Success in football is a double-edged sword. The moment you prove you are dangerous, you stop being a surprise and start becoming a target.
For Leo, the target was painted squarely on his chest.
Three weeks had passed since the Villarreal match. In that time, Castellón B had gone on a three-game winning streak, and the Spanish third-tier scouting reports had all updated with the same glaring warning: Shut down the Indian midfielder, and Castellón dies.
Valencia B had read the report.
It was the 65th minute, and Leo's lungs were screaming. His jersey was soaked in sweat, and his left ankle was heavily bruised. Valencia hadn't assigned just anyone to mark him; they had assigned a nineteen-year-old defensive midfielder named Cruz, who was built like a heavyweight boxer and played with the sole intention of breaking ankles.
Every time Leo even looked at the ball, Cruz was there, stepping on his toes, throwing an elbow into his ribs, and whispering threats in rapid-fire Spanish.
"You aren't passing to anyone today, flaco (skinny)," Cruz sneered, shoving Leo hard in the back as a Castellón defender cleared the ball.
Leo stumbled but caught his balance. He didn't say a word. He just breathed.
"Hey! Ref, he's hacking him to pieces!" Mateo yelled from the center circle, his River aura churning with frustration.
But the referee waved play on. This was the reality of the lower Spanish leagues. If you were too weak to survive the dark arts of defending, you didn't belong on the pitch.
Leo closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. The Architect's Domain expanded over the pitch, casting the sunlit grass into a glowing cyan-blue grid.
Status: Physical stamina at 30%. Bruising on left plant foot.
Enemy Profile (Cruz): Aggression 100%. Discipline 20%. Tactical awareness 0%.
Cruz was a dog chasing a bone. And Leo realized, with sudden, terrifying clarity, that he could use that. If a dog follows you everywhere... you can lead it off a cliff.
"Mateo!" Leo shouted, his eyes snapping open. "Switch the axis!"
Mateo didn't question it. He received a pass and immediately killed the tempo, holding the ball at his feet.
Leo started to jog. Not toward the ball, but away from it. He jogged diagonally, pulling himself entirely out of the midfield play and drifting wide toward the left touchline.
Cruz followed him like a shadow, right on his heels. "Where are you going, coward? Leaving the game?"
Leo didn't answer. He kept jogging, dragging Cruz further and further away from the center of the pitch. To the crowd, it looked like Castellón's playmaker had given up.
But in The Architect's Domain, Leo was watching the grid. By dragging Cruz—Valencia's central anchor—all the way to the touchline, Leo had just ripped a massive, gaping hole right in the heart of Valencia's defense.
A golden line of probability snapped into existence, straight down the middle of the pitch.
Leo stopped dead on the touchline and locked eyes with Mateo.
Mateo saw the empty space. His River aura surged. With a violent burst of speed, Mateo drove the ball straight into the massive hole Cruz had abandoned. The Valencia center-backs panicked and stepped up to stop Mateo's surging run.
Checkmate, Leo thought.
Mateo didn't shoot. He slipped a simple, ten-yard pass through the fractured defensive line to the Castellón striker, who was now completely unmarked.
Thwack. The ball hit the back of the net. 2-0 Castellón.
Cruz stood on the touchline, thirty yards away from the play, his jaw dropped. He looked at Leo in disbelief.
Leo turned to the massive defensive midfielder, his expression a mask of cold calculation. "You spent the whole game watching my feet," Leo said quietly. "You should have been watching the board."
Two hours later, under the freezing floodlights of Lancashire, Rio was dealing with his own target.
The East Lancashire Academy Derby. Blackburn Rovers vs. Burnley. It was one of the most bitter, hate-filled rivalries in English football, even at the youth level.
The pitch was a warzone. The mud was so thick it felt like running in quicksand.
Rio had already scored one goal, a thunderous header from a corner kick, but he was paying the price for it. The Burnley defenders had abandoned tactics entirely and resorted to pure violence.
