008 Blue Lock: System Ten Years Early

That night, after Shinichi fell asleep, his consciousness kept sinking. He didn't know how long had passed when he suddenly opened his eyes. What appeared before him was a boundless white space.

[You have entered the Legendary Training Camp]

[You may customize the training camp and freely add training facilities and venues]

[All training inside the Legendary Training Camp will not provide any physical attribute feedback, but will alter your body's muscle memory. Please choose your training items carefully]

It took Shinichi quite a while to adapt before he confirmed that he hadn't transmigrated again, but had entered a new function of the system. He raised his hand and summoned the system. After some time, the white space rapidly began to change.

The earthy, grassy tang drilled into his nose. The monotonous white background compressed and warped like a physical object, turning into clusters of white clouds hanging in midair.

In just a short moment, the originally empty space transformed into a standard football field. Shinichi looked around and found nothing missing, nodding in satisfaction.

"I really can't believe I'm actually sleeping right now. This perception is way too real."

He even pinched his thigh hard. The pain nerves faithfully transmitted the sensation to his brain, yet Shinichi still felt no sign of being forced out of the space.

"Worthy of a paid feature. Looks like I don't have to worry about suddenly waking up while training here. So next—"

With a casual wave of his hand, complex yet symmetrical lines appeared out of thin air. Moments later, they combined into a grand and dazzling magic circle. This was another paid feature of the Legendary Training Camp, and one could even say it was the true main event.

Actually, just thinking about it made things clear. Even if he trained inside this camp, it wouldn't increase his physical attributes. If the camp could only evaluate Shinichi's abilities and upgrade them into skills, then charging for it would be impossible, and there'd be no need to create a specially customizable room.

In truth, the real function of the Legendary Training Camp was to summon those who had already become legends and have them personally train Shinichi. During this special training, Shinichi had a chance to comprehend their skills, and even their traits.

As for the summoning mechanism, it was very similar to Fate. If you used a "relic" as an aid, you could summon precisely. Without a relic, everything would be completely random. Of course, the so-called "relics" here naturally referred to traits.

After all, traits were the manifestation of achievements during one's lifetime, so they would naturally be more likely to attract legendary figures who had accomplished similar feats.

Therefore, when using traits as a medium for summoning, there was a high probability of summoning figures who possessed the corresponding traits. Naturally, to prevent the host from lacking traits worthy of being used as a medium, the system very "thoughtfully" set up a gacha feature.

By paying points, one could obtain temporary traits that could be used "only as summoning media." One hundred points for ten draws, but you could only choose one of them as the summoning medium for heroic spirits.

Summoned heroic spirits, as unlocked characters, could be summoned infinitely as sparring partners, but the temporary trait used during summoning would be consumed. However, if Shinichi used a trait he already possessed as the medium, it would not be consumed.

"The prices are unexpectedly low. Looks like the value of points might be much higher than I imagined. Good thing I exploited that bug—looking at it this way, my points are more than enough."

Looking at his balance, Shinichi felt completely secure and immediately went for a ten-pull.

[Ding! Congratulations, you have obtained the following temporary traits]

[Focused Gaze (Purple)]

[Dexterous Fingers (Gold)]

[Actor (White)]

[Ear-Wiggling Divine Art (Blue)]

[Genius (White)]

[Sprint (Blue)]

[Iron Will (White)]

[Gain Weight by Drinking Water (Blue)]

[God's Tongue (Red-Gold)]

[Body Fragrance (Blue)]

...

Shinichi looked at the drawn traits with a strange expression. Leaving aside the fact that there were no explanations, many traits were completely incomprehensible just from their names. And why the hell was Ear-Wiggling Divine Art a blue rarity? Wasn't this deliberately stuffing trash into the pool to pollute it?!

He took a deep breath and tried to think positively. At least this gacha system didn't include a "Thank you for participating," which was already something.

After comforting himself, Shinichi pulled himself together. He directly ignored those joke traits and the white-rarity traits, focusing instead on the one purple, one gold, and the red-gold trait he had never seen before.

He knew that when upgrading his Genius tag before, even being just one blue rarity short would have allowed it to advance to gold, yet it never turned purple-gold. From this, Shinichi could roughly imagine just how rare that legendary red rarity must be.

"But I can't be blinded by rarity. Even though it's high, God's Tongue makes it obvious at a glance what kind of heroic spirit would be summoned. It can be said to be completely useless."

Shinichi first painfully eliminated the highest-rarity trait he had ever seen so far, and focused his attention on the remaining two traits.

"Although Dexterous Fingers doesn't seem helpful for playing football at first glance, compared to God's Tongue, at least I can be sure the summoned character's abilities would be in physical talent. There's a certain chance it could help me..."

"But in the end, Focused Gaze is still more reliable. Especially since it involves the use of 'eyes.' Ugh—so hard to give up!"

Only heaven knew how much willpower Shinichi used to give up those two traits. It was really because he had personally experienced the process of a talent going from blue to purple, and finally upgrading to gold.

