The Genius Hitter Who Conquered America - Chapter 113

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 113
Two outs, runners on first and second.
The decisive moment of the championship game. The gravest crisis.
The Referee called time, and the Salt River Rafters’ Pitching Coach walked up to the Mound.
He tapped Victor’s shoulder lightly and asked.
“Victor. Do you want to come out?”
It was a question, not a demand.
This was the American way.
An ace pitcher received unconditional trust.
Whether he left the Mound was not the Manager’s decision, but a matter of respect—left to the pitcher’s own judgment.
Victor commanded such absolute faith within the team, indeed throughout the entire League.
Instead of answering, Victor closed his eyes for a moment and exhaled a long breath.
It was less a deliberation over the Coach’s question than a cold assessment of my physical condition.
‘Undeniably. I’ve been pushing far too hard.’
I had no choice but to admit it.
My shoulder felt heavier than usual, and the sensation in my fingertips had dulled.
The price of throwing 100-mile fastballs recklessly from the start was finally catching up.
But what did it matter?
Even if I’d been pushing too hard, I was still holding the line without allowing a run through six innings, wasn’t I?
Despite this crisis, judging purely by results, my pitching today had been magnificent.
I’d allowed only three batters to reach base.
Even if the relief pitcher behind me fumbled and both runners scored to tie the game, I wouldn’t be the losing pitcher.
Six innings, two earned runs—that’s a Quality Start.
It’s an excellent record for a pitcher, and individually, I’ve done my part.
‘Should I come out?’
Honestly, stepping back here might be the wise choice.
Even in the championship game, I’ve already shown everything I have to show.
Victor was about to make that rational decision.
When he opened his closed eyes, his vision distorted strangely.
Behind the Pitching Coach’s back.
That guy—the one who should be in the On-Deck Circle—had moved.
Soo-ho stood behind the Coach, in a spot where he was clearly visible.
He stood with the bat resting on his shoulder, staring directly at Victor.
He said nothing, but Victor understood what that gaze was saying.
‘Running away?’
His expression was almost mocking.
“Ah….”
A low sigh escaped Victor’s lips.
In that instant, my mind cleared, and a forgotten truth surfaced.
My task was not yet finished.
I had almost forgotten.
That I had taken the mound today specifically to face Soo-ho.
How could I have forgotten something so crucial?
Because I had played baseball that way my entire life.
Personal statistics mattered more than team victory, and Scout evaluations took precedence over championship trophies in the life I had lived.
Today too, I had unconsciously been ready to settle for this level of performance and step down.
‘But not today.’
This game wasn’t over until I crushed that arrogant bastard beneath my feet.
“…Victor?”
When there was no response, the Coach called out once more.
Victor kept his gaze fixed on Soo-ho as he answered in a low but resolute voice.
“I’m not coming out.”
Victor had ultimately chosen to fight.
The Coach recognized the murderous intent gleaming in Victor’s eyes, nodded silently, and descended from the Mound.
Now all that remained was the confrontation between two rivals who had met on a single-log bridge.
* * *
A peculiar smile played at the corners of Soo-ho’s mouth as he finished his preparations to enter the Batter’s Box.
He had deliberately positioned himself not in the On-Deck Circle, but behind the Pitching Coach.
Precisely where Victor’s line of sight would reach—a calculation made with meticulous precision.
‘If you step down from here, you’re going to have a problem.’
What if Victor abandoned his pride and chose to be substituted?
Casey, Mark, and the carefully constructed quicksand of fatigue I had engineered would all come to nothing.
A fresh relief pitcher would come up with full stamina, and the opportunity with two outs and runners on first and second would reset to square one.
My objective wasn’t to defeat Victor as an individual pitcher.
‘All I need is the championship.’
It might sound cold, but to me, Victor was merely one obstacle among many that I had to overcome to obtain the championship trophy.
Of course, Victor was an exceptional player.
A first-round pick revered by every Minor League player, undoubtedly possessing monstrous talent.
But.
‘I’m looking toward even greater heights now.’
The Major League.
Once I stepped onto that dream stage, there would be far more vicious monsters that would make Victor look insignificant.
To survive there and defeat them, I absolutely had to win today.
A championship bonus would change how the Club treated me.
Salary, training support, coaching staff attention, and opportunities.
To receive the weapons I needed to fight and defeat players even more exceptional than Victor.
‘I must secure victory in this game today and claim the spoils of championship.’
That’s why I hoped Victor wouldn’t come out.
And I was certain of it.
As long as I existed within Victor’s field of vision.
Today, Victor would choose burning pride over cold, rational judgment.
‘If that weren’t the case, he wouldn’t have ramped up his pace like a madman from the first inning.’
Just as Soo-ho predicted, the Pitching Coach descended from the Mound, and Victor remained in his place.
Staring at him with eyes blazing with fierce determination.
Soo-ho adjusted his helmet and walked into the Batter’s Box.
The stage he wanted had been set.
‘Let’s see this through.’
Now it was time to reap what he’d sown.
* * *
The confrontation had begun.
Victor gripped the ball in his hand so tightly it seemed ready to crumble.
His fingertips had grown numb to sensation.
His muscles screamed, swollen to the point of bursting.
His body was already shrieking that it had reached its limit, yet Victor’s eyes burned colder and fiercer than ever before.
