Soccer System: All the Skills, One Player!

A training quest was all Lucas wanted, and then some. Excited, he went back to training as soon as he received the notification of the "Quality Passes" quest.

"Alright guys, I've got an idea!" said Lucas, getting up from the floor and setting his cell phone to record the training again.

"Eh?! Aren't you too excited for someone who's missing so many passes?" asked Felix, with a hand on his waist.

Lucas put his hand on his chin, smiling. "It's because I think I've found where I was going wrong."

Arthur, noticing Lucas' confident expression, raised his eyebrows. "So you'll be able to make other passes like that? My knees are sore after jumping so much to hit your crooked passes."

"It's not really a solution, but I think I know how to improve my hit rate for our future games."

"And how are you going to do that?" asked Miguel.

"Plain old repetition, right?" said a deep voice. Lucas turned and saw Alex approaching.

The assistant coach's intrusion into the conversation surprised Lucas a little.

"Alex... How do you know what I had in mind?"

"Well, you're a great passer, Lucas. So the only obvious way to always hit the passes you already hit by chance is repetition, of course."

Lucas thought about it. He hadn't thought of it that way, because, unlike Alex, he didn't have as much confidence in himself. He knew that one of his main characteristics as a footballer was his ability to make creative and precise passes, more than most players. However, he believed that this talent only made him stand out at Wushia College, not in grassroots soccer.

But he was wrong. His talent as a passer was rarer than he thought.

"Come on, I'll be here to help and instruct. Lucas, put the ball in the corner," said Alex.

"But, Alex, why the corner? Then I won't be able to practise my runs to receive passes," said Miguel, with a tone of confusion.

"Of course you can," said Alex, raising one hand and signaling to Arthur, who had the ball.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

Arthur tossed the ball to Alex, who caught it with ease and spun it from one hand to the other.

"The way you were trying to train was good. Putting the ball in the middle of the pitch and asking Lucas to pass is interesting because Felix had to identify who would receive the pass, Miguel or Arthur. However, this tires Lucas's leg, makes Miguel out of breath and also Arthur's knees, not to mention the fact that Felix needs to change direction and could injure himself. We're still in pre-season, so we can't keep doing situational training like this. The best thing is to do the same training, but from a shorter distance and with reduced space."

"In other words, the corner and the penalty area," Felix concluded.

"Exactly!" Alex stopped the ball under one arm and snapped his fingers. "Now we're going to need a goalkeeper. Um... Hey, Anton! Come here!"

Anton was drinking water and talking to Daniel when he heard Alex's voice. As he approached, the group gathered near the middle of the pitch. Alex threw him the ball and said:

"Come on, you're going to train with the forwards now." Alex started walking towards one goal.

"W-what? But I was training with the defense guys to..."

"You're a goalkeeper, man. Training requires jumping a bit, not just corner positioning. You can practice that later," said Arthur, putting an arm around the neck of Anton, who was tall and handsome, but shy.

The training was adjusted, keeping the essence of what they had been practicing before, but making it easier for Lucas. With the ball at one corner, he only had to decide whether to cross to Arthur, who was being closely marked by Felix, or to Miguel, who needed to get into the box and shoot. Although it was more difficult to execute than to plan, Lucas knew exactly what he needed to do. His objectives were clear.

100 Diagonal Passes.

100 Cross-field Passes.

50 Perfect Crosses.

70 Goal Assists.

The fact that Lucas needed to have more assists than perfect crosses was more of a relief than it might seem at first. It meant that he didn't have to hit every cross exactly right, as long as his strikers finished and scored, or so he thought.

In the first thirty minutes, he hit ten perfect crosses out of the fifty crosses he made, but the assist rate was lower than he expected. Only eight assists.

Having Anton and Felix impeding his crosses was a pain. However, there was no way he was going to look at Alex and ask the two defenders to come out of training to make it easier. It wouldn't even make sense to ask for something like that.

By the end of the afternoon, things had improved, but it also made Lucas think he wouldn't complete the 'Quality Passes' mission in a single day.

[Training Mission: Quality Passes.

Description: You're not good enough at passing, and you have no easy way of learning yet.

Objectives:

46/100 Diagonal passes

37/100 Cross-field passes

23/50 Perfect crosses

22/70 Goal assists

Rewards:

+1 Legendary Loot Box.

+1 Assimilation Feature.]

In the locker room shower, Lucas could feel the thigh muscles in his right leg throbbing, which made him realize, for the first time in his short soccer career so far, that it sucked not being an ambidextrous player.

'Gee, can I copy someone's good leg? For example, could I copy the left leg of someone who is good with their left leg?' he asked, but no longer expected an answer.

[Unlike skills such as dribbling, heading, or thrusting, a left leg is a body part. As such, unless you find a player who has a skill that can only be done with the left leg and not the right, it will be impossible for you to improve your left leg with copied skills].

'As I imagined...'

After dressing in an ordinary Brighton tracksuit, Lucas picked up his bag and left the changing room.

Raphael was standing outside, one foot against the wall, his bag over his shoulder and his cell phone in one hand. He looked up when he saw Lucas approaching and followed his stride.

"How was your A-Team training?" asked Raphael with a serious expression.

Lucas looked at him, confused and stopped walking. "A-Team? What are you talking about?"

"You were playing with Miguel, Arthur and the team captain, Felix. Also, Alex went to help you."

"And that automatically makes us preferred to go to the A-Team?"

"Doesn't it?"

Hearing that, Lucas realized that this could easily turn into a pointless argument. He turned his face away and continued walking, choosing to ignore him rather than answer him.

Raphael didn't follow him, and alone, Lucas left the Brighton CT, entered the institute, and went to the dormitories.

The next morning, he didn't text or wait for Raphael to go for coffee. He didn't need to stress about silly jealous intrigues.

Raphael was a friendship that Lucas valued, but it was a recent friendship, and it wouldn't affect him not to talk to him for a few days. However, things weren't so simple.

In class, Raphael and Lucas would sit next to each other from the beginning of lessons and talk.

For their classmates, not seeing the two of them talking or looking at each other was strange.

Lucas didn't have any problems with Raphael or anything to apologize for, so he just focused on his classes.

Even though they were at an institute, the content of the normal classes wasn't too difficult. It was just a less advanced version of what he had seen in business school, whether it was math, history, or philosophy. Perhaps because the teaching in Japan was so good, even the school subjects that his classmates struggled with, such as physics, he could solve with no problems.

He wasn't a genius, he just had to study a lot during his life, whether it was to pass high school or college.

Even though Lucas thought so, his colleagues didn't see it that way and, surprisingly, with Raphael's departure, many saw it as an opportunity to fill the supposed vacancy he had left. It was only then that he realized how many eyes were on him and the other Brighton youth footballers.

That meant...

"Hey, Lucas, I forgot my biology book. Can I sit here?" A girl asked.

"Oh, I think the teacher has some spare books in the cupboard." He replied.

"Hey, man! The guys and I are going to karaoke today after class and..."

"Sorry, I have to practice."

"Tanaka! There's an empty seat here. Do you want to eat with us?"

"I'm sorry, but today I'm just going to grab an apple and go to CT."

Lucas knew that most people were trying to make friends with him because he was a footballer, so he made up one excuse after another to turn down invitations.