Over the following month, Fergus began spending considerably more of his free time practising basketball.
Whenever the weather permitted and he had nothing that needed doing around the house, he would grab his battered basketball and make the familiar walk towards the public court near his home.
There were days when Angus followed him for a while before inevitably becoming bored, and occasionally there were other people using the court when he arrived, but most of Fergus’s training remained solitary.
That was nothing unusual for him, although there was now an important difference between the hours he had spent practising before the Basketball Development System appeared and those that followed.
For the first time, Fergus had something capable of showing him how he should actually train.
Mikan Maestro became the centre of his routine throughout July.
After exploring the skill in more detail, Fergus discovered that ascending it from Basic Understanding to Intermediate Understanding required him to complete one hundred repetitions with his right hand and another hundred with his left every day for thirty consecutive days.
The System was irritatingly strict about the word consecutive, and after Fergus questioned whether missing a day because of terrible weather would be acceptable, he learned that any interruption would reset his progress towards the advancement requirement.
Two hundred repetitions every day might have sounded painfully repetitive to most people, but Fergus rarely considered it a chore.
He had always enjoyed basketball practice, even when he was terrible at whatever he happened to be attempting, and now there was the additional satisfaction of knowing that every session contributed towards something measurable.
More importantly, Mikan Maestro had already begun changing the way he approached finishing around the basket.
Before acquiring the skill, Fergus understood the Mikan Drill in the most basic sense.
He knew where to stand, knew that he was supposed to alternate sides of the basket and understood that the drill was intended to improve his ability to finish with either hand.
What he had lacked was a proper understanding of the smaller details that made those movements effective.
Mikan Maestro provided those foundations, while A Star’s Work Ethic allowed him to comprehend the lessons more quickly as he repeated them.
The difference was particularly noticeable whenever Fergus made a mistake.
Previously, he might have watched a layup bounce away from the rim and simply tried again, perhaps changing the force of the next attempt without understanding why the first had failed.
Now he found himself paying attention to the angle of his approach, his footwork and the way the basketball left his fingertips.
He became increasingly aware that the backboard wasn’t simply something he could throw the ball against and hope for a favourable bounce.
Where the ball struck the glass and how softly he placed it there could be the difference between an easy basket and another rebound he needed to chase.
His left hand struggled considerably more than his right during the opening days.
The movements felt less natural, his control over the ball was poorer, and he had a habit of releasing his layups with far too much force.
More than once, Fergus watched the basketball strike the backboard and bounce beyond the other side of the rim, forcing him to chase it across the court before returning to continue his repetitions.
“You’re not supposed to throw the thing through the backboard,” Fergus muttered after one particularly awful attempt.
Once he retrieved the ball, he returned beneath the basket and tried again, deliberately concentrating on guiding it upwards rather than launching it from his palm.
“Just get it onto the glass softly.
It doesn’t need to be complicated.” His next attempt touched the backboard before falling through the rim, and while there was nothing particularly impressive about making a simple layup without a defender anywhere near him, Fergus couldn’t stop himself from smiling.
Small successes like that accumulated throughout the month, and gradually the difference between his hands became less severe.
His right remained comfortably superior, but his left no longer felt completely useless.
As his confidence increased, Fergus began experimenting with finishes that didn’t use the backboard at all.
He would approach from either side and attempt to guide the basketball directly through the rim, focusing on producing a clean swish rather than relying upon the glass.
Those attempts resulted in plenty of misses at first, but Fergus didn’t particularly mind.
Every mistake gave him something else to examine, and A Star’s Work Ethic made it easier for him to connect what he felt during the movement with the result that followed.
The process taught Fergus one of his first important lessons about the System.
It wasn’t simply rewarding him for mindless repetition.
Completing two hundred Mikan repetitions each day moved him towards the requirement for Intermediate Understanding, but the quality of those repetitions still mattered if he actually wanted to become better.
Repeating an incorrect movement hundreds of times would only make him more comfortable performing that movement incorrectly, so Fergus gradually learned to slow down whenever his technique deteriorated and concentrate on what he was trying to accomplish.
His understanding of the rest of the System also improved during those weeks, particularly when it came to the difference between the Skill Library and the Shop.