‘I don’t have much left.’
Perhaps after throwing this pitch, his shoulder would be destroyed.
He might not be able to lift his arm tomorrow.
But it didn’t matter.
‘Still, taking you down won’t be a problem.’
His baseball career had been a smooth, predetermined path.
Always rational, always efficient, always moving within calculations for the future—the life of an elite.
But now Victor had hurled every concept of that into the trash.
Even if his body shattered in the process.
Abandoning all thoughts of the future, only the primal instinct to crush the enemy before him dominated his being.
In truth, for Victor Moretti, the Arizona Fall League was merely a rehearsal to pass through.
A light warm-up before entering the Major League, a place to check his condition and loosen up his body.
But the moment he faced Soo-ho, that casual exhibition transformed into a desperate struggle for survival.
Ironically.
This narrow well he’d come to merely warm up in.
Was evolving the genius Victor to the next level.
‘Winning… that’s me.’
Victor threw with every ounce of strength he possessed.
In that instant, the entire Stadium seemed to enter a vacuum.
The ball leaving the Pitcher’s hand was less a round sphere than a single beam of white light.
Before the batter’s optic nerve could even react, it erased space itself and lodged into the Catcher’s glove.
“Strike!”
The Referee’s call erupted a moment late.
That’s how fast the pitch was.
The moment the Catcher caught it, the explosive crack of the glove rang out sharply all the way to the back of the Stands.
102 miles per hour (164 kilometers).
It was a new personal record for velocity.
Victor, having reached his limit, shattered it.
This moment revealed just how serious he was about this confrontation.
The second pitch followed.
Victor didn’t even grant Soo-ho a moment to breathe.
Whoosh!
This one was heavier still.
An overwhelming sense of mass, as if a cannonball were hurtling through the air.
The ball left a white afterimage in its wake, the air itself seeming to tear where it passed.
The Catcher groaned the moment he caught it—a cry of pain from the sheer force.
The sound came because he hadn’t caught it cleanly.
Which only proved how devastating the pitch’s power truly was.
“Strike two!”
In an instant, 0-2.
The aura Victor radiated silenced the Stadium as if ice water had been poured over it.
Pure, absolute power incarnate.
Soo-ho drew a sharp breath.
My heart thundered in my chest, sweat beading on my palms.
‘True geniuses really are different.’
All I could think was how extraordinary this was.
In this critical moment, when his stamina should have been depleted, he’d instead broken through his own ceiling.
Honestly, it inspired awe—the kind you feel for something beyond human.
‘I’ve never faced 102 miles per hour before.’
The fastest I’d ever seen was 100 miles per hour.
One could argue it was merely 2 miles per hour faster.
But in the Major League, there’s a common saying: if a pitcher could gain just one mile per hour of velocity, he’d sell his soul to the devil.
That’s how high and insurmountable the barrier of one mile per hour truly is.
Yet Victor had just leaped over that wall by 2 miles in a single bound.
The force a batter perceives isn’t merely a numerical increase.
It’s a speed so overwhelming that the ball seems to vanish before your eyes, only to suddenly appear embedded in your glove.
Any other batter would have fled the Batter’s Box immediately.
But my mind had gone cold, as if submerged in ice water.
‘Still….’
I tightened my grip on the bat.
Victor’s breathing had grown ragged.
His shoulders heaved with greater amplitude.
‘He’ll probably go for it all on the next pitch.’
Victor would understand it too.
If this at-bat dragged on, he’d be at a disadvantage.
With his body already pushed beyond its limits, he lacked the stamina to throw breaking balls with precision.
‘Then there’s only one choice.’
The most powerful, most confident pitch I can throw right now—the one that just drew a whiff from him.
‘I’m going to pin him down with a fastball.’
Three fastballs in a row.
Reckless, even arrogant—but if that pitch possessed otherworldly power, the calculus changed entirely.
It would more than suffice.
Victor began his windup.
A white flash erupted from his fingertips.
Exactly as expected.
The 102-mile heater that split the heart of the zone was no mistake pitch.
And yet.
Soo-ho’s eyes narrowed to slits.
‘Breaking through limits isn’t something only you can do.’
You scaled the wall with natural talent.
I shattered mine out of desperation to survive.
The urgency of one with nowhere to return to sometimes becomes a sharper weapon than genius itself.
Soo-ho’s tracking vision opened to its absolute limit.
‘I see it.’
No—his body reacted before his eyes could even register it.
Soo-ho poured his entire baseball life into the bat, every drop of blood and sweat he’d shed.
And the desperate dream he’d clung to.
A swing without hesitation.
The bat tore through the air and collided head-on with the white streak of light.
CRACK!
A sound utterly different from any contact Soo-ho had produced before.
A deafening explosion that made thunder itself seem humble, swallowing the entire Stadium.
Victor’s head whipped back in alarm, then dropped.
Soo-ho stood rooted in place, bat discarded, staring at the white dot receding into the distance.
The ball soared through the night sky.
A towering arc that pierced the pitch-black darkness, beyond the reach of any Outfielder’s pursuit.
It cleared the Fence of the Stadium.
A grand slam that sailed completely over Victor Moretti’s pride.
Score 2:3.
With a single swing, Soo-ho had reversed the entire game for the Desert Dogs.

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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