Ficorpio
Chapter 1
Early spring, 2025. The capital.
In the hallway outside the National Football Association Headquarters’ National-Team Eligibility office, Daniel Mercer walked in front.
He wore a vintage Benfica jacket, the shoulders slightly hunched beneath it. Back in Portugal, he never would have dared wear it in the greasy heat of the Chinese restaurant kitchen where he worked. Today, though, he’d pressed it flat and put it on with care.
His hands were rough with old calluses, and now they kept rubbing together from nerves. Clenched in one fist was a flash drive containing Ethan Mercer’s match highlights from Benfica’s Youth Academy. Beneath it sat a thick stack of naturalization paperwork, the corners curled from being handled too many times.
Daniel stopped and looked back at his son. “Ethan, when we get in there, be polite. Smile a little.”
Ethan said nothing.
At eighteen, he already stood six-two. His gaze passed over his father’s shoulder and fixed on the dark red wooden door at the end of the corridor, where a brass plaque marked the office of the director.
They went in.
The office was wide and overheated.
Ethan swept the room with one quick glance, then pulled his phone from his pocket and set it face down on the edge of the tea table by the entrance, casual enough not to draw attention.
Behind the desk sat a heavyset man with one leg crossed over the other.
Victor Kane. Vice Chairman of the National Football Association and director of the eligibility office.
He leaned back in a leather chair, holding a Yixing clay teapot in one hand. Behind him, an entire wall had been turned into a display case, packed with framed photographs and gold-plated trophies.
“Sit,” Victor said without even looking up, taking a sip of tea.
Daniel didn’t dare. He bent forward instead and hurried to the desk, presenting the papers and flash drive with both hands. “Director Kane, these are my son Ethan’s documents.”
“His scoring rate in Benfica’s youth setup is excellent. His physical talent is absolutely top level for Europe.”
“If you’d just look at the highlights—we want to apply for national-team eligibility. He wants to play for the country.”
Victor took the paperwork and flipped through two pages at random. His eyes paused for a second on Ethan’s short dark-gold hair and tall frame, then his mouth curled in contempt.
“So what is this?” he said. “Foreign reject couldn’t make it overseas, so now he’s come back here to beg?”
The muscles in Daniel’s face stiffened, but he quickly forced out a smile that looked almost painful.
“Director, my son didn’t fail out. His talent is real—truly elite. If he could just get into the youth national team—”
Clack.
Victor flicked his wrist.
The flash drive containing Ethan’s highlights dropped to the floor and rolled beneath the desk.
“Oh,” Victor said flatly. “Slipped.”
Daniel didn’t hesitate for even a second. He bent down immediately, nearly dropping to one knee as he reached under the desk. When he found the flash drive, he carefully wiped it clean with his sleeve, stood back up, and fumbled into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He pulled one out and offered it forward.
Victor didn’t take it. He actually leaned back in disgust and waved him off.
“Forget it. Don’t bother with this fake courtesy. You don’t even know what people smoke now. Amateur.”
He tossed the paperwork onto the desk.
“The Association supports patriotism from the Overseas Chinese Community,” he said. “But eligibility has procedures.”
“You’ve got youth development compensation, file review charges, facilitation fees at every level…”
He raised two fingers.
“Flat rate. Two million.”
Daniel stared.
“Euros,” Victor added.
“Transfer it to the designated account first. Once the money’s there, I’ll move the paperwork up the chain.”
“Two million euros?” Daniel’s hand shook so badly the cigarette trembled between his fingers.
He’d spent years doing hard labor in a Lisbon Chinese restaurant kitchen—cooking, scrubbing, lifting, working himself to the bone day and night. Even if he saved every cent after living expenses, everything he had amounted to less than a tenth of that number.
“Director…” His voice cracked. “How could I possibly come up with two million euros?”
“Please, just watch the highlights. Look at the kid’s talent. Can’t this fee be waived?”
“He only needs one chance to play.”
“Talent?”
Victor laughed, his full face jiggling with it.
“There are over a billion people in this country. You think we’re short on kids with football talent?”
“What use is being able to kick a ball?”
“There are only so many seats at the table on the national team.”
He rose with the teapot in hand and walked around the desk until he stood right in front of Daniel.
“If you don’t have money, then get back to Portugal and wash your dishes. Stop polluting the air in here. What business does a poor man have dreaming about football?”
As the last word left his mouth, Victor snapped his wrist.
Scalding tea splashed straight over Daniel’s polished dress shoes. Wet leaves clung to the hem of his jacket.
Daniel shuddered.
Looking up at the man looming over him, he remembered everything he’d left behind when he’d gone abroad all those years ago. For one chance to see his son wear the national red, he would have given anything.
“Director, please.”
His knees buckled. He started to kneel.
A strong hand shot out from the side and seized his arm.
Ethan yanked his father upright by force.
He looked at the tea soaking into Daniel’s shoes. Looked at the humiliation and despair on his face.
A blistering rage rose from somewhere deeper than thought, hot enough to burn through reason itself.
