Alexander returned home on the afternoon of 5 May with a folder of medical instructions and a mother who had memorised every line.
Dr Weber had cleared him for walking and light daily activity.
No contact sport.
No maximal exertion.
No unsupervised training until follow-up testing.
A gradual return to football could begin after several symptom-free days, with full work no earlier than the following week.
Alexander agreed to all of it.
The physician saw obedience and looked reassured.
Helena saw the speed with which her son accepted limits and looked suspicious.
The Falkenberg estate stood beyond iron gates south of central Munich, screened by old trees and lawns maintained with the precision of a private park.
Its main house was large without the theatrical ornament of a palace.
Generations of money had learned that stone, distance, and silence communicated wealth more effectively than gold.
Staff greeted him discreetly at the entrance.
Margarethe embraced him hard enough to test Steel Body and then denied having done so.
Friedrich asked about the medical report before asking how Alexander felt.
Otto waited in the library because meeting the car at the door would have exposed too much emotion.
Alexander endured dinner, family questions, and the strange intimacy of inherited memories attaching themselves to real rooms.
He knew which stair creaked.
He knew the smell of Otto’s tobacco cabinet and the place Helena hid birthday gifts.
None of those memories belonged to the man who had died in 2025, yet grief moved through him when Margarethe touched his hair.
He was not replacing a stranger anymore.
He was carrying what remained of a boy who had wanted desperately to become worthy of this family.
At ten, Helena inspected his room as though contraband footballs might be hiding beneath the bed.
“The doctor said rest.”
“Sleep is the plan.”
“No exercises.”
“None.”
“If I hear a ball—”
“You will confiscate it.”
“I will confiscate the floor.”
She kissed his forehead, turned off the main light, and left the door slightly open.
Alexander waited until the house became quiet.
The Legendary session had been purchased the previous night for 20,000 points.
Its status now read:
READY
Activation Condition: Continuous natural sleep
Projected Multiplied Duration at Eight Hours: 8,000 hours
Session Safety: Steel Mind and Host Protection compatible
Real-Body Monitoring: Active
He placed the alarm eight hours ahead.
The system could maintain dream continuity through ordinary sleep cycles, but the waking limit remained real.
Eight hours slept meant exactly eight thousand subjective training hours.
If Helena woke him after six, the session would end at six thousand.
There was no reason to explain that possibility to her.
Alexander closed his eyes and allowed his breathing to slow.
Sleep took him without transition.
One moment, he felt the cotton sheet beneath his fingers.
The next, his boots rested on immaculate grass beneath white floodlights.
An empty stadium rose around him.
Eighty thousand seats climbed into darkness.
There was no wind, no crowd, and no scent beyond cut grass.
A football waited beneath his right foot.
It resembled the ball used in the present era—heavier and less perfectly spherical than the modern equipment he remembered.
The system appeared above the centre circle.
LEGENDARY DREAM TRAINING
Available Duration: 8,000 hours
Historical Access: Teams, academies, coaches, facilities, and match environments, 1980–2020
Fatigue Restoration: Available
Injury Reset: Available
Scenario Rewind: Available
Learning Limit: Host’s current five-star football ceiling
Real-Body Growth: Not simulated into waking reality
Alexander asked the first question that mattered.
“Are the people conscious?”
Historical constructs possess scenario-complete behaviour and knowledge.
They are not transferred human consciousnesses.
He would not be imprisoning copies of dead players for a subjective year.
“Can they teach knowledge never publicly recorded?”
Construct capability is derived from complete historical sporting data available to the training domain.
Private non-sport secrets are excluded.
“Can I select future teams before they existed?”
Any team, academy, or tactical environment from 1980 through 2020 is available.
Period mixing is permitted.
Alexander smiled.
“Ajax technical foundation.
Best developmental coaching available within the period.
Begin at my actual current technique, not an idealised version.”
The stadium vanished.
Morning sunlight replaced floodlights.
He stood on a training field marked by rows of cones and small gates.
Brick buildings and modest stands framed the complex.
A lean Dutch coach waited with a clipboard.
Alexander recognised elements of several renowned academy teachers rather than one exact historical person.
The construct rolled a ball towards him without introduction.
Alexander received with his right foot.
The touch travelled half a metre farther than intended.
“Late scan,” the coach said.
“Closed hip.
Too much tension in the ankle.”
The criticism produced delight.
The five-star talent and specialist package had not allowed the system to flatter him.
He had entered at the original body’s real development—gifted potential wrapped around mediocre learned habits.
