5 Years Later… 1698
It was autumn in Swansea, and the wind had teeth.
Alaric stood partly hidden behind the village well with his thin shirt pulled tight around his small frame, but the cloth was too worn to offer much protection. Every gust slipped through the loose threads and crawled over his skin, making his shoulders tense despite his best efforts to stay still.
He hated that most of all.
Not the cold. Not the mud beneath his shoes. Not even the ache in his stomach that had become familiar enough to feel like part of his body.
He hated that his body reacted before his mind allowed it.
A grown man's thoughts lived behind a five-year-old's eyes, but his hands were small, his legs tired too quickly, and hunger made him irritable in ways discipline could not fully silence. He could remember barracks, weapons, orders, sleepless nights, and the dull weight of military routine. Yet here he was, shivering behind a village well while a merchant argued with an old man over onions.
The merchant held the onions like treasure. The old man counted coins with the despair of someone already certain he did not have enough.
Alaric watched them both.
Over these five years, survival had taught him a few simple truths.
Swansea's farmers hated taxes, no matter how little the collectors claimed to take. They worked until their backs bent and their hands split, but the collectors always arrived clean, dry, and patient, as if hunger itself had signed the paperwork.
Edward Kenway's laugh was loud enough to make people flinch.
Alaric's eyes drifted toward the muddy lane, where his young cousin had been chasing a frog barely ten minutes earlier, shouting as if the creature had insulted his bloodline. Edward was all elbows, scraped knees, and reckless joy, the kind of boy who ran first and discovered consequences later.
'So the rashness started young,' Alaric thought, though the edge of his mouth twitched despite himself. 'Good to know.'
And then there was poverty.
That was the lesson underneath every other lesson.
When people had nothing, they became smaller in public and harsher in private. Some borrowed. Some begged. Some stole. Some smiled through rotten teeth and pretended a thin soup was enough for the day.
Alaric crouched and traced patterns in the dirt with one finger, using the motion to steady his thoughts.
In his mind, he kept a ledger of everything.
The price of grain. The health of the goats. The hours his father spent repairing fences. The number of times his mother coughed after sundown. The moods of tax collectors. The men who drank too much. The men who watched doorways too closely. The families that still had spare food and the families pretending they did.
Details mattered.
His father, Leonard Kenway, was a hardworking farmer with no education and a stubbornness that seemed carved into his bones. He was the brother of Bernard Kenway, and like Bernard, he possessed the kind of pride poor men used when they had nothing else left to defend.
His mother, Eleanor Kenway, had gentle eyes, tired hands, and a cough that never truly went away.
That cough troubled Alaric more than he wanted to admit.
In his old life, a cough meant medicine, clinics, bills, pharmacies, and doctors who spoke in calm voices while machines measured the body's failures. Here, a cough meant boiled herbs, prayer, and pretending not to see fear in the eyes of the person pouring the soup.
Four years of failed crops had taught him that every detail mattered. One bad harvest was misfortune. Two was hardship. Three became ruin. Four was a slow execution carried out by weather, taxes, and pride.
He had spent five years counting every loss and gain.
'I might need a proper farming guide from the system,' he thought, watching the merchant finally take the old man's coins. 'Assuming the damn thing ever gives me more than empty promises.'
He was not a farmer. Even in his past life, he had known little about crops beyond buying food wrapped in plastic and complaining when prices went up. He had lived in cities, ordered meals, read webnovels until dawn, and treated food as something that appeared because money moved from one place to another.
That was his old life.
But this one was different.
In this one, he owed people.
Leonard and Eleanor had raised him the best they could despite having almost nothing. They had never once looked at him as another mouth they regretted feeding. They had never left him at a gate. They had never turned away.
They were poor, yes... but they had kept him, and that mattered.
A sudden shout broke through his thoughts.
"Catch it, 'Laric!"
Edward sprinted past him, boots splashing mud in every direction as a small green frog launched itself desperately toward a ditch.
