Football System: Penalty Zone Hero

Bonus Chapter #4 80/80 Power stones.

"Since I have two talent points available for allocation, does that mean I leveled twice?" Chen Yingxiong asked.

Yesenin nodded.

"How did I get the upgrade? Why didn't I hear some pleasant music and feel a golden light all over my body?"

"Do you really think this is World of Warcraft?" Yesenin was speechless.

"Okay, so how did I level up?"

"You completed some tasks and scored some goals, which gave you experience..."

"Mission? What mission did I complete? How come I don't know it?" Chen Yingxiong interrupted Yesenin suspiciously.

"First of all, you have successfully entered Zenit St. Petersburg. Moreover, that was the main mission, so it gave a lot of experience."

Chen Yingxiong was amazed. "So amazing? Then it's not that difficult to level up..."

"Don't be too happy too soon." Yesenin glanced at Chen Yingxiong. "When you are at a low level, less experience is needed to upgrade. The higher you go... The upgrade is fast now, but it will be slow later. For example, when you are promoted from the second level to the third level, it is not enough to just complete the tasks. You scored three goals in the official league of the youth team and performed seriously in training. These actions have accumulated experience for you. Then, through your outstanding performance in the youth team, you won the opportunity to be transferred to the first team. After completing the second main task, you were promoted again."

Chen Yingxiong roughly understood it. It was similar to the system in World of Warcraft, where one could complete various tasks to accumulate experience, and at the same time fight monsters - that is, if one scored a goal in a game or performed well in training, one could gain experience, and when one had enough experience, one could level up.

"Then how do I know how much experience I get for each goal I score? And how much experience do I need to advance to the next level?"

"The experience gained from scoring goals is not always the same. The experience gained from insignificant goals or goals scored against weak opponents will not be much. For example, if you scored three goals in the youth team league, two of them would only give you 150 experience points..."

"So little?"

"Because the opponents are not strong and it is not an important game, the value of your goal is relatively low."

"So what kind of goal is considered valuable?"

"When playing against strong teams, goals scored in difficult situations, goals that reversed the score at the last minute, goals that tied the score, goals that sealed the victory... braces and hat tricks all have experience bonuses. For example, if your first goal in a game only gives 150 experience points, your second goal may give 200 experience points, and your third goal may even be worth 400 experience points."

Chen Yingxiong found this interesting. "The more you get, the better?"

Yesenin nodded. "Yes, that's right. The more goals you score, the more experience you gain."

"This is not bad. A striker should aim to score goals. A striker who doesn't score goals is not a good striker. This system can motivate players to score more, which is good," Chen Yingxiong commented.

"That's it."

"Then I just need to keep scoring goals and complete my mission... What's the point of training?"

"The experience gained from scoring goals is limited, and the experience gained from training accounts for the majority," Yesenin explained patiently.

"Why do you gain more experience through training?"

"That's easy to understand. Even if you don't rely on this system, you can still improve your level by training hard, right?"

Chen Yingxiong nodded. That was for sure, otherwise, how could a kid who knew nothing become a qualified professional player? Of course, it depended on training.

"Why can you improve your level? Because you have upgraded. Why can you upgrade? Because you have gained a lot of experience in training."

Chen Yingxiong opened his mouth wide - training could be explained in this way! "This is good! I like it!"

Yesenin nodded seriously. "So training is indispensable, and the harder and more seriously you train, the more experience you will gain, and in turn, the more obvious the added effect of your training will be. In addition, the talents that indicate the percentage of increase are actually based on what you already have, that is to say, the better your foundation is, the more obvious the effect will be after the improvement. For example, if your jumping ability is very weak at the beginning, what's the point of adding 15%? If you have good jumping ability, this 15% plus is quite terrifying. So if you want these talents to really play a powerful role, you need to work hard to improve your various abilities. If you don't have a good heading ability, the talent of 'Air Domination' will not produce such an amazing effect. Do you understand?"

At this point, Chen Yingxiong already had a general understanding of the entire system.

Simply put, he had to gain experience through various means, improve himself, and then gain talent points to unlock new abilities. Training could allow him to learn many skills, which could later be enhanced. He needed to point out the corresponding talents to strengthen these skills in order to make them powerful instead of just average.

After he figured it out, he began to feel sad about the two wrongly assigned talent points.

