The Birth of A Volleyball Legend

A moment later, the referee took action to calm down the situation inside the building. He asked the security officer there to talk to Amagi to prevent him from disturbing the game again, and after getting reprimanded by a lot of people with Gondo explained that Amagi was a player of the team that would play after this game, the situation finally got calmed within a second.

However, this was enough to cut off Tsunemori's hard-earned momentum from the last two points. To make it worse, this time, Konan gained the second wind as they all suddenly turned serious after receiving the provocation from Amagi on the stand.

"Damn, that bastard!" Asahi cursed. "He must be doing this deliberately to help Konan High."

"Yeah, it should be the case." Kaede nodded in agreement.

Even though they knew Amagi didn't think that far and this was just a coincidence, as the party who suffered from his action, of course, all the Tsunemori would feel dissatisfied. Unfortunately, nothing could be done about this except reprimand the culprit for not doing that again, something that was useless for them.

"Okay, no need to think about it too much." Riku tried to calm down his senpai. "Let's just move on and get ready for the next play. If we are still affected by his shout, we will stand no chance against them who started to get serious."

Everyone nodded solemnly, somehow feeling nervous when they saw all the Konan players looking at them like prey. They had never felt such oppression even when they played against Matsukita, which showed the difference between the two teams. Even though they didn't know whether Konan would go all out or not, at least they knew the opponent wouldn't play around this time.

"Okay, Koji! Give us another good serve!"

"Yeah!"

Koji walked to the service line nervously. He could see from his spot, that almost all the area on the other side of the court was covered by Konan players. While there might be one or two spots near the sideline that the opponent left unguarded, he didn't have the confidence he could send the ball there.

'Okay, keep calm, Koji. No need to overthink this. Okay, come on!'

*Thud!*

Instead of doing a jump serve, Koji resorted to a normal one, knowing in his current state, the ball would only hit the net if he forced his way with a jump serve. Arizawa, the opposite hitter on the right side managed to get the ball perfectly, sending it straight to Shimada.

Then, before anyone on Tsunemori's side realized what happened, the ball moved again to the other direction, and this time, it went back to the right side where Arizawa who just saved the ball had already taken off from the ground.

*BAM!*

Even though Hirano and Asahi managed to react to the attack, since they got caught off guard, they didn't have time to coordinate with each other. As a result, even though they managed to form an emergency wall, it was too weak to hold against Arizawa's attack, resulting in a point for Konan High.

"Yes!"

"Nice spike, Arizawa-senpai!"

"That is a nasty quick, Nobu!"

"Come on!"

While all the Konan players celebrated the point, Hirano and Asahi chatted quickly to talk about their mistake.

"If you saw me coming from the middle, do your best to close the area for a cross spike. Don't worry about straight, Yuki will be able to cover it from the back." Hirano whispered.

"Are you sure about it?" Asahi whispered back.

Hirano nodded firmly. "This is the usual operation between me and Yuki, he would never miss it."

After staring at the middle blocker for a moment and then turning into his kouhai who gave a single nod, Asahi finally gave in, decided to trust his teammates. "Okay, I will do as you say."

After that, Arizawa grabbed the ball to do the serve. To all the Tsunemori players' surprise, the opposite hitter sent a floater to their area. Usually, a team would only have one specialist player on their roster.

But in Konan, besides Arizawa who just sent a floater, there were also Lucas and Matsumoto who had a crazy powerful jump serve in their arsenal, and three more guys who Tsunemori didn't know their capability.

As expected of the best team in Japan.

Fortunately, they were quite familiar with a floater serve. Kaede who often practiced together with Yuki knew how to handle this serve as he moved forward quickly and received it with an overhead pass. He didn't have any difficulty sending the ball to Riku on the front side.

"Nice receive, Kai!"

"Riku!"

Seeing three players moved in unison, Riku pondered for a moment about where he should send the ball. Koji was out of question since his state wasn't quite right this time. As for Asahi, he just came from the bench, so the opponent would expect him to receive the ball. Yuki also tried to sneak from behind, yet he could see Akihiro locked his eyes on him.

It seemed the opponent's middle blocker wanted to take revenge for the play earlier.

'Damn! My option is limited here! I need to do something! Dump? No, it is not safe. Trust Koji?

No, it would be blocked. Yuki? No. Damn, what to do? Hey, I know it!'

Under everyone's scrutinization, Riku copied the exact same play Sawada had just done before. He glanced at Hirano in the middle, the least player everyone expected to attack, and while they didn't communicate with each other a lot, Hirano knew instantly what the blonde boy wanted to do.

Without hesitation – and without even doing a proper run-up, Hirano suddenly jumped, and the ball suddenly appeared in front of his hand.

*BAM!*

"OH! Nice save, Shimada!"

Hirano and Yuki had their eyes widened in surprise when they saw the defensive specialist jump acrobatically to save the ball. However, Sawada didn't give them any time to think about it, as the setter rushed to pick up the ball and sent a quick pass accurately to the left wing. Lucas who was there took off from the ground, and even with Asahi jumped in front of him, he just ignored it completely.

There were not a lot of players who could stop Lucas in a one-on-one battle, and Asahi wasn't one of them.

*BAM!*

"Shit!"

Even though Kaede managed to react and grabbed the ball, his stance wasn't stable enough to dampen the impact of the spike. As a result, the ball flew wildly outside of the court, and even though Yuki tried to pick it up, he was too late as it fell on the ground first.

"YOSSHAA!"

As they all saw Konan players celebrate with each other, all the Tsunemori players stared at each other wryly. In their mind, they all had similar thoughts inside their mind.

'How could we stop them when they got serious like this?!'