“Again,” Alexander said.
The ball returned from a different angle.
For six hours, he received passes.
Ground balls from the front.
From behind.
Across his body.
Into his feet and a stride away.
Bouncing deliveries on wet grass.
Passes that arrived too hard, too softly, or with ugly spin.
Pressure came from mannequins first, then live defenders whose footsteps he could hear but not see.
The coach corrected the smallest details.
Scan before the passer strikes.
Decide the next action before contact.
Relax the receiving surface.
Meet the ball when space demands it; let it travel when the defender’s momentum can be used.
The original Alexander had repeated drills until boredom weakened attention.
Dream Training exposed boredom as part of the skill.
A professional did not need novelty to maintain precision.
At hour twelve, Alexander’s calf began to tighten.
He opened fatigue restoration.
Warmth passed through the dream body.
Tiredness disappeared, hydration returned, and the muscles felt fresh.
The hours already experienced remained.
The correction learned on repetition seven hundred remained.
Restoration reset physical fatigue, not memory or discipline.
He continued.
At hour forty, the coach added a defender at his back.
At hour eighty, two passing options moved after the ball had already begun travelling.
At hour one hundred, the surface changed from perfect grass to winter mud. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
The ball no longer arrived merely as an object to stop.
It arrived carrying information.
Its speed described how urgently the passer wanted it returned.
The angle revealed which defender had been avoided.
The spin changed which foot should receive.
The pressure behind him determined whether the correct touch was a cushion, a turn, a layoff, or no touch at all.
Alexander failed thousands of times.
He welcomed every failure because the stadium clock did not punish repetition.
He could rewind one ugly reception, alter the ankle by a few degrees, and feel the outcome change.
He could repeat the same action two hundred times without consuming a real afternoon.
After the first hundred hours, he moved to short passing.
Walls.
Gates.
Moving triangles.
One touch.
Two touches.
Both feet.
Passes played around a defender’s leading leg, into a teammate’s next stride, and away from pressure.
The dream drew from Ajax, Barcelona, Bayern, Milan, and dozens of academies whose methods had evolved across four decades.
The coaches never praised the reputation he did not yet possess.
“Weight is wrong.”
“You saw him.
You did not see what he would need.”
“Your left foot is technically capable.
Your confidence is not.”
“Again.”
Alexander obeyed.
At hour three hundred, he entered a positional square with older academy players.
They pressed aggressively.
His beautiful isolated technique collapsed the first time speed, deception, and bodies arrived together.
He lost the ball six times in ten minutes.
Anger rose.
Steel Mind held it without suppressing it.
Alexander examined the failures.
He had scanned, but too early.
He had selected an answer before the defenders completed their movement and then forced it after the picture changed.
He reset the scenario.
This time, he scanned twice.
The third time, three times.
He learned not merely to look, but to update.
By hour five hundred, pressure became a source of direction.
A defender rushing from his left closed one option and opened another.
Two opponents committing to him meant a teammate had become free.
The pass did not escape pressure.
It exploited the cost of pressure.
Long passing followed.
The training ground expanded.
Targets appeared at thirty, forty, and sixty metres.
Wind changed without warning.
Balls came from different historical periods.
Alexander learned how 1980 construction carried, dipped, and absorbed water.
Then the equipment jumped to the 1990s, the 2000s, and 2020 before returning to the present.
His right foot found diagonals first.
His left followed through volume.
One thousand passes became five thousand.
Five thousand became too many to count.
Each remained consciously lived.
The dream did not compress effort into a flash of understanding.
It gave him the hours and allowed him to survive them.
That was the blessing and the test.
After what felt like two months of daily work, Alexander stood beside a rack of balls while the training field faded into evening.
The system clock read:
Dream Time Elapsed: 612 hours
Real Sleep Elapsed: 36 minutes, 43 seconds
He stared at the numbers.
In the outside world, Helena had not yet completed a full sleep cycle.
No coach knew he had returned home.
His medical restrictions still had days to run.
Inside the dream, his first touch had already been rebuilt through more deliberate practice than many professionals accumulated in a career.
Alexander placed a ball on the grass and called for the next drill.
“Shooting,” he said.
The Dutch coach shook his head.
“Receiving under aerial pressure.
Your chest is still too proud.”
Alexander laughed for the first time in hundreds of hours.
“Then fix it.”
The coach launched the ball high into the artificial night.
Alexander moved beneath it, mapped the defender behind him, and relaxed his chest at the correct instant.