Initially, the two had seemed like different menus offering much the same thing, but Fergus soon realised that they represented two very different routes towards acquiring new abilities.
The Skill Library was the natural developmental route.
Skills could be learned without spending Hooper Coins once Fergus satisfied their prerequisites and completed whatever requirements were attached to them.
Some prerequisites involved possessing another related skill at a particular tier, while others required specific training achievements or experience during actual basketball games.
The Cookie Thief provided an obvious example.
Fergus had originally discovered its Yellow version in the Shop and nearly choked when he saw the 50,000 Hooper Coin price attached to it.
Searching through the Skill Library later revealed that he could eventually begin learning the same ability without spending anything, although there was an important prerequisite standing in his way.
‘Skill prerequisite: Perimeter Pest must reach Green Tier – Intermediate Understanding.’ That requirement helped Fergus understand that many of the abilities within the Skill Library were connected rather than existing independently.
Perimeter Pest taught him the fundamentals of staying in front of an opposing ball handler, controlling defensive spacing and moving laterally without compromising his position.
Once he developed sufficient understanding of those fundamentals, the System would allow him to pursue more specialised defensive abilities such as stealing the ball.
Fergus could see the logic behind the progression.
There wasn’t much point teaching somebody how to gamble aggressively for steals if they couldn’t remain in front of the opponent whenever that gamble failed.
Learning the foundations first would make whatever came afterwards considerably more useful.
The Shop offered a way to bypass some of those developmental requirements, although the convenience came at an enormous price.
Fergus discovered that a typical Grey skill cost approximately 5,000 Hooper Coins, while acquiring the same skill at Green could easily cost around three times as much.
Yellow skills were another substantial increase, with something like The Cookie Thief costing 50,000 Hooper Coins.
Prices weren’t completely uniform, since more specialised abilities could be more expensive, but the general pattern was enough for Fergus to realise that buying everything he wanted would never be practical.
Considering his balance remained at only 1,000 Hooper Coins, the decision wasn’t particularly difficult.
Whenever possible, Fergus intended to learn skills through the Skill Library and save his coins for something he couldn’t easily acquire himself.
Unfortunately, there was another obstacle that prevented him from immediately chasing every ability that interested him.
Some skills couldn’t be learned through solitary practice, regardless of how many hours Fergus was willing to spend working on them.
Bullet Passing was one of the first skills to teach him that lesson.
‘Bullet Passing – Locked.’ A fast pass is useless without accuracy, while an accurate pass is useless if it arrives too late.
Learn to combine both.
Unlock Requirements: Complete 1,000 successful wall passes.
Complete 50 successful passes during recognised competitive games or practice scrimmages.
The first requirement didn’t bother Fergus in the slightest.
He had access to several walls sturdy enough to survive having a basketball repeatedly thrown against them, and completing a thousand passes was simply a matter of patience.
The second requirement was impossible for him to complete while practising alone.
Fergus had still tried to find a loophole.
“Would passing the ball to Angus count if I got him to actually play properly instead of picking it up and running away with it?” ‘No.
Recognised competitive games or structured practice scrimmages require sufficient participants and legitimate basketball conditions.’ Fergus frowned at the response before attempting another possibility.
“What if I get Dad involved as well?
That’s three people, and I could probably convince Mum when she isn’t working.” ‘The proposed activity would not satisfy the requirement.’ “You could at least pretend to think about it before saying no.” The System offered no response, leaving Fergus to accept that Bullet Passing would have to wait until he had teammates and opponents.
The restriction annoyed him, but it also reinforced something he was gradually beginning to understand about basketball development.
There were limits to what he could accomplish alone, and sooner or later he would need actual competitive experience.
During the second week of July, the System unexpectedly gave him another reason to search for something he could learn immediately.
Fergus had just returned home after completing his daily Mikan repetitions when the familiar translucent screen appeared before him without warning.
‘Mission Issued: Learn a New Skill.’ ‘Objective: Unlock one basketball skill through the Skill Library.’ ‘Reward: One Random Grey Skill.’ ‘Time Limit: None.’ Fergus stopped halfway through wiping the sweat from his forehead and immediately focused on the reward.
“So if I manage to learn one skill myself, you’re going to give me another one as a reward?
