sat down directly on the floor of the narrow passageway.

She started stretching as if no one else was around.

"Click—"

As Sakuragi's body pressed down, a sickening cracking sound erupted from his bones.

"This genius thought the top eight were some kind of monsters with three heads and six arms."

Sakuragi picked at his ear idly, his eyes filled with extreme contempt.

"Turns out they're just a bunch of babbling idiots."

"You're not even good enough to warm me up."

He completely ignored the group of Urayasu players opposite him, whose faces were ashen.

This kind of pure contempt is more hurtful than any trash talk.

Rukawa Kaede remained standing in the same spot.

He didn't speak, his bangs obscuring his eyes.

But in his mind, the arrogant and ugly face of Ono when he crashed into Miyagi was flashing back and forth, as well as the interview that Ayako had read aloud.

"A lone wolf?"

Rukawa Kaede slowly raised his left hand, bit the edge of the black wristband with his teeth, and pulled hard.

The wristband tightened around the wrist, making a slight snapping sound.

He raised his head.

In those iconic fox eyes, only pure, murderous coldness remained.

"Then let's chew it up, bones and all."

"beep--"

The whistles urging people to enter the stadium were broadcast through loudspeakers into the passageway.

"Time is up."

Takenori Akagi took a deep breath, and his lion-like roar echoed through the passage.

"Shohoku!"

"To dominate the entire nation!!!"

"oh!!!"

With a unified, deafening roar, the Shohoku team stepped out of the dark passage.

The lights shone on them instantly.

The "everyone's a villain" mode has been fully activated.

The moment I stepped onto the wooden floor.

The six men exuded a palpable killing intent honed through countless brushes with death.

Like a tsunami, it swept across the halfway point of Puan Commercial.

That was a true battlefield of carnage.

In contrast, the Urayasu Commercial players had just entered the field.

Faced with this suffocating and terrifying pressure, the arrogance on his face had long since vanished.

Ohno is warming up after receiving a pass from his teammate.

His hands inexplicably trembled, and the basketball slammed into the instep of his foot, bouncing out of bounds.

His Adam's apple bobbed laboriously as he looked at the expressionless demons on the opposite half of the court.

A chilling fear, already creeping up his spine to the top of his head, preceded the battle.

The audience in the stands immediately noticed the strange atmosphere on the field.

The second half of the court on Shohoku's side was eerily quiet.

The only sound was the dull thud of the basketball hitting the floor.

Every player's movement was so precise that there was not a single unnecessary movement.

Their intense focus created an invisible, absolute domain around them.

The referee took the basketball and walked to the center circle.

Takenori Akagi and Ohno both stood on the service line at the same time.

As Ohno looked into Akagi's bloodshot eyes, which seemed to want to devour him alive, his calves began to cramp uncontrollably.

"Beep—!"

A sharp and long whistle pierced the air in the stadium.

The basketball was tossed high into the air by the referee.

A ruthless and extremely cruel one-sided massacre has officially begun.

In that instant, it was as if all the air in the entire venue had been sucked out.

Akagi Takenori's bloodshot eyes were fixed on the rising basketball.

His legs unleashed a terrifying jumping power.

The wooden floorboards emitted a dull, mournful groan.

The gorilla's massive body rose from the ground.

Puan Commercial's center gritted his teeth and jumped with all his might.

But to his despair, he discovered that the light overhead was completely blocked by a huge shadow.

Akagi's muscles bulged to their limit in mid-air, his veins bulging like writhing dragons.

He didn't even try to test the waters; he simply used his broad shoulders to crush Urayasu's center forward in mid-air.

It was an absolute, irrational crushing force.

A thick, powerful arm, like a swinging hammer, slammed into the basketball.

"Snapped!"

The ball was violently pushed back into Shohoku's half of the court by an extremely forceful force.

Due to the excessive force, the basketball bounced off the floor with an extremely high arc.

The center forward, Urayasu, lost his balance in the air, like a leaf that had gone out of control.

He fell to the floor in a very awkward manner, letting out a painful groan.

Less than two seconds into the game, Shohoku set the tone for the match with sheer violence.

The basketball fell precisely into Miyagi Ryota's control.

Instead of rushing into a fast break, he lowered his center of gravity and dribbled the basketball repeatedly.

He crossed the midfield line at a leisurely pace.

The one defending him was none other than Ono, who had been extremely arrogant in the passage just moments before.

At this moment, Ohno's leg muscles were stiffening uncontrollably.

But he forced a smile, lowered his center of gravity, and spread his arms to block Gongcheng.

"Come on, shorty!"

Ohno deliberately raised his voice, using crude and vulgar language to try to cover up his inner fear.

"Let me see what Shohoku is really capable of!"