Ficorpio
Chapter 1
April, 2016. Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
A cold spring rain sheeted down over PSV’s famous De Herdgang Academy, turning the grass slick and the air sharp enough to bite.
Bang.
With a dull, ugly thud of body on body, a thin figure went skidding across the muddy pitch for nearly two full yards before coming to a stop face-first in dirty rainwater.
The whistle shrilled.
But Martin Janssen, head coach of the PSV U15s, didn’t call a foul. He only frowned at the Asian boy sprawled on the ground, his expression full of naked disappointment and impatience.
“Zhang! Get up!” he barked in heavily accented Dutch. “This is PSV Eindhoven. We need fighters who can survive in the first team one day. If you can’t even handle a fair challenge from someone like Van den Berg, then this will be your last match here.”
Hearing the furious shout in his ear, Ethan Mercer slowly opened his eyes.
Rain and grit ran into them, the sting jolting him fully awake. He stared blankly at the mud-caked boots on his feet, then at the Dutch defenders around him—boys who were only fifteen, yet already built like grown men.
I… regressed?
Ethan’s heart slammed against his ribs.
He knew this scene.
This was the final evaluation match for PSV’s U15 side in 2016.
In his previous life, this was where everything had gone wrong. In this brutal match under the rain, his body had been too slight, too underdeveloped. He’d been battered all game by Lars Van den Berg, the local center back who had already shot up to six-one. After the match, Ethan had received his release notice. He’d left Europe in disgrace, wasted year after year in the lower leagues, and retired early after injury.
And now—
He was back at fifteen.
“Hey, Asian kid.” The center back who had just flattened him looked down with a cold sneer. “If you’re scared, go pack your bags on the bench now. The Eredivisie isn’t a playground for children.”
A few nearby defenders burst into laughter.
On the sideline, Janssen had already taken his marker and drawn a hard red X next to Ethan’s name on the tactics board.
“Terrible physicality. No development value,” the coach said flatly, as if delivering a final sentence.
At the exact moment Ethan pushed himself up out of the mud, a mechanical voice rang out deep in his mind.
[System binding detected. The Ball King System has been activated.]
[Current timeline: 2016.]
[Host age: 15.]
[Scanning host physical data…]
[Height: 178 cm]
[Weight: 58 kg]
[Speed: 60]
[Shooting Power: 45]
[Shooting Accuracy: 50]
[Passing: 55]
[Heading: 40]
[Free Kicks: 45]
[Positioning: 50]
[Physicality: 45 (severe disadvantage)]
[Stamina: 50]
[Defending: 30]
[Dribbling and Ball Control: 55]
[Mentality: 80 (big-game player; will not disappear under pressure)]
[Overall Rating: Below Standard (retirement recommended immediately)]
Listening to the cold, detailed report on a body that was almost painfully weak, Ethan clenched his jaw.
So it was true. Even with regression, this body—thin, unfinished, still growing—was still bottom-tier against a Dutch back line full of long legs and raw strength.
Then the voice sounded again.
This time, it came with a burst of golden light.
[First-time system bind confirmed. Starter Pack granted.]
[Congratulations. You have obtained the Unique God-Tier Talent: Maxed-Out Dribbling and Ball Control.]
[Data overwrite in progress…]
[Your “Dribbling and Ball Control” stat has been forcibly locked at: 100 (MAX)]
[Talent description: An absolute physical connection has now been established between your feet and the ball. As long as the ball is at your feet, you are the only truth on the pitch.]
Boom.
A strange current of heat rushed into Ethan’s legs.
When he rose to his feet again and planted his boots on the slick, muddy turf, the whole world felt different. The soaked grass beneath him, the rain falling from the sky, even the mud-streaked ball nearby—it all felt like an extension of his body.
“Play on,” Janssen said with a dismissive wave. He couldn’t even be bothered to look at the Asian kid anymore.
The match resumed.
A midfielder on Ethan’s side lazily floated a waist-high pass toward him. It was terrible—slow, hanging, careless—and dropped right in front of his chest.
And Van den Berg, built like a wall, was already charging in from ten feet away with the expression of a man looking to break something.
“Careful! Move it!” a teammate shouted from the touchline, panic rising in his voice.
Everyone expected the same thing.
The skinny boy wouldn’t dare bring it down. His only options were to hack it away blindly—or get sent flying again, ball and all.
But this time, Ethan didn’t retreat.
His eyes were so calm it was unnerving.
The ball dropped fast. The defender stormed in. And Ethan didn’t even seem to prepare. At the last possible second, he simply lifted the instep of his right foot with almost absurd gentleness.
Tap.
The sound of contact was feather-light.
The ball, slick with rain and alive a heartbeat earlier, seemed to lose every bit of momentum the instant it touched his boot. It stuck to his foot as if a magnet had locked onto it.
Then Van den Berg arrived.
Chapter 2
The collision should have crushed him.
Instead, Ethan’s body tipped left at a strange, impossible angle—so far it looked like he was about to fall, an off-balance lean that seemed to defy basic physics.
