1 The Greatest of all Times
# SOCCERSTAR34
# ALTERNATEREALITY21
# RISINGSTAR13
# 2
Chapter 1
1. REMIND
Adiele bright was woken from a deep slumber by the crowing of a rooster. His eyes abruptly rolled open, glazed over with the remnants of a dream or rather a nightmare.
Zachary was first aware of the coolness of the air and its fresh fragrance. It was nothing similar to the foul polluted air he'd grown accustomed to in the suburbs of Kinshasha City.
He was lying on an abnormally small mattress that seemed to have been crafted by inserting spiky grass into rigid sacks. It was very uncomfortable and hurt his back when he stirred.
Zachary blinked as his eyes adjusted to the dim lighting in the room before propping himself up and orienting himself to the surroundings.
He was in a room with gray clay walls and a grass roof over his head. Small khaki curtains hid the shabby small window on one side of the cramped chamber—just leaving a shy peek of the banana plantation beyond. One wooden stool and a roughly made bench stood at the foot of his small bed.
[WTF!? Isn't this my small hut back in my ancestral village?]
[Why am I back here?]
He seemed to be hallucinating about his childhood residence back in Bukavu. He had stayed with his grandma until he was sixteen before he gained some small achievements in his soccer career and then went on to waste his life.
[I am not dreaming!] He exclaimed inwardly after pinching the dark brown skin on his forearm.
The last thing that he could recall was drowning and struggling for a single breath of air in the deep waters of the Congo River. The experience was deeply traumatizing for him.
Zachary had failed to pay back a debt he owed to a local drug lord in Kinshasha and was left to drown in the river by the thug's sycophants. He should have already died and on his way to hell, but here he was, alive and well.
[Could I have gone back in time? Could I have gotten a second chance?]
"Hahaha..." Zachary's laughter was a high cold cackle, piercing the silent atmosphere.
"I've got to stop following those soaps and web novels," Zachary mumbled while trying to suppress his laughter.
But suddenly, from the small open window came a form. Levitating a foot off the dirt-laden coarse floor was an ash-grey translucent silhouette that shimmered with a hazy glow. Slowly, it came into focus as an object looked at through a telescope, but this phantom was close, very close, just a few meters away.
Now Zachary could see the form of a man, with a silvery ragged line across his neck standing in his room. His skin was the color of charcoal and matched his bottomless soulless eyes. He wore a crown of leaves and grass, plus a tattered regal gown on his person.
Zachary's first impression of him was that he was just a hallucination and thus shook his head, trying to disperse his image from his mind. He was calm as this was not the first time he was getting delusions. His hallucinations had been getting progressively less amusing over the years due to his abuse of drugs.
Despite his efforts, the phantom was still there, before him, laughing and performing a sort of wild – prehistoric dance around his small room.
Zachary wanted to run fast for safety—out of the small wooden door, but instead remained where he was. Let's face it; there was only one thing he could do in such a situation: Pray the phantom wouldn't kill him.
But suddenly, the phantom stopped its manic laughter and started studying Zachary with the unwavering attention of a predator.
The phantom's soulless eyes creeped him out to the point of nearly peeing in his pants. But he clamped down on his fears and prayed that the almighty God (if there was one) could help him out of the situation.
"Young man!" Zachary heard the phantom's deep voice resounding like a thunderclap directly within his mind. It spoke to him without moving its chapped lips.
"I have felt your sadness and regret."
"I can sense your deep desire to do something for this forsaken land of ours. Your ancestors have sacrificed a lot to give you another chance. Remember; don't waste it! I will be watching you." The voice of the phantom was as chilling as ice at absolute zero, devoid of any emotion.
Before Zachary could register the meaning behind the words, the phantom began growing steadily less solid like it was being rubbed out of existence by some invisible eraser. One minute it was there, and the next, it was gone—vanished.
[What is happening!?] Zachary was shocked stiff by the development.
