THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME

"System, show me my current stats," Zachary intoned as he settled into one of the sofas in the living room of his apartment. He'd just arrived home from Lerkendal Stadion. On noticing that it was getting close to 6 PM, he had decided to check out his attributes before getting on with preparing dinner.

"DING"

A system notification sounded right after he finished voicing his command.

"Generating current user stats data," the system AI's feminine voice sounded directly within Zachary's mind. "User data has been loaded. Please follow the drop-down menus to navigate the interface and view your current data."

Zachary was glad the system had finally manifested an AI with a mental/voice communication function after its upgrade. He no longer needed to worry about teammates doubting his sanity whenever he used his fingertips to navigate the system menu. The system had become more user-friendly since he could call out the AI with his thoughts.

As icing on the cake, it was a highly advanced artificial intelligence. It was capable of explaining most of the data on its interface. It behaved just like a talking encyclopedia of sports science, fitness, and football information.

With the AI, Zachary could easily design an effective training regimen to fit his current needs. He didn't need to bother hiring a physical fitness trainer to adapt to his growing physique. The system had already designed a mission to tackle the issue of the growth spurt three months prior. He had dissuaded Emily from hiring a trainer since he already possessed the highly-capable system.

"I should make a decision on which direction to develop my skills before the team training starts on Monday," Zachary mumbled, leaning back into the comfort of his sofa. He fixed his eyes on the familiar translucent blueish system interface that had appeared before him.

****

SOCCER G.O.A.T SYSTEM

SYSTEM LEVEL: 3 (2700/10000 Juju-points to level-up)

USER: Zachary Bemba

AGE: 18 years

TALENT ASSESSMENT: Grade-A

JUJU-POINTS: 2700

(Evaluation: A promising young professional player)

USER MENU

*USER STATS

*G.O.A.T MISSIONS

*SYSTEM SHOP (1 msg)

*SYSTEM LOTTERY

*SNOOPING TOOL

NB: Pls level-up the system to unlock more functions.

****

Zachary grinned on seeing his stock of Juju-points. He had earned most of them from winning the Riga and Norway Youth Cups the previous year. Despite his colossal expenditure on elixirs and training in the system simulator, Zachary still had a whopping 2700 Juju-points in his possession. He had saved them up to buy a new skill after joining the Rosenborg senior team. Since he had finally signed the contract with Rosenborg, he could go ahead with the purchase.

"System," Zachary instructed mentally. "Bring out my user-stats data."

"DING"

"User-stats data coming up on the interface," the AI's feminine voice sounded in Zachary's mind as the contents of the translucent blue interface changed to display his primary attributes.

****

*USER STATS

->Physical Fitness: A+

->Soccer Technique: A+

->Game Intelligence: A+

->Mental Ability and Mindset: B+

->X-Factors: B+

->G.O.A.T Skills: 5

****

Zachary had been using physical conditioning elixirs to strengthen his physique over the previous year. Thanks to them, his physical fitness, soccer technique, and game intelligence attributes were all at the A+ grading. Only his mental ability and X-factor stats still lagged behind the rest at the B+ grading.

Zachary had hoped to upgrade all the attributes to A+ grading before joining the Rosenborg senior team. However, he'd found it no easy task to push those two attributes beyond the B+ grading. It seemed he had stumbled upon an impermeable bottleneck, preventing him from breaking past to the next grade, especially for his mental ability.

On the other hand, the X-factor was the most challenging attribute to develop. It solely depended on how he performed in competitive matches. He had to participate in competitive games on a regular basis while remaining consistent as the play-maker of his team and winning matches. Only then would the match-winning, consistency, and supernormal factors glacially rise and boost his X-factor.

Zachary deliberated for a bit before inspecting the rest of his stats. He needed to have a comprehensive understanding of his abilities before selecting which new skills to purchase from the system shop. "System," he intoned. "Take me through all my stats data."

"DING"

"User stats coming up," the system voiced as the contents of the screen before Zachary morphed into his physical-fitness data.

****

*USER STATS

->Physical Fitness (Av. Rating: A+)

Balance and Coordination: A+

Agility: A+

Strength: A+

Stamina: A+

Endurance Points: 9495/9500 (A+)

****

Zachary had continued his strict training schedule over the past year. He had trained hard and upgraded all his physical fitness attributes to the A+ grading—with some help from the elixirs availed by the system.

However, he had still failed to bypass the bottleneck that impended his way to achieving the S grading in any of his physical attributes. Over the past year, he had focused on training his agility, intending to make it an S grade before his debut. He had strictly followed an agility-enhancing training regimen, day-in-day-out, but his efforts had proven futile. Even taking B-grade agility enhancing elixirs on two separate occasions had not helped him to achieve the grade. All his efforts were for naught.

