BLUE LOCK CHAPTER 25: TRICK

TRICK

The Question on the Training Field

He does not knock. He does not wait. Isagi walks onto the Team X training field with the weight of everything Ego said still pressing down on him, and he asks the only question that matters:

“Please tell me, Barou. How can I become… …a striker who can score goals like you?”

The response is not words. It is a ball, launched directly at his face with a THWAP and a BOOSH that echoes through the empty field. Barou does not even turn around fully. He simply says it, flat and final:

“Loser. Use your own brain.”

Isagi picks himself up. He does not leave. And what comes out of him next is not strategy or calculation. It is something rawer and more urgent than either of those things:

“Wait! You’re the top scorer in Wing 5 with ten goals… You can score all by yourself… You’re the most amazing guy I’ve met here!”

The Ego That Cannot Be Crushed

Barou could ignore him. He does not. Instead he turns, and what he offers is not mentorship or kindness. It is something altogether more dangerous: a challenge.

“Listen, loser. That ego of yours, that can’t help… …having stupid dreams…”

He plants his feet. The air between them changes.

“I’ll crush it for you, here and now.”

One on one. No teammates, no formations, no safety nets. Just Isagi against the scoring king of Wing 5, on an empty field with balls scattered across it like fallen stars. Isagi braces himself and thinks clearly:

“I can’t compete with him physically!! I need to focus on the ball and his feet… …and watch for a chance to steal!”

The duel begins.

One on One with the King

Barou charges. Isagi holds his ground, reading every micro-movement, knowing that the moment he commits early, it is over:

“I can’t move until… …the instant Barou makes a decision… If I move an inch, he’ll blow past me!!”

He waits. He reads. And for a single precious moment, it works. He stays with him.

“But he’s still not past me! If I can just…”

Then comes the shot. Not from close range. Not from a comfortable angle. From over 20 meters away, a high-speed strike that finds the upper-right corner of the goal with a BWOOSH that Isagi can only stare at in disbelief:

“Huh?! He’s shooting already?!”

“He got it in the upper-right corner from over 20m away?! That was precise!”

Barou is already walking away.

“Later, loser.”

“Ah… wait! One more! Please!”

The King Does Not Stop

He comes again. This time Isagi tries to stay close, pressing in tight, refusing to give him space:

“I’ll stay on him this time! If I keep close, he won’t be able to shoot!”

Barou simply uses his arm to create the separation he needs. Isagi scrambles to reach the ball:

“Damn… he’s blocking with his arm?! He’s going to get a shot in…”

He stretches. He barely reaches. For one fraction of a second, he thinks he has disrupted it. Then he realizes:

“It was a feint?!”

Barou pivots left. Isagi is thrown off for just a moment. That moment is all it takes. The ball buries itself in the upper-right corner again. The same corner. The same precise trajectory.

“The upper right again!! Incredible… Was he aiming for the same spot?!”

And then, standing amid the debris of the duel, Isagi’s mind catches something. Something Ego said. Something about formulas. Something about the world’s best strikers. And it clicks:

“…can Barou score a goal from wherever he wants…?!”

“The world’s best strikers… …all have their own personal goal formulas!”

Reading the King

He tells Barou he will stop the next one. Barou raises an eyebrow:

“Oh?”

Isagi looks at him with something new in his eyes. Not fear. Not admiration. Something sharper.

“I’ve figured you out… Bring it on, King.”

Barou’s response is as contemptuous as ever:

“Quit yapping. Commoners like you… …should know their place…”

But Isagi is no longer listening with his ears. He is watching with his eyes, running the numbers through his spatial awareness, building a hypothesis from every shot he has witnessed:

“If my hypothesis is correct… …then he still… …can’t shoot from back here!!”

He mutters coordinates to himself. Positions. Distances. Angles. The picture assembles itself slowly, and when it is complete, it is devastating in its simplicity:

“…he’ll make a high-speed curve shot towards the goal’s upper right corner…”

The narration lands like a verdict stamped in bold:

THAT’S BAROU’S GUARANTEED SCORING RANGE!!