[I need to stop smoking Cannabis sativa.] He resolved.
"Hallucinating about my death, going back in time to my childhood, and meeting a ghost. If not marijuana, what could it be?" He mumbled while trying to calm his still bubbly emotions.
But at that instant, he heard a voice that should have been buried deep in his past.
"Zachary, wake up and go fetch some water," the high-pitched voice belonged to his grandmother. It was like he remembered: comforting as it wrapped around Zachary and whisked him off to a world where the sound was the power that could change everything wrong in the world.
Zachary's eyes moistened as he jumped out of his bed and limped towards the door of the small hut. He felt some pain in his left leg but ignored it as he was eager to see the old lady who had looked after him from childhood. His grandma was the rockstar of his world, his anchor, his safe place. But he had lost her prematurely.
Just opening the door made Zachary's breathing rapid and shallow. He could feel his pulse pounding in his temples as he stepped out of the grass-thatched house.
"I am really back," he mumbled while looking at the banana plantations and pastures around him. Their homestead was on a hill allowing Zachary to see down the slope covered by the virulent greens. Cows mooed quietly in one corner of a paddock nearby, and the squeals and snorts of fat pigs came from a pen some distance away from the house. Hens pecked at the soil with clockwork rhythm while goats grazed eagerly in the meadows. Zachary's grandma's farm was massive, spreading across a good four acres.
"This is a utopia," Zachary grinned while focusing his attention on his grandma.
A tall woman, all lean and skinny and with greying hair, was washing clothes a few meters away from his doorstep. She was humming a hymn and took no notice of Zachary when he was observing her. She was his grandmother, alive and well.
For a moment, the emotions Zachary had buried deep inside his mind came flooding forward, threatening to drown him in an endless abyss of regret and confusion. But as he continued looking at his grandmother's form that was as real as anything tangible around him, his mood lifted.
[Let this be real.] He inwardly prayed as he resisted the urge to rash forward and lift the woman into a hug.
If this was just a dream, Zachary didn't wish to wake.
He was highly suspicious that he had gone back in time to when he was just fifteen years old.
His hopes soared on thinking about the possibility. There were many things Zachary regretted and a lot more he could change. If there were even a slim chance that he had traveled back in time, he would use all his wasted opportunities to soar into the skies. And just maybe, he would make better decisions and become one of the greatest footballers of his generation. That had been his previous life's wish.
Zachary turned back and headed into the house. He needed a few minutes away from his grandmother to clear his head. But then, he noticed the mind-numbing pain that tortured his ankle bones and muscles whenever he moved.
And then he remembered.
He'd gotten involved in a bike accident around the time he was fifteen during his previous life. The accident had been so bad that it'd basically tore most of the ligaments in his left foot. That'd been the beginning of the end of his soccer career. He had gone on to fail the trials of his school team due to the injury and then started wallowing in endless distress. He then took to drugs to suppress his sorrow and was later expelled from his high school.
What followed was a period of being out on the streets in Kinshasha for a few months. But luckily, he was picked up by a retired footballer on the DRC National Team. With his help, he managed to get back on his feet and join TP Mazembe—a local football team in Lubumbashi. With the team, he managed to gain a bit of success in his football career.
But his success was short-lived. He soon relapsed back to taking drugs and was banned from the National League. One wrong decision led to another until even God could no longer save him from himself.
However, the starting point of all his distress was the accident he suffered when he was fifteen.
[Why would I return to a point when I was already injured?] He was distressed. He felt his mood sink as he limped back to his room to examine his left ankle.
But at that moment, a Ding sounded in his head, and a translucent blue book flipped open before him. On its first page, a few words were being inscribed in beautiful calligraphy.
CHAPTER 2
SOLO TRAINING
Bright was jogging at a steady pace.
He was mindful of neither the ever-present potholes in the dirt-roads of eastern Bukavu nor the mud heaps brought about by the rain of the previous day.
