The terraced house on Keswick Road in Acklam had three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen which was too small for the family of four but somehow it contained each and everyone of them at once. There was also a garden at the back that Gary, William's dad, had resurfaced in artificial grass a long time ago so that William could practice without spoiling the grass. Although there were several bald patches testifying to the fact that William hadn't wasted his father's efforts.
Gary had invested a lot into William's football career, to call William his 'Project Mbappe' wouldn't be too much of a stretch. In fact, it wasn't a stretch at all.
William got him twenty minutes to ten. He noticed that the kitchen light was still on, telling him that his mother was still up. His mother usually went to bed a lot earlier, so the kitchen light being on told him that she was waiting.
Sandra Smithson, was sitting idly in the kitchen with a cup of tea in one hand, while staring at the television which was on in the living room, with the sound reduced. Th news was on, and they were currently on a weather review. She turned her head towards the door when she heard it open, and stared wordlessly at William when he walked inside, drenched and dripping.
"I got a voicemail from the gaffer". William said as he took off his coat and hung it at the back of the door. "Don't come in Tuesday or Wednesday. Said a squad review is supposed to be happening".
Sandra considered it for a moment. He face was very expressive. She was the type of person who you could tell what they were thinking just based off of their facial expressions. Shey was forty-four and had been working multiple jobs along with William's father to make ends meet.
"Then show them". Sandra said, wincing as she saw William's muddy feet step on the floor that she mopped just an hour earlier.
"Show them what?" William scoffed. "They've already made up their minds. I'm gone".
"Did the coach say that in the voicemail?" Sandra asked.
"He didn't have to say shit". William said. "We all know how it goes from here".
"No, you can't say that. It's not decided yet". Sandra said, as she stood up, picking up her mug. "Are you eating? There's some pasta in the pot. And clean up the damn floor when you're done".
William ate the pasta while standing. He didn't want to sit down and have more to clean. His dad was in the front room, he could faintly hear the sound of the television there. He was watching a football match.
His dad usually worked six until two at the steelworks on weekdays and was usually in bed by ten but the light under the front room door suggested he had stayed up, either because he had heard the gate too or because the match was interesting. Probably both.
William finished eating the pasta, and then went up to his room.
His room was... quite small. It had a desk pushed against the window, just so it could fit. And the chair in front of the desk had turned into a second house of sorts for his clothes. He used to have football posters pasted all around the walls, but he took them down when he was fourteen, but one could still see the scars that the glue from the posters left on the wall. On the far side of the wall, there was a shelf which housed a trophy from an U13 district league, a worn out pair of football boots, which was there cos he was feeling sentimental, and a picture of his sister, Jess at age nine, holding a fish she had caught during the family trip.
He sat on his bed and willed the panel to show up, and it did almost immediately.
'I'm beginning to get the hang of this thing'. William smiled faintly as he saw the panel.
He navigated to the part which had the information about the system, something he saw briefly on the field, and read all of it.
The system was not, as it very explicitly mentioned in the introduction, a cheat. But it pretty much was. It served as a measurement unit and a guide a it could track everything he did with a precision that most coaching staff or scouts do and it could give a number to his attributes, or things like his match ratings. It could assign tsks calibrated to his current ability and desired development, and then he got rewarded through the use of something called Credits. Credits were the system's currency. They could be spent in the System Shop on stat improvements, skill unlocks, training programs, and most importantly, the improvement of his potential cap.
William stopped at the part about the potential cap and read it again three times.
'What the fuck is this? This is a fucking cheat! Limitless Potential Sys.. Ah, makes sense'. William thought to himself as he read through the description
According to the system, every player had a potential cap. It was a ceiling on the maximum value any individual stat could reach. His was currently seventy-two. No stat could exceed seventy-two through natural development unless the cap was raised. In other words, he was doomed to have the career of a baller shuffling around second tier clubs until he retired.
It wasn't particularly bad, but it still wasn't the type of career he had dreamed of.
Fortunately for him, the cap could be raised by spending Credits in the System Shop, and even though raising his potential cap was astronomically expensive, but there was nothing a little bit of saving couldn't accomplish.
Seventy-two... But it could be increased.
He immediately navigated to the System Shop, and found the section which had the cap expansion.
[POTENTIAL CAP EXPANSION]
[Current Potential Cap: 72]
[Expansion [1] : +3 to potential cap]
[Price: 500 Credits]
[Expansion [2]: Locked]
[Expansion [3]: Locked]
[...]
[Note: Expanding cap does not directly contribute to increment of stats. Stats can only grow through training, match performance, and skill acquisition. The cap determines the player ceiling, but the player is directly responsible for his current level]
William swallowed some saliva as he read the information. He was currently like a hungry dog who had a buttload of meat chunked in front of him.
He immediately checked his credits balance and upon seeing the big fat zero that was there, he was brought back to earth.
He needed five hundred credits before the first expansion was possible. He navigated to the credits section and read the earning structure. By the time he was done reading it, he had a smile on his face.
'So much for potential expansion being expensive. Stupid, lying system.
I'm not a cheat, YOU'RE A FUCKING CHEAT AMONG CHEATS!'
[Match rating 7.0 and above: 50 Credits]
[Match rating 8.0 and above: 100 Credits]
[Man of the Match: 200 Credits]
[Goal: 30 Credits]
[Assist: 25 Credits]
[Daily Quest Completion: 20-80 Credits, depending on the difficulty of the quest]
[Weekly quest completion: 100-300 Credits]
[Hidden quest completion: Variable]
[Training session rated Excellent: 15 Credits]
William immediately did the math in his head. If he played consistently and completed the quest, he could amass 500 Credits in roughly six to eight weeks of consistency. It wasn't that long considering his normal stats were still way below his cap, and he still had room for improvements. But he had to work very hard. The contract review was in three weeks so he had to give the performances of his lifetime so that he would change their minds.
He was still thinking when the system's first daily quest arrived as a flash notification.
[DAILY QUEST]
[Complete 200 passes against the rebounder wall at Rockliffe Park]
[Accuracy threshold: 85%]
[Time limit: Complete before the general training session begins]
[Reward: 20 credits]
William immediately checked the time and almost entered a flurry of curses. He had spent so much time studying the system, and he didn't even notice how much time had gone by. It was already past two in the morning.
He immediately set his alarm for five in the morning, then he lay back on his bed, and closed his eyes. A lot of thoughts played around in his mind before he finally fell asleep.
In the next room, his sister's alarm was going off at three. She was one of those people that set alarms that would wake everyone else but her. Fortunately for William, he was so spent that her alarm didn't disturb his sleep.