My Ultimate Gacha System

**Sunday, September 24, 2023**

**Demien’s Apartment — Manchester**

**Morning**

The Burnley match ball sat on the chair by his kit bag, streaked with grass stains gone dry overnight, the mud cracked along the seams where his boot had caught it.

The small printed line from the match officials still ran along one panel.

Demien woke to his phone already lit up on the nightstand, the screen flashing again before the last notification had even dimmed.

He picked it up and started scrolling.

A fan edit played first — his three Burnley goals cut over a drill beat, the volley slowed down to quarter speed at the end. Below it, an old Atalanta account had posted a side-by-side: his first Serie A goal against Sampdoria on the left, the Munich free kick on the right, with the caption *we told you first*.

He kept scrolling. The volley again, from behind the goal this time. Then from the away end. Then from a phone camera in the lower tier, the audio just one long scream.

His thumb moved through all of it at the same steady speed. He didn’t stop on any of them.

**WALTER’S TURF MOOR TREBLE ADDS PRESSURE BEFORE PALACE CUP TIE**

**UNITED FACE QUICK TURNAROUND AFTER DEMIEN’S HAT TRICK**

**FROM ATALANTA BREAKOUT TO UNITED HAT-TRICK HERO: WALTER’S RISE CONTINUES**

He scrolled past all three headlines without slowing down.

Then a clip loaded that stopped his thumb completely.

Burnley’s corner. The header going straight up instead of away. The scramble on the six-yard line, bodies everywhere, and the ball squeezing under Onana’s dive.

He watched it through once.

He dragged the clip back to the header and watched it again, his eyes on the space behind the first jump this time — the gap where nobody had attacked the drop.

Then he put the phone face-down on the nightstand and got up.

-----

He ate at the kitchen counter standing up, eggs and toast, the recovery notes from his physio open on the counter beside the plate.

*Calf check. Low resistance only. No plyometrics.*

He rotated his ankle once while he chewed, slow circles, feeling for the spot where Burnley’s midfielder had raked his studs down.

Nothing. It held clean.

He set the plate in the sink, braced one hand against the counter edge, and rolled his hips through a slow stretch, first one side, then the other.

Then he went to pack his bag.

The match ball caught his eye on the way past the chair. He stopped, looked at it for a second, and reached out to turn it slightly so the officials’ writing faced the room.

Then he zipped the bag shut.

「DAILY TRAINING MISSION ACTIVATED」

「MISSION: Post-Burnley Recovery」

「OBJECTIVE 1: Complete full recovery protocol」

「OBJECTIVE 2: Complete light technical work without sharpness drop」

「OBJECTIVE 3: Review Crystal Palace match preparation clips」

「REWARD: +8 TP」

「BONUS OBJECTIVE: Maintain focus during reduced-load session」

「BONUS REWARD: +5 MP」

He read it once, picked up the bag, and headed for the door.

-----

**Carrington Training Centre**

The sky over Carrington sat grey and low, the grass still damp from an overnight rain, water beading along the practice pitch nearest the gate.

Security waved his car through, one hand up in greeting. Staff pushed equipment trolleys between the buildings, the wheels clicking over the seams in the pavement.

Outside the perimeter fence, two media vans sat parked with their cameras already mounted, lenses pointed at the entrance road.

One of the camera operators tracked his car all the way through the gate.

Inside the building, Demien dropped his bag in his locker, changed into training kit, and walked out toward the pitches — and stopped two steps out the door.

The setup told him everything before anyone said a word.

To his left, the recovery wing: bikes lined against the wall, stretching mats laid out in rows, a massage table with towels stacked at the end, an ice bath steaming faintly in the cold morning air.

To his right, the far pitch: cones already set out in a pressing grid, two small goals dragged into position near the end line, and mannequins standing in a defensive shape.

Sharp pitch. Recovery wing. Two lists, already written, just not spoken out loud yet.

A staff member with a clipboard caught his eye and tilted his head toward the recovery wing.

"You’re with us today," he said.

Demien nodded once and changed direction.

-----

Out on the sharp pitch, the ball was already moving.

Garnacho took on a mannequin defender in the wide channel, dropped his shoulder one way, cut back the other, and whipped the ball across the face of a small goal. A coach shouted something short and approving.

Nearer the box, Martial peeled off an imaginary marker and met a cutback first time, the ball smacking the side netting. He jogged back to the start of the line without celebrating and waited for the next feed.

Mount moved through a passing pattern with three others, calling for the ball with one hand up, taking it on the half-turn, playing it on.

