29 Going to Japan

*10 months time skip*

I've finally arrived in Japan and put all my bags in my grandparents' house, until my parents join me I'll be staying here in a guest room.

My parents decided to stay back in Spain in order to take care of a few things before joining me, luckily my mom's job could be taken care of remotely and my dad found himself a new job as an academy coach in the new City we'll be staying in so in the future we won't be having any problems.

I had to stay 8 months without any physical activity but luckily once that was done my father did everything he could to help me get back my form, I even managed to improve a lot of my physical aptitudes in those 2 months with many of my physical stats reaching above 60.

In those 2 months, I did my best to catch up to the time I've lost but whenever I met up with Alex and Nathan I could see how much they started changing and evolving, We were now all 15 and would soon turn 16, both Riccardo and Alex were actually older than us by 1 year and would turn 17 by the end of this year.

Those years are the most important for the development of the body and mind of players, those are the years where you can find the most progression and I learned that the hard way. While I was still forced to stay in bed all day long I could see everyone around me improving at an extremely fast pace.

Ricardo's stats already reached above 80 and I could feel that if he kept going I would soon enough no longer be able to check his stats. Even Nathan and Alex seem to have found their place in their new team, most of their stats are above 70.

They actually both had such a fast progression that even I hardly believed it, apparently their team last year reached the finals but lost to Itoshi Sae, and a few months after that both of them got scouted by the U17 team. I even heard that they might soon join the youth team if they keep improving regularly.

I even went to watch a few of their games and I was extremely surprised, they both looked so much more professional and both of them matured a lot, both in body and mind. Nathan even upgraded one of his special weapons which was extremely impressive.

I'm not sure what happened to them there but I'm convinced that it was extremely beneficial to them, I'm the only one out of all my friends who had no choice but to be stagnating, now that I got the chance to play in high school I'm sure that I will get to improve a lot but first of all I had to do something I've been keeping myself from doing for a while.

I had many stat points I could use but I always tried to keep them as much as I could since the higher the stat was the harder it was to naturally increase it. But now that I was going to join a new high school I needed to make sure that I'll get into the main team of the high school.

After getting kicked out of the tournament last year I gained quite a lot of information about the system, and I now had 10 stat points I could put wherever I want as well as 50 random stats. I knew that thanks to that I could at least make up for a few months of training that I lost.

But out of everything I gained, the most interesting part was without a doubt the reward for attaining the semi-finals of the tournament, not only did I gain 30 random stat points but I also gained a D rank special weapon and something even more valuable than that.

I gained a special weapon slot, at first I didn't know what that meant but after asking the system a few questions I finally got the answers I needed. At birth everyone has a predetermined amount of special weapon slots, mine happened to be 4 but thanks to the system I gained one more and now have 5 slots, thanks to that I also learned about another particularity of my [Greed] special weapon.

Once I finally got 3 D rank special weapons for myself I received a special notification from the system.

[Congratulations to the Player for obtaining 3 D Rank special weapons, do you wish to synthesize your 3 D Rank special weapons into a random C Rank special weapon?]

[Yes] [No]

I've been keeping that notification unanswered for 10 months now, I did know that this would be the best thing to do in order to be able to gain more special weapons in the future since I didn't know how long it would take me in order to gain another special weapon slot.

After thinking for a bit I've finally decided to do it, from what I've seen the higher the Rank of a weapon is the more amazing its effects are, while D rank weapons are pretty common amongst football players the C rank weapons are only possessed by a few talented individuals.

I didn't know what was the highest Rank a special weapon could reach but I knew that it could make an extremely huge difference, special weapons are very versatile, and some special weapons also helped raise stats faster, Ricardo was one of the people who had such a special weapon, it increased the development of his short pass stat by 20%.

There were so many different kinds of special weapons with so many different kinds of effects that I couldn't help but start feeling more and more curious as to what I might get.

I then hurriedly clicked on yes before I had the time to keep overthinking it any more than I already did in the past few months.

[Congratulations on obtaining the C rank special weapon "Excitement"!]

[Excitement:

Rank: C

When activated this increases the player's heartbeat for 5 minutes. For those 5 minutes, the player's processing speed as well as instincts get heightened. The player also gains an additional 1 point in every single stat when the special weapon is activated.

Special note: the player is advised to only use this special weapon only once a day or else the player might augment his risks of a heart attack.]

'So it's that's kind of special weapon...' It wasn't my first time seeing a special weapon that gave overall benefits to all the stats but it was my first time that I've got to witness a special weapon with such an effect as well as a cool down.

I still couldn't help but think that it was worth it though, I still needed to try it to see if it was actually as good as the description made it to be but I believe that it could actually help me reach a whole new level whenever I needed it.

With that, I was already way more confident but I still had something else I needed to do.

[Do you really wish to use 50 random stat points?]

[Yes] [no]

I clicked on yes and watched as the system notifications flooded me.

[Shooting accuracy: 58->60

Short pass: 52->54

Long pass: 47->49

Volley: 61->64

Long shot: 56->58

Free kick: 52->56

Centering: 41->42

Weak foot: 49->50

Stamina: 93->96

Acceleration: 63->66

Jump: 65->66

Reaction speed: 66->67

Power: 58->59

Balance: 60->61

Composure: 60->63

Assertiveness: 64->66

Condition stability: 59->60

Attack awareness: 59->61

Defense awareness: 49->50

Coordination: 51->54

Tactical coordination: 47->48

Trapping: 59->60

Ball control: 59->61

Heading: 55->56

Dribbling: 58->59

Sliding tackle: 42->43

Direct play: 46->47

Positioning: 56->58

Play field of vision: 54->55]

I couldn't even focus on any of them as they all popped up in front of me at an extremely high pace. I didn't have the time to check them one by one since I had to go to school soon, instead, I just took one last look at my status window before going out.

[Player status:

Name: Jude Sanchez

Age: 15

Title: none

Version: Normal

Total: C (61)

Offence: C (66)

Shooting: C (60)

Dribble: C (60)

Speed: C (64)

Defence: E (49)

Pass: D (50)

Stat points: 10

Random stat points: 0

Special Weapons: Greed (Z), Eyes of the Lord (Z), Excitement (C)]

I've finally reached a satisfying level, my stats are way weaker than what I expected but with the help of my special weapons I'm sure that in a few months I'll be able to catch up with everyone and might even catch up to Ricardo at some point.

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(Thanks to everyone who supports this story! If you want to support the beginning of this new Volume then make sure to spam all your Power Stones!)