He felt helpless since there seemed to be a massive bottleneck hindering him from attaining the S grade. He had sought help from the system about the issue. Instead, the AI had informed him to focus on upgrading his mental ability and mindset first. It had insisted he needed to steadily improve his mental aspect before attaining the S-grading in any of his other attributes. Zachary was confused by the AI's advice. According to his understanding, the mind's development should have been utterly unrelated to his physical fitness.

Zachary pushed his worries to the back of his mind after a few seconds. The AI had switched the interface display contents to his soccer-technique data. He concentrated once again on assessing his core football skills.

****

*USER STATS

->Soccer Technique: (Av. Rating: A+)

Ball Control: A+

Dribbling Skills: A+

Passing Accuracy: A+

Body Control: A+

****

Zachary grinned as he perused through his skills data. He had managed to push both his dribbling skills and body control further—after consuming two doses of the agility-enhancing-elixir, coupled with training intensively on both the field and in the simulator over the course of the previous year.

Additionally, his mastery of the Cruyff-turn and Ronaldinho-Elastico-Dribble to a hundred percent completion had helped him achieve the feat much earlier than he'd expected. Zachary was quite pleased with himself.

After upgrading his dribbling, Zachary could move the ball in different directions at different speeds with both feet better than he had been able to the previous year. He could successfully maneuver through multiple opponents without losing possession by simply relying on agile footwork.

He had come to the understanding that superb drilling skills were essential to achieving success in football, especially in the midfield, after facing Valencia in the SIA Cup. In that match, his speed had failed to help him beat the highly technical Valencia youth players. The opponents had given him a hard time, especially in the latter part of the game, since his dribbling was lacking. He had ended up under-performing since the defenders had managed to put a stop to his signature runs through the midfield.

After that loss in the semi-final, Zachary had vowed to improve his dribbling skills. He had trained in the Cruyff-turn and Ronaldinho-Elastico-Dribble thousands of times—on both the physical field and the simulator. He also performed training drills designed by Coach Johansen to improve both his body control and agility.

He now understood the importance of body control and its effect on dribbling after consulting his coaches. Body control was the athlete's ability to move their body fluidly to optimize balance and coordination. It applied to the correctness of form consisting of the nature of strides, correct running-form, and the management of a low center of gravity for better dribbling.

As Zachary's body control and agility improved, so did his dribbling and the pace of learning the two skills. In just three months, he had leveled-up the two attributes to the A+ grading.

"I wonder when I'll be able to improve my ability to the S grade," Zachary mumbled, returning his attention to the system interface. The AI had just switched the interface contents to his game-intelligence and mental-ability data.

****

*USER STATS

->Game Intelligence: (Av. Rating: A+)

Spatial Awareness: A+

Tactical Knowledge: A+

Risk Assessment: A+

****

->Mental Ability and Mindset: (Av. Rating: B+)

Soccer Passion: A+

Composure and Mental Strength: C+

Coachability: B -

Self-Motivation: A+

****

Zachary's game intelligence attributes had not changed much over the past year. He'd only improved his tactical knowledge from the A- grading to the A+ grading. He was only a single step away from the game intelligence of most coaches in that attribute.

He could analyze risks and make sound decisions by himself on the pitch. The advantage gained from that had helped him win the majority of the games in his youth career. He couldn't help but wonder what his game intelligence would be capable of if it broke through to the S-grading.

Lastly, the AI switched the contents of the interface to his X-factor stats. Zachary leaned forward to have a better view of the attributes.

****

USER STATS

->X-Factor (Av. Rating: B+)

Consistency Factor: A-

Luck Factor: A-

Supernormal Factor: D-

Match Winning Factor: A+

NB:

*Luck Factor is not constant. It varies depending on the circumstances of the user. On a good day, it can be an S grade, while on a bad one, it can easily fall to an F.

****

Zachary's frowned as he perused through his X-factor attributes. The AI had already explained to him the different stats under the X-factor. The consistency factor was related to how he maintained his form across many matches. He had to play at his best in every single game to have a high consistency factor. Zachary had managed to achieve an A- grade for that stat since he'd only lost two games since arriving in Norway. He had lost once against the senior Rosenborg senior team and another time against Valencia in the SIA Cup.

On the other hand, the match-winning factor referred to the rating of his contributions to his team's performance. It was an evaluation derived from a player's match performance details such as the goals scored, the assists made, the shots on target, the successful dribble attempts, the accurate passes vs. total passes ratio, etc.

Zachary had an A-grade match-winning factor because he'd been playing like a superstar in the academy. On most occasions, he managed to score or make key assists even when the rest of the team was underperforming.

"System," Zachary intoned after perusing through his X-factor data. "How can I improve my supernormal-factor attribute?"

"The user 'simply' has to improve his mental attributes and game intelligence," the feminine voice of the system's AI replied apathetically. "When the mental capabilities reach a given threshold, the user will automatically unlock more aspects of the supernormal factor. The user does not have to worry since he has already unlocked a supernormal state on two occasions."