An unexpected meeting

"They're here." Ricardo said and pointed towards a group of players who lazily entered the stadium before slowly starting to warm up without even looking at us.

"And which one is the little genius we need to take care of?" I asked with a confident smile, thanks to our last game I knew that winning against a stronger opponent was very possible for us.

Thanks to my [Eyes of the Lord] skill I'm able to make the best use of other people's strengths and weaknesses, as long as I have such an amazing special weapon I thought myself to be close to invincible, even Ricardo knew and trusted my ability to see through people so I was allowed to take big decisions about our game plans.

That's also the reason why he followed through with me in the quarter-finals when I decided to launch a sudden offensive against the coach's directives.

"That's him, the guy with the reddish brown hair and long lower lashes." He said as he pointed towards an average-sized guy who wasn't even warming up, he was just sitting on the bench and looking nowhere in particular.

"You're kidding me..." I unconsciously let out a wide smile after taking a good look at the person in front of me. After trying to use my [Eyes of the Lord] skill on him I confirmed my suspicions.

[Name: Itoshi Sae.

Age: 15

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It was the first time ever since meeting Lavinho that someone's stats were hidden from me, it was the first time my strongest weapon didn't work. I couldn't get any information about him other than his name and age.

I knew that his abilities are way above most players and that even now he should have the level to play with the youth team but I didn't expect to not even be able to see his overall stats.

"What's wrong? You know him?" Ricardo asked after seeing my weird reaction.

"You could say so, now I'm convinced that I need to play this whole game, no matter what." I said with an excited smile and went to convince the coach to let me play.

"Alright, but make sure to not take it too far, if you feel tired or hurt anywhere I'll sub you out, understood?" My talk with Evans went well and he even ended up agreeing with letting me be in the starting eleven, that's how much faith he had in me.

"I will make sure to not disappoint you, sir." At the same time as those words left my mouth, I heard the familiar sound of a system notification.

[Special quest: facing Itoshi Sae.

Difficulty: C

Description:

A flame in the player's ego has been ignited, keep the flame alive by scoring against Itoshi Sae.

Reward: 10 stat points and 20 random stat points.]

It seems like meeting him triggered my [Greed] skill, I couldn't hide my excitement after meeting such a strong player and it seems like my skill picked up on those feelings, he's still 2 years younger than when he's seen in the manga but that doesn't stop him from being the strongest player I'll be going against so far.

'I wonder what it's like to go against such a genius.' I couldn't stop my heart from going crazy, I wasn't even able to the coach's words before the game and instead hurriedly went to my position and hoped for the game to start as soon as possible.

The kick-off was ours this time, I stood next to the ball while waiting for the referee to blow the whistle. I could see Sae standing in front of me with his usual lazy look, I hated how lazy he looked even though the game was about to start, it was as if he didn't have any interest in this game.

Though I couldn't deny that he had a special aura around him, even without my prior knowledge I would've noticed that he was special, he was clearly shining brighter than everyone on the field.

As soon as I heard the whistle I passed the ball back to Ricardo, we agree to take it slow this time and not play too aggressively, we first needed to assess the strength of our opponents so I was thinking of taking it easy and staying back with Ricardo then slowly advancing.

What we didn't expect was that Sae rushed straight toward him and forced Ricardo to pass the ball back to Pedro.

It was my first time seeing Ricardo panicking in front of someone and making such a rushed decision, Pedro then passed the ball back to one of our midfielders who then tried passing it towards Kevin but it was easily intercepted by a player of the opposite team.

Everyone on our team was playing way too fast, I could feel that instead of holding onto the ball everyone was just passing it around to make sure they didn't lose the ball. The pressure of the semifinals was too heavy for them.

"Fuck it!" I already guessed that something like that might happen so I rushed straight towards the defense, I didn't want to waste my stamina but I knew that if I didn't give it my all we would certainly lose.

The player who stole the ball then passed it back to Sae, even tho he was closely guarded by Ricardo, he easily trapped it and got ready to face our captain, I thought that this would give me enough time to catch up but Sae didn't even look bothered and easily dribbled past Ricardo then sprinted towards the goal.

Even while dribbling he was faster than most players I knew, he might even be faster than Kevin who was our star player when it came to speed.

Both Pedro and Arnold rushed to stop him, he was running all alone towards us while the rest of his team stayed behind him to cover for him.

Arnold was the first to arrive in front of Sae, he tried pushing him with his shoulder to intimidate him but Sae just stopped in the middle of his run and then got past him with an extremely fast roulette.

Even after he got dribbled past, Arnold still tried to tackle him from behind but Sae easily jumped to dodge it while simultaneously keeping the ball stuck to his feet.

Right as he landed on the ground Pedro rushed towards him while keeping some distance, it did gain us some time but as soon as Pedro made a slight mistake Itoshi Sae dribbled past him with almost no effort.

He was now face to face with the goalkeeper and was about to shoot, but that's when I suddenly appeared in front of him and put my leg in front of him to block the shot.

"I didn't expect to see the Ace striker being the last line of defense." He said in a cold sarcastic voice before getting the ball over me with a light chip and jumping to finish it off with a volley.

His shot was so powerful and precise that our goalkeeper couldn't do anything to stop it. We were still in the first 15 minutes of the game and yet he already scored on us.

1-0 in the 14th minute, that was the worst possible outcome for our team's morale which was already very low, and that low morale soon enough translated into the rest of our plays.

For the rest of the first half, we tried out best to hold on and play it as safe as possible but even with us trying to keep the possession as much as possible and listening to the coach's instructions Sae managed to score 2 more goals.

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"Since when are those fucking Sushi eaters so strong?!" Arnold complained while laying down in our locker room.

"A genius won't let his nationality limit his potential, he's just that good, and if we can't accept that then we'll lose for sure." Pedro said with a serious face.

"This might be our last game in this tournament..." Kevin said while looking down, he didn't even get to touch the ball since the beginning of the game.

"Hey Ricardo, let's just forget all the previous tactics, it's clearly useless for us to try and play it safe anymore, it's not our usual play style and it's obvious that it's just stressing everyone out." I said out loud, the coach was still outside so I took this opportunity to talk to everyone.

"It might actually be a good idea... If this is going to be our last game we might as well enjoy it as much as we can and play the same way we usually would!" Ricardo announced which cheered up everyone, we all agreed to ignore the coach's instructions for the second half.