“Ethan, don’t—just let me beg him…” Daniel was still struggling.
“Dad. Stand up.”
Ethan’s voice was ice.
He let go of his father’s arm and strode forward.
Victor frowned as he watched him approach. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Chapter 2
“This is Association property. You think you can make trouble here—”
Ethan didn’t waste a single word.
His left hand shot out like lightning and snatched the Yixing clay teapot from Victor’s grip.
Without breaking stride, he swung his arm in a full arc and smashed it straight into Victor’s bloated face.
Bang.
The teapot exploded on impact. Scalding tea and ceramic shards burst across Victor’s cheeks and forehead.
Victor shrieked like a pig being slaughtered.
In another timeline—another world—Ethan Mercer had been an old-school football diehard who’d practically died from fury watching his national side get annihilated 0-7 by Japan. After waking up in this world, he’d wondered whether things here might somehow be different.
They weren’t.
Different world. Same cesspit.
The anger from two lifetimes slammed together inside him, and all at once the filth he’d hated had finally taken a human shape right in front of him.
So what was he supposed to do—hold back?
With a face like that, how could you not slap it?
Before Victor could even stumble backward, Ethan’s right arm tightened, muscle bunching in an instant. Then he drove a savage backhand across the man’s jaw.
The crack of it echoed through the office.
Victor’s heavy body flew backward into the display case. Glass doors shattered with a roar, and shards rained down with the gold-plated trophies in a crashing heap.
He collapsed to the floor. His mouth fell open, and two bloody molars spat out with the blood.
Silence swallowed the room.
Daniel stood frozen, numb from head to toe.
Ethan walked over, planted a foot on Victor’s chest, and pinned him there until the man could barely breathe, reduced to pained wheezing.
Ethan looked down at him, expression cold.
And at that exact moment, a voice rang out in his mind.
Ding.
“Host detected delivering justice to a vile opportunist.”
“Activation objective complete. Story Mission System successfully awakened.”
“Activation rewards granted: SSS-Tier Finishing.”
“Maxed-Out Physicality, SSS tier.”
A surge of heat swept through Ethan’s entire body.
He could feel his muscle fibers restructuring at a terrifying pace, his bones growing denser, stronger. His brain and body flooded with absolute instinctive memory—power generation, first touch, striking mechanics, finishing technique—everything fused into him as if it had always belonged there.
Ethan slowly let out a breath.
Late, but not too late.
Now this was more like it.
He turned, walked to the desk, and grabbed a sheet of official Association stationery. Calmly, almost leisurely, he wiped the blood from the back of his right hand. Then he tossed the paper onto Victor’s swollen face.
“Ethan…” Daniel’s voice shook. “We’re in real trouble now.”
Ethan went back to the tea table, picked up his phone from the corner, and slid it into his pocket. Then he took his father’s trembling hand and headed for the door.
“Let’s go, Dad.”
They had only just stepped through the revolving glass doors of the Association building when shouts and pounding footsteps erupted from the lobby behind them.
Several security guards charged out carrying control poles.
“Ethan, what do we do?” Daniel’s face had gone white as he looked back over his shoulder. “We can’t stay here now. They’ll bury your future.”
The cold wind of early spring hit Ethan in the face.
Across his vision, a translucent system panel flickered faintly.
It was the card he’d torn out of a rotten system with nothing but raw violence and his own dignity.
Ethan rolled his neck once. The bones cracked sharply.
Then he turned toward the west.
If one road was blocked, he’d take the other.
“Back to Portugal,” he said.
“This place doesn’t deserve me.”
“In Europe, I’ll show them what a real monster looks like.”
No need to explain it.
He simply had that deep-blue confidence.
At dawn, Ethan Mercer took the bus to Benfica’s academy on his own.
Outside the window, the streets on Lisbon’s northern edge slowly brightened under the morning light. In the distance, a cluster of red-and-white buildings emerged from behind the trees, sprawled against the horizon like a giant eagle at rest.
The Eagle Nest Academy Complex.
When Ethan got off the bus, his backpack hung from one shoulder, and the wind had left his dark blond hair slightly messy. The security guard at the gate gave him a look, scanned his card, and let him through.
As he walked deeper into the complex, the staff stared a little longer than usual. Some pretended not to see him. Others waited until he had passed before immediately lowering their heads to check their phones.
Ethan ignored all of it.
He pushed open the youth team dressing room door.
A second earlier, the place had been loud—music blasting, shin guards flying between players, one kid standing barefoot on a bench and laughing like an idiot. The moment the door opened, every sound died at once, as if a hand had closed around the room’s throat.
More than a dozen pairs of eyes turned toward him.
Curiosity. Appraisal. And more than a few openly hostile stares.
Ethan stood in the doorway and swept the room with his gaze.
Chapter 3
He spotted Adrian Pierce first—the undersized, Chinese-Portuguese holding midfielder—sitting in the corner with a roll of bandage in his hand, his face twisted with the urge to say hello and the fear of doing it.
