Haikyuu!!: The Disaster of Gamers

At the start of the second game, Karasuno High School firmly grasped the rhythm of the match.

On the bench of Tsubakihara Academy, Coach Echigo rested his chin on his hands, his gaze fixed on player number 13 on the other side of the net. From the first set until now, as long as that player named Rikujin was on the court, every offensive route of Tsubakihara had fallen into the opponent's defensive trap.

The whistle blew. Yamaguchi Tadashi's serve ended, and Tsubakihara Academy finally managed to regain the serve thanks to a desperate spike from their outside hitter, Terahiro.

The score was 16-9. Karasuno led by seven points.

Terahi landed heavily, sweat dripping from his chin onto the wooden floor. He had barely managed to score a point with his eyes closed, hitting the ball right on the edge of Tsukishima Hotaru's fingers.

"Substitution." Coach Tsubakihara handed the substitution card to the referee's table.

On the sidelines, a short boy wearing jersey number 14 stood up. His name was Himekawa Aoi, a first-year student at Tsubakihara Academy, and the team's secret weapon prepared specifically for dealing with large stadiums.

Himekawa walked to the sidelines with his number, his legs trembling uncontrollably. The national tournament stage, the dome of the Tokyo Gymnasium, and the monsters opposite him who had utterly defeated his seniors—all this pressure weighed heavily on his shoulders.

"Himekawa." Captain Echigo walked over and patted him on the back. "Don't feel pressured. Just do what you practice. Just serve the ball."

Ji Chuan swallowed hard and nodded vigorously. He replaced the middle blocker and walked to the service area.

Karasuno's halftime.

Lu Ren stood in the back row and glanced up at the trembling number 14. The data panel in his mind quickly updated.

[Tsubakihara Academy #14: Himekawa Aoi. Height 163cm. Muscle tone 90%. Footwork is clumsy. Substitute server.]

"The server has changed." Daichi Sawamura lowered his center of gravity and glanced at his teammates. "Watch out for changes in the landing point. He might serve a short ball."

west Gu Yu slapped her thigh, her eyes bright: "Bring it on! I can catch anything!"

The referee blows the whistle.

Himekawa Aoi stood outside the baseline. Instead of tossing the volleyball high like a typical server, he held it in his left hand, clenched his right fist, and adopted an extremely rare underhand serve posture.

"An underhand serve?" In the stands, Kiyosawa Ayashi held a camera, zooming in. "This kind of serve is rarely seen in high school matches, right? It has no attacking power."

Lu Jianguo peeled an orange, popped it into his mouth, and chewed it a couple of times: "Is this kid too nervous? He can't even serve the ball properly. His posture is exactly the same as the old man playing volleyball in the park downstairs from my company."

Lu Xin ignored her husband's complaints and kept her eyes on the audience: "Something's wrong. He pulled his arm back too far."

Inside the court, Himekawa Aoi swung her right arm in an exaggerated semi-circle from bottom to top, her fist slamming heavily onto the bottom of the volleyball.

"Bang."

A muffled thud. The volleyball didn't fly straight over the net, but instead hurtled towards the dome of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium at an almost vertical angle.

Ceiling serve.

This is a tactic that takes advantage of the unique environment of a large stadium. The ball is hit to an extremely high height, and as it falls, it experiences tremendous gravitational acceleration. Even more deadly is that the receiver must crane their neck to find the ball's trajectory, and in such a large stadium, the dome is equipped with countless high-powered searchlights.

When the volleyball reaches its highest point, it blends perfectly into the blind spot of the glaring lights. The receiver's retina is stimulated by the bright light, causing a momentary loss of vision and leading to a misjudgment.

Tsubakihara Academy had practiced countless times in the prefectural tournament venue. This was their ultimate trump card to break the deadlock and disrupt the strong teams' first pass system.

The volleyball flew higher and higher until it became a small black dot.

The Tsubakihara team held their breath, their eyes glued to the reactions of Karasuno's back row. Echigo clenched his fists, waiting for the moment when the opposing team would fall into disarray.

As long as Karasuno's first pass breaks down, Tsubakihara can seize the opportunity to counterattack and catch up in the score.

However, the scene on the other side of the screen left the entire Tsubakihara team stunned.

There was no panic. There was no scrambling for the ball. There was no embarrassing moment of being blinded by the lights.

The three people in the back row of Karasuno—Sawamura Daichi, Nishitani Yu, and Riku Jin—did not move an inch.

Daichi Sawamura simply raised his head calmly. He didn't even use his hand to shield his eyes from the lights in the dome; his eyes were fixed on the sky, and he made two extremely subtle adjustments to his steps.