Alaric blinked.
Edward was already knee-deep in filth, arms outstretched, grinning like a lunatic.
"You're wasting time," Alaric muttered, but he smiled. He did not mean to. The expression slipped through before he could stop it.
Edward missed the frog, stumbled, nearly fell face-first into the mud, and laughed so loudly that a nearby chicken fled under a cart.
Alaric shook his head and stood, brushing dirt from his worn trousers.
His eyes drifted toward the old Kenway farmhouse.
Farmhouse was generous. It was a wooden shack that creaked whenever the wind remembered it existed. Smoke leaked poorly from the chimney. One side sagged lower than the other. The roof had been patched so many times it looked more like an argument than construction.
For five years, Alaric had eaten their meals, slept under their roof, answered to the name they gave him, and played the role of the child they believed him to be.
At first, it had been a role.
Then Eleanor had held him during a fever for two nights without sleeping.
Leonard had given him the larger half of a heel of bread and pretended he was not hungry.
Edward had once punched an older boy for calling Alaric strange, then ran away before the boy's brothers could retaliate.
Somewhere along the way, the role had become harder to separate from the truth.
They were his family.
It wasn't perfect, nor was it safe. And of course, not convenient.
But it was his.
Still, as the village continued around him, Alaric could not stop thinking about what had happened the night before.
Because last night, everything had changed.
FLASHBACK
Dinner had been potato soup again.
Simple, thin, and served in the same chipped bowls that had somehow survived more winters than some families in Swansea. Alaric sat near the fire, stirring his portion slowly to make it look fuller than it was.
Across from him, Leonard rubbed his brow while speaking in a low voice.
"Another tax hike," Leonard muttered. "As if the soil itself is hiding coin from us."
Eleanor's spoon paused halfway to her mouth.
"We'll manage," she said.
Leonard gave a tired laugh without humor. "Aye. We always manage. That's what poor folk call drowning slowly."
Eleanor's eyes flicked toward Alaric.
Leonard noticed and quieted.
That was another thing poverty did. It taught adults to lie badly in front of children.
Alaric lowered his gaze to his bowl.
Then a sharp ding rang inside his skull, making him freeze.
For a moment, he thought something had cracked in his head.
Then translucent blue text flickered into existence before his eyes.
[SYSTEM SHOP UNLOCKED!]
[BUY] [SELL]
Alaric's spoon slipped and he choked on the soup.
Leonard reacted instantly, crossing the small space and thumping his back with a hand large enough to cover most of Alaric's shoulders.
"Slow down, lad," Leonard said, alarm tucked beneath a gruff voice. "No one's stealing it from you."
Eleanor leaned forward, worry sharpening her tired face.
"Alaric?"
He coughed once, then twice, forcing air through his throat as the words continued to hover in his sight.
[BUY] [SELL]
He blinked.
The text stayed.
His heartbeat quickened.
For five years, he had wondered whether Kami had cheated him. Whether the so-called System Shop had been a joke, a delayed reward, or some cosmic mistake. He had tried every command he could think of as an infant, then a toddler, then a child pretending not to be disappointed each time nothing answered.
Now it was here.
Here, in the middle of potato soup and tax complaints.
Alaric wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and forced his expression into confusion rather than recognition.
"I'm fine," he said.
His voice sounded too small.
Eleanor reached across the table and touched his forehead.
"No fever."
Leonard frowned at him. "You sure?"
Alaric nodded.
"Yes."
He kept his eyes on the soup and did not look at the screen again until the meal ended.
PRESENT
Behind the barn, Alaric stared at the floating blue screen.
The air smelled of damp straw, old wood, and animal musk. Somewhere inside the farmhouse, Eleanor coughed once, then again.
Alaric's hand tightened at his side.
"Okay," he whispered. "It's real."
The words should have thrilled him.
And they did, but beneath the thrill was something colder.
If it was real, then every choice from now on mattered. No excuses. No blaming fate, no blaming poverty, no blaming the absence of tools. He had a tool now. Maybe the only one in the world like it.