In the 80th minute, Rio received a ball with his back to the goal. Before he could even turn, the Burnley center-back—a skinhead named Barker—came flying in with a two-footed, studs-up tackle.
It was a career-ender.
Rio saw it coming at the absolute last millisecond. He jumped, pulling his legs up to avoid the worst of the impact, but Barker's studs still caught Rio's shin guard, snapping the plastic in half and sending Rio spinning into the mud.
The referee blew the whistle, flashing a yellow card, but the damage was done.
Davies, Blackburn's giant center-back, sprinted up from the backline, his Wall aura radiating pure fury. He grabbed Barker by the collar of his jersey. "Do that again, and I'll bury you in the pitch!" Davies roared.
"Get off me!" Barker shoved back, laughing. "Your striker's too soft for the derby!"
Rio lay in the mud, staring at the shattered pieces of his shin guard. His leg throbbed with a sickening, hot pain. The Burnley fans on the sideline were jeering, calling him a diver, telling him to go back home.
Rio slowly placed his hands in the freezing mud and pushed himself up.
The Blackburn physio started running onto the pitch, but Rio held up a hand, stopping him dead in his tracks.
Rio limped heavily for two steps. Then, he planted his injured leg. He tested the weight. It held.
He turned his head and looked directly at Barker.
The jeering from the Burnley fans slowly died down. Something was wrong. The air pressure on the pitch was dropping. The freezing rain seemed to hang suspended in the air.
Rio's Will didn't just activate; it overflowed. The abyssal black smoke poured from him in waves, so thick it seemed to swallow the stadium lights. The silhouette of the massive, predatory panther didn't just appear behind him—it seemed to merge with him. His eyes burned with an absolute, terrifying arrogance.
He wasn't going to just score. He was going to execute them.
"Davies," Rio commanded, his voice unnervingly calm. "Give me the ball."
Play resumed with a Blackburn free kick. Davies tapped it to Rio.
Barker charged at him immediately, looking to finish the job.
Rio didn't pass. He didn't run away. He stood perfectly still, waiting until Barker was inches away. At the very last microsecond, Rio dropped his shoulder and rolled the ball backward with the sole of his boot—a devastatingly fast drag-back.
Barker went flying past him, completely out of control, slipping in the mud and crashing onto his stomach.
The crowd gasped.
Rio accelerated, ignoring the pain in his leg. His Apex Predator aura crushed the surrounding defenders. They hesitated, their instincts screaming at them not to step into his strike zone.
Rio reached the top of the penalty box. The Burnley goalkeeper crouched, anticipating a rocket of a shot.
Rio pulled his right leg back. The dark aura swirled around his boot like a vortex.
But instead of unleashing a violent strike, Rio sliced the absolute bottom of the ball with a delicate, mocking flick.
It was a Panenka.
The ball floated gracefully through the freezing rain, an agonizingly slow, perfect arc. The goalkeeper had already dived frantically to his right, grasping at thin air. He could only watch in horror from the mud as the ball drifted softly, beautifully, directly into the dead center of the net.
3-1.
The stadium was dead silent. The ultimate disrespect.
Rio didn't celebrate. He turned around, limping slightly, and walked past Barker, who was still trying to scrape himself up from the mud.
"Soft," Rio whispered, the word cutting through the freezing air like a blade.
That evening, Coach Harrison was sitting in his cramped office at the Blackburn training ground, sipping lukewarm tea and reviewing the post-match medical report on Rio's shin.
His desk phone rang. It was an internal line. The Director of Football.
"Harrison," the voice crackled over the receiver. "The first team is struggling with injuries up front. The gaffer wants to pull someone up from the U-18s to sit on the bench for the senior squad this weekend. The League Cup."
Harrison looked through the glass window of his office, out onto the dark, empty training pitch. He thought about the shattered shin guard, the terrifying dark aura, and the floated Panenka that broke a rival academy's spirit.
"I've got your man," Harrison said.