Chapter 51 Equal exchange
Later in the night of that day, after finishing dinner and brushing his teeth, he was sitting at his study table pondering over the suggestions made by Eric.
With the lights turned off, he was sitting all by himself.
As he rested his head atop his study table, he lazily rolled his eyes outside the window. The clear night sky was aglow with the bright city lights.
Even though he resided in the outskirts of the city, he couldn't avoid the bright lights coming from the city. While looking at the luminescent moon atop the city, he revealed a deep sigh.
Sigh!!
'May be I should take up on his suggestion and join an academy. I've already fulfilled one of my dream of lifting the national trophy. And my growth has kinda become stagnant too. May be the time has come for me to accept a new challenge and embark on a new journey.' He thought while staring at the moon.
"Things have really changed in this life. I've lifted the national trophy, signed a professional contract with an agent from Europe and amassed quite a bit of wealth too. And all of it were possible only because of system and my choices."
"If I would have followed the same choices as in my previous life. May be I would have been in the same situation as I was in my previous life. So yeah I've made my decision. I'll join a youth team." He contemplated and made his decision after analysing his success in his present life.
As he made up his mind to join a professional youth team instead of a middle school team, he lifted his head up and rose up from his chair.
Just as he was about to head to his bed, a sudden thought flashed in his mind. He remembered something;
"Ah!! Yeah!! System!! There was a reward for the completion of the quest. How could I forget about it."
As he remembered about the reward from the earlier quest, he again pulled the chair and sat down.
"System activate"
Just as he mumbled, the holographic blue screen of the system appeared infront of his eyes, once again.
[Basic information]
Name: Takahashi Hiro
Age: 10 years old
Weight: 42 kg
Height: 4 feet 7 inch
Potential: SSS
Attribute point: 103
Roulette tickets: 0
Skills: Focus, Perseverance
Copied Talents: Roberto Carlos's freekick
Title: Master of the Talent Copying System, Regressor, One who possess ethereal talent.
[Attributes]
Physical: 41/100 ( Grade: C)
Dribbling: 78/100 (Grade: B+)
Pace: 52/100 ( Grade: C+)
Passing: 63/100 ( Grade: B)
Shooting: 61/100 (Grade: B)
Defending: 34/100 (Grade: D+)
Mentality: 57/100 ( Grade: C+)
IQ: 77/100 (Grade: B+)
Overall grade: B-
Witnessing his stats, he thought to himself; "Indeed my growth has remained quite the same for a long time. Although with this stat I could probably play in a youth team and may be I could even play in lower division of professional leagues."
While looking at his stats, he completely forgot about the fact that he was still a child. And even though his stats were pretty amazing, the world was filled with infinite variables.
"But I'm not here to analyse my stats. Today I'm here to look at my reward from previous quest. Let's see what amazing thing did we get from the system." While rubbing his palm against each other, he looked at the system with his greedy eyes and revealed a crooked smile on his face.
"Now where is the inventory tab?" Unable to find the inventory tab, he began to scroll through the system in search of inventory tab. Finally after scrolling for a while, his eyes landed on an icon which resembled a chest.
"Since it looks like a chest. May be it's the inventory tab that I'm searching for." He muttered as he curiosly clicked the chest icon. Just as he clicked the icon, the system redirected him to the inventory.
His inventory consisted of 10 slots. There were two slots in the first row, two in the second, two in the third, two in the fourth and two in the fifth. Altogether there were five rows with two columns.
His inventory was almost empty with only first slot occupied. And that slot was occupied by the muscle enhancing elixir.
"Just when I thought that I figured out the working mechanism of the system it gets even more complex. Like does it update automatically or what?" He mumbled as he found the inventory tab.
He then clicked on the first slot. As he clicked on the first slot, suddenly a picture of round glass bottle with blue liquid in it became visible. The transparent glass bottle resembled a bottle of perfume.
Beneath the picture, there were some texts written on it, which read as such;
[Muscle enhancing elixir]
[Effects: Increases muscle density and slightly increases recovery rate.]
[Additional effect: +5 physical stat point and +3 pace stat point.]
[Note: This is a one time use item and it will expire in a weeks time. Hence it's suggested that host should consume it as soon as possible.]
[Use]
[Leave]
"Damn!! +5 physical stat points and +3 pace stat points!! I could hardly raise 10 points my busting my ass on training for about a year. And this elixir is providing me 8 stat points from a single consumption!!" His voice shook as he read the description of the item.
He couldn't believe his eyes that the item could grant him about a years worth stats in one single consumption.
"I really don't know what to make of this situation. Just when did the system start being so generous?" He wondered as he witnessed the benefits of the item provided by the system.
"Since there's a time limit, I should probably consume it right away."
He immediately pressed on the use option to consume the item. Just as he pressed on the use option, the item disappeared from the slot of inventory.
For three seconds nothing happened aside from the disappearance of the item from the slot of the inventory.
But after three seconds passed, his body temperature suddenly started to rise and he began to sweat profusely.
"What's this? Why am I feeling so hot all of a sudden?" He mumbled as he began to sweat profusely out of nowhere.
Along with the rise in body temperature, he began to feel excruciating pain all over his body. His muscles started to convulse.
"Huff!! Huff!! Argh!! Why does it feel like my body's crumbling?"
"I guess the item is taking it's effect. Seems like the benefits comes with a price. But I can handle this much pain. No pain no gain." While trying to endure the pain, he revealed a cheeky smile as if he was prepared to endure the pain.
At first the pain was tolerable but as the time passed it began to intensify. However he was still somehow holding his ground and enduring the pain. But the pain kept on intensifying.
Unable to endure the pain, he fell down from his chair. Still unwilling to let out a single scream, he clenched his fist tightly and tried to endure the pain by gritting his teeths.
But just like how a milk would spill after heating it for a while, he was also reaching his limit. Afterall there's only so much pain a human could handle.
Just as he was about to scream, he heard something.
[Abnormal activity detected!!]
[The system will forcibly put the host on mute until the end of the absorption process.]
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaa!!"
He screamed in agony but no sound came from his mouth. As the intolerable pain spreaded all over his body, he felt like he's getting struck by needles all over his body.
But since his voice was put on a mute, no matter how much he screamed not even a single word came out from his mouth.
However that didn't meant that he didn't feel any pain at all. Unable to endure the pain, he was on the verge of losing consciousness. But somehow he persevered through the situation and endured the pain.
Finally after sometime the pain started to recede and he felt some relief. And as the pain dissipated, he stopped his screams and started to regain his strength. His voice returned back to normal as well.
After going through that horrible experience, he tried to rise up. While taking the support of the floor and the chair, he struggled to raise his body from the floor.
However he was still too weak to stand straight. And thus, he leaned his back against the chair to prevent his body from falling down.
As he leaned his back against the chair, he began to stare blankly at the posters in the wall infront. For a moment he couldn't think of anything. For some inexplicable reason his mind went completely blank for a while.
And as he regained back his strength and returned to his normal self, he tried to stand straight on his legs.
"Argh!!"
"What in the lord's name happened just now?" He mumbled softly as he tried to reason with himself. "So it's not easy to obtain a year's worth of stat in one single moment huh? So to get a year's worth stat in a single sitting, you'd have to suffer year's worth pain in one sitting as well."
"It's a fair trade. But I'm not sure if I want to go through it again."
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