Haikyuu!!: The Disaster of Gamers

In late June, Miyagi Prefecture entered its rainy season, with humidity so high it felt like you could wring water out of the air. In Lu Ren's spacious living room, the central air conditioning was blasting out cool air. The temperature should have been quite comfortable, but the atmosphere inside was so oppressive that even breathing felt difficult.

A dozen or so members of the Karasuno volleyball team were sprawled haphazardly in front of the low table. Piles of various colored study guides, practice tests, and error notebooks lay before them. Lu Ren, twirling a red pen in his hand, surveyed the group from his elevated position.

What kind of mess is this? He's the vice-captain, responsible for tactical command on the field, and off the field he also has to double as a tutor. Midterm exams are next week, and the school has a strict rule: anyone who fails is banned from participating in next month's Tokyo expedition training camp. To prevent these muscle-bound single-celled organisms from being suspended, he has no choice but to sacrifice all his weekend rest time.

Hinata Shoyo crumpled the English test paper in his hand into a mushy mess, muttering to himself, his eyes practically bulging out of their sockets. He was trying to force the word "volleyball" into his brain, the spelling process resembling an encrypted phone call.

Kageyama Tobio stared at a math geometry problem, holding a pen and drawing a parabola on a piece of paper, muttering about the angle of the pass, and somehow managed to draw a standard rectangular coordinate system as a top view of a volleyball court.

Ryunosuke Tanaka and Yu Nishitani drew stick figures fighting on the illustrations of their Japanese language textbook, and even gave the stick figures lines like "Watch my super-sized smash," completely giving up on treatment. The newly enrolled first-year student, Sakura, was biting his pen and staring blankly at the history dates. Asano was slightly better, but he also got stuck on a physics problem, his brows furrowed into a knot.

Lu Ren tapped the table. Had all these kids put all their skill points into sports? Their intelligence attribute panels were filled with red warning boxes. He started seriously considering whether he should go to the school tomorrow to apply for a special tutoring allowance from the head of student affairs. This workload was even more mentally taxing than playing a best-of-five final. Against high-difficulty matches, he could still find breakthroughs through tactical analysis. But against this group of academic underachievers, any logically rigorous teaching method would be utterly crushed.

Hotaru Tsukishima sat on a single sofa in the corner, holding an original English novel, not even glancing at the group. Tadashi Yamaguchi was patiently explaining grammar to Hinata three times, but Hinata's eyes remained clear and naive.

Tsukishima adjusted his glasses and delivered a devastating blow: "Don't waste your energy. A single-celled organism's brain can't handle clauses. I suggest you just give up. We can send you scenic photos from Tokyo during the training camp. By the way, Hinata, you just spelled 'apple' as 'Apollo'."

"Tsukishima, you bastard! I can pass! I'm sure I can pass!" Hinata jumped up in protest, waving his arms and legs.

Kageyama slammed his fist on the table: "Shut up, you noisy idiot Hyuga! You're disturbing my calculations of parabolas! The passing trajectory for this problem should clearly be a wide diagonal line!"

The living room was a complete mess. Lu Ren rubbed his throbbing temples. These guys weren't treating the exam like a challenging game they needed to conquer; their attitude was extremely negative. In their underlying logic, volleyball was the main quest, while studying wasn't even a side quest, at best just an annoying pop-up ad.

The Chimera system can function like a multi-core processor on the court, but when it comes to learning, these people's CPUs are completely incompatible. Asano's logical thinking is passable, but he crashes when faced with complex physics formulas. Sakura is essentially a single-core processor, running out of memory when processing massive amounts of data like historical dates. As for Hyuga and Kageyama, their brains seem to only have two folders: "passing" and "spiking." They need some negative status effects to activate their survival instincts.

The kitchen door opened, and Qingze Yazhi came out carrying a plate of sliced, chilled watermelon. She placed the plate on the table, looking at the group of frustrated boys, and couldn't help but laugh. "You guys are making terrible progress. Forget about beating the game, even the slimes in the starting village could wipe you out. Lu Ren, even you, the tactical commander, have times when you can't lead the team."

Lu Ren threw the red pen he was holding onto the table and stood up. "I'm going to get something to refresh myself," he said, turning and walking into the kitchen.

A two-second silence fell over the living room. Hinata and Kageyama, upon hearing the words "something to perk them up," simultaneously stopped what they were doing. They exchanged a glance, their pupils contracting sharply. A long-buried, extremely painful memory was awakened in their minds.

The roar of the juicer whirring wildly echoed from the kitchen. Lu Ren stood in front of the counter, expressionlessly tossing bitter melon, celery, and ginger into the machine, finally adding a spoonful of some mysterious Chinese herbal powder his mother had sent from China. The recipe was nutritionally sound, but its taste was downright inhuman.

Five minutes later, Lu Ren emerged carrying a large tray. Neatly arranged on the tray were a dozen or so small, transparent glasses. Each glass contained a viscous, fluorescent green liquid bubbling eerily. An indescribable, bitter smell, mixed with the pungent odor of vegetables, immediately filled the air.

Hinata sprang up from the mat, staggering backward until his back pressed firmly against the wall. Kageyama's face turned green, and the pen in his hand clattered onto the table. Back in their first year, Riku had created this kind of biological weapon as punishment for their poor catching. After drinking it, the two of them vomited in the toilet for half an hour, emptying even their stomach acid.

Tanaka and Nishiya leaned closer. Nishiya sniffed, "What's this? It smells really good! Riku, is this your family's special sports drink?"