He hummed the Chris Brown song (Don't Wake Me Up) that was supposed to be released two years later.
Bright smiled softly. He was in a good mood.
Above him loomed the blue sky with just a few stratus clouds making their unhurried way toward Lake Kivu in the north. The sun was already a golden ball of yellow above, promising more heat as the day progressed. All in all, he could not have asked for better weather to complete the system mission.
It had been six days since Bright returned to the past, and he was very close to completing the tasks in his first system mission.
He had been exercising like there was not a tomorrow in his vocabulary.
With the G.O.A.T system, he had the motivation to work hard and thus never once thought about giving up when the going got tough.
Every morning, he would start with a routine of one hundred seat-ups, then do fifty press-ups before jogging ten or more miles around the dirt roads of Bukavu. He would then complete his day's training in the evening by going through six rounds of Hatha-yoga routines. His daily yoga practice always included the serpent, bow, peacock, tortoise, eagle, and Matsyendra poses.
In his previous lifetime, he had come across an article explaining how yoga was essential to improving the flexibility and body coordination of any sportsman. Bright was determined to stick to this practice as it would reduce the risk of him getting injured later in his career.
He feared getting injured again the most. Injuries would diminish the player's form and destroy careers if not meticulously handled.
An injury had been the start of Bright's downfall in his previous lifetime. But he was determined not to let it affect him in his new one.
Throughout the past six days, his injured ankle had hurt like hell after continuing to support his strenuous exercise without much rest. It had swollen and taken on a reddish hue like that of a perfectly boiled shrimp. But Bright had chosen to ignore the pain and continue the tedious tasks imposed on him by the system.
A few times when he felt he could not hold on, he just had to think about the great heights achieved by some of the top athletes from poor backgrounds in his previous lifetime. Soccer stars like Sadio Mane, lonial Messi, and Cristiano Ronaldo had made it to the top by capitalizing on their talent. Through sheer hard work and their unrelenting attitude towards soccer, they had almost achieved the G.O.A.T status supported by the common consensus of the pro-sports community.
Bright believed that the pain and fatigue he was feeling at that moment was his weakness leaving the body.
He could see the bigger picture.
The climb might be tough and challenging, but if he ever made it to the top of the soccer world, the view would be worth it. So, he decided to work harder than any athlete alive and see if he could also become one of the greats. He would try becoming the best or die trying. With a cheat system aiding in his rise, he would not settle for less.
Bright was in the zone and felt like running was a form of whole-body meditation. He continued his steady motion at a steady pace pushing away the pain and fatigue from his mind while humming song after song to psyche himself up.
On the nearly empty Bukavu dirt-roads, he had no worries. Bright didn't need to fret about high-interest loans like in his previous life, no problematic girlfriend, no therapist. It was just him cutting across the warm breeze caressing his skin.
Stick sweat soaked his oversized tracksuit while his old second-hand Nike snickers were all covered in mud. He panted as he wiped his mouth on his sleeve. He could only imagine how badly he stunk.
As he rounded a bend heading back towards his grandpa's farm, a Ding sounded in his head.
The sound elevated his mood as it was the now-familiar system notification indicating that he had completed one of the mission tasks.
But bright resisted the urge to open the system User-Interface and continued jogging across the plains, up the hill, until he was back to his grandma's house.
Once he stopped running, the perspiration lay cool on his skin, cooled further by the noon breeze, and he began to shiver.
He hurriedly washed up before stretching to cool down his muscles. He was then just about to start his yoga routine when he was interrupted by the high-pitched voice of his grandma.
"Bright," she yelled. "You're running on that foot again. Didn't Dr. Kazadi tell you to desist from straining it for three months? Child, I don't have any more money to take you to the main hospital." She was speaking in Swahili - one of the local languages in Bukavu.
"Grandma, I'm now fine," he lied, voice humble. "I will be okay by the time school starts once again. I want to be ready for the school team trials."