"Senior Dadi." Lu Ren stood to the side and behind, his tone as calm as if he were ordering food in the cafeteria. "The wind is blowing from the left, and the air conditioner vents will add deflection to the ball. The landing point will be half a step behind the three-meter line."

"Received," Daichi Sawamura replied.

The coach of Tsubakihara Academy stared wide-eyed. This was impossible. How could a team serving against the ceiling for the first time not have even the slightest delay in judgment?

What they didn't know was that the Karasuno team had long been familiar with this serving mechanism that utilized height and blind spots in lighting.

Back in the pre-match training camp in Miyagi Prefecture, Lu Ren developed a special "high-altitude bombardment" program to torment the team's defensive system. He not only served the ball from the ceiling, but also added strange sidespin to the ball, and even deliberately chose the angle with the most glaring lights in the stadium to serve.

In Lu Ren's words at the time, "The dungeon environment of the National Tournament comes with a blinding debuff. If you don't max out your resistances beforehand, you'll just be feeding kills."

Sawamura Daichi and Nishitani Yu had suffered countless hardships trying to receive Lu Ren's bizarre serves. Now, facing Himekawa Aoi's straight, spinless, beginner-level ceiling serve, it looked like a slow-motion tutorial video to them.

The volleyball flew through the illuminated area, plummeting rapidly with a whooshing sound.

Sawamura Daichi bent his knees, lowering his center of gravity. His hands clasped together in front of him, his arm muscles tensed, forming a perfect plane.

"Bang."

The volleyball slammed heavily onto his forearm. The immense downward force was neutralized by his perfect technique. Instead of flying wildly, the ball traced a gentle arc, steadily heading towards the setter's position at the net.

A perfect pass.

"What?!" Himekawa Aoi exclaimed in disbelief.

Tsubakihara's defensive formation stalled fatally at this moment. They pinned all their hopes on this serve and were completely unprepared for a counter-attack.

Kageyama Tobio stood under the net, and the volleyball landed precisely on his fingertips.

"Counterattack!" Kageyama shouted.

Karasuno's offensive machine instantly went into full power.

Hinata Shoyo started from the left bottom corner, his speed so fast that only a streak of orange remained. Tanaka Ryunosuke took his stance on the left wing. Higashimine Asahi began his run-up from the back.

The three attackers attacked simultaneously. The blockers from Tsubakihara went blank, their eyes darting back and forth between the three attackers, their feet rooted to the spot, unable to move.

With a slight twist of his wrist, Kageyama passed the ball back to the right wing.

Lu Ren had somehow moved into position two. He didn't take a long run-up; he simply took two steps and lightly leaped into the air.

Tsubakihara's outside hitter, Terahiro, desperately moved sideways, attempting to organize a solo block. However, his jump was a beat too slow; while his hands were still rising, Rikuin had already completed his arm swing.

There are no fancy techniques. Pure route planning.

The volleyball grazed Terahashi's fingertips and slammed into the baseline corner of Tsubakihara's half of the court with extremely high initial velocity.

Within the boundary. 17:9.

The referee's whistle shattered Tsubakihara Academy's last illusions.

Lu Ren landed, dusted off his hands, and turned to look at the pale-faced number 14 server opposite him.

"The mechanics are good," Lu Ren said to Himekawa Aoi through the net. "It's a pity the stats are too low. The height is insufficient, there's no added rotation, and the landing point is too predictable. This level of test server skill isn't enough to fight the boss in the official server."

Himekawa Aoi opened her mouth, but couldn't utter a single word. Her secret weapon, which she had practiced diligently for months, hadn't even made a ripple in front of her.

In the stands.

Lu Jianguo, holding a megaphone, grinned from ear to ear: "That's it? That's it? I thought they were going to unleash some amazing move! It went so high, but what good is that? Our captain caught it perfectly!"

The surrounding black-clad bodyguards clapped in unison: "The Iron Wall of Karasuno! Indestructible!"

Lu Xin pulled a bag of sunflower seeds from her bag and cracked them open with a loud crunch: "This Kanagawa team is no good. Their serves are so weak, they don't even have a hint of aggression. They're nowhere near as good as the spirit our son used to smash windows when he practiced in the backyard."

As Kiyosawa Ayashi flipped through the playback on her camera, she laughed, "Uncle and Aunt, you're really clueless. That kind of ball is really hard to catch. It's just that Lu Ren is usually too abnormal in the team, raising everyone's threshold for catching the ball too high. Tsubakihara's move was a bit of a mistake."