Van den Berg slammed into nothing but air.
Because the turf was slick, he couldn’t stop himself. His right ankle twisted under him, and his huge frame went down hard into a muddy puddle in a grotesque split, sending water spraying six feet into the air.
“Ahhh—!”
His scream tore through the rain.
And Ethan?
He used that near-fall as a feint. With one impossibly smooth touch from the tip of his right boot, he nudged the ball to the right, stepped past the sprawling Dutch giant, and glided over him as lightly as if he were stepping over a fallen branch.
In that instant, the dominance of maxed-out dribbling showed its fangs for the first time in this timeline.
On the sideline, Janssen—who had been looking down, recording notes—jerked his head up.
The tactics board slipped from his hand and splashed into the mud.
His eyes went wide.
On the muddy grass at PSV’s De Herdgang Academy, the only sounds left were the cold hiss of rain and Lars Van den Berg screaming as he clutched his ankle.
On the touchline, U15 head coach Martin Janssen stood frozen, too stunned to even pick up the tactics board he’d dropped in the puddles.
What the hell had he just seen?
That skinny Asian kid—the one who usually couldn’t shield the ball to save his life, the one who went down the second anyone touched him—had just feinted so casually he’d sent the strongest center back in the squad into an ankle injury.
“Damn it! It was a fluke!” Janssen roared, finally snapping back to himself. “Stop him!”
The PSV youth players jolted awake as if from a dream.
By then, Ethan Mercer had already carried the ball over midfield.
Two huge Dutch holding midfielders exchanged a glance, then accelerated from either side at the same time, closing in on him like a pair of iron gates.
This was classic European academy defending: simple, brutal physicality. If Ethan tried to keep dribbling, they’d crush man and ball together like he was meat in a sandwich.
“Ethan! Pass!” one of his teammates shouted desperately from the bench.
With Ethan’s pathetic 60 pace and 45 physicality, there was no way he could blow past the trap before it closed. And there was even less chance he could muscle through two mountains like that.
But Ethan never even looked at his teammates.
He didn’t sprint. He didn’t panic.
His face stayed as cold and calm as ice. That 80-point mental composure showed itself in full. Combined with the game intelligence he’d built from years grinding through lower-league football in his previous life—and the 100-point Maxed-Out Dribbling and Ball Control he’d been gifted now—the movements of those two midfielders looked painfully slow to him, like a replay in half-speed.
Three yards.
Two.
One.
The instant both midfielders committed to sliding tackles, four long legs scissoring toward him to cut him down—
Ethan moved.
No flashy stepovers. No exaggerated tricks.
In the tiniest sliver of space, he nudged the ball lightly with the inside of his right foot, his body snapping left in a way that almost seemed to break physics, then used his left foot to push the ball delicately forward.
The Iniesta move.
Pure, effortless, absurdly smooth.
The ball skimmed across the mud as if it had eyes, sliding perfectly through the gap between the two sliding tacklers.
And Ethan’s body slipped past them like something boneless.
Bang.
The two PSV midfielders, unable to stop their momentum, slammed into each other hard. Mud flew everywhere as both men hit the ground clutching their thighs and rolling in pain.
Ethan, meanwhile, kept gliding forward with the ball as if nothing had happened.
Two defenders gone.
Three, counting Van den Berg.
“Stop him! For God’s sake, are you all traffic cones?” Janssen bellowed from the sideline, completely losing it.
The entire back line panicked.
The moment the midfield pair went down, a recovering central midfielder charged in from behind and to Ethan’s side, eyes red with desperation, reaching for Ethan’s shirt to drag him down with a tactical foul. With Ethan’s current 45 physicality, one solid grab would have sent him sprawling.
But Ethan moved like he had eyes in the back of his head.
Just before the other player’s fingers caught his jersey, Ethan pulled the ball back with his left foot and spun in the mud in one fluid three-hundred-sixty-degree turn.
A Marseille turn.
The midfielder didn’t touch so much as a thread of Ethan’s shirt. He lunged too hard, lost control, and pitched face-first into a muddy patch, coming up with grass in his mouth.
Four.
Then came the last starting center back near the edge of the box.
Ethan didn’t even slow down.
The defender stretched out a long leg in panic, trying to intercept, and Ethan simply flicked the ball with the outside of his right foot.
Whoosh.
The ball darted cleanly through the defender’s legs.
A merciless nutmeg.
The center back twisted around to chase, but his weight was too high and the soaked turf gave way beneath him. His legs tangled, and he crashed forward into the mud with a slap.
Five.
After watching five teammates get wrecked in a row, one fullback completely lost his mind.
He abandoned his position, came flying in from the angle, and launched himself studs-up—straight at Ethan.
Ethan’s eyes turned cold.
Facing a tackle like that, he didn’t dodge.
Instead, he lifted his right arm and swung his right leg back, shaping his body like he was about to unleash a vicious shot.
“He’s shooting! Block it!”
