Stadio Renato Dall'Ara, Bologna.Tuesday Night. Kick-off.Champions League Quarter-Final, First Leg.
The whistle blew, piercing the humid night air like a jagged knife. Yet, for the first five minutes, absolutely nothing happened.
It was a strange, suffocating stalemate. PSG moved the ball with a lazy arrogance deep in their own half. Marquinhos cycled possession to Vitinha, who tapped it to Ugarte. They were circling their prey like sharks in shallow water, waiting for Bologna to commit a single structural mistake in their pressing game.
Rio Valdes didn't press. He stood near the center circle, his body deceptively relaxed, but his eyelids were peeled wide open, unblinking.
He wasn't watching the ball. He was staring intently at the left wing, where Kylian Mbappé was casually strolling along the touchline, looking bored and uninterested in the match.
To the thirty thousand fans in the stadium, Mbappé looked lazy. To Rio, who had sacrificed forty days of his life for The Eye of the Storm, Mbappé looked like a coiled viper waiting to strike.
Through the filter of his enhanced perception, the world looked sharper, almost hyper-real. Rio could see micro-movements invisible to the naked eye. He saw the rhythmic twitch in Mbappé's calves—fast-twitch fibers firing in anticipation. He saw the way the Frenchman shifted his weight entirely onto the balls of his feet every time possession crossed the halfway line.
He's charging, Rio realized, his heart thumping a slow, steady rhythm against his ribs. He's building potential energy.
Minute 7.The First Strike.
It didn't happen fast; it happened instantaneously. Vitinha looked up and saw—or thought he saw—a microscopic gap between Stefan Posch and Sam Beukema. He drilled a ground pass toward Mbappé.
The pass wasn't perfect. It was slightly behind Mbappé. A normal player would have to slow down, check their run, and control the ball to kill the momentum.
Mbappé didn't slow down. The Speed King System activated.
ZWOOSH.
In a motion that looked like a glitch in the video feed, Mbappé didn't stop to trap the ball. He let the leather roll past him, then spun 180 degrees and exploded in the opposite direction. Posch, the Bologna right-back, blinked. In the time it took for his eyelids to close and reopen, Mbappé was already three meters past him.
"Oh my god," Posch gasped, turning around to chase a ghost.
The crowd screamed in genuine terror. Mbappé was loose. He was cutting inside, driving straight toward the penalty box like a bullet train. Beukema stepped out to close him down, fear written all over his face.
Mbappé dropped his shoulder. He was going to execute his signature move: The feint shot followed by a near-post finish. His leg cocked back. The muscle memory was perfect. The goal was open.
But then, a shadow appeared in his peripheral vision.
It wasn't a defender running frantically to catch up. It was Rio Valdes, sliding across the turf with surgical precision.
Rio wasn't reacting to the shot. Rio had started his slide tackle before Mbappé even wound up his leg.
[Skill Active: The Eye of the Storm][Perception Time Dilation: 0.5x Speed]
To Rio, the world submerged underwater. Sound became distorted and low-pitched. He saw the rotation of the ball slowing down to a crawl. He saw the tightening of Mbappé's quadriceps, signaling the kinetic chain of the shot. He saw the exact trajectory the boot would take.
Rio threw his body into the path.
THUD.
Mbappé's boot didn't hit the ball. It smashed into Rio's shin. The impact was heavy, like a sledgehammer hitting an anvil. A normal tibia would have suffered a hairline fracture under that force. But Rio's Phoenix Bone absorbed the shock wave, vibrating violently but holding firm like a steel beam.
The ball popped loose, rolling harmlessly away to Lucumí.
Mbappé stumbled, forced to hop over Rio's legs to avoid falling face-first. He landed gracefully like a cat, spinning around to look at the man who had dared to stop him.
For the first time, the boredom on Mbappé's face vanished. He looked down at Rio, who was picking himself up from the grass.
"You predicted it," Mbappé whispered, his voice barely audible over the crowd's roar. "You didn't react. You predicted."
Rio dusted off his shorts. His shin throbbed with a dull ache, but he stood tall. "I told you, Kylian. I can see you."
Mbappé's eyes narrowed. The faint flickering light in his pupils intensified, analyzing the data. "You spent your points on Perception," Mbappé deduced instantly. "Clever. You knew you couldn't match my output, so you upgraded your input."