He looked around carefully.
Leonard wasn't there. No Eleanor. No Edward. No neighbors pretending not to watch.
Only the barn, the fading light, and a sack of wheat leaning against the wall.
Alaric approached it slowly.
The sack did not belong to him.
That thought came first.
He stood with his hand hovering above the rough fabric.
It was family property. Food, labor, coin, survival. Perhaps not much on its own, but in a house like theirs, nothing was truly small.
His jaw tightened. 'I need to know how it works.'
That was true.
It was also convenient.
He hated that he could tell the difference.
After another glance around the barn, he touched the sack lightly.
'Sell.'
The sack vanished in a flash.
New text appeared.
[+3 R]
[Current Balance: 3 R]
Alaric stared at the empty space where the sack had been.
His stomach sank... because it worked.
Of course it worked.
For one breath, triumph rose in him, bright and sharp.
Then Eleanor coughed again inside the house, and the triumph turned heavy.
He had stolen from them.
Only a sack. Only three reales. Only an experiment.
The justifications lined up quickly, obedient as soldiers.
He would pay it back. He would pay back more than a sack. He would buy them fields, medicine, warm coats, food that did not need to be stretched with water, a roof that did not leak, a life where Leonard did not look older every time the tax collectors came.
All of that could be true.
It did not make the empty space less empty.
Alaric swallowed and turned his attention back to the screen.
The shop catalog unfolded before him.
[Unlock Chakra – 500 R]
[Kunai x10 – 20 R]
[Shadow Clone Jutsu – 1000 R]
[Sharingan – 3000 R]
And so many more.
His eyes lingered on the first option.
Unlock Chakra.
Five hundred reales.
A ridiculous amount for a child in a poor farming family.
A tiny amount compared to what power could become.
Alaric exhaled through his nose.
"Cheap?" he whispered. "My ass."
But his mind was already moving.
The Caribbean was full of Spanish treasure, privateer gold, merchant chests, and wealth buried under sand by men who trusted maps less than greed. Assassin's Creed meant history, bloodlines, Pieces of Eden, Templars, Assassins, pirates, kings, wars, and opportunities hidden inside every disaster.
But before treasure, before ships, before the Caribbean, there was this village.
This body.
These hands.
A five-year-old could not walk into a port and seize destiny by the throat.
Not yet.
"Alaric!"
He flicked the system screen away.
Edward came skidding around the corner, hands covered in mud, a squirming frog poking halfway out of his pocket as if considering suicide.
"We're mendin' fences!" Edward said. "Da says you're better at knots."
Alaric blinked. "Da?"
Edward stared at him as if he had asked what rain was.
"My da," Edward said. "Your uncle Bernard. Who else?"
"Right," Alaric said quickly.
Edward narrowed his eyes. "You hit your head?"
"Repeatedly, from knowing you."
Edward grinned, apparently deciding that was answer enough, then ran off with the frog still struggling in his pocket.
Alaric watched him go.
Bernard. Of course.
Sometimes the village's words blurred together in his head, especially when spoken through Edward's breathless nonsense. Five years in Swansea had taught him hunger, taxes, and how to mend rope with hands too small for the work. It had not made him fluent in every childish nickname thrown at him from the mud.
He looked once more at the place where the sack had vanished.
Then he followed Edward.
Two Months Later
Dusk settled over Swansea like wet wool.
Inside the cramped Kenway house, Alaric scrubbed the fireplace with both hands, trying to clear years of soot and grease from stone that seemed determined to remain filthy. Ash clung to his fingers. Smoke stung his eyes. His arms ached in a way that annoyed him more than it should have.
A man's mind, a child's muscles... it was a cruel combination.
Edward slept on a torn rug in the corner, one arm flung over his face, snoring with the confidence of a drunk sailor twice his size.
Through the thin walls, Leonard and Eleanor spoke in low voices.
