Seihō's possession.
After crossing midcourt, Yuuto raised his hand to call for the ball again.
An isolation against Himuro. Kasuga and the others cleared out to the opposite side, taking their defenders with them, giving Yuuto room to operate.
The two faced each other in silence—they'd already clashed in that streetball game a month ago.
Thump...
Yuuto's five fingers worked the ball. Golden lightning seemed to crackle around both hands, his dribble frequency impossibly fast. Himuro didn't dare look away for even a moment.
That dribbling speed was simply too quick. One lapse in attention and he'd lose track of his man entirely.
Smack!
After a momentary setup, Yuuto exploded into motion. Brilliant golden light radiated from his body—the Tezuka Zone's enhanced ball-handling made the basketball seem magnetically attached to his palms.
One step forward, so fast it looked like a blur passing before Himuro's eyes, and suddenly Yuuto was parallel to his right side.
"Don't underestimate me!" Himuro's words were ice-cold. Despite taking hits from the opening whistle, his confidence remained.
But the next second, his vision seemed to fracture into illusions.
Yuuto's driving motion stopped halfway as he pulled back the ball—yet that overwhelming sense of rhythm never stopped deceiving his opponent's sensory system.
Himuro saw Yuuto break past his right side... but also not, as if he was pulling back and crossing over to attack from the other side.
"This is Yuuto's evolution?!"
Chills ran through his entire body.
Compared to their last encounter, Yuuto had come out firing on all cylinders from the start. The adjustments for Himuro were already complete—this was the result.
"That—is that the Phantom Mirage?!" The Kaijō contingent gasped.
But Kise recognized something was off. Having just faced Haizaki, this felt familiar.
"It's not just Phantom Mirage," he said. "It's more like he's fused it with Himuro's fake-out dribbles."
He'd improved again.
Kise stared, dumbfounded. In just one summer, Yuuto had taken another step forward. The speed of his evolution was terrifying.
His guess was correct.
This was Yuuto's harvest from his latest simulation.
Combining Haizaki's rhythm deception with Himuro's fakes made his movements even more deceptive.
Yuuto accelerated past Himuro's side. Against Fukui, there was no meaningful difference—it was practically a one-step blow-by.
"Not so fast!"
Okamura and Liu Wei, the two pillars, stepped up simultaneously.
With Murasakibara anchoring the paint, they could rotate and help without hesitation—no worries about leaving anyone open behind them.
A wall-like defense, two mountains standing before Yuuto.
Tap, tap, tap...
Yuuto's expression remained unchanged. His dual-personality shooter mode activated unconsciously, lending him a cold detachment.
His pupils glowed as two crimson rings rapidly expanded, enveloping both defenders.
The next instant—
He identified their weaknesses through their shifting body data.
Yuuto moved. In mere moments, Okamura and Liu Wei felt something was terribly wrong.
They didn't want to move—Coach Araki had warned them—but their bodies seemed to act on their own, moving independently of their will.
Thud! Thud!
In the blink of an eye, under the stunned gaze of every spectator, Yōsen's two pillars dropped rapidly.
They hadn't suddenly shrunk—they'd both been ankle-broken simultaneously, sent sprawling to the floor.
Their expressions mirrored those players Akashi had made kneel—pure horror.
Rakuzan's bench, Akashi included, all changed their expressions.
"Let's continue, Murasakibara."
Yuuto bent low and slipped between the fallen giants, facing Yōsen's final defensive line—also their most formidable one.
His movements were lightning-quick, with actions often executing only halfway before jumping to the next step.
"Just like Tatsuya... no, he's even faster!" Alexandra's expression tightened.
She could roughly guess what her student must be feeling right now.
Himuro had polished his fundamentals to near-perfection.
From that foundation, he'd developed those devastatingly realistic fakes, forming his personal style.
Within the limits of his talent, he'd squeezed out almost every drop of his potential.
And yet—
His painstakingly crafted personal style had been perfectly replicated by an enemy in barely a month—possibly less—and then improved upon.
Skills he'd honed over a decade, mastered and enhanced by someone else in weeks. The psychological blow was unimaginable.
And Yuuto possessed extraordinary talent that Himuro had never been blessed with.
...
His speed was already terrifying. Combined with this playing style, he could compress his opponent's reaction time to the absolute minimum.
"But we have Murasakibara." Araki's eyes locked onto her center.
Right now, Yuuto's silhouette was dreamlike, generating multiple afterimages.
Partly from his sheer speed, partly from movements so convincingly fake they approached reality.
He attacked Murasakibara from three different directions simultaneously.
Smack!
Yuuto blew past him, taking one huge stride around to Murasakibara's back.
The "continue" he'd mentioned referred to that streetball game cut short by rain.
Murasakibara's reflexes were absurdly fast—almost unreasonably so.
Even with Yuuto pushing him to this extent, compressing his reaction time to the limit, Murasakibara still managed to respond.
...
Athletic ability that defied his massive frame—he was already launching into the air while turning, his dark shadow enveloping Yuuto completely.
His enormous hand swept across, blocking nearly every passing lane.
Most terrifying of all, even if Yuuto passed now, it would be useless—Murasakibara had already reacted.
Without any primal instinct enhancement, purely through freakish reflexes, he'd surpassed that kind of intuition.
Yuuto's eyes gleamed. Finding his opponent's weakness, he instantly switched to Aomine's style.
Specialty shot!
He evaded Murasakibara's block, threading the ball under the giant's armpit and into the net.
"So this is the strongest in the country..." Kagami Taiga's gaze flickered.
Murasakibara's defense was incredibly strong.
So strong that even from across the court, Kagami felt suffocated.
Despite being completely beaten, that freakish athleticism still allowed Murasakibara to chase down the play.
Physical ability. Body type. Motor reflexes... everything had reached its peak, each element essential.
No wonder Kuroko had said that within the Generation of Miracles, they all believed Murasakibara's talent might be the greatest.
"But his defense was still broken by Yuuto." Kasamatsu wasn't surprised.
They'd experienced Yuuto's absurdity firsthand. This seemed only natural.
But Kise shook his head. "It's not that simple."
"If Murasakibara had been a bit more patient, Yuuto wouldn't have scored that easily."
...
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