Mbappé walked backward, a dangerous smile returning to his face. "But seeing a bullet and stopping a bullet are two different things, Rio. Let's see how long your brain can keep up before it melts."
Minute 22.Overclocking.
The game transformed. It was no longer Bologna vs PSG. It was a private duel in the middle of a Champions League match.
Every time PSG regained possession, they fed Mbappé. And every time Mbappé touched it, Rio abandoned his position as a striker to track back, hunting him down.
It was a tactical anomaly. The Bologna captain, the team's primary goalscorer, was playing as a man-marking defensive midfielder. Coach Italiano screamed instructions from the sideline, but Adrian Vance grabbed his arm, pulling him back. "Let him cook," Adrian said, watching his tablet with wide, disbelief-filled eyes. "Rio's interception rate is 100%. He's reading the game three seconds into the future."
But on the pitch, the cost was mounting. The Eye of the Storm wasn't a free skill. It consumed mental stamina and glucose at a terrifying rate.
Rio felt a dull headache building behind his eyes, like a pressure cooker waiting to blow. Every time he "slowed down" reality to read Mbappé's movements, his brain felt like it was overheating.
In the 22nd minute, Mbappé switched gears. He received the ball on the halfway line. Instead of cutting inside, he kicked the ball ten meters ahead of himself—a classic "Kick and Rush".
"Catch me if you can!" Mbappé taunted.
He sprinted. The acceleration was violent. The grass seemed to tear under his boots. Rio sprinted alongside him, shoulder to shoulder.
[Speed Comparison][Mbappé: 37.2 km/h][Rio: 36.1 km/h]
Rio was fast, but Mbappé was pulling away. Inch by inch. Meter by meter. If Rio let him go for one more second, Mbappé would be one-on-one with the keeper.
Rio looked at the gap. He couldn't close it with speed. He had to use the environment. Use the physics.
Rio saw the path Mbappé was taking. He saw a slight divot in the grass five meters ahead. He saw Mbappé's stride pattern. Left, right, left...
Rio made a desperate calculation. He didn't run at Mbappé. He ran at the space where Mbappé wanted to be. He used his Body Balance (Grade A) to lean his shoulder into Mbappé's projected path, cutting off the lane.
It was a collision of high-speed trains.
CRASH.
Shoulder met shoulder at full sprint. Normally, a player of Mbappé's agility would bounce off a defender or spin away. But Rio was now a Heavy Tank. He absorbed the kinetic energy, rooted himself for a split second, and held his line. The force of the collision sent both players tumbling onto the grass in a tangle of limbs.
The referee blew the whistle. Foul? No. The referee pointed at the ball. "Shoulder to shoulder! Play on!"
Mbappé rolled and jumped to his feet instantly. He looked down at Rio, who was slower to get up, gasping for air. "You are annoying," Mbappé spat, genuine frustration creeping into his tone for the first time. "You are like gum stuck to my shoe."
Rio stood up, his chest heaving. His head was pounding like a drum. "And you..." Rio smiled through the pain, tasting iron in his mouth. "You are slower than I expected."
It was a bluff. A psychological needle aimed at a god's ego. And it worked.
Mbappé's face twitched. The calm, arrogant facade cracked like porcelain. "Slower?" Mbappé's voice dropped an octave. "You think this is my top speed?"
Suddenly, the air around Mbappé seemed to vibrate with heat. The veins in his neck bulged against his skin, pumping blood at a rate that should be fatal.
Rio's System screamed a warning redder and more urgent than ever before.
[WARNING][Target Activating Unique Skill: MACH ONE.][Description: Removes the brain's natural safety limiter on muscle contraction. Allows 100% fiber recruitment.][Speed Projection: +20% (Approx. 44.6 km/h).][Risk of User Injury: HIGH.]
Mbappé glared at Rio. His eyes were no longer human; they were glowing with a faint blue energy visible only to Rio. "I was saving this for the Final," Mbappé said, his voice distorted by the sheer intensity of his aura. "But you... you deserve to see the summit."
Rio swallowed hard, tasting blood. He had forced the monster to reveal its true form. But now, he had to survive it.