My Ultimate Gacha System

Thursday, November 2nd, and Demien arrived at Carrington carrying two completely different weeks in his pocket.

His phone still had congratulations trickling in from Monday’s ceremony — seventeenth in the Ballon d’Or, second in the Kopa, messages arriving hours apart from people in different time zones who’d only just seen the news.

The football coverage had already moved past all of it, straight onto United’s elimination from the cup.

He didn’t spend the morning reading either side of it.

He locked his car, walked past the reception desk with a nod to the two staff members behind it, and went straight through to the medical wing without detouring toward the coffee machine the way he usually did.

His only concern was whether the staff would clear him for normal Fulham work after the derby, Paris, and his substitute minutes against Newcastle.

The squad had been split according to Wednesday’s workload — Newcastle’s starters went through indoor recovery and light pitch work in one group, the unused substitutes and low-minute players in another, running a controlled top-up session instead.

A physio ran him through the standard questions first, more out of habit than expectation of a real answer.

"How’s the body?"

"Heavy," Demien said. "Nothing sharp."

"Ankle?"

"Fine."

"Hamstrings, adductors — anything pull tight overnight?"

"No."

The physio wrote it down anyway and worked through the screening properly rather than taking his word for it — mobility checks first, then hamstring and adductor testing, short acceleration bursts across ten and twenty yards, a light conditioning block before any ball touched his feet.

Nothing came back flagged.

His body felt heavy from the week rather than damaged, and he accepted the difference without needing anyone to explain it to him — the same way he’d learned to read every other signal his legs sent him this season.

「CLUB TRAINING MISSION ACTIVATED」 「Objective: Complete Compensatory Session」 「Maintain 90%+ Pass Accuracy」 「Win 4 Transition Recoveries」 「Complete Required Conditioning Load」 「Reward: +12 TP」 「Bonus Objective: Zero Physical Warnings During Session」 「Bonus Reward: +10 MP」

The top-up group ran a tight possession game rather than full eleven-a-side, six players inside a narrow grid with two floaters helping whichever side had the ball.

He felt it almost immediately — half a step slower than usual changing direction, the kind of lag that wasn’t injury, just the accumulated travel and fixtures finally catching up with his legs.

On one transition, the ball squirted loose near the edge of the grid.

Demien read it correctly, saw the bounce a half-second before anyone else did, and started moving toward it the way he always did — trusting the acceleration would be there when he needed it.

It wasn’t.

McTominay got there a full stride ahead of him, knocked it away, and gave him a look that wasn’t unkind so much as surprised.

"Slow today," McTominay said.

"Long week," Demien said.

He didn’t chase the next three loose balls the same way.

Instead he started reading the game a half-beat earlier, positioning himself where the ball was likely to go rather than reacting once it got there, leaning on anticipation instead of demanding more from legs that had nothing extra to give.

His recoveries improved from that point on — not because the tiredness lifted, but because he’d stopped trying to out-run it.

By the time the coaches called the session, he’d cleared the mission, narrowly.

「CLUB TRAINING MISSION COMPLETE」 「Pass Accuracy: 92%」 「Transition Recoveries: 5/4」 「Conditioning Load: Complete」 「Physical Warning: None」 「Reward: +12 TP」 「Bonus Reward: +10 MP」

After showering and eating, the whole group moved into the analysis room for the Newcastle review.

Ten Hag kept it short — Fulham was already two days away, and there was no value in dragging a dead result out longer than it needed.

He didn’t replay every goal.

He didn’t single anyone out by name in front of the room.

He picked three clips and let them speak.

The first showed United’s press starting with one forward while the midfield line behind him sat several yards too deep, an obvious gap that let Newcastle play straight through the first wave of pressure without any real risk.

"Watch the distance here," Ten Hag said, freezing it. "One man presses, three men stand off. That’s not pressing, that’s one man running around by himself."

Nobody said anything.

The second clip showed a second ball lost in midfield, United’s players spread too far apart to support whoever won the first contact.

The third showed the buildup to Newcastle’s third goal — both central midfielders caught ahead of the ball at the same time, the exact kind of spacing error that had let Newcastle break into space with numbers.