[Sorry, grandpa. I can't tell you everything now. But I'll surprise you in the future.] Bright vowed inwardly.
"Are you sure?" She asked. "I will come and take a look at that foot myself. I won't trust your words." She added.
"No, Grandpa," Bright hurriedly yelled back while bolting the wooden door to his room from the inside. "I am currently dressing. Maybe later."
"I can tell that you are lying," the voice of his grandpa had risen a crescendo.
"That does it. Tomorrow, I will ask Dr. Kazadi to look at your ankle again. If he says that it's okay, then you can do whatever you want. But I don't want to see you out running before that." His grandfather warned, voice somber.
"Yes, grandpa," Bright replied humbly.
[I will have completed my mission by tomorrow. If the elixir reward can right away heal all my torn ligaments and dislocated bones, then there'll be no need to worry.] He thought.
He once again focused on his training and went through his Yoga routine. Today, he had woken up very early and worked extra hard to finish the mission before lunchtime. He was eager to receive the first rewards from the system. He would then be able to gauge if the G.O.A.T system was as badass as the ones in most of the web novels he had read.
In a few minutes, he completed the yoga routine, and the Ding sound once again resounded in his mind.
Without even taking a minute to relax, he summoned the system's user interface to check the changes in his stats.
****
SOCCER G.O.A.T SYSTEM
SYSTEM LEVEL: 1 (15/100 juju-points to level-up)
USER: Adiele Bright
AGE: 17 years
TALENT ASSESSMENT: Grade-C
JUJU-POINTS: 17 (2 msg)
(Evaluation: A pitiful boy far from becoming a professional soccer player)
----
USER MENU
*USER STATS
*G.O.A.T MISSIONS (3 msg)
*SYSTEM SHOP (temporarily-unlocked)
*SYSTEM LOTTERY (temporarily-unlocked)
*SNOOPING TOOL (locked)
----
NB: Pls level-up system to unlock more functions.
****
Bright instantly noticed the juju-points, G.O.AT-missions, system-shop, and system-lottery tabs blinking red on the user interface. With his expertise gained through reading web novels, he could tell that he had received new messages or status changes in those tabs.
So, he tapped on the tab towards the top of the virtual blue screen.
****
JUJU-POINTS: 17 (1 msg)
-> You have completed mission – Preparations to Become a Soccer G.O.AT. You have earned 17 juju-points.
----
NB: Please complete more system tasks, win matches, and gain fame to gain more juju-points.
****
Bright understood the message at first glance. He closed the tab in a way similar to that of navigating the android tabs of a smartphone and then fixed his attention on the G.O.A.T mission tabs.
[What rewards will I get from the system?] He wondered.
[Will the vitality enhancing elixir cure me?]
[What if this is a dream? Am I just about to wake?] A lot of doubts ran through his mind making his brain tingle with anxiety.
But he suppressed them and tapped on the G.O.A.T missions tab.
****
"DING"
#5 new messages
CONGRATULATIONS
-> You have completed mission (Preparations to Become a Soccer G.O.A.T).
----
->Mission-Rewards
1) B-grade vitality enhancing elixir (Available in system-shop; temporarily unlocked. NB: The user must consume the elixir within 6 seconds after being removed from system shop.)
2) A random G.O.A.T skill (Available in system-lottery; temporarily unlocked)
3) 6 juju points
----
->Mission Summary
*Task 1: Run 60 miles within a week. (70/76 miles completed; rating A+)
*Task 2: Complete 100 seat-ups daily for a week. (Av. 200/100 seat-ups completed daily; Rating S)
*Task 3: Complete 50 press-ups daily for a week. (Av. 64/50 press-ups completed daily; Rating A+)
*Task 4: Complete four rounds of half a dozen Hatha-Yoga routine daily for a week. (Av. 6/4 rounds of Hatha-yoga poses completed; Rating A+)
----
Overall Mission Rating: A+
----
->Bonus rewards
You have earned 10 bonus juju-points.
