Moments before motion

The days had started to blur.

It was summer, with clouds still heavy from the last gasps of spring, and Alaric sat in the back row of his classroom, chin resting lightly on his knuckles. To anyone watching, he looked like any other bored student trying not to fall asleep during grammar practice.

But inside, his thoughts were elsewhere—coiled like a spring, quietly rotating around theories and energy matrices.

The chalk squeaked sharply against the board, dragging him momentarily back to the present.

"Alaric," said Mister Lewis, the math teacher, his voice light and non-confrontational, "are you paying attention?"

He blinked slowly. "Yes, Mister Lewis."

"Then be so kind as to give the answer." He demanded with a stern tone.

"12" the answer came instantly.

After all, this was math for six-year-olds — the kind even the 'I'm bad at math' crowd could breeze through.

He smiled gently and walked over, glancing down at the simple calculations on Alaric's paper.

Perfect. As always.

Alaric offered a thin smile back before returning to what he was actually working on—a separate page tucked beneath the workbook. It was covered in diagrams: small circular glyphs, repeated symbols, energy lines coiled in spirals. None of it meant anything to anyone else, but to him, it was a draft of an energy-stabilization Axiom to even better use his hammer, inspired by the Vault's last configuration.

He shaded a small triangle at the corner of the page. The Vault had shown that axiom four times now, in different contexts. He still didn't know what it meant exactly, but it felt important. Maybe an activation symbol. Or a focus. Or a warning. At the very least, he knew it preserved power. An anchor for efficiency.

The bell rang.

Lunch was the same as usual: grayish potatoes, baked beans with a small peace of bacon and lukewarm water amongst the gibberish that six-year-olds gave off themselves.

He ate quickly, methodically, and returned his tray before anyone could try to chat. Clara waved at him from across the room. He nodded back, just enough not to be rude.

He liked Clara. She was kind and always tried to include him in group activities with the others. But he didn't have the patience for discussions so far beneath his level.

Later, when classes ended, he walked his usual route through the alley located on the way to the orphanage.

Past the second lamppost, between the rusted fencing and the brick wall, was a broken glass container half-covered in ivy. No one ever checked here. That's why it was perfect.

He went to his usual place before activating the scar and arriving in the forest.

He summoned the Hammer briefly—just long enough to test his coordination. Five swings, full weight, controlled. Arms steady. Core stance firm. Releasing the power of the hammer on a tree, which after the 5th hammer strike collapsed.

He exhaled. The progress of a year of training as hard as one could, being surrounded nearly all the time, while still fulfilling obligations like school.

His spirit power was now somewhere between Rank 8 and 9. Still slow. Still frustrating. But stable.

And then, it finally completed.

A new rope.

Yes – it had been some time since he noticed it slowly forming alongside the one that lead to Douluo Dalu. Around a week.

Not pain. Not pressure. It felt as if someone was placing a rope around his hand.

Subtle. Gentle. But unmistakable. The only negative thing about it, was that it felt like someone was touching his hand all the time, which started to irritate him after the 3rd day.

His hand reached instinctively to his chest. The scar didn't glow. It didn't give off any fluctuation for that matter. It just felt like something was weird about it.

Like a painting you have seen that deeply unsettles you. Not because of the painting itself, but because you know there is a message inside of it that is flying over your head.

Then he moved over to the side where a backpack was hanging from a tree branch. It was filled with bottled water, some rations and cloth. The cloth he took to bind it around his face. Like a desert trader, after all maybe in a world he would travel to, he potentially would be instantly noticed just by his facial features.

Then he took the clothes in the backpack and started to change from his day-to-day wear. Obviously, it wasn't all too different from what he usually wore, but it was made with better & more resistant materials.

Additionally, it was colored along the lines of a gray tone. Wouldn't want to stand out too much by wearing colors only obtainable by the local royalty, right?

It was thankfully not too hard to organize the funds for it.

Over the year that he worked hard, he noticed that he could minimally use his spirit power, aka. The power of the mind to slightly stun the average human.

Long enough to pick their wallet, take the money and put it back.

A convenient money supply for the start. And it's not like he stole from the poor, after all it was too much work for too few gains.

After resting half an hour from spending his soul power on breaking a tree apart he noticed that the rope had finally finished forming.

"A new world for me to look at" he smirked eager from excitement of getting so see a new place with an infinite number of new possibilities.

"I need to be more careful though, after all I could have ended right in front of a spirit beast when I came here" that realization instantly gave him a shudder down his back.

"At the very least, I can give someone a brutal hit before taking enough time to dip." He muttered with a slight self-depreciating smirk.

Then his expression turned serious, like a killer about to do the deed.

He raised his scarred left arm.

"New world, here I come"

The only thing that remained in the forest was the whisper of a departed future legend.