One Who Never Gives Up
Before his regression, Jung Hyuk had been a player who thrived in the K League—right up until the day he finally unlocked A-class talent.
In those years he mostly lined up as a midfielder, but whenever he came off the bench he was often thrown on as a striker instead. His team had a habit of sending him on with ten minutes left, sometimes five. It was never random. Jung Hyuk simply became a different animal in the dying moments of a match—especially when his side was losing. That was why he always entered so late.
Super sub. Ultimate joker. The names people pin on players like Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Henrik Larsson, and Chicharito—men who step onto the pitch with almost no time remaining and still deliver the goal that changes everything. Men who, even with the clock nearly empty, keep their focus razor-sharp and their finishing lethal enough to swing a match. That was the kind of player Jung Hyuk had been in his past life.
And the reason he scored so freely when his team was behind had nothing to do with luck or simple concentration. People never knew it, but Jung Hyuk had a concrete explanation.
The trait One Who Never Gives Up.
He had carried it from the very first moment he obtained the Card of Dream. And now, with four minutes left in the final against Unnam High, the trait's conditions were met.
Activation conditions for the trait One Who Never Gives Up have been met.
The effect of One Who Never Gives Up is now active.
The moment he saw the messages, the corner of Jung Hyuk's mouth curled upward.
"That's it."
He had refused to surrender even in a desperate match for more than one reason—belief in his own ability, yes, but also the certainty that One Who Never Gives Up was about to fire.
When the team is driven into crisis, all stats rise by 5.
Duration: 5 minutes
With the effect live, Jung Hyuk's attributes now read as follows.
Age: 18 (16 internationally)
Height: 181 cm
Preferred Foot: Right
Talent: S
Traits: One Who Never Gives Up, One Who Never Gets Injured, Soccer Genius
Points Held: 0P
A total boost of fifty points across the board.
Yeah. Stats need to be at least this high.
With the numbers elevated, everything felt different. He still wasn't at his prime, but confidence surged through him—he could play the way he wanted far more freely now. The trait's effect showed itself at once. Jung Hyuk began driving the attack with a whole new sharpness of movement.
They were down 3–2. Only four minutes remained. None of that mattered to him. He felt no pressure at all.
With a body like this… four minutes is plenty.
The stat boost had restored his stamina as a natural side effect. He wasn't perfect, but he had more than enough fuel to run wild for four minutes.
Bed soccer and a ten-back setup, is that it?
From the other side of the ball, it was an infuriating, filthy way to play—and Unnam High was running it to the letter. Breaking that kind of defense was brutally hard. One wrong step and your mentality cracked; you could get completely swallowed by it. But that didn't mean there was no way through. In Jung Hyuk's experience, perfect football did not exist. Sooner or later, every wall could be cracked. And so he started laying bait to pry Unnam High open.
Take it.
Tuk. Tuuk.
Jung Hyuk and his teammates circulated the ball just outside Unnam High's penalty area. The Unnam players stayed coiled, locked into pure defense. They made no effort to press. They simply compressed the space and shut down every forward pass and every attempt to break through. Their shape looked like a solid wall, and it was more than enough to smother an opponent in frustration.
Then Jung Hyuk took the ball and struck it without hesitation. With One Who Never Gives Up active, his shooting sat at 73. The shot left his foot far harder than usual.
Puhng!
It was a fierce strike, but the contact was clean, so the ball stayed low instead of sailing high.
Shuuung!
The ball skimmed toward Unnam High's wall at a dangerous height. Their players spun and threw themselves into the block. The dense wall did its job—the shot cannoned off a defender and rebounded out. But every Unnam player was packed near the box, and Jeongwoon High had them surrounded. The loose ball fell straight back to Jeongwoon.
Tuk!
Lee Geon-ho claimed it. With roughly three minutes left in a situation this desperate, the ball always found its way to the most reliable man on the team. Geon-ho immediately fed it to Jung Hyuk.
Tuk—
Jung Hyuk took the pass, nudged it ahead, and shaped as if he were about to shoot again. With every attribute raised by five, his movement was smoother and sharper than usual.
"Block it!"
Unnam High reacted to the shooting motion. The trajectory of his previous strike had been genuinely threatening—if it hadn't hit the wall, it might well have been a goal. This time they moved to stop him before he could pull the trigger. One Unnam player charged in to disrupt the shot.
Good. Keep coming out one by one.
A smile touched Jung Hyuk's lips. Pressure arrived, and he felt none of it. Even on a normal day he could beat one or two men; with boosted stats, shrugging off a defender was almost trivial.
Whoosh!
He swung his leg as if to shoot—then stopped the motion cold. His upper body swayed left and right, selling a feint toward the left. Thud! The Unnam player bit and threw his body in to cut him off. Jung Hyuk had already read every intention. On top of that, his ball retention was elite. No matter how hard the pressure, he was certain he would not lose the ball.
Puhk!
The charge landed, and Jung Hyuk did not budge. He dropped his center of gravity, shifted his weight, and let the force slide off him. Even with a defender glued to his side, he kept driving forward—and before long he had carried the ball all the way into the penalty area.
"What are you doing?! Don't let him through!"
"Damn it! At least stop him from shooting!"
"Stick to him! Get close and shut him down!"
Jung Hyuk's sudden breakthrough shattered Unnam High's compact shape. Players poured out of their positions, swarming him in a net of bodies to contain a dribbler this dangerous. And in that instant, Jung Hyuk's eyes lit up.
Now!
Tuk!