Tanaka patted his chest and said, "Since it's the vice-captain's idea, then we won't stand on ceremony! Cheers! Let's continue our Mandarin battle!"

Lu Ren placed the tray in the center of the table and slowly pulled out a chair to sit down. "That's right, a special energy drink. The recipe is a secret, all-natural and additive-free, rich in various vitamins, specially formulated to cure all kinds of inattention and brain freeze." He pointed to the mock test paper on the table. "The rules are simple. Each test paper has a time limit of forty minutes. For every big question you get wrong, or every word you misread, you get a cup. It's plentiful and you can drink as much as you want; there's a whole bucket in the kitchen."

Zuo Cang was an honest man, and young and fearless. He happened to be struggling to memorize a history question, and upon hearing Lu Ren's words, he picked up a glass and poured it into his mouth. "Glug." Zuo Cang swallowed it.

Two seconds later. Zuo Cang's eyes widened, his features contorted in shock. He clutched his neck, gagged, and fell backward, convulsing twice on the floor before going still.

Asano was startled and quickly patted Sakura's face: "Sakura! Wake up! Don't scare me! Someone come and do CPR on him!"

Tanaka and Nishiya's outstretched hands froze in mid-air, then they silently withdrew them. Nishiya swallowed hard. "This effect is too strong... Is this really something for humans to drink?"

Lu Ren tapped the table, making a crisp sound. "Time is precious. There are still three days until the exam. If you want to stay at school to weed during the training camp, you can pack your bags and go home now. By the way, after drinking this, I guarantee you won't be sleepy even if you study all night."

Hinata dashed back to the table, grabbed her pen, and stared intently at the English test paper, frantically chanting, "Apple! Banana! I am a student! I can memorize it! I can memorize it all! Don't bring that green thing near me!"

Kageyama buried his head in the math problem, his pen sparking as it scratched across the paper: "Equation of the parabola... coordinates of the vertex... substitute into the formula... as long as I get it right, I won't get poisoned..."

Under the powerful influence of the green beverage, the learning atmosphere in the entire living room underwent a dramatic transformation. No one complained anymore, no one was distracted. Everyone displayed the same focus they would have on a match point on the court. This was no longer an exam; it was a survival game concerning taste and dignity.

Lu Ren leaned back in his chair, watching the rapidly operating "machines," and nodded in satisfaction. "It would have been better if we had done this earlier. Why force me to implement such a malicious patch? Human potential really does need to be pushed to its limits."

Yazhi laughed so hard she couldn't stand up straight: "That's such a dirty trick. I think their brainwave activity is even higher now than when they were playing in the national finals. The school should really reimburse you for your tutoring fees. You're not a vice-captain, you're practically a heartless player exploiting NPCs."

The next two hours were exceptionally efficient. Yamaguchi Tadashi was in charge of grading, and Tsukishima Hotaru was in charge of finding mistakes. Whenever someone's accuracy rate fell below the standard, Lu Ren would quietly push a glass of green beverage in front of them.

Tanaka unfortunately fell victim to this trap, failing all his Chinese reading comprehension questions. He wailed, clutching his hair, "Damn it! Why do we have to analyze the author's feelings in Chinese reading comprehension?! The author might have just wanted to eat ramen when they wrote that sentence!"

Lu Ren coldly replied, "Even if he wants to eat ramen, you have to analyze from that bowl of ramen his critique of social class stratification. Drink up."

Tanaka stared at the bubbling green liquid in front of him, then, with a death-defying resolve, picked it up and downed it in one gulp. Immediately afterward, he let out a bloodcurdling scream and rushed to the bathroom. Outside, Nishiya cheered him on: "Ryu! Hang in there! You're Karasuno's ace! A mere glass of vegetable juice won't defeat you!"

Under immense pressure, Kageyama surprisingly solved a complex geometry problem correctly. He held up the paper and showed it to Lu Ren: "I solved it! The answer is the square root of 3!"

Lu Ren glanced at it and nodded: "The process is all wrong, the logic is utter nonsense, but the answer is right. You pass. But I'm very curious, how did you calculate the geometry answer to an algebra problem?" Kageyama let out a long sigh, collapsed to the ground, and had no intention of explaining.

Hinata was still struggling with English grammar. Pointing to a multiple-choice question, he asked Lu Ren, "Why is C the correct answer for this blank? A sounds better!"

Lu Ren patiently explained, "This is a relative clause. The antecedent is a thing, so we use 'which.' It sounds smooth to you because you don't usually follow grammar when you speak. Memorize the rules by rote, and don't rely on your pitiful intuition to guess. English exams don't test your motor skills."

Night fell. The tutoring session finally ended. The dozen or so team members lay sprawled on the floor, as if they had just finished a best-of-five, exhausting battle, the room filled with the sound of heavy breathing. Only two green drinks remained on the tray.

Lu Ren stood up and tidied up his study guide. "That's all for today. We'll continue at the same time tomorrow. If anyone gets a single-digit score in any subject, I'll personally brew a concentrated version of the supplement and make them drink it like water."

A collective groan escaped everyone's lips. Hinata and Kageyama helped each other to their feet, their legs still trembling. Riku watched their departing figures and sighed. These guys were geniuses at volleyball, but utterly hopeless idiots when it came to academics. But perhaps that was just a characteristic of Karasuno.

He turned and went into the kitchen, pouring the remaining two glasses of green drink into the sink. Even he himself found the smell of it nauseating. This player was truly going to great lengths to ensure these NPCs could smoothly advance the main storyline.