Demien watched all of it from the edge of the recovery wing with a water bottle in his hand.

Then he turned, walked to the nearest bike, and swung his leg over it.

-----

A staff member reached across and set the resistance dial low, then clipped a monitor to his finger and propped a tablet against the handlebars.

"Easy pace," the man said. "Just spin it out."

Demien’s legs turned over, steady and even, the pedals whirring soft under him.

*Thwack.* A ball hit the net on the sharp pitch. His eyes went there before he could stop them.

Garnacho again, arms out, jogging back from the small goal.

Demien looked back at the tablet. His heart rate number sat flat and green.

*Thwack.* Another finish. Another shout from the coach.

His eyes drifted again. He caught himself on the third one and kept them fixed on the monitor after that, the numbers ticking along while the sounds from the other pitch kept arriving anyway.

-----

The bike gave way to mobility work on the mats.

Hip rotations, one leg at a time, the physio counting each rep out loud beside him. "Six. Seven. Slower on eight."

Hamstring stretches against the wall, his heel planted high, holding each one until the count ran out.

Ankle circles, slow and controlled, first the clean ankle, then the one Burnley had marked.

Then the resistance band, looped around his shin for lateral steps, the physio crouching to watch his knee track over his toes.

"Stop there." The physio pressed two fingers gently against his calf, right where the stud marks still showed faint under the skin. "Same spot from Saturday. Push against my hand."

Demien pushed.

The physio watched his face while he did it. No wince. No hesitation in the muscle.

"Good." He made a note on the tablet. "You’d tell me if that was lying to me, yes?"

"It’s fine," Demien said.

"That’s what they all say." The physio stood up. "It’s also what the scan will say, so you’re lucky."

-----

A coach rolled a short pass into him for the technical portion.

Demien killed it dead with the inside of his right foot.

The coach rolled another. He killed it with his left, the ball stopping like it had hit glue.

"One touch now."

The next pass came in and went straight back off his first touch, clean and weighted, into the coach’s stride.

Then the body-shape work — receive on the half-turn, shoulder check before the ball arrived, show for the return, release before the imaginary press could land.

Roll. Turn. Release. Roll. Turn. Release.

None of it was flashy. None of it was supposed to be.

The coach collected the last ball under his foot and nodded. "Same tomorrow. Lighter."

「MISSION PROGRESS」

「Recovery Protocol: 2/3 Completed」

「Technical Sharpness: Stable」

「Fatigue Response: Controlled」

**Analysis Room**

The analysis room sat dim and cool, a long table down the center scattered with water bottles and open notebooks, players in training tops filling the chairs on both sides.

The screen at the front held on a single frozen frame — Burnley’s late corner, the ball just leaving the six-yard scramble, still a half-second from crossing the line.

Ten Hag stood at the front with the remote in hand.

He didn’t open with the hat trick.

"Here." He pointed at the frozen header. "Not far enough. That’s why we’re defending a scramble instead of clearing our lines."

He clicked once. The frame crawled forward.

"Watch the drop." The header fell short, hanging in the air over the six-yard box. "Now watch who attacks it."

Nobody in white did. A Burnley shirt arrived first, loose between two defenders, and the frame froze again with his boot already drawn back.

"One second late," Ten Hag said. "That’s all it takes at this level. One second, and a four-goal afternoon has a stain on it."

He let the clip run to the finish, the ball squeezing under the dive, and then clicked it off without replaying it.

Demien watched it all from his seat halfway down the table.

He’d been on the bench when it happened, so nothing in him rose up to defend it. What he watched instead was the space between midfield and the back line in the seconds before the corner — the gap that had opened after the sixty-minute mark and never fully closed again.

He didn’t say anything. He just marked where it was.

Ten Hag moved to the next clip.

The second Burnley goal came up — the flick around the defender, the spin the other way, the finish lifted over the keeper with no hurry in it.

"Individual quality," Ten Hag said. "Nothing to coach here. Enjoy it."

A couple of players laughed low. Bruno reached over and shoved Demien’s shoulder without looking away from the screen.

Then the fourth goal’s buildup — Demien shielding on the touchline, both Burnley players committing, the disguised pass inside.

Ten Hag froze it on the moment the second presser’s weight tipped forward.

"This," he said, tapping the screen. "This is what mattered after halftime. Not the finishing." He looked down the table at Demien. "You stopped chasing a fourth goal and you controlled the match instead. That decision is worth more to me than the volley."

He clicked off the Burnley footage.