“So, the two talent points I had to allocate earlier mean that I leveled up twice?” Chen Hero asked.

Yesenin nodded.

"How did I level up? Why didn't I hear a burst of pleasant music, and then a surge of golden light all over my body?"

"You really think this is World of Warcraft?" Yesenin was speechless.

"Okay, how did I level up?"

"You completed some quests and scored goals, all of which earned you experience..."

"Quests? What quests did I complete? How come I don't know?" Chen Hero interrupted Yesenin, full of suspicion.

"First of all, you successfully joined Zenit St. Petersburg, which completed a quest, and a main quest at that. Just completing this quest alone allowed you to level up directly."

Chen Hero clicked his tongue in wonder. "That's amazing? So, leveling up isn't that difficult after all..."

"Don't get too happy too soon." Yesenin glanced at Chen Hero. "When the level is low, the experience required to level up is relatively small. The higher you go, the more experience you need. Leveling up is fast now, but it will be slower later on. For example, when you leveled up from the second level to the third level, relying solely on completing quests wasn't enough. You scored three goals in the youth team's official league, and at the same time, you showed dedication in training. All of this accumulated experience for you. Then, through your outstanding performance in the youth team, you earned the opportunity to be transferred to the first team, completing the second main quest, and you leveled up again."

Chen Hero roughly understood. It was similar to the World of Warcraft system. He accumulated experience by completing various quests. At the same time, he could also fight monsters—that is, score goals in matches, show outstanding performance in training, and all of them would earn him experience. When the experience reached a certain point, he would level up.

"Then how do I know how much experience I get for each goal? And how much experience do I need to reach the next level?"

"The experience for scoring goals isn't fixed and unchanging. Those unimportant goals, goals against weak opponents, won't earn you much experience. For example, of the three goals you scored in the youth team league, two of them only gave you one hundred and fifty points of experience..."

"That's so little?"

"Because the opponents weren't strong, and it wasn't an important match, so the gold content of your goals was relatively low."

"Then what kind of goals count as high gold content?"

"Goals scored in matches against strong teams, goals scored in difficult situations, goals that reverse the score at the last moment, goals that equalize the score, goals that secure the victory... And scoring twice, and hat-tricks, all have experience bonuses. For example, if your first goal in a match is worth only one hundred and fifty points of experience, your second goal might be worth two hundred points of experience, and the third goal might be worth four hundred points of experience."

Chen Hero found it interesting to listen to. "So, the more goals I score, the better?"

Yesenin nodded. "Yes, that's how it is. The more goals you score, the more experience you gain."

"That's not bad. Strikers should pursue goals anyway. A striker who doesn't score goals isn't a good striker. This system can motivate players to score more goals, which is great," Chen Hero commented.

"That's right."

"So, I just need to keep scoring goals and completing quests... What's the point of training then?"

"The experience gained from scoring goals is limited, and the experience gained from training accounts for the majority," Yesenin patiently explained.

This thing was quite complicated to explain, but as long as the principle was explained clearly, everything would be understood.

"Why is more experience gained from training instead?"

"It's easy to understand. Even if you don't rely on this system, you can improve your level through hard training, right?"

Chen Hero nodded. That was certain. Otherwise, how could a child who knew nothing become a qualified professional player? Of course, it was by relying on training.

"Why can you improve your level? Because you leveled up. Why can you level up? Because you gained a lot of experience in training."

Chen Hero opened his mouth wide—training could be explained like that!

"Moreover, in addition to allowing you to level up, experience can also bring bonus effects to your training. If it used to take you three months to improve in a certain area through training, after accumulating rich experience, it might only take you one month."

"That's great! I like that!"

Yesenin said with a serious face, "So training is indispensable, and the more diligent and serious you are in training, the more experience you will gain. Conversely, the more obvious the bonus effect of your training will be. In addition, those talents in the talent tree that state how much percentage is increased are actually based on what you already have. That is to say, the better your foundation is, the more obvious the effect of your improvement will be. For example, your jumping ability was very weak to begin with, what's the point of adding fifteen percent? If your jumping ability is already good, adding that fifteen percent on top of that would be quite terrifying. So, if you want these talents to truly exert their powerful effects, you need to work hard to improve your various abilities. If you didn't already have good heading ability, the 'Aerial Master' talent wouldn't have had such an amazing effect. Do you understand?"

Having said this, Chen Hero had a general understanding of the entire system.

In simple terms, it was to obtain experience through various means, improve himself, and then obtain talent points to add to talents to strengthen his abilities. Training could allow him to learn many skills, just like in a game, after leveling up, he had to go to a professional trainer to learn new skills. However, these skills weren't considered strong, they were just the basics. He needed to use talent points to strengthen these skills in order to exert a powerful effect in battle.

