The two words still hung in the air in front of him. Skill Shop Unlocked.

Garcia sat on the edge of the bed with the laptop beside him and the approval email still open on the screen. G11 Sports Management Ltd was real now, a registered agency with his name at the top of it.

But the room made the win feel smaller than it should have.

The same faded posters from when he was sixteen were still on the wall. The money behind the registration was borrowed from his father. He had no clients, no office beyond an address that forwarded his post, and no income coming in from anywhere.

A legal agency was not the same as a working one.

He turned his attention back to the panel, because for the first time the system was offering him something other than a mission to finish or a number to watch climb. It was offering him a tool.

He focused on it the way he had taught himself to, without speaking, and the panel responded.

A new window opened in its place.

[Point System] Stat Points (SP): Earned through agent actions. Used to raise Agent Stats toward higher ranks.

Skill Points: Used to purchase skills from the Skill Shop.

Current Skill Points: 100

Current Shop Access: Level 1 Reason: Network: Damaged Reputation: Ruined

Higher shop levels require improved Network and Reputation.

Garcia read it twice and sorted the two currencies in his head.

Stat Points were the numbers he had already watched move, the ones that filled each of his stats and pushed them toward the next rank. He earned those by doing the work, the way scouting and registering the agency had nudged his numbers up after the last mission.

Skill Points were different. They were what the shop ran on, and he had a hundred of them.

Then he reached the part that annoyed him.

His shop access was capped at Level 1, and the system was blunt about why. His Network was damaged and his Reputation was ruined, so it would not let him reach for anything higher.

Of course.

He wanted to argue with it, but he could not, because it was right. In football, access was the whole game. The agents who mattered could get a manager on the phone in an afternoon and a sporting director to dinner by the weekend.

He had been able to do that once. Now he had a hundred points and a Level 1 door, and the system was only telling him the truth about where he stood.

He stopped resenting it and opened the shop.

The window widened, and five skills filled it.

[Level 1 Skill Shop]

Golden Eye: Prospect Appraisal — 100 Skill Points

Allows the host to scan active football prospects and view a basic potential report.

Contract Red Flag — 250 Skill Points

Highlights dangerous, unfair, or exploitative clauses in contracts.

Calm Table — 400 Skill Points

Improves emotional control during tense negotiations and reduces impulsive responses.

Contact Thread — 700 Skill Points

Identifies the weakest reachable connection between the host and a target club, coach, scout, or player family.

Reputation Buffer — 1,000 Skill Points

Reduces the impact of hostile rumours during one professional approach.

Garcia read them slowly, one at a time, and every single one was something he wanted.

Contract Red Flag stopped him first. He thought about the binding clauses that had kept his old clients locked to Vantage, the fine print most families never read until it was too late. A skill that caught that for him would have been worth a great deal a few years ago.

Calm Table was harder to look at, because it pointed straight at the thing that had finished him. A skill that kept him from losing control across a table might have left Holt’s face untouched and his own career intact.

Contact Thread could rebuild the network he had lost, one weak link at a time. Reputation Buffer could blunt the blacklist Holt had spread through the industry.

Every one of them solved a real problem.

And every one of them was priced above the hundred points he held.

It was like being shown a full pantry through a locked door while his stomach was empty. The skills he needed most to survive were the ones he could not touch yet, and the system had no interest in his frustration.

His first reaction was that frustration, and he let himself feel it for a moment before he pushed it aside.

Then he looked at the top of the list again.

Golden Eye: Prospect Appraisal. One hundred Skill Points. The only skill on the board he could afford, and it was priced to the exact number he had.

He almost dismissed it as the cheap starter the system threw at every beginner. But then he made himself think it through the way he would think through a signing, not the way someone reaches for the flashiest item on a shelf.

What was his actual problem right now?

It was not contracts. He had no client, so there was no contract to review, which made Contract Red Flag useless to him today.

It was not negotiation. He had no meeting with anyone, so Calm Table had nothing to calm.

It was not even his network or his reputation, as much as those hurt. Rebuilding either one meant convincing people he was worth dealing with again, and he had nothing yet to convince them with.

I have no result.

That was the real problem. His agency was a registered name and nothing more. Before contracts, before negotiations, before any of it, he needed the one thing that every other step depended on.

A player.

One overlooked prospect. One talent everyone else had passed on. One signing that produced a result good enough that the industry had to look at G11 and at the name on top of it.

Scouting on instinct alone was a risk he could no longer take, because he had no money to waste chasing the wrong boy across the country and no time to spend on a player who would not work out. He had to be right the first time.

Golden Eye let him be right.

He had spent his whole career claiming, like every agent did, that he had an eye for talent. Now the system was offering him an actual one.

If it’s a cheat, I’ll use it.

He confirmed the purchase.

[Purchase Confirmed]