My Goalkeeping System

<You know receiving a quest from the system at this level means that keeping out six out of the eight balls isn\'t going to be easy>

\'I am aware of that Catherine.\'

<I\'m just reminding you so you can put your sixth sense to good use>

The second ball was shot directly at him while he had already dived to the right but luckily for him, his legs has not completely shifted out of there, and with them, he was able to hit the ball away.

<That was a close one>

\'Yeah, really close one.\' Dave replied as he got ready for the next one.

The third shot was fired at the bottom right side and Dave had dived toward it at the right time but the ball had bounced on the floor and rolled over his hand to get into the net.

<Two out of three>

\'Just three more saves to make.\'

He got up on his feet again as the fourth ball was quickly fired toward the top right-hand corner.

Dave was glued to the spot as he didn\'t expect the ball to come at that time.

<Be vigilant Dave>

The fifth one was quite a tricky one as it had been shot toward the bottom left-hand corner but with a swift dive, Dave was able to get there on time and with the tip of his glove, he prevented the ball from going into the goalpost.

<That\'s three out of five now if you miss any of the last three balls you\'ve failed the quest>

Dave let out a deep sigh as he got ready for the last three balls, if he wanted to complete the quest and get those rewards then he had to make sure that none of those three last balls were going to go into the goalpost.

The ball was shot directly at him but higher in a way that made it look like it was going to go over the bar but he knew it wasn\'t going to go over the bar as he quickly raised his right hand and tipped it over the bar before it fell into the goalpost.

\'Two more to go.\'

This one was shot toward the top right-hand corner as Dave quickly dived toward it and tipped it off with the tips of his gloves.

[ 20% stamina remaining ]

<Well at least you have enough stamina to make another save like that one>

"Just one more." He muttered as he slowly got up from the floor.

He kept his gaze on the ball-blasting part of the blaster for this last part, he was really determined to keep this last one out until something he had not planned for happened.

The blaster blasted the ball toward the top left-hand corner, Dave was glued to the spot as the ball hit the crossbar and fell to the side.

[ Quest failed ]

"Oh, come on." He said with a frustrated voice as he fell to the floor.

"Why are you beating yourself up? You did great."

Dave slowly turned his gaze toward the entrance to his house to see Emilia walking toward him.

"You\'ve been watching me?" Dave said with a baffled look on his face.

"Yeah," Emilia said with a nod after stopping in front of him.

"For how long?"

"About five minutes," Emilia said.

"Oh."

He had been so focused on completing his quest that he had failed to take notice of her standing there.

"I thought you were busy with Emma."

"She went to….um…powder her nose so I decided to come out here and see what you were doing and I am glad I did." She said with a bright smile on her face.

"Oh, okay."

"That was some really good goalkeeping," Emilia said.

"You think?" Dave said slowly getting up from the floor.

"No, I don\'t think, I know," Emilia said with an enthusiastic voice. "Why don\'t I put the balls back in the blaster and you try again."

"Okay." Dave answered after staring at her for a while with a strange expression on his face.

"Okay," Emilia said before she quickly began to go around the area to pick up the balls.

It didn\'t take long before she picked up all the balls and filled the blaster with them.

"Level three right?" She asked with her hand on the level three button.

"Yeah," Dave said.

She quickly pushed the button as soon as Dave said that.

"I can see that there are other things that differentiate you from Emma apart from those physical differences," Dave said before she could hit the start button.

"Emma likes football, she wouldn\'t watch highlights with you if she didn\'t."

"She told you about those," Dave muttered.

"She just doesn\'t like it as much as I do, that isn\'t really much of a difference." She added before pushing the start button.

Dave expected to see the quest again after she pushed that button but nothing happened and that led to him getting demoralized.

Low morale coupled with low stamina had led to him performing badly as he had only managed to keep out two of the balls and the reason why he had kept those out was because they were too easy to keep out.

"What\'s wrong, you\'re not even trying?" Emilia asked after the last ball had fallen into the net after Dave\'s passionless attempt to keep it out.

"I think that\'s enough training for today." He said walking toward her.

He had pulled off the glove on his right hand just as he got close to her and that was when he had gotten a serious dose of the cramp.

"Owww." He said flinging his hand.

"Wait," Emilia said as she quickly grabbed his hand and pulled it to get rid of the cramp.

"Awwww." He winced. "Thank you." He said as he could feel his hand again.

"You\'re welcome," Emilia said with a warm smile. "I\'m going to go see if Emma is done now." She added before quickly making her way back inside.

_____ _____

Dave was lying on his bed going through his phone as Emilia and Emma were busy doing something downstairs.

He was scrolling through the media with his phone when he came across an article that had the heading \'How Long Can Dave Richards Keep This Up.\'

Reading the article gave him a warm feeling in his heart as a smile appeared on his face but that feeling and smile vanished as soon as he scrolled down to the comments section.

Ninety percent of the comments were about his performance being a fluke and how they were waiting for him to flop in a game against one of the big teams in the game.

Reading those comments gave him mixed feelings of worry because even he was afraid that he might start performing badly and then anger because of the way some of them had written their comments.

That feeling of anger was making him wish that he would be able to continue this good form and perform well even against top teams and then come back to rub it on their faces in his own way.

<If this is going to be a source of motivation for you then you should keep reading those comments>