The formula reveals itself at last. Barou cannot shoot freely from everywhere. He has an area. A specific zone. And it is from that zone, and that zone alone, that his scoring odds increase dramatically. His monstrous physique is not just brute force. It is the engine that drives him into that zone past anyone who tries to stop him. His physical strength is the mechanism of his formula.

BY DRAWING EVERYTHING INTO HIS GUARANTEED SCORING RANGE… …BAROU CAN SCORE THE SAME KIND OF GOAL!!

THIS IS THE TRICK BEHIND HIS SCORING FORMULA!!

Isagi sees it now. And seeing it, he knows what to do:

“I can see it thanks to my spatial awareness! In that case, as long as I don’t let him in that area… …I can seal off his attacks!!”

The Monster Beneath the Formula

What happens next is humbling. Barou does not flinch. He does not adjust. He simply charges again, and this time what he reveals is not the formula but the terrifying scale of it. His guaranteed scoring range is not 20 meters. It is not 23 meters. With a POW that shakes the building:

“…is 27 meters.“*

The ball hits the net. Isagi can only stare:

“Is he… …some kind of monster?!”

And through the shock, a quieter question rises:

“Just how much training has he done… …to be able to make these kinds of plays?!”

What the King Actually Gave Him

When it is over, Isagi finds his voice:

“Th… Thank you, Barou! He really is… incredible!!!”

Barou corrects him immediately, and the correction matters:

“I didn’t teach you. I just made you realize…”

Then, turning away, he delivers his final word on the matter with the calm certainty of someone who has never once doubted his own dominance:

“As long as I’m on the field… …the despair you feel should be more than enough to make you quit.”

Isagi shudders. Isagi thanks him anyway.

“Thank you!”

The Formula That Remains Unsolved

Back in the Team Z room, the countdown is ticking. Twenty hours. Isagi sits with the formula laid out in his mind like an equation on a blackboard:

A × B = C

(Absolute Weapon × Situation in which you can use it = Lots of Goals)

E.G. Barou: Precise middle shot charging power × Range of 27m from front of goal = GOAL

He understands the structure now. But understanding the structure of someone else’s formula is not the same as having one of his own:

“I figured out the trick behind a goal formula, but… …my ‘A’ is nothing like Barou’s…”

“My weapon is spatial awareness… …but that doesn’t directly translate to scoring goals…”

“There’s no time… I’ll just… have to find it during the match…”

The admission is honest and frightening. He is going into the most important match of his life without a formula. He will have to find it on the battlefield itself.

The Night Before

His hands are shaking. He notices them.

“Am I nervous…? I guess that makes sense…”

The room is quiet. Tomorrow will decide everything. And somewhere in the darkness of his own thoughts, a fear surfaces that is harder to hold than any tactical problem:

“If I lose… …I wonder if I’ll feel that way again… Or maybe this time… …I’ll just give up honorably…”

Then, from somewhere nearby in the dark, comes a rustling. A voice. Igarashi, wide-eyed and trembling in his bed:

“Everything… …is riding on tomorrow, huh… I’m so scared I can’t sleep…”

He explains himself in pieces. He is a temple son. If soccer does not work out, he has to take over the temple. He came here after fighting with his father. Blue Lock is the last place where his dream can survive:

“Hey, Isagi… To me, Blue Lock is… …the place where I get my last chance to keep playing soccer…”

Fighting Because We Are Scared

Isagi looks at the boy shaking beside him and sees something he recognizes. The fear of a dream ending. The terror of tomorrow. And from that recognition, something steady surfaces in him:

“The thought of your dream ending… …is really terrifying, huh…”

Then the realization, printed across the page like a declaration:

THAT’S IT… I’M SHAKING BECAUSE I’M SCARED…

“It’s okay, Igaguri. You’re right…”

“We’re… …fighting because we’re scared.”

“And since we’re scared… …we can get stronger.”

The room holds that thought for a moment. And then, with the quiet conviction of someone who has made his decision and will not be unmade by it, Isagi says the only thing left to say:

“We’ll win for sure.”

“We’re not finished yet!”

The countdown ticks forward.

LAST GAME IN 19:40:01.

The last match is less than twenty hours away. Team Z has a formula to find and a monster to face. Everything begins now.

→ Continue to Chapter 26