Sweat dripping like rain.
Breathing turning into growls.
Kaito start to breath heavily hand gripping his chest.
His shoulders rose and fell in shallow bursts.
The General had run through his own limits.
Coach Tsugawa glanced at him.
"Dirga, you ready?" the coach called, voice sharp over the roar.
Eyes locked on the court.
"Yeah... I’m ready, Coach."
He rolled his shoulders once.
His breath still heavy from the earlier burst.
But something inside burned brighter than fatigue—
"Hiroki, you too. Sub for Rei. We need to cool the tempo. Slow it down."
"Yes, Coach." Hiroki nodded, already peeling off his warmup.
The crowd stirred—again.
A wave of noise rolled across the court.
A name surged with it.
The storm was returning.
But this time, not as a bolt of chaos—
As calculated lightning.
Horizon’s new formation clicked into place: PG: Dirga. SG: Hiroki. SF: Aizawa. PF: Taiga. C: Rikuya
Five minutes left in the third quarter.
As they took their positions, Taiga jogged beside Dirga, his voice low but steady.
"Wanna guard Masaki again?"
Dirga didn’t even blink.
"You’ve already started reading him. You’ve got this."
Taiga nodded, surprised—
Dirga wasn’t being prideful.
He was being strategic.
Right now, the problem wasn’t the thunder.
It was the lock around Horizon’s offense.
And Dirga intended to snap it wide open.
He wasn’t stepping in to survive.
He was stepping in to disrupt.
To break the balance Toyonaka had built.
The inbound pass came.
Dirga caught it clean.
And just like before—
Yuto was there. Clinging. Relentless. Breathing down his neck like a shadow stitched to his spine.
So Dirga did what he knew best.
The court shifted into a wireframe battlefield.
Red glows—enemy trails.
Blue pulses—allies in motion.
Yuto? A red flare, sharp and twitching. Predictable.
Dirga brought the ball up, eyes pulsing with calculation.
He called for isolation.
Yuto tried to slide—too slow.
Shunpei crashed in from the wing.
"Damn." Dirga gritted his teeth.
He made the call in a split-second—
Drive into the contact. Try to draw the foul.
He launched into Haruto’s chest—bump—
The ball kissed the rim—
But Horizon was already moving.
Snatched the rebound.
Hiroki, top of the arc.
Catches. Rises. Fires.
PAKK! The ball shattered backward off his fingertips.
Daichi and Aizawa dove for it.
Sweat, sneakers, shouts.
Fingertips to leather—
Seven seconds on the shot clock.
Dirga didn’t hesitate.
He surged forward—straight into the teeth of the defense.
No pass. No hesitation.
You thought the tempo would slow.
You expected breath. A pause.
And Finals don’t wait.
And the court ignites again.
So Toyonaka answered—
Faster. Harder. Meaner.
Yuto streaked down the sideline, quick pass to Masaki.
Masaki caught it in full sprint.
No tricks. No setup. Just pure aggression.
He attacked the rim like it insulted him.
The shadow. The thorn.
He didn’t stop Masaki—he suffocated him.
Cut off angles. Forced a slip.
Taiga’s contest made it ugly.
Rikuya and Haruto skyed for it.
A collision of shoulders, hands, sweat.
Haruto—didn’t catch it—
He slapped it, desperate, and sent it arcing back.
But Dirga was already there.
He read it like a book.
And in that moment, GodFrame blinked out.
No more wireframe vision.
No more floating mind.
Real breath. Real sweat. Real fire in his legs.
But the instinct remained.
He was already sprinting.
Full-court. Fastbreak.
Nothing but him and the rim.
Then euro-stepped, fluid and clean—
Anticipating the block.
Yuto was already behind him.
Like a ghost from nowhere.
The block thundered like a gunshot.
Not just away—backward.
Toward Horizon’s own rim.
Everyone froze—then flipped.
Lightning. Raw. Vicious.
The ball bounced once.
Breath ragged, muscles screaming.
But he was too late. A second too slow.
Masaki had already risen.
A clean, effortless lift.
Like thunder escaping gravity.
Spinning with a surgeon’s precision.
The net snapped like a whip in dead silence.
Just the hush of a crowd too stunned to speak.
Even awe had to catch its breath.
But both teams—Horizon and Toyonaka—
Refused to slow down.
Refused to give an inch.
They weren’t just running systems.
They were baiting chaos.
Possessions flipped like coins in a hurricane, A block. A missed layup. A rebound ripped from the sky. And Bodies collided like rams in the wild.
The screech of sneakers carved the court like claws.
The sound of skin slapping hardwood echoed like a gunshot.
And the air was thick—
With sweat, heat, and something rawer:
You could see it Taiga, chest rising like a drumbeat of war, hair matted to his forehead. Rikuya, fists clenched, sweat dripping from his chin like rain off steel. Aizawa, eyes red-rimmed, locked onto his matchup like a hunter. Hiroki’s legs twitching, fighting off cramps.
Even he—the Black Thunder—
Now showed signs of mortal fatigue.
His steps heavier. His jaw tighter.
Drained like water from a bucket full of holes.
Every time the whistle blew,
It wasn’t strategy—it was mercy.
But even those timeouts couldn’t tame the pace.
Because the moment one side slowed—
When Horizon tried to push—
When Toyonaka tried to breathe—
Dirga hit the gas again.
This wasn’t a tempo game.
This was a game of mutual destruction.
The only one who still looked like he could run forever—
Thanks to the Stamina Booster,
But he wasn’t dead yet.
The game was brutal, and everyone knew it.
Focus was the only thing keeping them standing.
That was all that separated them.
And as the buzzer screamed to signal the end of the third quarter—
The sound rang sharp.
Like a blade pulled from its sheath.
No one on the floor smiled.
Because they all knew:
And if this was what the third looked like—
The fourth would be something else entirely.