(Eric's perspective)
I woke up feeling the familiar, tight knot in my chest. It wasn't the pain of yesterday's training; it was the slow, simmering burn of humiliation. My name, Eric Ekeng, was cursed with the label "Temper control" on Kelvin's damned board, a scarlet letter placed next to a pitiful rating of 5.7. I wasn't a bad player. I was a great player. I had strength, a perfect tackle, and a midfield vision that rivaled anyone in the league. But the moment an opponent insulted my family, or the referee blew a bad call, the world went red.
My mind would shatter like cheap glass. I'd rush, I'd foul, I'd get the card. That loss to Lord's Academy? I wasn't even on the field for the last twenty minutes. My rage had earned me a foolish red card in the second half, leaving Nnamdi and the others to drown in the 6-0 scoreline. I didn't fail the team; I abandoned them.
I thought of my mother, the only steady thing in my chaotic life. When I was younger, I used to get into street fights every week. She'd always look at my bruised knuckles, sigh, and say, "Eric, your heart is a great engine, but you're giving the key to every idiot who bumps into you." She meant well, but Kelvin's criticism was worse: "Your rage is a tool that destroys its owner. You are an axe that only hits your own leg." He didn't just insult my technique; he insulted my essence. He treated my fury, the one thing I thought made me powerful, like a pathetic, childish flaw.
(Third-person perspective)
Kelvin's philosophy was clear: a weakness is only a weakness because the ego hasn't mastered it. Nnamdi needed to multiply his vision; Eric needed to weaponize his fury. The custom regimen Kelvin designed was called the Ares Chamber.
The Ares Chamber was a small, padded containment room, equipped with advanced biometric sensors. Eric's sole task was to train with a tethered punching bag. This was not a test of strength; it was a test of controlled output. As Eric hit the bag, the sensors would monitor his heart rate, adrenaline, muscle tension, and the exact speed and force of his strikes.
The goal was simple, yet psychologically crippling: Eric had to maintain a "Red Zone" heart rate—the threshold of pure, blinding anger—while simultaneously keeping the force and angle of his strikes within a tiny, "Surgical Precision" window. If his strikes fell below the precision limit, he failed. If his rage-induced heart rate dropped, he failed. But the moment his heart rate spiked above the Red Zone, causing his movements to become frantic or sloppy, a blast of ice-cold water would instantly hit him, shocking his system and resetting the entire counter.
(Eric's perspective)
I entered the chamber, the heavy punching bag looming over me like a silent judge. Surgical Precision. I scoffed. I was a demolition expert, not a surgeon.
My first attempt was a spectacular, humiliating failure. I swung with full force, rage already boiling because the machine was telling me what to do. The biometric screen immediately showed my heart rate soaring into the Orange Zone, then spiking past the Red. The force of my punch was immense, but the angle was off by two degrees. FAIL.
The ice-cold water blasted me, chilling me to the bone, but the greater shock was the buzzer. Kelvin's voice, piped into the chamber, was laced with cold contempt. "You are an amateur, Eric. Your supposed 'strength' is nothing but a temper tantrum. You waste 90% of your energy fighting yourself."
The words stung with the truth. I threw myself back into the drill. Punch. Punch. Focus. Rage rising. I could feel the familiar red cloud descending, bringing power but blurring my vision. The machine was right—my movements were becoming messy, wasteful. I tried to suppress the anger, to calm down, but then the heart rate monitor dipped. FAIL. The cold water hit me again.
Countless failures piled up. I was trapped in a perpetual cycle: too much anger led to imprecision and the cold water; trying to control the anger killed the power and led to failure. I spent hours in the chamber, my body freezing, my muscles burning, my mind screaming. I failed so many times I lost count. I tried to visualize my mother's face, calm and steady, but the only face I saw was the sneering striker from Lord's Academy, followed by Kelvin's indifferent stare. I hit the bag until my knuckles bled, but I couldn't find the balance. I was broken.
(Third-person perspective)
The other players, training on the peripheral track, could hear the constant, mocking buzzer of the Ares Chamber, followed by the hiss of the water cannon. They saw Eric emerge after one session, shivering violently, his eyes red-rimmed, not from tears, but from pure, unadulterated frustration. He was being systematically destroyed by his own greatest asset.
Kelvin watched the data screen, his expression neutral. Eric's graph was chaos—jagged peaks of rage that never coincided with the flat line of precision. He was fighting his ego to be a disciplined team player, but Kelvin knew that was the wrong approach. He didn't want a disciplined player; he wanted a controlled weapon.
That evening, after another punishing round that ended with him collapsing on the wet mat, something inside Eric finally snapped. He wasn't crying, screaming, or fighting. He was simply... empty. In that hollow space, his ego—the thing Kelvin insisted must be purified—began to reform.
(Eric's perspective)
I was lying there, the cold water dripping off my hair, smelling the metallic tang of my own fear and failure. Then, the anger returned. Not the hot, blinding flash, but a deep, pressurized heat—the kind of heat that melts steel. I realized my mistake. I had been trying to separate my rage from my focus. I had been trying to extinguish the fire. But fire doesn't destroy steel; it forges it.
I saw myself in the mental landscape. I was no longer a confused boy. I was a forge, my heart a roaring bellows. The rage wasn't a flaw; it was the fuel. The precision wasn't a limitation; it was the hammer. I wasn't just Eric. I was the divine blacksmith, the god who transforms raw fury into unbreakability.
The rage rose, but this time, I didn't let it scatter. I wrapped my focus around it, the way a smith wraps tongs around glowing iron. The emotion became a dense, manageable core of power. I was the fire, and I was the one who controlled its spread. Ares was not just a mindless berserker; he was the God of War, a master strategist whose fury was a surgical tool.
(Third-person perspective)
The next morning, the air crackled with a new tension around the Ares Chamber. Eric entered the room, his demeanor flat, almost terrifyingly calm. He began to strike the bag.
The biometric screen immediately registered his heart rate rocketing into the Red Zone—the threshold of maximum power. But this time, his strikes did not waver. The force was immense, but the angle was perfect. The line representing Surgical Precision was no longer a frantic zig-zag; it was a flat, unyielding plateau directly above the Red Zone. He was striking the bag with the power of a sledgehammer and the precision of a scalpel.
He ran the entire regimen, hitting every mark, never dipping below the power threshold, never exceeding the precision limit. He was a flawless engine of controlled destruction. The buzzer remained silent. The water cannon was frozen. He finished, his chest heaving, his eyes burning with a steady, contained red glow. He hadn't just mastered his temper; he had purified his rage.
The leaderboard update flashed immediately: Eric Ekeng rocketed to 8.8 with the note: Controlled Explosive Power.
Miracle Johnson, still languishing at the bottom of the board, stared at the massive jump in Eric's score. His friend, the one closest to him in both weakness and spirit, had ascended. He had proven Kelvin right. He had earned his meal. Miracle felt the knot in his own stomach twist—not from hunger, but from a terrifying, escalating sense of loneliness.