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

He walked to the technical table.

Looking up at Sakuragi, whose face was covered by a towel.

"Idiot, get down here right now."

Rukawa Kaede's tone was indifferent, but it lacked the usual hostility.

"Don't break the tech desk, or we'll have to pay for it."

"The few dozen coins in your pocket aren't enough to cover the damages."

Sakuragi ripped off the towel, his eyes wide with anger as he pointed at Rukawa:

"You damned fox!"

"Are you jealous of my genius's coolest pose in the whole room?!"

"If I, the genius, hadn't blocked that meatball, would you have been able to dunk it so easily?"

"Say what you want."

Rukawa Kaede turned around and waved to Sakuragi with his back to him.

"But... at least you didn't drag us down today."

Sakuragi stood frozen on the scorer's table, blinking.

Two seconds later, he suddenly burst into laughter: "Hahahaha! Of course!"

"Does a genius need your affirmation, you damned fox?!"

"However, your technique today is barely one-tenth of what a genius would have!"

The two no longer fought like they used to.

They were only a few steps apart, enjoying the tacit understanding that belonged only to mortal enemies.

Right in the center of the venue.

Lin Bei stood quietly, letting the red ribbons fall all over his shoulders.

He looked at Akagi, who was kneeling on the ground and weeping bitterly.

Watching Miyagi and Mitsui hugging and cursing each other.

Watching Sakuragi and Rukawa still bickering as usual.

A genuinely relaxed smile finally appeared on Lin Bei's face.

He took a deep breath of the air, thick with the heat and the smell of sweat, and put his hands in his basketball shorts pockets.

"What a bunch of troublemakers," Lin Bei muttered to himself.

Then, deep in his mind, he skillfully tapped that transparent interface.

"System, stop pretending to be dead."

"The main quest 'Conquer the Nation' has been completed. Now, bring out the ultimate reward."

one second.

two seconds.

The familiar, crisp notification sound did not come.

The smile on Lin Bei's lips suddenly froze.

The world before my eyes began to distort without warning.

The originally translucent light blue system panel suddenly changed color.

The glaring blood red completely replaced the background color, turning Lin Bei's retina a blood-red hue.

A waterfall of black gibberish rolled wildly down the blood-red screen at a dizzying speed.

Immediately afterwards, an extremely sharp electrical sound exploded deep inside Lin Bei's head!

[Warning... Buzz... Warning...]

[An unknown spacetime turbulence has been detected forcibly intruding...]

The fundamental rules of this world have been maliciously altered...

[Main quest completion interrupted... The final quest difficulty has been forcibly increased by external forces...]

[Buzz... Warning... A transdimensional target has arrived in this dimension...]

Lin Bei's smile froze instantly.

The muscles that were originally relaxed tensed up instinctively at this moment.

Lin Bei mentally cursed.

His dark golden eyes were fixed on the blood-red panel.

I led my team to sweep across Japan, even enduring the hellish training of the NBA, and finally sent this ordinary team to the throne.

You're telling me now that the difficulty is going to be forcibly increased?

Spacetime turbulence?

Rule tampering?

Who exactly is playing the sixth man in this wave?

"System, explain yourself!"

"Who exactly broke in?" Lin Bei asked coldly in his mind.

The garbled text on the system panel flashed even more frantically, then the screen went completely black, leaving only a scarlet pop-up message.

Insufficient permissions to parse target data.

[Please prepare yourself, host.]

At the very same second that the system crashed.

The loudspeakers above the stadium, which were playing rousing championship music, suddenly emitted an extremely piercing shriek!

"Buzz—!"

The sharp noise was amplified through the giant sound amplification matrix of the dome.

With an extremely terrifying volume, it directly drowned out the cheers of tens of thousands of people in the stadium.

The entire stadium seemed to have been muted, becoming completely silent.

Everyone covered their ears in pain and looked up at the dome-shaped speakers with surprise and uncertainty.

A few seconds later, the electrical noise disappeared.

The voice of the official female announcer came over the radio.

Her voice lacked the professional tone she used when announcing her victory; instead, it trembled with an undeniable intensity.

"Dear audience, please be quiet."

"Congratulations again to the Kanagawa Prefecture team, Shohoku High School, for winning the national championship!"

The female announcer swallowed hard, her voice carrying through the microphone to every corner of the stadium.

"But please do not leave yet."

"The organizing committee has just received a...extremely urgent notification."

Tens of thousands of audience members looked at each other in bewilderment, and whispers began to spread like a tide.

The highest point of the stands.

Shinichi Mu, a student from the Hainan University Affiliated School, suddenly stood up.

He abruptly stopped in his tracks, as if he had guessed something.

"Urgent notification?"

"The national tournament is already over, and the awards ceremony hasn't even started yet. What kind of announcement could there be?"

"They can't just replay the game because of biased refereeing, can they?"

"Could it be that special team we talked about before?" Kiyota Nobunaga muttered loudly, clinging to the railing.

The female voice on the radio took a deep breath, seemingly trying to calm herself down after seeing the announcement.

"According to the latest resolution of the organizing committee..."

"Tomorrow morning at 10:00 AM, an unprecedented... special exhibition game will be added to this arena!"

boom!

The entire stadium erupted in chaos.

"A special exhibition match? What the hell is that?!"

"I've never heard of a tiebreaker after the finals are over!!"

"Has the organizing committee gone mad?"

"Shohoku just went toe-to-toe with Meihou Industrial today, how can they possibly fight again tomorrow?"

Protests and questions rose and fell from the audience.

But the female announcer completely ignored the commotion at the scene, and she used an almost screaming volume to forcefully drown out all other sounds.

"This special match will be played by a mysterious team that has been specially invited and whose roster cannot even be revealed by the organizing committee!"

"They will directly challenge our new champions—Shohoku High School!"

"This is an ultimate showdown that doesn't count towards regular records, but involves the highest honors!"

"Please stay tuned!"

The broadcast abruptly stopped.

The entire stadium fell into a deathly silence, followed by a roar ten times more terrifying than when they had just won the championship.

The first half of the game for Shohoku.

Takenori Akagi suddenly stood up, not even having time to brush the dust off his knees, and glared angrily at the technical table.

"Are you kidding me!"

"We've already won the national championship, why should we accept this ridiculous challenge again!"

Ryota Miyagi angrily threw the towel in his hand to the ground:

"Is this targeting us? This guy is a real scoundrel!"

Lin Bei scratched the back of his head.

Only Sakuragi Hanamichi.

After a brief moment of surprise, he suddenly put his hands on his hips and burst into an extremely arrogant laugh.

"Hahahaha!"

Sakuragi's laughter echoed across the court.

He turned his head, looked at his teammates with angry faces, and waved triumphantly.

"Don't panic, everyone!"

"The genius saw it all coming!"