Stadio Via del Mare, Lecce.Sunday Afternoon. Serie A Matchday 20.
The southern Italian sun scorched the stadium grass, baking the pitch until it radiated shimmering waves of heat visible to the naked eye. But Rio Valdes didn't feel the temperature. He only felt the cold, unnatural metal buried deep inside his right hip.
It was the seventieth minute. The score was tied 1-1.
Lecce was playing a dirty, gritty, physical game designed to break the spirit of the league leaders. Their center-back, a massive veteran named Federico Baschirotto, had just smashed into Rio from the blind side. It was a tackle meant to hurt, a collision designed to rattle bones and detach retinas.
In the past—before the Phoenix Bone Elixir—that collision would have made Rio crumble. His old Grade C+ cartilage would have shuddered under the impact, sending shockwaves of pain up his spine.
But today?
THUD.
Rio didn't budge.
Instead, a strange sound echoed—dull and heavy, like a sledgehammer striking an anvil. Baschirotto was the one who bounced back, stumbling away with a grimace as if he had run full-tilt into a steel telephone pole.
Rio planted his right foot into the ground. He felt that strange sensation again—an unnatural density, a comforting solidity that bordered on alien. His bone was no longer chalk; it was granite.
The ball bounced wildly just outside the penalty box.
"Now," Rio whispered.
He no longer had to worry about a "tell" or muscle signals. He didn't need to modify his technique to hide his intentions. His body could now withstand pure, unadulterated explosion.
He rotated his hips. The socket moved with the smoothness of a hydraulic piston.
[Skill Active: The Mirage Strike]
His right leg snapped at the ball with a speed that even the slow-motion cameras struggled to capture. No backlift. No wind-up. Just pure kinetic recoil.
The ball screamed through the air. The Lecce goalkeeper, Wladimiro Falcone, hadn't even raised his hands when the net behind him was already torn by the impact.
GOAL.Lecce 1 - 2 Bologna.
Rio didn't run to celebrate with a backflip or a dance. He just stood there, staring at his right leg with a mixture of awe and horror. He had traded three hundred days of his life for this. He had become a monster.
A System Notification appeared faintly in the air, invisible to the tens of thousands of cheering or booing fans. The side quest The Domestic King updated its status, confirming the top spot was maintained. With eighteen matches remaining in the league, his Lifespan counter ticked down, leaving him with exactly 224 Days.
Rio clenched his fist. Every victory was one step away from death. But every match also ate one day of his time. It was the deadliest rat race in the world.
Casteldebole Training Center, Bologna.Monday Morning. Tactical Analysis Room.
The atmosphere in the tactical room was far from the euphoria of yesterday's victory. The lights were dimmed, with only the cold glow of the projector illuminating the serious faces of the coaching staff and core players.
There was a palpable heaviness in the air. Rio sat in the front row, his eyes drifting instinctively to the seat on his right. It was empty. That was usually where Kenjiro sat, scribbling notes about pass angles and vision. Now, it was just a void. A silence where there used to be a solution.
Without Kenjiro, the bridge between midfield and attack was broken. Rio felt the absence like a phantom limb; he kept waiting for a whisper of tactical insight that never came.
Adrian Vance sat at the front, his wheelchair facing the large screen. On that screen, the red eagle logo of S.L. Benfica was displayed clearly.
"Forget what you know about Portuguese football," Adrian began, his voice cold and analytical. "People say Latin football is about flair, about individual skill, about Joga Bonito. Benfica is not that."
Adrian pressed a button. The screen changed to a series of graphs and heat maps showing intense red zones covering the entire pitch like a virus.
"Benfica under Roger Schmidt this season is a statistical anomaly," Adrian continued. "They don't play football. They play high-speed chess. The average distance between their players when defending is always precisely twelve meters. Never more, never less. They move as a single organism."
Adrian showed clips of Benfica's Champions League group stage matches. The Bologna players watched in silence.
On the screen, Benfica looked terrifying. Not because of flashiness, but because of suffocation. They didn't have global superstars like Vinicius or Salah. But the way they pressed the opponent was perfectly coordinated. As soon as an opponent lost the ball, five Benfica players swarmed them within two seconds. It wasn't aggression; it was an algorithm.
"They are called 'The Lisbon Machine'," Coach Italiano said, crossing his arms tightly. "They don't make unforced errors. They aren't emotional. They kill you slowly with efficiency."
Rio felt a tightness in his chest. If Kenjiro were here, he would find a crack in that algorithm. He would see the pass that breaks the twelve-meter grid.
Adrian pressed the button again. The face of a young man appeared on the screen. Gonçalo Ramos. Striker. 21 Years Old.
