The morning after the Valencia match, Lorenzo woke up to 347 unread messages on his phone.
He didn't open a single one of them. Instead, he showered, brewed a fresh pot of coffee, and sat at the kitchen table with the signed match ball sitting on the counter right beside him. The early morning sunlight caught the signatures written in permanent marker across the leather: his own, alongside Messi's and Busquets's, both added uninvited while riding the team bus back from the stadium. It was a scuffed, battle-worn football with three iconic names on it, resting quietly next to the fruit bowl.
Lucia came downstairs a while later, finding him in the exact same spot. Without saying a word, she picked up his phone from the counter and tapped the screen.
"You haven't checked any of these, have you?" she asked.
"No," Lorenzo replied simply.
"There are 347 notifications waiting for you."
"Lucia, I know how many there are."
She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down opposite him. Somewhere in the middle of the silence that followed, a warm empanada arrived on a small plate in front of him.
"My mother called again," he said quietly. "Twice."
"I know. She called me first." Lucia slowly turned her mug in a half-circle on the wooden table. "She was asking if you were eating properly. I told her you weren't."
Lorenzo frowned slightly. "I am eating. Why did you tell her that?"
"Because you're not, and she'd much rather hear it from me now than figure it out on her own at Christmas."
He let the point go. She had been acting like this ever since they left the stadium, sharp and dry in her usual way, but just half a beat out of rhythm. Every answer she gave came a fraction later than it normally would. He had noticed it back in the car park, and he noticed it again now. But he chose not to press her.
Later that afternoon, Martino's press conference was broadcast live across Europe, South America, and most of Asia.
Sitting at the Camp Nou media room podium, the manager answered every question using as few words as humanly possible.
"One hundred goals in a single season," a reporter began. "Does that number surprise you?"
"The number itself? No," Martino replied steadily. "It's the timeline that caught me off guard. I expected seventy, maybe eighty goals across a full campaign. Hitting a hundred by March is beyond any reasonable projection."
"Is Lorenzo the best player in the world right now?"
Martino paused, letting a long silence fill the room, the specific kind of silence he always used when he wanted the weight of the moment to answer for him.
"Lorenzo is seventeen years old," Martino said slowly. "He has scored a hundred goals. He has won the Copa del Rey, the Supercopa, and the European U-21 Championship, and he is currently preparing for a Champions League final. Draw your own conclusions."
"And what about Messi?"
"Messi is Messi," Martino stated flatly. "There is no comparison because there is no competition. They play for the exact same team. That is the only fact that matters."
The media storm raged on for an entire week.
Over on ESPN Sur, Inés broke down the historical gravity of the achievement. "Gerd Müller scored sixty-seven goals in 1972. Lionel Messi scored seventy-three in 2012. Both of those numbers were treated as untouchable, eternal landmarks. Lorenzo has hit a hundred, and he still has twelve league matches and a Champions League final left to play."
"So where does this actually end?" Santiago asked beside her.
"That," Inés replied, "is the one question nobody on Earth can answer."
In Turin, Gianluigi Buffon offered reporters a few quiet words and nothing more. "I already said everything I needed to say to him on the pitch."
Sir Alex Ferguson, watching intently from retirement, took a call from the BBC. "I've watched Pelé, Maradona, Cruyff, and Best. I've managed Ronaldo, Rooney, and Cantona. This boy is doing things at seventeen that those legends were doing at twenty-five. The part I can't wrap my head around is that he's doing all of those things at the exact same time."
In Madrid, Cristiano Ronaldo was asked about the milestone during a Real Madrid media event. His response was brief, measured, and level.
"A hundred goals in a season is an incredible achievement. Anyone who knows football knows how much work goes into a number like that," Ronaldo said, pausing briefly to let the room settle. "But individual records don't win titles. Trophies do. We still have two competitions left to play for, and Real Madrid intends to win them both."
When a journalist pressed him on whether Barcelona's dominant run had altered his view of the season, Ronaldo stated firmly that Barcelona had simply been the better side on the night of the cup final, reminded everyone that another Clásico was still on the schedule, and promptly moved on to the next question.
Back in Catalonia, a major Spanish sports outlet ran a nationwide poll asking if Lorenzo was already the greatest player on the planet, surpassing Ronaldo and Messi. Sixty-three percent voted yes. Twenty-two percent said it was too early to tell. Eight percent voted for Ronaldo, and the remaining seven percent stood by Messi.
Cecilia sent him a screenshot of the poll results without a single word.
Lorenzo looked at it, tapped out a single thumb-up emoji, and sent it back the first emoji he had ever used in a message to anyone.
A second later, his phone buzzed.
Did you just send me an emoji? Is the world ending? Who are you and what have you done with Lorenzo?