That’s probably the best deal you’ve offered me so far.” ‘Correct.
The reward will be issued upon successful completion of the mission objective.’ That evening, Fergus spent considerably longer than he intended searching through the Skill Library.
Bullet Passing remained one of the abilities he wanted most, but there was no way to satisfy its game requirement before school resumed.
Several shooting skills demanded hundreds or thousands of successful attempts, while others had prerequisites attached to skills Fergus didn’t yet possess.
Eventually, he found something considerably more straightforward: ‘Suicide Sprinter’ Basketball is a game of repeated acceleration, deceleration and recovery.
Develop the conditioning necessary to continue moving when fatigue demands that you stop.
Unlock Requirement: Complete 50 full suicide repetitions within two hours.
The requirement must be completed during one continuous training session.
Fergus was already familiar with suicide drills, although he had never willingly completed fifty of them.
For the version recognised by the System, one repetition required him to begin on the baseline, run to the quarter-court mark and back, reach half court and return, and finally travel the full length of the court before coming back to his starting position.
The requirement sounded intimidating until Fergus calculated the amount of time available.
Two hours gave him slightly more than two minutes for every repetition, and he was confident that one suicide wouldn’t take him anywhere near that long.
To test his assumption, he visited the court the following morning and used his phone to time himself completing one at a reasonably fast pace.
One minute and fourteen seconds.
Fergus looked down at the stopwatch with considerable satisfaction.
“If I can do them in about a minute and fifteen seconds, I’ve got loads of time.
Fifty should be completely manageable.” What Fergus failed to properly consider was that completing one repetition in seventy-four seconds and completing fifty repetitions at anything resembling that pace were very different challenges.
He made his first serious attempt the following afternoon.
The Edinburgh weather cooperated for once, providing a cool and calm day without enough rain to make the surface dangerous.
Fergus had eaten beforehand, his legs felt fresh, and he spent several minutes warming up before placing his phone safely beside the court.
When the clock reached one in the afternoon, he started the timer and began.
His opening repetitions were easy enough that Fergus wondered whether he had overestimated the difficulty of the challenge.
He attacked each turn aggressively, pushed away from the lines with plenty of force and completed his first five repetitions without experiencing anything worse than slightly heavier breathing.
Ten passed quickly enough as well, and although Fergus could feel the exercise beginning to affect him, he remained convinced that he was comfortably ahead of schedule.
The problem became considerably more obvious as he approached twenty repetitions.
His legs were heavier every time he accelerated away from a turn, and the repeated changes of direction were beginning to burn through his thighs.
Fergus still had plenty of time remaining, but instead of recognising that as an opportunity to reduce his pace, he stubbornly continued trying to maintain the same speed he had established at the beginning.
By twenty-five repetitions, sweat was running freely down his face.
Thirty required considerably more effort than Fergus had expected, and each journey towards the opposite baseline seemed longer than the one before it.
His breathing became ragged, his strides shortened, and the sharp acceleration he had possessed at the beginning gradually disappeared.
When Fergus completed his thirty-fifth repetition, he reached the baseline, attempted to turn and nearly stumbled as his legs failed to respond properly.
He bent forward with both hands resting against his knees while his chest heaved, desperately trying to convince himself that only fifteen more remained.
“Come on, Fergus.
You’ve already done thirty-five, so you can’t stop now.
Just slow down and finish the rest.” He managed to start another repetition, but his legs had little left to give.
After several metres, his run deteriorated into a walk, and although Fergus spent another minute trying to recover enough to continue, he eventually accepted what his body had already made obvious.
The System appeared in front of him: ‘Attempt failed.
Fifty repetitions were not completed within a continuous qualifying session.’ Fergus dropped onto the grass beside the court and stared unhappily at the message.
“Yeah, I noticed.
You didn’t really need to tell me that.” For several minutes, he simply remained there, recovering and wondering how something that had looked so achievable on paper had fallen apart so badly.
His first reaction was frustration, but once his breathing settled, A Star’s Work Ethic began proving useful in a different way.
Instead of simply deciding that he needed to try harder next time, Fergus started thinking about why he had failed.
The answer eventually seemed embarrassingly obvious.
He had approached an endurance challenge as though it were a race.