Inside the arena, the morale of Tsubakihara Academy plummeted.

Looking at the scoreboard, Echigo sighed deeply. He'd exhausted all his options, his tactics were completely outmatched, and statistically he was utterly crushed. There was no hope of a comeback in this match.

The rest of the game became garbage time.

Karasuno showed no mercy. Kageyama Tobio's serve came out on fire again, with two powerful jump serves disrupting Tsubakihara's first pass.

Hinata Shoyo's signature "thump" jump was a recurring feature on the court. Every time that orange figure paused in mid-air, Tsubakihara's defensive system would collapse. They couldn't comprehend this physics-defying hang time, nor could they organize an effective block.

20: 11.

23: 13.

The score climbed relentlessly.

Lu Ren skillfully directed the defensive positioning from the back row. His brain was like a sophisticated radar, calculating the trajectory of each of Tsubakihara Academy's attacks in advance and then arranging his teammates to wait in the most suitable positions.

"straight line."

"Lob ball".

"Double net block, shutting down the diagonal shot."

The brief instructions echoed across the court. The Tsubakihara attackers discovered with despair that no matter where they hit the ball, the guy in the number 13 jersey, or his teammate, was always there a step ahead.

The last goal.

Echigo, the setter for Tsubakihara Academy, delivered a barely-placed ball. Terayama gritted his teeth and jumped, spiked the ball past the double block of Tsukishima Hotaru and Kageyama Tobio.

The ball was touched by Tsukishima's fingertips, bounced high, and flew towards Karasuno's backcourt.

"Chance ball!" Nishitani Yu shouted, quickly stepping back and placing the ball towards the net.

Kageyama Tokio jumped.

Hinata Shoyo, Tanaka Ryunosuke, and Higashimine Asahi started up simultaneously again.

But this time, Kageyama didn't pass it to anyone. He leaned back in mid-air and gently flicked it with his right hand.

Second attack.

The volleyball deftly flew over the net and landed inside the three-meter line where no one was defending at Tsubakihara Academy.

The whistle blows.

25: 14.

The score was 2-0. Karasuno High School secured a decisive victory in the first round of the national tournament.

A burst of enthusiastic applause erupted from the stands in Stadium C of the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium. Although the match was one-sided, Karasuno's multi-pronged attack, lightning-fast counter-attacks, and terrifying defensive resilience made this team from Miyagi Prefecture unforgettable for all spectators.

The Tsubakihara Academy team members stood on the court, motionless for a long time. Himekawa Aoi lowered her head, tears falling to the floor. Captain Echigo walked over, put his arm around her shoulder, and led the team to the net.

Both sides lined up, bowed, and shook hands.

Thank you for your guidance.

Lu Ren shook hands with Echigo. Looking at the calm-looking Number 13 before her, Echigo gave a wry smile: "You guys are really strong. Compared to you, we're like toddlers just learning to walk."

"Your foundation is very solid." Lu Ren withdrew his hand. "It's just that the system version is too old. Go back and update the underlying logic, and come back to run the dungeon next year."

Echigo didn't understand what "running dungeons" meant, but he understood the objective assessment in Lu Ren's tone. He nodded and led his team away dejectedly.

Karasuno's substitute bench.

Coach Uyang, holding his notebook, wore a rare relaxed smile. "Well done, lads. The first game warmed you up. No mistakes, and the tactics were executed thoroughly."

Coach Takeda adjusted his glasses, his voice brimming with excitement: "Fantastic! We've secured our first victory in the national tournament! This is a historic moment for Karasuno!"

Hinata Shoyo jumped up and down excitedly, "Yay! The court at the National Tournament is amazing! I want to spike even more balls!"

Kageyama Tobio poured cold water on the idea, saying, "Idiot. Your footwork was off when you jumped for the third ball today. Go back and practice more."

"What did you say! You clearly passed the ball five centimeters off target!"

"Do you want to die, you idiot!"

Their daily bickering completely relaxed the previously tense atmosphere.

Sawamura Daichi and Sugawara Koji exchanged a smile. The summer of their third grade continued.

Lu Ren walked to the bench and picked up a towel to wipe his sweat. Qingze Yazhi ran down from the stands and handed him a sports drink over the railing.

"Not bad, Young Master Lu," Ya Zhi said with a smile. "You didn't even break a sweat. It seems the monsters in this beginner village are indeed easy to defeat."

Lu Ren unscrewed the bottle cap and took a big gulp: "Just a warm-up. The real trouble is tomorrow."