So he understood even more clearly how big the improvement was with each rank increase. Even so, he still forcibly pressed down his own hand, selected Focused Gaze (Purple), and directly used this trait for summoning.

"But what if Dexterous Fingers could summon some legendary goalkeeper? That could also give me a lot of football-related guidance. What if Ronaldo was secretly a culinary genius with God's Tongue? What if..."

After making his choice, Shinichi started to feel indecisive again. But the system wasn't going to wait for him. A crystal-clear purple crystal slowly rose into the air and merged into the summoning magic circle.

The summoning circle lit up with a dazzling glow. When the radiance dispersed, a bald man in purple-gold battle armor, holding a basketball, stared at him expressionlessly.

"WTF! Kobe?!" Shinichi's eyes widened. He actually summoned the boss? That said, although Kobe really did fit this trait, his Focused Gaze was only purple rarity?

"Your Genius trait has multiple levels, so of course other traits also have different levels. You just got lucky and summoned me, who also has this trait but at a higher level."

Kobe seemed to have entered game mode right from the start, trash-talking Shinichi with a smug face, not giving him any chance to retort.

"I don't read minds. It's just that stupid face of yours exposes everything you're thinking. Alright, hurry up. Don't waste my time. Let me see your level."

"Uh, I play football..."

"Bullshit! Everything I need to know, I already understood the moment I was summoned. Since you play football, then use your feet to steal the ball from me! Didn't you choose 'Focused Gaze'? That means you want this trait, so I'll attack and you defend! Keep your eyes on me—if you can stop me once, you'll have Focused Gaze!"

Kobe was decisive and fierce. He moved in with the ball, about to post up. But as soon as he dribbled, the basketball hit the grass. The soft turf couldn't provide enough rebound, causing the basketball not to return to Kobe's hands, instead slowly rolling far away. Shinichi hurriedly covered his mouth, barely managing not to laugh out loud.

"Is it funny?" Kobe's already dark face grew even darker as he roared at Shinichi. "Hurry up and change this damn football field!"

Moments later, the grass was replaced with a hardwood floor. Everything was ready. Kobe stared at Shinichi intently, holding the ball in a triple-threat stance. Shinichi watched as Kobe kept the ball very low, instinctively sticking out his foot to steal it. As a result, Kobe quickly gathered the ball, turned sideways, squeezed past him, and finished with a reverse layup.

"Damn it, how stupid are you? You fall for something that obvious? You can't disrupt the opponent's rhythm, can't block the attacking lane, and even if you touch the ball, you still can't gain possession. What's the point of this kind of defense?"

"Your defense is like some roadside chick—pretending to push away, but actually having no intention of refusing at all. Do you just love getting blown by your matchup that much?!"

"Your vocabulary is really pathetic. No wonder after playing for so many years you don't have a single classic trash talk line. High school dropout—no culture at all!"

Profanities blasted at Shinichi like a machine gun. Even if the other party was the boss, Shinichi couldn't hold back his temper anymore. He fiercely body-checked Kobe and gritted his teeth as he started trash-talking back for the first time.

Although Shinichi was talking back, Kobe instead lost some of his initial arrogance.

"Now you're starting to look a bit like a man."

But what caught Shinichi off guard was that while Kobe spoke to distract him, his movements didn't stop at all. He spun and drove an elbow straight into Shinichi's chest. The immense force made Shinichi nearly lose his breath.

Kobe charged straight to the basket and slammed it down, then turned back and pointed at Shinichi.

"But it's still not enough! When I was six years old, I was a hundred times tougher than you, kid."

"Of course, if you think this is a foul, then as a courtesy to a baby, I can cancel these moves. After all, this is real man-level physical confrontation—minors need parental supervision to watch."

"Damn it, you really won't shut up! Again!" Shinichi slammed the floor hard, rubbed his burning chest, and stood back up.

...

"I could defend this ball even without using my hands or feet, just by fasting, yet you still got shaken to the ground. You like falling down that much? Why don't you switch careers and learn street dance? There are plenty of floor moves in that."

...

"As a defender, the first thing you need to do is obstruct what the opponent wants to do, understand? Only after you accomplish that are you qualified to think about what you want to do. Steals, counterattacks—those are things you're not even worthy of thinking about right now. The only thing you should be thinking about is this: how do I stop you from scoring!"

...

For the entire night, Shinichi was tormented by Kobe until he was half-dead. Using his feet to defend basketball was already ridiculous enough, let alone when the one holding the ball was Kobe.

Moreover, this was also Shinichi's first time facing an opponent whose physical quality was not weaker than his own, or even stronger. Yet Kobe's use of his body was far superior to Shinichi's.

Not to mention Kobe's endless dirty moves and trash talk, which annoyed Shinichi to no end.

However, Shinichi didn't come away empty-handed. At the very least, the wish he made at the end of Chapter One had come true. Now, in Blue Lock, there was no one who could out-trash-talk him anymore.

Not because his strength had improved overnight to the point of overpowering everyone in Blue Lock. It was simply that after an entire night of trading trash talk with Kobe, there probably wasn't anyone in all of Blue Lock whose mouth was filthier than his.