He just finished looking at all the talents and found that there were indeed talents that could solve his current problems. For example, he was too easily targeted by Skrtel and Hagen, unable to get rid of the defence and get a chance to compete for the header. For that, he could choose the talent "Hound in front of the goal" to improve his ability to appear in the right place at the right time. 

He could also choose "Elusive" to get rid of the defence and improve his ability to avoid being targeted... or choose the "Knockdown" talent to knock the opponent to the ground during the attack, with a certain chance of not committing a foul. In this way, he wouldn't be afraid of a head-on confrontation with the opponent. He got whistled by the referee way too often because of his regular collisions...

What to do now?

He wanted to see how much more he needed to level up. If it was fast, he could level up quickly and choose a talent...

"How much until the next level up? Where can I see this?"

Yesenin pointed to the bottom of the talent simulator. "Do you see your profile picture? Click it."

"Here?"

Chen Yingxiong clicked on it and opened a new page. There was a long experience bar below his avatar. The blue part represented the experience already gained, while the blank part represented the experience still needed.

Chen Yingxiong took a look and saw that the blue part was only halfway full!

To upgrade, he needed more than 15,000 experience points.

If I rely on goals alone, then I would get 150 experience points for each goal. That would require 100 goals! How long would it take to get that? It seems that I can only gain experience through training...

Chen Yingxiong suddenly stood up, looked at Yesenin and asked, "Do you have any experience in extra training outside of normal training time?"

Yesenin nodded. "Training at any time will bring experience, and extra training will bring more experience because if you do extra training in addition to normal training, it means that you are more serious and hardworking..."

Before he could say anything, he saw Chen Yingxiong leave the table and walk towards the door.

"What are you doing?"

"AFK farming!"

…

What surprised the Zenit first-team players was that the Chinese boy was not sent to the reserve team, but stayed in the first-team for training. And when he saw everyone again the next day, he still greeted everyone enthusiastically with a big smile.

Judging from his performance, there was absolutely no sign of a psychological shadow from yesterday's training on him.

Of course, they didn't know that Chen Yingxiong had already seen hope.

Yesterday he had practiced at the training base until 11:30 pm before returning to the dormitory... This was thanks to the special geographical location of St. Petersburg. Since St. Petersburg was at a high latitude and close to the Arctic Circle, there was a polar day phenomenon in winter, so the days here were very long and the nights extremely short. Even at 11:30 pm, the sky was still relatively bright and there was absolutely no problem with vision. If he were a robot that could go without food, water or sleep, he would definitely practice until 9 am the next morning and then report directly to the first team's training base...

The first thing he did when he returned to the dormitory after practice was to open the web page on Yesenin's laptop to see how much experience he had gained.

After practising hard for several hours, he found that he was still 12,000 experience points away from upgrading. An increase of 3,000 experience points was equivalent to 20 goals.

This was proof that training could help him gain experience faster than scoring goals. Just like in a game, idling in a fixed location to kill monsters was definitely more efficient than running around to do quests. So those boosters rarely did quests, but just kept killing monsters in a place where monsters were dense...

Last night, Chen Yingxiong was lying in bed and thinking, whether what he did could be considered a power levelling job... He seemed to have returned to the days when he locked himself in the room, frantically killing monsters to level up.

To become the first player to reach the maximum level on the server, he could stay awake for 48 hours. Was playing football any different now?

'I wonder, with this crazy energy, how soon can I become a real hero?'

…

Advocaat also noticed the change in Chen Yingxiong. When he left the training ground yesterday, he was still dejected, obviously, he was hit hard. But after one night, he adjusted himself. His psychological quality was indeed outstanding.

'I really wasn't wrong about him.' Advocat secretly praised Chen Yingxiong's psychological quality. Little did he know that Chen Yingxiong regained his vitality for another reason...

In the set-piece tactical training, Advocaat once again changed Chen Yingxiong into a feint attack role. This time Chen Yingxiong did not make any suggestions. He completed the tasks assigned to him by the head coach conscientiously during the training.

That was because he knew that if he completed every training seriously, he could get more experience, which would bring him one step closer to upgrading his talents.

When he levelled up and got that talent point... He had already decided which talent to choose... "Knockdown."

Of course, it wouldn't be Hagen and Skrtel who would be knocked down, but Li Hao!

...

Author's note

Bonus Chapter #5 - 100 Power stones