Elian took a deep breath as he prepared to take the free kick shot. He had watched the tutorial over and over again, zooming in and studying the player, even as he tensed his muscles before releasing his shots.
Elian took a few steps backwards, setting up his run up just as he had seen the character in the tutorial do. Elian ran forward slowly, his eyes on the ball. He took a glance to the goalkeeper who had stationed himself to the best of his abilities, ready to save the shot.
Thud!
Elian hit the ball cleanly, wrapping his foot around the ball. The Goal keeper watched the ball as it rose steadily, curling high and away from the ball. But the instant the ball had curled away from the wall, it started swerving back in at high speed, aiming for the top corner of the post.
The goalkeeper dived immediately, but it was too late. He was never going to save such a perfectly placed shot. Elian had perfectly simulated the character in the tutorial, maybe it was because they were the same person, so he had little difficulty in copying what the character did.
Elian's soul was calm as he looked on quietly, the sound of the ball thrashing against the net filling his ears. The painful sound of the goal keeper hitting the floor came next, then the final and most powerful sound came.
Elian felt a sense of joy flood his veins as the crowd behind him cheered madly for the perfect goal, they were jumping and some straining to touch him, he suddenly had the feeling again that this was all real. It all seemed too real.
Elian now knew why Meta described this as the grandest stage of football, it was indeed a very grand stage with a baffling amount of spectators.
"Now that was nicely done." Meta said, joy a bit clear in his voice.
"This feels awesome…" Elian said aloud, reveling in the cheers and joys of the crowd all around him. He felt like Messi on a World Cup final.
*Ding!*
Elian was surprised by this- System notification. He wasn't expecting anything from the system right now, after all he had only just began a system mission on Setpiece Expertise.
"Click to display message"
Elian clicked it and something like a celebratory ribbon filled his vision, almost splashing on his face.
"Congratulations! You have unlocked a new skill (Active). Click to preview skill."
Elian was overjoyed, this was the first skill he was unlocking by himself, not any pure system core abilities or stuff like that. He wasted no time in clicking at the message, he wanted to see what type of skill he had unlocked.
[Perfect Copy (Active Skill)]: It allows Elian to perfectly simulate a previous skill or shot carried out by a player. It enhances the skill and makes it a lot better, increasing Elian's proficiency with the skill, allowing him to carry it out even better than the original performer of the skill. With time, Elian's natural proficiency with the skill would increase and he becomes naturally adept at using the skill. Duration: Two Minutes. Cost: Ten Stamina points. Backlash: Host would suffer a twenty percent decrease in speed attribute and host's reaction time and reflexes would suffer a twenty percent decrement. Duration Of Backlash: two minutes.
Skill Description
Perfect Copy has a sort of limited storage space database system within the Awakening System. This allows Elian to store certain skills he comes across so he would be able to use them later. But if Host doesn't store a skill, if he wants to use it for just one time, he would have to remember the exact rhythm and steps to follow to execute the skill, even if he can't carry it out physically.
Elian was very happy and pretty satisfied with the skill and it's description, not even the fact that the skill's backlash was a bit too much was able to deter him.
"I'm loving this!" Elian exclaimed, all smiled. He was reading and re-reading the skill description, he wanted to assimilate every single bit of information the skill had to offer.
Meta chuckled. "It's a pretty important skill and I guess it would come in handy in important occasions. But the backlash is a bit too…"
"That's not a problem." Elian replied, shrugging off the remark. He knew that the backlash would prove to be very fatal to him if he uses the skill at the wrong time. After all, he was a forward, if his two major attributes which he relied on suffered a twenty percent decrement for a whole two minutes then how was he supposed to beat defenders?
"Now, let's go back to this free kick stuff." Elian said. He was playing with free kicks with Meta's help. It was the bot that was analyzing his play and rhythm, Meta told him when his stance and position was off. It seemed like a minor help, but it was the most important thing he needed.
"Wait." Meta said. " I just stumbled on an idea."
Elian rolled his eyes. He had grown to hate the ideas of Meta, they never did him good.
Meta ignored Elian's reaction to his statement. It went on to say. "Why don't you try out the new skill? I mean, you can restart the mission, then you use Perfect Copy on the tutorial character. If you do that, it'll be very easy for you to score a lot of shots within two minutes. That way, you'll complete both the mission given by the system and you'll also get a feel as to what the backlash feels like. The Exp won't be lost as stated by the skill description of Perfect Copy."
Elian thought this over. It was a pretty good idea, but given his previous experience with the bot, he didn't trust it one bit. Even at that, he had no time to spare, he had to get better as soon as possible.
"God help me if I get tricked again." With that, Elian activated the ability.
****
A lot of time had passed and Elian had completed two missions set out by the system for the Setpiece Expertise. He had just finished the last one and the time was 3:30pm, only thirty minutes to his training's evenings session.
"You still want to go to your team's training session right? It's almost time." Meta said.
"Oh okay. How do I exit this mode?" Elian asked, not sure of what to do.
"Just think of exiting the training zone and you'll do so. You can easily operate the system by thoughts alone, that's the beauty of it all." Meta answered.
"Okay."
The warm evening sun hit Elian's eyes the moment he opened them, reminding him of what reality felt like. Elian slowly pulled himself up from the floor, his face hurt from the weird position which had been lying all this while.
"How do you know what the time is?" Elian asked.
Meta sighed arrogantly before it started speaking. "I'm an ultra intelligent modern AI…"
"Yeah, yeah, established." Elian said, cutting him short. "Can't you just answer a question straight without boasting of how you're an ultra whatever? That's not an achievement ya know."
Meta completely ignored Elian statement, this made Elian suspect that the bot didn't hear him.
Meta went ahead to answer the previous question. "I'm connected the AM, GM and every other time zone in this galaxy. So I can tell what time it is anywhere in the milky way."
"Really?" Elian exclaimed, finding that pretty amazing. "What time is it on Pluto?"
"Surprisingly, Pluto shares the same time as this part of earth. The time on Pluto is 3:32 PM right now."
"Woahhh…whoever made this bot is pretty awesome." Elian thought to himself.
Meta hissed inwardly. "There's goes that brat doing it again. He's shutting me off from his thoughts subconsciously."
Elian slung his sports bag across his shoulders and walked off, he was going to Machester city's U-19 team.