He clipped the ball lightly into the air. The Unnam players flooding toward him spun as one—and saw a figure already racing onto the arc of the lofted pass.
Jeongwoon High's striker, Oh Jung-hoon.
He had slipped Unnam High's offside trap and was already swinging his leg at the ball dropping out of the sky. It was falling right in front of goal. The Unnam keeper flung himself across, but he could not match the speed of Jung-hoon's volley.
Puhng!
A heavy crack of contact—and the ball, struck clean off Jung-hoon's instep, buried itself in the bottom-right corner of the net.
The atmosphere inside the final's stadium flipped in an instant.
Jung Hyuk had finally cracked Unnam High's ten-back wall, and Oh Jung-hoon had finished with clinical perfection. Their combined masterpiece left the Unnam players with their heads hanging. Score: 3–3. Time remaining: one minute.
Urgency seized Unnam High. Extra time would be a burden even for them. They had managed their stamina carefully, but running into extra time was never easy—and football was a sport full of chaos. Unnam High wanted no more variables. They wanted a goal in the final minute, by any means necessary. So they abandoned the ten-back and pushed forward to create a chance.
But an attack born of pure desperation was always going to be blunt. The real problem was that Jeongwoon High's players were so spent that even a blunt attack could make them stagger.
Unnam High rattled Jeongwoon's back line with quick passes. Jeongwoon's defenders, legs almost completely gone, still refused to lose focus. Their reactions had slowed and their hearts felt ready to burst, but they kept throwing their bodies in the way and snuffing out the attacks.
Puhng!
A ball deflected off a Jeongwoon defender's leg and sailed behind the goal.
Piiik!
Corner kick to Unnam High. Twenty seconds left. They scrambled into position as fast as they could, even the goalkeeper charging up to turn this last chance into a goal. The moment the referee gave the signal, the corner was delivered.
Puhng!
The ball rose high into the box. Every player on both sides—except the one who had taken the corner—was packed inside the penalty area. It was a corner born of pure desperation. With fifteen seconds remaining, every body left the ground. Jeongwoon fought to clear it. Unnam fought to force it in. Hearts hammered as if they would explode. And even in a moment that raw, one man watched it all with cold, clear eyes.
Focus. One chance might still come.
One was all he needed. When that chance arrived, Jung Hyuk was certain he would take it.
Whoom!
With every player airborne, the two closest to the ball were Unnam High's Kim Ki-hyuk and Jeongwoon High's Oh Jung-hoon—and that was pure fortune for Jeongwoon. At 193 cm, with monstrous physical gifts, Jung-hoon's leap and heading ability had no equal at the high-school level. Kim Ki-hyuk was himself a 188 cm center-back with a strong aerial game, but the result was still shockingly one-sided.
Puhng!
Oh Jung-hoon won the header. Kim Ki-hyuk, jumping with him, was a physical specimen in his own right—and still went flying off like a rag doll.
"Guhh!"
The ball Jung-hoon headed clear sailed forward. Players from both sides tore after it. Ten seconds left. Jeongwoon players wrung every last drop of strength from their legs to launch the counter. Unnam players sprinted just as hard to create one more chance. Purposes were crystal clear—and the man who reached the ball first was Unnam High's Park Jin-hyuk.
That was where the problem began. Park Jin-hyuk was not a player who made mistakes. But with his heart hammering under that crushing tension, he made one he never would have made on a normal day.
Teong!
His first touch was a fraction too long. That single error opened the door wide.
"No!"
Feeling the ball sit differently than he expected, Park Jin-hyuk dug in and lunged to recover it. And in that same instant, another player threw himself to the ground—sliding full length, leg stretched for the ball.
Chwaaak!
"I'll take that."
The sliding tackle that stripped the ball clean belonged to Jung Hyuk. Chwaak! Tat! He was on his feet in a single motion and already sprinting forward. No one stood in front of him. Unnam High's goalkeeper was racing back toward his goal at full speed, but his start had been late.
Still, the distance was far too great for a shot. Jung Hyuk's shooting sat at a solid 73, but trying to bury one from short of the halfway line into the opposite net was an absurd gamble. He had to close the gap.
Just a little more…!
Driving the ball ahead, Jung Hyuk glanced back at the referee. Stoppage time was already gone. The whistle could come at any second and no one would complain. He kept running while tracking the official's every move—and then:
Damn it!
The referee lifted the whistle. Slowly, deliberately, he brought it toward his mouth. Jung Hyuk saw it, planted hard off his left foot, and swung his right leg through.
Whoong!
There was no certainty. He had only just crossed the halfway line. The goal was still a long way off. Even with boosted stats, putting the ball in the net from that range was extraordinarily difficult—and his S-class talent effect had not triggered either. Even so, Jung Hyuk swung. He struck the shot as cleanly and precisely as he possibly could.
Puhng!
Please!
He froze. Every movement stopped. He stared after the ball with desperate eyes. He had done everything he could. All that remained was to trust the shooting he had trained for a lifetime—to trust the sweat and blood he had poured into every single day of practice. And his effort did not betray him.
Whether he had talent or not, the product of shooting drills he had never once skipped came through. The ball Jung Hyuk struck flew on a trajectory so beautiful it raised goosebumps, arrowing with eerie precision straight into the dead center of the goal.
Got it…!
Cheolreong!
The net shuddered hard as the ball slammed into it. Only then did Jung Hyuk let out the breath he had been holding.
And in that same instant—
Piiiiik!
The final whistle rang out across the pitch.