Then one clip from Demien’s cameo — him receiving under pressure, turning out cleanly, helping United string together six or seven passes in a row that Newcastle couldn’t get near.

The clip ended with the move breaking down anyway, the ball recycled harmlessly along the edge of Newcastle’s block, no penetration, no danger created.

"Moving it better at three-nil doesn’t matter if we can’t turn it into anything," Ten Hag said, looking briefly at Demien rather than past him. "That’s for you too."

Demien nodded and didn’t say anything back.

He’d expected worse than that, and he understood exactly what Ten Hag meant — clean possession without consequence was still a wasted twenty-five minutes.

The meeting produced one real consequence before it ended.

The medical staff confirmed it to the group directly: Casemiro had suffered a hamstring strain against Newcastle and would be out for several weeks.

A ripple went through the room, quiet rather than dramatic — Bruno exhaled through his nose, Maguire muttered something under his breath, Onana just shook his head slightly.

Casemiro had given United a natural anchor behind the more aggressive midfielders all season, someone who let the rest of them push forward without the whole structure collapsing behind them.

Without him, that safety net was gone.

Ten Hag kept Demien back afterward, along with Bruno and the small group who’d be training together on Friday.

"Your job’s changing while he’s out," Ten Hag told him, arms folded, no notes in his hand this time. "Not every match, not every minute. But sometimes you attack the box. And sometimes you’re the one who has to stay behind it — protect the center, control what happens the second we lose the ball. Without Case there, that second job doesn’t belong to anyone else right now. It belongs to you."

"I understand," Demien said.

"Do you?" Ten Hag asked, not unkindly. "Because your instincts are going to tell you to go forward every time you get the ball in space. That’s what makes you good. It’s also exactly what will hurt us if nobody’s protecting behind you."

Bruno, standing nearby, added quietly, "He means: don’t be a hero every five minutes."

Demien allowed himself a small, tired laugh at that.

He understood immediately what was being asked of him — his attributes and his legendary techniques made forward actions tempting every single time the ball reached him, but United didn’t need another player chasing highlights with their rest defense already unstable.

Becoming more complete, not just more productive.

Thursday evening, Demien went home to his apartment.

His Ballon d’Or formalwear still sat out from Paris, draped over the back of a chair, not quite put away, his recovery gear and Newcastle kit bag dropped somewhere else in the flat entirely — two different lives occupying the same small space without touching.

Marco called while he was heating something up in the kitchen.

"The Ballon d’Or’s created another wave of interview and commercial requests," Marco said. "Good problem to have. Most of it’s getting pushed back regardless — you’ve got Fulham Saturday, Copenhagen four days after that. Nobody’s getting five minutes of your time this week that isn’t football."

"Fine by me," Demien said.

"How are you feeling about Kopa now? Forty-eight hours on."

Demien thought about it for a second rather than answering automatically. "I wanted it," he said. "I lost it. Jude deserved it. Now I’ve got football."

"That’s it?"

"That’s it."

Marco didn’t push further than that.

Sophia called not long after, and she asked about his body and the Newcastle match before anything else — she knew exactly how compressed his week had been, derby to Paris to a cup exit inside four days.

"Legs?" she asked.

"Heavy. Nothing worse than that."

"You sure?"

"I did a full physical screening this morning, Sophia. I’m sure."

"Fine, fine," she said. "I believe you. Barely."

Once she was satisfied, the conversation drifted naturally into her own week — a project that had eaten most of her Tuesday, a colleague she was mildly annoyed with, whether she’d manage to get up to Manchester again before the international break.

Demien asked questions instead of steering it back toward himself, actually listening to the answers rather than waiting for his turn.

Nothing dramatic in any of it — just an ordinary call between two people, proof that his life didn’t stop the moment the football coverage moved on to something else.

He messaged Isabella briefly rather than calling — a few lines, nothing heavy. She’d already had her real moment with him in Paris, and nothing needed repeating so soon after.

He ate properly, worked through the recovery routine the performance staff had emailed over, and went to bed earlier than he wanted to admit to anyone.

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