The last day of school passed without much fanfare.
Some kids ran out the gates like prisoners being pardoned, their laughter echoing down the streets. Others, the quiet ones, trickled out with backpacks slung low and no real plan but to enjoy the freedom. Alaric stood at the edge of the yard for a few minutes longer than most, watching the sun tilt slightly past noon. Appreciating the climate of Britain in the summer.
He walked home without hurry. After all, time was his ally.
The orphanage felt lighter than usual. No homework screams, no rush to prep for tomorrow. Miss Leila was in the kitchen humming to herself. She smiled when he passed by the door. She came up to him and ruffled his hair—gently, like she knew better than to try and hug him. Having noticed the last time that he got quite uncomfortable.
He returned the smile with a polite nod.
Upstairs, in the quiet of his room, he finally sat.
School was done for the term. Which meant he could now focus completely on what truly mattered. The daily structure was already engraved into his bones.
Morning: Soul power training in Douluo Dalu. Midday: Research in the Wizarding World. Night: Meditation and Vault attunement in the desert hellscape of Arrakis.
It's nearly been a year since the 2nd string attached to him. The timing in-between the different arrivals of the strings being around a year. He mused that this was the time spent in-between each time that the scar would form a new one.
He grabbed the book he had borrowed two weeks ago from the town library—"Historical Oddities and Magical Folklore in the British Isles"—and flipped back to a page he had bookmarked.
A passage on witches talking to peasants in their dream and cursing them in various different ways, who supposedly held magical powers and were throwing around flying lights. Interesting. Probably complete rubbish. But he wrote down a few key information from the book. You never knew what the Vault might recognize that might come in handy later on.
He spent the next hour reading, jotting, noting Vault responses in the margins of his personal logbook. Every so often, a pulse would flicker faintly through his left hand—nothing grand, just a brief shift of heat.
Then came the moment.
He paused.
That familiar internal tug.
Faint. Insubstantial. But undeniably there.
His body stilled. Eyes stared ahead into nothing.
Another thread was forming.
He didn't jump up. Didn't smile. He simply turned his attention inward.
It wasn't pulling yet. Wasn't ready. Just barely starting to manifest. Like the early breath of wind before a storm.
The rope to Douluo Dalu had begun before he could even notice it. Not being aware of the feeling at the time. The one to Arrakis had bloomed slowly, a weight in his hand. This one… this one felt cold. Like the memory of something old. Ancient. Watching.
He didn't know what that meant. But he would.
Not today. Not tomorrow. But soon.
Alaric didn't need to know everything all at once. He had learned the value of patience.
He wrote a single line into his notebook:
Third Thread: Initial pulse detected. Faint, cold. No anchor point yet.
He closed the book. No more for tonight. The Vault had pulsed once during the moment. A passive response. It acknowledged the shift. That was enough.
The summer stretched ahead of him like a canvas. For others, it was a break. For him, it was opportunity.
He turned out the light and laid back.
In the darkness, he felt the faintest itch inside his core.
A new world waited. He could feel it watching back.
The next morning began with overcast skies and the distant sound of a garbage truck grinding its way down the street. Alaric rose before anyone else. Early morning solitude was precious.
He didn't meditate right away. Instead, he pulled out his notebook again and began sketching.
Not magical symbols, not cultivation diagrams. This time, he was attempting to build a base language—something universal. A logic grid. A pattern recognition matrix that the Vault might eventually respond to.
He called it the "Thought Ladder."
Each drawing was a symbol or structure from vastly different origins: a rune from a Norse myth he'd read, a flowchart from a computer science magazine he skimmed at the library, a Taoist trigram, a hexagonal elemental circle from DnD. All mapped together. All stacked logically – at least to his young and unexperienced mind.
Not for casting spells. For provoking the Vault.
After an hour of trial and error, he noticed something.
One of the shapes began pulsing faintly in his memory.
The Vault didn't glow. It didn't spin. But it acknowledged the work. That single flicker—barely noticeable—was a yes.
He leaned back in his chair, staring at the rough mess of symbols and arrows.
"Alright," he whispered. "You like logic, don't you?"
The Axiom Vault wasn't a spellbook. It wasn't magic in the traditional sense. It was a filter—a sieve that let him comprehend systems that were otherwise too complex to piece together. Like a guiding hand.
He grinned.
This summer wouldn't be rest.
It would be foundation.
He rose from his chair and walked to the window, the first birdsong of the morning drifting in. Somewhere, distant and quiet, the third thread twitched again.
He'd be ready when it called.
Then his focus shifted toward his soul power refinement.
Soon he would be level 10. The first milestone in Douluo Dalu.
Every ten level he would need to kill a spirit beast. An animal, monster or mythical creature that has consumed and absorbed enough soul power to form a spirit ring that would appear on death, that he then would have to absorb.
These rings being mainly decided by age, which would affect their color. Namely:
A Decade Ring: 10 - 99 years / white in color
A Century Ring: 100 – 999 years / yellow in color
A Millenium Ring: 1.000 – 9.999 years / purple in color
A Ten-Thousand Year Ring: 10.000 – 99.999 years / black in color
A Hundred-Thousand Year Ring: 100.000 – 199.999 / red in color
A Ferocious Beast Year Ring: 200.000 – 999.999 / red in color with a golden string for every additional 100.000 years
A Million Year Ring: 1.000.000+ / gold in color
A God level Ring: variable in age and strength / semi gold and semi color of whatever element a god one is of
Alaric had to consider how he would attach spirit rings in the future to his martial soul, as once attached they couldn't be removed – not without risk of permanently crippling himself.
This meant that if even one slot is wasted, it would be a permanent downgrade for the spirit master.
"The casual attachment of spirit rings is probably the main reason that people in that universe are incredibly unlikely to become a god." He mused.
After all, there is no way that not one God has appeared in the last ten thousand years otherwise.
Even that one guy in Douluo Dalu 'Yu Xiaogang' was revered as a master of the theoretical aspect of the spirit master world, because he simply concluded basic logic, that most people in high-ranking positions knew either way but seemingly didn't even consider to combine logically.
"Then again, maybe the author just didn't think it through." Alaric lightly smiled.