The shock of Europe wasn't the skill level. It was the gravity. It felt like stepping onto an alien planet where the atmospheric pressure was turned up to ten. And both Leo and Rio were being crushed by it.
Lancashire, England, was gray. The Blackburn Rovers training facility was a sprawling complex of perfectly manicured grass, but today, Pitch 4 was a muddy swamp.
Rio stood on the sideline, his cheap tracksuit offering zero protection against the biting, horizontal rain. His breath plumed in the freezing air. Around him, the Blackburn U-18 academy players were warming up. They didn't look like teenagers; they looked like heavyweight boxers. They radiated a heavy, dull, suffocating physical pressure. Davies, the giant center-back, felt like a solid wall of mud.
"Alright, listen up!" bellowed Coach Harrison, a red-faced man wrapped in a thick waterproof coat. He blew a silver whistle that cut through the sound of the rain. "11-on-11 scrimmage. If you're on a trial today, I want to see if you have a spine. If you don't, there's the gate."
Rio was tossed a neon green bib. He walked onto the pitch, and Davies instantly stepped into his path.
"Careful you don't blow away in the wind, tiny," Davies sneered, looking down at Rio's mud-stained boots.
Rio ignored him, but his chest felt tight. His physical stats were struggling to adjust to the cold.
The whistle blew.
Within thirty seconds, Rio realized his speed meant nothing if he couldn't stay on his feet. The tackles were brutal. Every time the ball even came near him, Davies was there, using his shoulder like a ramming bat, stomping on Rio's toes, imposing his massive will.
Fifteen minutes in, Rio finally got a pass played to his chest. He backed into Davies to shield it.
Smack. Davies drove his knee into Rio's thigh and shoved him. Rio went flying forward, landing face-first in the freezing mud. The academy kids laughed.
"Get up, trialist!" Harrison barked. "This isn't a nursery!"
Rio rolled over onto his back, gasping for air. The freezing rain washed the mud off his face, but it couldn't put out the wildfire igniting in his chest. His heart rate wasn't just increasing—it was resonating. The humiliation snapped something in his core. He thought about the concrete court in Kolkata. He thought about Leo.
No... I did not travel 7,000 kilometers to die in the mud.
Rio slowly pushed himself up. His usual arrogant grin returned, but now, it was predatory. The machine wasn't just awake; it was Activated.
His Will erupted.
He couldn't see it, but he could feel it. A boiling, abyssal black smoke began to seep off his shoulders, too heavy for the rain to wash away. He locked onto Davies, and to Rio, the giant defender suddenly looked smaller—just another target.
Two thousand kilometers away, under the blistering Spanish sun, Leo was fighting a war on a completely different battlefield. The training pitch at CD Castellón was a flawless, hybrid carpet. The heat was blinding, and the air hummed with the rhythmic thwack, thwack, thwack of the football moving at lightspeed.
"Rondo! Faster! Un toque!" yelled the Spanish coach.
Leo was thrown right into the middle of the eight-man passing circle. It was humiliating.
The Castellón players were maestros. They moved the ball with telepathic precision. To them, Leo was just a training cone. He lunged left, the ball went right. He sprinted forward, the ball was chipped over him.
"Too slow, chico," taunted a blonde midfielder named Mateo, trapping the ball and waiting for Leo to commit before effortlessly passing it through Leo's legs—the ultimate disrespect, a nutmeg.
The Spanish players chuckled.
Leo stood in the center, sweat dripping from his chin. His body couldn't keep up with their speed. He was drowning in their technical brilliance.
Breathe. Analyze. Stop looking at the ball.
He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, tapping into his analytical mind. He synchronized his breathing with the rhythm of the ball. His physical body was weak, but his mind... his mind was a weapon.
His Will ignited.
His eyes snapped open. The green turf of the pitch visually dissolved, replaced instantly by a glowing, geometric cyan-blue grid that stretched across the entire rondo circle. He wasn't on a pitch anymore; he was inside a simulation. He entered The Architect's Domain.
He could see mathematical equations for ball velocity. He saw golden lines of probability connecting the players. His perception had sharpened to a terrifying degree. Time seemed to slow down.
Back in England, the reserve midfielder finally managed to steal the ball and booted an ugly clearance down the pitch. It was a 50/50 ball in the air.
Davies roared, launching his 190-pound frame into the air to head the ball and crush Rio in the process.
But Rio activated his Will. The abyssal black smoke surrounding him suddenly transformed into the towering, black silhouette of a roaring, predatory panther directly behind him. He didn't just jump; he launched.
He rose higher than Davies, his knee driving into the defender's chest for leverage. Rio slammed his forehead into the ball, flicking it perfectly behind the defensive line.
But the real shock wasn't the header. When Rio connected with Davies in the air, Davies didn't just feel a collision—he was hit by a shockwave of pure, crushing pressure (Rio's Will). It felt like the air was being physically crushed out of his lungs. Davies slammed into the mud, dazed, gasping for air.
Rio landed and instantly accelerated past the fallen giant. The ball sat up perfectly just outside the penalty box.
Strike through the center.
Rio unleashed a violent volley. He didn't just strike the ball; he channeled his entire Will into the impact. The ball distorted, transforming into a swirling, black-red missile that ripped the air in half. To the goalkeeper, it looked like a black hole devouring the pitch. It hit the crossbar with a deafening CRACK that amplification the noise of the impact throughout the facility. The ball rebounded violently into the net.
Silence fell over Pitch 4. Davies lay on his knees, staring up at the tiger-eyed trialist in shock.
"Get up, defender," Rio said, his voice cold and terrifyingly calm. "This isn't a nursery."
Spain. Mateo received the ball again in the rondo, looking to nutmeg Leo a second time.
But Leo was in the grid. Mateo thought he was disguising his pass, but to Leo, it was like reading an open book. Mateo's right hip had shifted two millimeters. He was going to pass to the midfielder on his right.
A glowing golden line of 90% probability snapped between Mateo and the target.
Before Mateo even committed to the pass, Leo moved. He didn't sprint; he just calculated. He intersected the golden line before the ball was even struck.
Mateo kicked the ball, but before it could even travel a meter, Leo was there. He intercepted the pass with a velvety, silent touch, killing the momentum instantly. The grid dissolved.
Leo didn't celebrate. He just gently rolled the ball back toward Mateo with the sole of his boot, his expression a mask of absolute calm.
"Your telegraph is too wide," Leo said in flawless Spanish. "Next time, don't look at where you want to pass."
Mateo's smug smile vanished. The coach on the sideline stopped pacing and pulled out a notebook, his hand shaking slightly as he wrote, "Indian trialist... Perception Level: Elite."