Lorenzo just smiled to himself, locked the screen, and tossed the phone onto the couch.
Lucia read both over his shoulder on her way past and said nothing at all, which was itself unusual, and went upstairs.
At training the following morning, Pintus pulled Lorenzo aside right after the squad warm-ups.
"Your recovery data from Sunday is completely abnormal," the conditioning coach said, staring intently at his digital tablet with a deep frown. "Your blood lactate level at the final whistle was actually lower than it was at halftime. That is biologically impossible."
Lorenzo shrugged casually. "I felt fine."
"You felt fine?" Pintus repeated, looking at him over the rim of his glasses. "What are you even talking about, kid? You played ninety minutes, scored twice, covered fourteen kilometers on the pitch, and your readings say you ran a casual six. I have trained Olympic sprinters and elite Tour de France cyclists. I have never seen numbers like these in my entire career."
"Maybe I just got a really good night's sleep."
Pintus held his gaze in dead silence for a long moment before walking away, muttering under his breath about scheduling immediate blood tests.
Lorenzo got back to the villa a little after six in the evening.
Lucia was already home, but her bedroom door upstairs was firmly shut. Whenever she stayed over after coming back from her university dorm, her door was always left open. Tonight, muffled music was playing from inside her room, turned up just loud enough to signal that she wanted to be left alone.
Lorenzo stood in the dimly lit corridor for a long moment, his heavy gym bag still slung over one shoulder.
He knew how Cecilia would have handled this. Cecilia would have marched right up the stairs, knocked once, walked straight in, and sat on the edge of the bed until the whole problem was talked out within four minutes flat. Lucia would have let her, too, because Cecilia entering a room was more like a sudden shift in the weather than a personal choice.
Instead, Lorenzo turned around and walked back downstairs to make another pot of coffee.
There was a real risk of handling this situation poorly if he tried to force it. Over the last six months, he had learned that there were times when doing nothing was the smartest play on the board. He was fairly sure this was one of those times, even if a small part of him wasn't completely certain.
Later that night, when the entire house had fallen completely quiet, Lorenzo sat in the dark living room and let his mind settle.
Suddenly, a crisp chime resonated directly inside his mind, followed by a warm, clear, vocal interface:
[Ding! Major Milestone Achieved: 100 Goals in a Single Campaign. Unprecedented historical threshold reached.]
[Milestone Reward Dispatched: Physical Attribute Enhancement. Stamina Ceiling Permanently Raised.]
[Effect Applied: Maximum endurance capacity permanently expanded. Inter-match recovery rate dramatically enhanced. Peak performance can now be maintained effortlessly across congested fixture schedules. The 90th minute now carries the exact same stamina reservation as the 1st minute.]
The sensation hit him much deeper than a standard template integration. It wasn't just data; it arrived sharp and physical, like a new set of instructions hardwired straight into his muscle tissue. It felt structural, the way a building feels when its underlying foundation is reinforced with solid steel. His legs felt weightless, entirely capable of running for hours on end without paying the heavy physical toll that ninety minutes of elite football usually demanded.
Then, the interface shifted.
The notification bar that had lingered at the edge of his perception for the past six months, delivering cold, functional text rewards, underwent a fundamental transformation.
The ambient presence altered completely. Where there was once just an automated software tool, there was now a conscious, vocal entity.
A smooth, articulate voice echoed clearly in his consciousness:
[Greetings, Lorenzo. System evolution protocol initiated. Milestone threshold crossed. The Football King System has officially upgraded.]
[Moving forward, I will no longer simply issue notifications or deliver static instructions. I can now actively observe and advise. Your decisions will always remain entirely your own. My function is to ensure you possess every insight, and strategic advantage necessary to make those decisions correctly.]
Lorenzo sat completely still, processing the words. Then, without speaking aloud or typing anything, he focused his thoughts: Can you hear me?
[Yes, Lorenzo. Clearly.]
He leaned back against the cushions. The signed match ball on the kitchen counter caught the soft glow of the lamp. Outside, the city of Barcelona slept in quiet peace. Inside, a system he had relied on as a cold mechanism for six months had just spoken back to him as a living partner.
Can you tell me what you actually are?
[Not yet,] the voice replied smoothly. [However, I can tell you my primary directive: to ensure that Lorenzo Valentini becomes the greatest footballer to ever walk the earth. That objective has not changed.]
Lorenzo let out a long, quiet exhale and picked up his phone to review the upcoming schedule: the remaining La Liga fixtures, the Clásico, and the Champions League final waiting in Lisbon.
In the background, the system remained quietly attuned to his thoughts, listening and waiting in no rush at all.
You know the drill: Hand over those Power Stones to keep the momentum rolling!
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