The ball fell exactly where his next action required.
His first purchase had not given him a trophy, a contract, or a single real goal.
It had given him time.
Every throne he intended to build would begin there.
At dream hour seven hundred, the technical field dissolved into a laboratory.
White walls replaced grass.
Cameras surrounded a marked running lane, force plates divided the floor, and screens displayed the outline of Alexander’s body from multiple angles.
The equipment belonged to no single year.
It combined the most useful analysis available anywhere between 1980 and 2020.
A performance coach waited beside the first screen.
“You have learned what to do with the ball,” the construct said.
“Your body still wastes time getting there.”
Alexander stepped onto the force plate.
The display separated capacity from expression.
His five-star football talent gave him an extraordinary adult ceiling in speed, coordination, strength, and agility.
Steel Body had reinforced the structure capable of supporting that ceiling.
Cat Reflexes shortened the delay between information and response.
None of those purchases automatically corrected the habits built through seventeen ordinary years.
He still allowed the right knee to drift inward when decelerating sharply.
His first step rose too high.
His shoulders rotated unnecessarily during a left-foot strike.
He protected the ankle he had once sprained even though Steel Body had removed the instability.
Small flaws did not look dramatic.
They stole hundredths of seconds, reduced balance under contact, and multiplied injury risk over thousands of actions.
“Can the dream alter my waking muscles?” Alexander asked.
No accelerated hypertrophy, skeletal growth, or aerobic adaptation will be transferred.
Neural learning, coordination patterns, and consciously acquired technique will map within safe present-body limits.
The answer preserved the line he had expected.
He would not wake with the thighs of a twenty-five-year-old or a heart conditioned by a year of running.
His real body had to mature and train in real time.
But the nervous system could learn how to use every gram it already possessed.
They began with walking.
Alexander had expected sprint mechanics.
The coach made him cross the laboratory slowly while cameras examined how each foot met the ground, how the pelvis stabilised, and how the arms counterbalanced movement.
He walked barefoot, in boots, and on surfaces tilted by a few degrees.
Then he jogged.
Then he accelerated for three steps and stopped.
The system rewound every inefficient attempt.
“Do not reach for the ground,” the coach said.
“Apply force beneath your centre.”
Again.
“Your head is chasing your chest.”
Again.
“You are trying to look fast instead of moving fast.”
Alexander suppressed the urge to answer and ran again. This chapter is updated first at novelping.com.
At hour seven hundred and sixty, the first three steps became compact and violent.
He did not manufacture speed by flailing.
The foot struck, force travelled through the reinforced ankle and hip, and the body moved as one linked structure.
The coach added a ball.
Acceleration without possession and acceleration while controlling possession were related but not identical.
A sprinter could commit the body fully towards one destination.
A footballer needed options.
Alexander learned how far to push the ball when open grass waited, how tightly to keep it when a defender could recover, and how to disguise the moment of maximum acceleration behind a slower preparatory touch.
Next came turning.
He trained outside cuts, inside cuts, Cruyff turns, pivots, drag-backs, and simple changes of direction too small to earn a name.
The most useful turn was often not the most beautiful.
It was the one that left his eyes facing the next problem and his hips prepared to act.
Cat Reflexes made correction quick.
Five-star talent made the ceiling enormous.
Dream time provided repetition until the correction survived thought.
At hour nine hundred, the laboratory displayed a comparison.
Acceleration Mechanics: 98
Stride Efficiency: 97
Deceleration Safety: 99
Dynamic Balance Utilisation: 99+
Two-Foot Coordination: 94
Present Strength Expression: Limited by real physical development
Present Aerobic Expression: Limited by real conditioning
Alexander selected the final two lines.
The system estimated that his present body could express an age-adjusted ability near 98 once calibrated.
His adult ceiling exceeded the panel’s conventional scale, but muscle, lung capacity, and skeletal maturation could not be hurried without distorting the body.
The original Alexander was already 184 centimetres and would likely reach approximately 188.
His shoulders would broaden.
Power and sustained pace would improve through the early twenties.
That did not mean he would be physically weak in 1980.
Correct mechanics, a five-star foundation, and exceptional recovery made the existing seventeen-year-old body more useful than stronger adults who leaked force through poor movement.
Alexander could survive senior contact, win short accelerations, and repeat technical actions under fatigue.
He simply could not pretend present strength was the same as full adult strength.
The distinction suggested how he should play during the first season.
He would not wrestle centre-backs continuously with his back to goal.