Then he saw Ryan Silva.
Blond hair. Blue eyes. Balanced build. Sitting dead center in the dressing room—the unofficial captain’s spot in the youth squad. Several regular starters clustered around him.
When Ryan saw Ethan, the corner of his mouth lifted. It was a shallow smile, impossible to read.
Ethan walked to his locker. A white notice had been taped across the door.
You are not included in this week’s training squad. Report to Youth Academy Director Santos’s office immediately.
Signed by the youth administrative team.
Someone in the room let out a low snicker.
Ethan reached up, tore the paper down, and crushed it into a ball.
He did not go to Santos’s office.
Instead, he opened his locker, took out his training kit and boots, and started changing. The backup winger sitting beside him instinctively shifted farther away, as if he were afraid of getting caught in the blast radius.
Ryan finally spoke.
“What, were the Portuguese words too complicated for you?” he asked. “Need your captain to read them out loud? Or did getting sent back from home knock the brains out of your head too?”
He spoke in Portuguese, not loudly, but more than clearly enough for the entire room to hear.
Bent over tying his laces, Ethan didn’t look up. “I can read.”
Ryan leaned against the locker door. “Then why are you still sitting here like a parasite? This dressing room belongs to players with a future in the first-team pipeline. A walking headache like you doesn’t deserve this locker anymore.”
Ethan pulled the laces tight and knotted them. “The only rules I recognize are the ones on the pitch, not scraps of paper from some office. Training’s about to start. My place to warm up is on the grass, not in some bureaucrat’s office listening to nonsense.”
The room went quiet again.
The smile faded a little from Ryan’s face.
Beside him, defender Jonah Conway gave a mocking snort. “Look at that. The Chinese kid thinks this is some amateur kickabout back where he came from. Ignoring Coach Amorin’s instructions? That’s arrogance on a whole different level.”
Ethan stood.
At six-two, he was half a head taller than most of the youth players around him. The training top clung to his shoulders and back, outlining muscle that looked far too heavy and dense for a player his age.
He didn’t even glance at Jonah.
He picked up his bag and slammed the locker shut.
Bang.
The metallic crack made several players flinch.
Out on the training ground, Coach Marco Amorin was already waiting on the touchline.
He was in his thirties, dressed in a black training jacket, tactical board in hand. An assistant coach stood beside him, murmuring something in a low voice while flicking repeated glances toward the dressing room exit.
Ethan walked out of the tunnel. Amorin saw him, and something unreadable passed through his eyes.
He didn’t speak right away. He waited until Ethan had come close, then raised a hand.
“Ethan.”
Ethan stopped.
On the field, the rest of the squad was warming up, but it was obvious they had slowed down to listen. Amorin flipped through the sheet on his clipboard.
“The club has received some feedback regarding you,” he said.
Feedback. A very restrained word.
Ethan looked at him. “What kind of feedback?”
Amorin’s pen paused against the page. The assistant beside him looked uncomfortable.
“The situation still needs to be verified,” Amorin said, lifting his eyes again. His tone was clipped and official. “Until then, you’ll train at the back of the group on fitness work.”
Ethan didn’t move. “Who gave the feedback?”
Amorin frowned. “Ethan, this is an internal club matter.”
He didn’t answer. He closed the tactical board, turned, and started walking toward the main training area.
“Follow the instructions.”
Ethan watched his back. Sunlight caught in the ends of his dark blond hair. There was no fury in his eyes, only a cold, hard scrutiny.
Half a minute later, he moved to the back, and training began.
The starters took one half of the pitch for possession drills and tight-sided games. The substitutes worked on movement patterns. Ethan was sent to the far side by himself with two fringe players to do basic shuttle runs.
Fifty meters. Push-ups. Another fifty meters.
The assistant coach stood to one side with a stopwatch, barely bothering to look at him.
“Hey! Chinese boy!” he shouted. “Don’t think you can coast through this at a jog. Faster! You move like an eighty-year-old grandmother!”
Ethan ran rep after rep.
His breathing stayed steady. His stride was heavy but efficient, and every time he pushed off, his boots kicked up flecks of dirt from the turf.
By the tenth set, the two fringe players beside him were bent over with their hands on their knees, gasping. Ethan barely even looked like he was sweating.
The assistant coach’s casual expression slowly changed. He glanced down at the stopwatch, then back at Ethan, as if he suspected the thing had broken.
On the other side of the pitch, the starters’ scrimmage was in full flow.
Ryan Silva took the ball, slipped past his marker with ease, and curled a controlled finish in from the edge of the box. Several teammates rushed over to slap him on the shoulder.
“Jesus, that bend on the shot was unreal! Ryan, you really are Benfica’s youth prodigy!”
“Captain, keep it up! Let Coach Amorin see who the real first-team prospect is!”
Ryan spread his arms and accepted the praise with a grin.
A few minutes later, he made another forward run, met a cross, and headed it in.
Two goals.
At the sideline, Amorin nodded. For the first time all session, there was a trace of satisfaction on his face.