The fullback was thrilled. He immediately spread himself wider to cover more space.
Chapter 3
But just as Ethan’s right foot was about to strike the ball, it ghosted over the top of it. Then, with a sharp twist of his ankle, he dragged it back instead.
Shot fake. Pullback.
The fullback’s center of gravity vanished. He skidded across the wet grass like a discarded rag, straight over the byline, and smashed into the advertising boards with a heavy thud.
Six.
At that point, Ethan had ripped through the entire PSV youth defense by himself.
Only the goalkeeper remained.
The keeper let out a roar to steady his nerves and rushed off his line, arms spread wide, trying to use his frame to block every angle.
He’d judged Ethan correctly—or so he thought. Ethan’s stamina and explosiveness were weak. With only 45 shooting power, he couldn’t possibly blast a lethal shot from range.
And that much was true.
But Ethan had never planned to beat him with power.
He kept moving forward, the ball seeming glued to his feet. Then, just as the keeper dropped low and lunged for the ball at Ethan’s toes—
Ethan slipped the tip of his right foot under it and lifted.
Whoosh.
The ball rose in a short, beautiful arc, just high enough to clear the keeper’s desperate fingertips before floating over his head.
At the same time, Ethan skipped lightly around him.
The goalkeeper hit nothing but mud.
All he could do was turn helplessly and stare at the thin figure in the oversized jersey moving past him.
Seven.
Inside the box, there was no one left.
Faced with an empty net, Ethan didn’t shoot.
Instead, in a final act of humiliation, he dribbled the ball forward and took one step, then another, then a third—
and walked it over the line with him.
The net rustled softly as the ball kissed into it.
Then De Herdgang fell silent.
Deathly silent.
Only the endless spring rain pattered against the grass.
Every player on the field—teammate and opponent alike—stood there as if petrified, staring blankly at the expressionless Asian boy inside the goal.
He’d beaten seven men.
He’d taken the entire defense—including the keeper—and toyed with them like they were training dummies.
This was the same weakling with 45 physicality? The one who dropped every time someone bumped him?
Janssen stared at Ethan, stunned, but still shook his head.
“Flash in the pan,” he muttered.
Not far from him, outside the chain-link fence, a middle-aged man in a black overcoat stood under a black umbrella, his gaze fixed on Ethan.
He adjusted the gold-rimmed glasses on his nose. Rain dripped from the umbrella ribs onto his expensive leather shoes, but he didn’t seem to notice. His expression remained controlled, yet behind those lenses, in eyes known for being relentlessly critical, a rare flicker of surprise—and appreciation—appeared.
He was Martin De Vries, a senior scout from Ajax’s academy.
He’d only stopped by to take a look at PSV’s youth setup, more out of habit than anything else. He hadn’t expected a find like this.
“On a surface this muddy, and he still keeps that kind of close control… smart balance adjustments under hard tackles… and calm, too.”
Martin studied the boy on the pitch—the one standing around five-ten—and in his head, a technical profile was already taking shape.
“Elite dribbling. Strong technical base. PSV’s academy coaches are too obsessed with physicality. They clearly haven’t understood where this kid’s real value lies.”
He didn’t hesitate.
Taking out his phone, he dialed Ajax’s academy director.
“It’s Martin. I’m at PSV’s training ground, and I’ve found a very special prospect. His technical profile is a perfect fit for our possession system. Before Janssen and the others realize what they’ve got, prepare a trial offer. We need to speak to him immediately.”
The rain still hadn’t let up, but on the training pitch at PSV’s De Herdgang Academy, the temperature had dropped to something far colder than the weather.
That goal—slaloming past seven players and practically walking the ball into the net—had landed like a brutal slap across the face of every PSV player and coach on the field.
“Tweet—tweet-tweet!”
The assistant coach blew for full time in obvious disarray. The internal trial match ended abruptly, in a way none of them had seen coming.
One by one, the players started toward the locker room. The looks they threw Ethan Mercer had changed completely. The earlier contempt was gone, replaced by open disbelief. Most of all Lars Van den Berg, the towering center back who had lost his balance so badly he’d twisted his ankle, limped past with the team physio supporting him. When he drew level with Ethan, he turned his face away with a dark expression, jaw clenched tight. All the swagger he’d carried at kickoff had vanished.
In football, respect belonged to whoever was strongest.
At the touchline, Ethan ran a hand through his dripping hair. With his mental composure sitting at a solid 80, he wasn’t overwhelmed by wild excitement, even after scoring a goal like that. He simply walked toward the bench and looked at head coach Martin Janssen, whose face had gone rigid with fury.
“So,” Ethan said evenly, “did I pass the trial?”
Janssen’s mouth twitched.
He stared at the skinny Asian boy in front of him. That goal had absolutely rattled him. But he’d spent ten years coaching at PSV, and deep in his bones he believed in steel-hard challenges and endless running. That was football to him.
Admit he’d been wrong?
Admit that some lightweight kid with no physical presence was actually a genius?
He’d sooner choke on glass.