"And this is the spearhead," Adrian said. "Ramos. He isn't the type of striker who dribbles past five people like Rio. He rarely touches the ball outside the penalty box. But look at the data."
Adrian pointed to the metrics displayed next to Ramos's face. "His touches in the penalty box per goal are a mere 1.8. His conversion rate sits at a staggering 45%. And perhaps most terrifyingly, he runs an average of 13.5 kilometers per match."
"He is a predator of efficiency," Adrian explained. "Benfica's system is designed to supply the ball to high-probability zones, and Ramos is programmed to finish it. He doesn't miss. If you give him half a chance, he scores one goal."
Rio stared at Ramos's face on the screen. The face looked flat, expressionless, even when celebrating goals in the video clips. Ramos's eyes looked empty, focused entirely on the task.
"He is your antithesis, Rio," Adrian turned to look at his captain. "You are Chaos. You create chances from nothing. Ramos is Order. He is the final result of a perfect system."
Rio leaned back in his chair. "A perfect system can be destroyed," he muttered. "We just need to inject a virus into it."
Adrian shook his head slowly, looking pointedly at the empty seat beside Rio. "The problem, Rio... is that the data shows Benfica gets stronger against teams that rely on individuals. They eat players like 'The Ghost' for breakfast. They will isolate you. They will cut your supply lines."
Adrian's voice softened, but the truth hit harder. "And without Kenjiro... who is going to feed you the ball through that grid? Without his vision, you are an island."
The question hung in the air. Heavy and suffocating.
Mixed Zone Interview Area.Lisbon, Portugal. The Same Afternoon.
On the television screen in the corner of the room, a sports news channel was broadcasting a live interview from Benfica's training ground.
A reporter shoved a microphone into Gonçalo Ramos's face. The young striker had just finished a training session. Sweat soaked his red jersey, but his breathing was remarkably steady.
"Gonçalo," the reporter asked. "The Round of 16 draw pits you against Bologna. They just beat Liverpool and Real Madrid. Their captain, Rio Valdes, is becoming a global phenomenon. What are your thoughts?"
Ramos looked directly into the camera lens. He didn't smile. He didn't look intimidated. He didn't even look excited.
"Bologna is a statistical anomaly," Ramos answered. His voice was flat, devoid of passion, like someone reading a weather report. "Their victory against Liverpool had an Expected Goals rating—or xG—of only 0.3. They won because of variance luck. Luck cannot survive over two legs."
The reporter tried to bait him again. "Rio Valdes is said to have a shot that the human eye cannot see. Does that worry you?"
Ramos blinked once. A slow, deliberate blink. "There is nothing that cannot be seen. It is only a matter of frame rate and perception. We have analyzed his biomechanics. He has an overload on his right hip. If we force him to move to his left, his effectiveness drops by eighty percent."
Rio, watching from Bologna, felt his blood boil.
It wasn't trash talk like Trent Alexander-Arnold used to do. Trent mocked out of arrogance. Ramos analyzed coldly. He talked about Rio as if Rio were a bug in the software that would soon be patched out in the next update.
Ramos continued, "Football is a game of probabilities. And Bologna's probability of qualifying is below 15%. We will correct that anomaly at the Estádio da Luz."
Rio's Apartment.Monday Night.
Rio turned off the TV with a sharp click.
Correct the anomaly.
The words echoed in his head. They thought Rio was just "statistical luck." They thought Lifespan Gacha was just data variance that could be explained away by math.
Rio opened his System Interface. The Lifespan counter read 224 Days. He had just spent another day of his life just to listen to someone say he was irrelevant.
Rio walked to the balcony, staring at the Bologna night sky. He gripped the iron railing with his right hand. The iron was cold, as hard as his new bone.
"15% probability?" Rio whispered to the night wind. "Adrian said you are Order. I am Chaos."
Rio smiled, a smile that was sharp and dangerous. "Then let's see what happens when a machine meets a ghost."
A new notification appeared, responding to its master's rising anger. It identified the enemy scenario as The Perfect Machine, with Gonçalo Ramos designated as the S-Grade Main Boss. The mission type was a Tactical Hivemind, but it was the specific objective that caught Rio's eye.
The Round of 16 Special Mission was titled Break the Algorithm. The condition was simple yet paradoxical: Score a goal with 'Zero Probability' (0.00 xG).
The reward for completing this impossible task? It would unlock the 'Global Gacha' Tier 2 Feature.
Rio's eyes lit up. Score a goal with zero probability? That meant doing something logically impossible. Something the Benfica algorithm had never seen, never calculated, never predicted.
"Challenge accepted," Rio said into the darkness.