Nothing in the requirement demanded that Fergus finish as quickly as possible.
He had two hours available, yet he had spent the opening portion of the challenge completing repetitions at a pace that would have finished the entire exercise far earlier than necessary.
By the time his body forced him to slow down, he had already wasted much of the energy he needed for the later repetitions.
Over the following two days, Fergus experimented with pacing instead of attempting the full challenge again.
He deliberately aimed to complete each repetition in approximately two minutes, moving quickly enough that he wasn’t simply jogging around the court but avoiding the aggressive accelerations that had exhausted him during his first attempt.
The slower pace initially felt unnatural because suicide drills were supposed to involve sprinting, but Fergus gradually realised that the unlock requirement wasn’t testing how quickly he could complete a single repetition.
It was testing whether he could manage his effort across all fifty.
By the beginning of August, Fergus believed he was ready to try again.
He chose another cool day, completed a proper warm-up and placed his phone beside the court.
This time, when the timer started, Fergus deliberately resisted the temptation to attack the first repetition.
He moved steadily through the quarter-court, half-court and full-court stages, giving himself enough time after returning to the baseline to control his breathing before beginning again.
The first ten repetitions felt almost suspiciously comfortable compared with his previous attempt.
Fergus repeatedly felt the urge to increase his pace, but the memory of collapsing at thirty-five was enough to keep him disciplined.
Twenty arrived with fatigue beginning to settle into his legs, although it remained manageable, and by the time he reached thirty he knew his decision to conserve energy had been correct.
Passing thirty-five gave Fergus a particular sense of satisfaction.
That number had ended his first attempt, yet this time he still possessed enough strength to continue without immediately questioning whether his legs would carry him through another repetition.
The final fifteen were considerably less pleasant.
By forty, his legs had begun trembling whenever he pushed away from the baseline, while sweat soaked through his shirt and his breathing had become increasingly difficult to control.
Fergus no longer looked anything like the energetic boy who had started the challenge, but he had expected this part to hurt.
More importantly, he had preserved enough time that his deteriorating pace wasn’t yet a problem.
“Only ten more,” Fergus muttered while forcing himself to remain upright.
“You’ve already done forty, and you’re not doing all of this again because you stopped with ten left.” He continued.
The forty-first repetition seemed noticeably longer than the fortieth, and the next several were worse.
Fergus stopped thinking about how much distance remained in the entire challenge and instead concentrated upon the next line he needed to reach.
Every time he touched one, he turned and focused on returning to the baseline, refusing to allow himself to think any further ahead.
By the time only three repetitions remained, his legs felt almost detached from the rest of his body.
He was no longer running quickly, but speed didn’t matter anymore.
Fergus had learned from his first failure that the challenge wasn’t asking him to impress anyone with his pace; it was asking him to continue moving when exhaustion made stopping seem considerably more appealing.
The final repetition began with Fergus breathing heavily enough that he could barely mutter encouragement to himself.
He reached the quarter-court mark and returned, forced himself towards half court before making the same journey back, and then turned towards the opposite baseline for the final full-length sprint.
His pace was closer to a tired run than anything resembling a sprint, but Fergus kept moving until his foot reached the distant baseline.
After turning for the final time, he stared towards the other end of the court and knew that one last length separated him from completing something that had beaten him only a few days earlier.
Fergus pushed himself forward.
When his foot finally crossed the baseline, he stumbled onto the grass beside the court and collapsed onto his back, his chest rising and falling rapidly while his exhausted legs throbbed beneath him.
He remained there for several seconds before remembering that finishing the repetitions meant nothing if he had taken too long.
Fergus quickly reached for his phone and looked at the elapsed time.
One hour and fifty-two minutes.
Eight minutes remained.
A breathless laugh escaped him as he allowed his head to fall back against the grass.
“I actually did it.
Thank God, because there was no chance I was doing another one today.” The familiar System screen appeared above him.
‘Congratulations.
Unlock requirements have been satisfied.’ ‘Suicide Sprinter has been unlocked at Grey Tier – Basic Understanding.’ ‘Suicide Sprinter develops the host’s understanding of repeated sprint conditioning, pacing, acceleration and physical recovery during high-intensity basketball activity.’ Fergus read through the message while still trying to recover, but before he could properly examine his new skill, another notification appeared.
