Chapter 174: The Upgraded Skill!

He waited until the next morning, after training had wrapped and the recovery session was finished, before he finally sat down with the door closed.

He had deliberately forced himself to sleep on it. The previous night had been a blur of adrenaline and the lingering ring of eighty thousand people, which was the worst possible state of mind for making a lasting decision. So he had put his boots away, slept a solid eight hours, gone through the morning drills, and only now sat on the edge of the mattress with a quiet head to address what was waiting.

The golden reward rested in his inventory, glowing with a deep amber hue, still sealed. Next to it, the orange upgrade card sat untouched.

He had always pictured using that card on the eve of a brutal Champions League knockout clash, perhaps when he was stuck trying to solve an impenetrable defense and desperately needed an extra yard of pace or sharper ball retention. Yet as he stared at the pair side by side, the rarest reward the interface had ever granted him next to a single-use multiplier that could push any trait to its absolute ceiling, he felt an unexpected pull. This was the moment. Saving it for some hypothetical match down the road seemed completely pointless when this was sitting right here.

A more conservative approach would be cracking the golden skill open first, inspecting the parameters, and then deciding if it warranted the upgrade. That was the safe, methodical way to do it.

He ignored the cautious voice entirely.

A deep gut instinct told him that whatever sat inside that amber container would carry far more weight if it unlocked at full power right from the start. That upgrade card had occupied an inventory slot for months specifically for an occasion like this. He dragged the orange card directly over the sealed golden icon. Before second thoughts could creep in, his finger tapped the prompt to confirm the merge.

The interface froze for two long seconds, that brief, eerie pause the system always took whenever a critical milestone was being processed.

The glow behind the digital panel shifted rapidly, bleeding from soft amber into a brilliant, crystalline gold, before unfolding to reveal the unlocked ability.

[Legendary Skill Unlocked.]

[Legendary Skill: Zico's Vision.]

Mateo stared at the glowing letters, completely motionless.

Every kid who grew up kicking a scuffed ball across Brazilian dirt knew that name by heart.

Arthur Antunes Coimbra. Zico. The White Pelé, the beating heart and creative engine of the iconic 1982 Seleção, the squad his father still spoke of with reverence as the greatest team to ever grace a football pitch. He was the classic number ten that every subsequent playmaker from Rio to São Paulo had been measured against.

Mateo's father kept an old, flickering VHS tape of that eighty-two World Cup campaign in a cardboard box, and Mateo had watched those matches dozens of times on the living room rug. Even through the grainy static, those passes had looked impossible, finding runners a fraction of a second before the defenders even realized an opening existed.

He tapped the card to expand the technical details, reading through each line with complete focus.

The mechanics were laid out with clinical precision. Blind passing lanes mapped before his head even came up to scan. The ability to hold the entire geometry of the pitch in his working memory simultaneously, tracking twenty-one other moving bodies across ninety yards of grass. Set pieces visualized from start to finish, the dipping trajectory calculated well before his boot struck the leather.

This was not some flashy bag of circus tricks or arbitrary skill moves. It directly amplified the singular trait that had always defined Mateo's game, pushing his spatial awareness and anticipation to the absolute peak of world football, modeled after one of the rare geniuses who saw the sport three steps ahead of everyone else.

He sat on the bed in complete silence for a long time, letting the reality settle into his bones.

He thought back to the through balls he had played over the past few months, the ones the German press kept calling flashes of magic, passes that drew two defenders away and slipped a teammate clean through on goal. He had pulled those off simply by seeing half a yard more space, a quarter-second quicker than the men marking him. This upgrade widened that margin considerably.

For a pure creator whose entire effectiveness relied on anticipation, there was no finer attribute to inherit, and certainly no greater legend to share it with.

He swiped the window away and closed the system.

The orange upgrade card was gone from his inventory, finally spent on something worthy of the wait. He felt zero hesitation or second-guessing. He would get his first true read on how the ability translated to his feet during tomorrow morning's tactical session, though an instinctive confidence told him the investment was already secure.

A pungent, smoky odor began drifting through the cracks in the floorboards.

Mateo sniffed the air, immediately picking up the harsh scent of charred bread, accompanied by the distinct sound of Jamie Vardy cursing under his breath down in the kitchen while violently shaking a heavy frying pan.

The sheer absurdity of the domestic chaos snapped Mateo straight out of his tactical trance, planting his feet firmly back onto a chilly Monday afternoon in Gelsenkirchen.

His team was currently sitting at the very top of the Bundesliga table. He possessed an elite playmaking trait that sharpened the strongest weapon in his arsenal. And in four days, the Champions League quarter-final draw would reveal exactly who stood between Schalke and the biggest stage in Europe.

All of that would have to wait. Right now, there was a hyperactive striker downstairs turning a breakfast skillet into an inferno.

Mateo pulled himself up from the mattress, slipped into his sliders, and headed down the stairs to put out the fire.

Don't let your free votes expire! Drop those PowerStones this way before the daily reset hits!

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