He would use angles, timing, and first touch to prevent clean contact.
He would attack space before the duel formed.
If forced into collision, Steel Body and balance could keep him upright, but intelligence should avoid unnecessary contests.
The laboratory became a gymnasium.
Alexander studied landing mechanics after headers.
He learned to distribute force across foot, knee, and hip, to avoid landing with the leg rigid, and to sense where an opponent’s body would occupy the ground.
He jumped while being nudged from different directions.
He landed on wet turf, uneven turf, and turf concealed beneath simulated snow.
Injury Reset existed, but he refused to treat it as permission for carelessness.
Every simulated injury taught a cause.
A locked knee under lateral contact.
An ankle exposed because the foot reached too far.
A hamstring loaded after excessive sprint volume.
A concussion risk created by challenging for a ball he could never reach.
The system restored him after each scenario, but the pain was real enough to teach respect.
Alexander did not need to become afraid of contact.
He needed to distinguish bravery from waste.
At hour one thousand and ten, the coach placed him between two large defenders.
They applied pressure through shoulders and hips while he attempted to receive.
The first effort sent him forward.
“You resisted force after it arrived,” the coach said.
On the second attempt, Alexander widened his base too much and lost mobility.
“Stable is not stationary.”
On the third, he felt the defender’s weight through Eagle Eye and touch, shifted half a step before contact peaked, and allowed the pressure to carry past him.
The ball remained protected.
They repeated the duel from every angle.
Steel Body did not make him heavier.
It allowed him to trust joints and tendons while redirecting force.
Dynamic balance turned a collision from a contest of kilograms into a problem of timing.
The coaches moved to striking mechanics.
Alexander’s technique had already improved during hundreds of passing repetitions, but shooting demanded controlled violence.
He learned to stabilise the planted foot, sequence hip and knee, keep the ankle rigid, and choose follow-through according to desired flight.
Every wasted movement appeared on the laboratory screen in red.
Right foot.
Left foot.
Laces.
Inside curl.
Outside bend.
Low driven strike.
Chip.
Half-volley.
Volley after rotation.
He did not practise power alone.
A shot struck at ninety percent with no telegraph could be more dangerous than a maximal attempt announced by the entire body.
At hour one thousand one hundred and twenty, he placed twenty consecutive balls into a square no wider than a goalkeeper’s reach from eighteen metres.
The coach moved the square.
Alexander placed twenty more.
Then the ball changed to one soaked by winter rain.
The first attempt flew differently and missed.
He recalibrated within three strikes.
Movement preparation expanded beyond performance.
Dream Training gave him access to future sports science that 1980 clubs had not yet institutionalised.
He learned warm-up sequencing, mobility, progressive loading, hydration, sleep protection, and recovery monitoring.
Perfect Recovery increased his capacity but did not make load management irrelevant.
A supernatural repair talent still worked best when given nutrition, rest, and intelligent scheduling.
He studied signs of overtraining in teammates.
Resting pulse.
Mood change.
Loss of explosive quality.
Persistent soreness.
Poor sleep.
He learned enough to recognise danger without pretending to be a physician.
Later, club doctors and performance staff could translate the ideas into accepted practice.
“You cannot walk into Bayern and lecture veterans about methods from forty years ahead,” the coach said during a simulated meeting.
“Then I demonstrate what works and ask questions.”
“And when they call you an arrogant child?”
“I let performance create curiosity.”
The coach nodded once.
That lesson belonged to movement too.
A body could be technically correct and socially clumsy.
At hour one thousand one hundred and ninety-eight, Alexander returned to the marked running lane for a final examination.
He sprinted ten metres, received a pass at speed, cut across an imaginary defender, absorbed contact, and finished with his left foot.
The sequence was not perfect because the present body could not produce its adult force.
Everything within the present body’s control was.
The display updated.
MOVEMENT INTEGRATION: Complete at current age-adjusted ceiling
Waking Calibration Required: Yes
Recommended Real-World Ramp: Progressive, medically plausible
Alexander looked down at his dream legs.
They had run hundreds of kilometres without adding a gram of real muscle.
Somewhere outside, his sleeping body lay beneath a blanket while tiny neural impulses followed movements no observer could see.
The instrument had not been replaced.
Its strings had been tuned, its joints reinforced, and every possible fingering rehearsed.
Real grass, gravity, and fatigue would demand a final adjustment.
Alexander welcomed that limitation.
Instant mastery did not mean the world owed him instant belief.