After understanding, he began to feel heartbroken again about the two talent points he had added incorrectly.

He had just finished looking at all the talents and found that there were indeed talents that could solve his current problems. For example, he was too easily marked to death by Skrtel and Hågan, unable to break free from the defense and gain the opportunity to compete for headers. Then he could choose to add the "Poacher" talent to improve his ability to appear at the right time and in the right place. He could also choose to add "Invisible Man" to improve his ability to break free from the defense and not be easily marked... Or add the "Knockdown" talent to knock the opponent to the ground during the attack, with a certain chance of not fouling. In this way, he wouldn't be afraid of going head-to-head with the opponent. He had often been called for fouls for bumping into people during header contests.

What should he do now?

He wanted to see how close he was to leveling up. If it was fast, he would quickly level up and add a talent...

"How can I see how close I am to leveling up?"

Yesenin pointed to the bottom of the talent simulator: "See your portrait photo? Click on it."

"It's here?"

Chen Hero clicked on it and opened a new page. Below his portrait was a long experience bar. The blue part represented the experience he had already gained, and the blank part represented the experience he still needed.

Chen Hero took a look. The blue part was only halfway there!

He still needed more than fifteen thousand points of experience to level up.

If he relied solely on scoring goals, assuming one hundred and fifty points of experience per goal, he would need to score one hundred goals! When would he ever get there? It seemed that he really could only gain experience in training...

Chen Hero suddenly stood up, looked at Yesenin, and asked, "Does extra training outside of normal training time give experience?"

Yesenin nodded. "Any training gives experience, and extra training gives even more experience, because training outside of normal training shows that you are more serious and hardworking..."

Before he could finish speaking, he saw Chen Hero leave the table and walk towards the door.

"Where are you going?"

"To grind for experience!"

What surprised the Zenit first-team players was that the Chinese kid was not sent to the reserves. He still stayed in the first team for training. And when he saw everyone again the next day, he still greeted everyone enthusiastically, grinning widely.

Judging from his performance, it was impossible to see the impact of yesterday's training on him at all.

Of course, they didn't know that Chen Hero had seen hope.

Yesterday, he had been training at the training base until eleven thirty at night... For this, he had to thank St. Petersburg's special geographical location. Because St. Petersburg is located at a high latitude, close to the Arctic Circle, there is a polar day phenomenon in winter, so the daytime here is very long, and the night is extremely short. Even at eleven thirty at night, the sky was still relatively bright, and there was absolutely no problem with visibility. If he were a robot who could not eat, drink, or sleep, he would definitely train in one breath until nine o'clock the next morning, and go directly to the first team's training base to report...

The first thing he did when he returned to the dormitory after training was to use Yesenin's laptop to open the webpage and check how much his experience had increased.

After several hours of hard training, he found that he was still twelve thousand experience away from leveling up, and had increased his experience by three thousand, equivalent to twenty goals.

Practice proved that the speed of gaining experience from training was indeed faster than scoring goals. Just like in a game, grinding monsters in a fixed location is definitely more efficient than running around doing quests. So those power-levelers rarely do quests, they just keep killing monsters in a monster-dense area...

Chen Hero, who was lying in bed sleeping last night, was thinking about whether what he was doing counted as power-leveling... He seemed to have returned to the days when he locked himself in his room, frantically grinding monsters and doing quests to level up.

In order to become the first player to reach max level on the server, he could stay awake for forty-eight hours straight. It was with this crazy energy that he eventually became the first player to reach max level on the server.

He wondered if he could become a hero on the green field as soon as possible with this crazy energy?

Advocaat also noticed Chen Hero's change. When he left the training ground yesterday, he was dejected, obviously hit hard. But after one night, he actually adjusted himself, and his mental quality was indeed outstanding.

He really didn't misjudge him.

Advocaat secretly praised Chen Hero's mental quality. He didn't know that Chen Hero was revitalized for other reasons...

In the set-piece tactics training, Advocaat once again changed Chen Hero to a decoy role. This time, Chen Hero did not raise any objections. He conscientiously completed the tasks assigned to him by the head coach in training.

Because he knew that seriously completing every training session would give him a good accumulation of experience, which would make him one step closer to leveling up.

When he leveled up and had talent points... he had already decided what talent to add, he would add that knockdown!

Of course, not to knock down Hågan and Skrtel, but Li Hao!

Don't think I don't know what you're happy about, I won't swallow this breath easily, Korean!