Battle to the Death

The match opens on a compact thirty-by-forty-meter pitch, each goal guarded by a Blue Lock Man, with Isagi, Bachira, and Nagi playing as Team White under a matching white keeper. From kickoff Isagi feeds Bachira, prompting Aryu to send Tokimitsu to mark him, but Bachira slips free with a quick scissors move and pushes toward Rin, who stays coldly unmoved. Rather than take him on, Bachira releases the ball toward Nagi. As Aryu contests it and the pass looks too short, Nagi grasps that it was never meant for him: Isagi has ghosted into the corner, and his direct shot beats the keeper for a one-nil lead.

Team White huddles in celebration, Nagi and Bachira praising how far Isagi has come, and Isagi swells with confidence at his team's strength. Across the field Tokimitsu panics while Aryu concedes the finish looked stylish, yet Rin remains unbothered, dismissing everyone's play as lukewarm and insisting football is not a mere game but a battlefield. He then leans into a shot from long range, the vicious spin curving it home before Nagi or Bachira can even move their feet, and the keeper fails to react. The score levels at one apiece.

Isagi stares in disbelief that Rin scored straight off the restart, and Bachira confirms to Nagi that finishing from the kickoff spot is legal but rarely succeeds. Rin coldly repeats that friend or foe, everyone is just a lukewarm obstacle in his path, and suggests ending this waste of time. Stung, Isagi confronts him, declaring that he too is staking his life and chasing goals. Rin retorts that goals are anything but gentle, that losing a match means losing one's reason to exist, and that to him football is a deathmatch. The others reel at the words, but Isagi shakes off the shock, embraces his own ego, and tells Rin the lukewarm game is over and the real battle has begun.

Team White, made up of Isagi, Bachira, and Nagi, strikes first through a coordinated Isagi finish. Rin equalizes with a stunning spin-heavy shot launched from the kickoff spot. He declares football a deathmatch where defeat erases a player's reason to exist, and Isagi rises to the challenge as the score sits at one apiece.

Called Koroshiai, this twenty-page chapter continues the Second Selection Arc in Volume 6 and is adapted in Episode 13. It falls between Chapter 44 and Chapter 46.