‘Mission Completed: Learn a New Skill.’ ‘Reward issued: One Random Grey Skill.’ His exhaustion momentarily became less important.
“Already?
All right, show me what I got.
After all that running, it better be something good.” The Inventory opened and revealed a new mystery card occupying one of its slots.
Fergus selected it immediately, watching as the screen transitioned into the familiar demonstration court.
A silhouetted guard stood near the perimeter with the basketball before accelerating past his defender and attacking the lane.
A much larger interior defender waited near the rim, positioned perfectly to challenge any attempt to finish directly against him.
Rather than continuing towards the basket, the guard slowed near the free-throw line and lifted the basketball high into the air with one hand.
The shot climbed beyond the reach of the waiting defender before descending softly towards the rim and dropping cleanly through the net.
Fergus recognised the shot immediately.
“That’s a floater.
I’ve seen guards use those all the time when they can’t get right to the rim.” The demonstration disappeared as the reward was revealed.
‘Congratulations.
You have unlocked Tear Dropper at Grey Tier – Basic Understanding.’ ‘A shot known for finesse, the tear drop is an effective weapon against interior defenders who possess a significant size advantage.
Tear Dropper develops the host’s understanding of high-arcing close-range shots designed to score before a rim protector can effectively contest the attempt.’ Fergus remained sprawled across the grass while reading the description again, and the more he considered the skill, the more pleased he became with his reward.
A floater was exactly the kind of shot a smaller guard could use when attacking somebody much taller.
At five-foot-three and not yet thirteen, Fergus had no idea how tall he would eventually become.
Perhaps he would have an enormous growth spurt over the next few years, or perhaps he would remain relatively short and spend his basketball career playing against people considerably larger than himself.
Either way, he already knew what happened whenever he attempted to finish directly against someone who could reach far above him.
Usually, his shot got blocked.
Tear Dropper gave him another possible solution, although Fergus knew by now that unlocking the skill didn’t mean he would immediately become reliable with the shot.
He would need to practise the movement, understand the appropriate distance and eventually learn when to use it against actual defenders.
A Star’s Work Ethic would help him comprehend those lessons more efficiently, but the hours of repetition would still belong to him.
Fergus opened the Player Skills menu while his breathing gradually returned to normal.
A Star’s Work Ethic remained his only Green skill, while Mikan Maestro, Perimeter Pest and his two newest abilities occupied Grey cards beneath it.
A Star’s Work Ethic – Green Mikan Maestro – Grey Perimeter Pest – Grey Suicide Sprinter – Grey Tear Dropper – Grey Five skills now belonged to him, but Fergus didn’t make the mistake of interpreting that number as proof that he had suddenly become a great basketball player.
His left hand still needed considerable work, his jump shot remained unreliable, and Perimeter Pest had given him defensive knowledge without many opportunities to apply it against real opponents.
Suicide Sprinter hadn’t suddenly granted him endless stamina either, something the aching muscles throughout his legs were making painfully obvious.
What had changed was that Fergus finally understood how to improve.
A month earlier, he had been willing to spend hours practising without always knowing whether those hours were being used effectively.
Now he was beginning to understand close-range finishing, learning how to structure his conditioning and gaining access to techniques he could gradually incorporate into his game.
Even his failed attempt at Suicide Sprinter had taught him something valuable about pacing himself rather than assuming every challenge could be overcome by attacking it as hard as possible.
The System wasn’t turning Fergus into a great basketball player.
It was teaching him how to become one, and Fergus was more than willing to provide the work required to make those lessons useful.
He remained on the grass for several more minutes before eventually sitting upright and looking across the empty court.
School would begin again soon, which meant basketball tryouts were no longer some distant event he had weeks to prepare for.
They were approaching quickly, and for the first time since failing to make the team the previous year, Fergus found himself genuinely looking forward to them.
He had spent a month learning, practising and correcting mistakes without knowing how much difference any of it would make once other players were placed in front of him.
The upcoming tryouts would finally give him an answer, and while Fergus knew there was every possibility that he still wasn’t good enough, he was no longer the same player who had walked nervously into the gym the previous year.
Soon enough, he would get the chance to prove it.