"…needs a new coat before winter," Leonard murmured.
"And maybe sell the goat while we can," Eleanor replied.
Silence followed.
Not peaceful silence.
The kind that arrived when both people knew the answer and neither wanted to say it first.
Alaric's hand stopped moving.
His jaw tightened.
He pulled up the system screen.
[Current Balance: 397 R]
Two months.
Two months of scraps, risks, and shame tucked into corners where no one could see it.
Laundry cloth too ruined for anyone to claim. Rotten apples left behind after market day. Bent nails. Broken tools. A tarnished watch lifted from a drunk who had passed out behind the alehouse with more coin in his purse than sense in his skull.
He told himself he only took what would be thrown away, what would not be missed, or what belonged to men who had already wasted more in one night than his family ate in a week.
It was a neat argument... too neat. It was the kind of argument a thief made before he learned to sleep well.
His fingers hovered near the balance.
Three hundred ninety-seven reales.
It was not enough for chakra.
It was enough to buy food.
Not luxury, and obviously not salvation. But food. Enough to soften winter's teeth for a while. Enough to keep Eleanor's bowl fuller. Enough to stop Leonard from selling the goat before the cold even properly arrived.
Alaric stared at the number.
Food would help them survive the season.
Chakra might help him change their entire lives.
That was the calculation.
That was the excuse.
His stomach twisted.
'If they freeze because I wanted power…'
The thought refused to finish as he closed the screen, then opened it again.
[Unlock Chakra – 500 R]
One hundred and three reales short... but it was so close.
Eleanor coughed from the other room, a wet, stubborn sound that cut through the walls.
Alaric shut his eyes.
In his old life, he had wasted money on things he barely remembered. Energy drinks. Delivery food. Webnovel coins. Small comforts purchased by a man too tired to care whether he was alive or merely continuing.
Now, every coin had weight.
Every coin accused him.
Later that night, after the house had quieted and Edward's snoring had returned to its full offensive strength, Alaric slipped outside for air.
The hills near the sea were dark beneath a clouded sky. The Kenway household sat behind him, small and fragile against the slope, its weak candlelight trembling through the cracks like it was afraid of the night.
Alaric leaned against the goat pen and breathed in the salty air.
It did not help.
He missed things from his old life at strange times.
Phones. Hot showers. A real mattress. Cheap noodles. Locked doors. The ability to be alone without worrying whether loneliness meant safety or abandonment.
He missed webnovels too, though he would never admit that aloud.
The system was better, in theory. Riches, power, impossible abilities, a path out of the mud.
But the system did not warm a bed, and it did not cure Eleanor's cough. Well... not yet.
A pebble skittered nearby.
Alaric turned.
Edward flopped down beside him with a half-chewed carrot in hand.
"I'm surprised you woke up," Alaric said. "Thought you'd be dead to the world until morning."
Edward grinned. "I was pissin' in my dreams. Woke up panicked, thinkin' I'd pissed on your floor."
Despite himself, Alaric laughed.
It slipped out easier than expected.
Edward chewed his carrot and studied him with unusual seriousness.
"You okay?"
"Peachy," Alaric said, offering a small smile. "I'm good."
Edward snorted. "Liar. You always look like Da when the crops rot."
Alaric looked toward him.
There it was again, but this time he understood it properly. Bernard. Edward's father. Alaric's uncle.
The comparison was not flattering.
"It's the face God gave me," Alaric said.
Edward squinted at him, then nodded gravely. "Then God's a right prick."
Alaric stared.
Edward stared back.
Then both of them laughed, the sound small against the dark hills and the endless sea beyond them.
For a few seconds, Alaric forgot about the system.
He forgot the balance, the cold, the missing hundred and three reales, and the fact that every choice ahead of him seemed to demand betrayal in the name of salvation.
He was just a boy sitting beside another boy.
Then the wind shifted, and he remembered he was not only a boy.
Later, Alaric returned to his makeshift bed, a pile of hay wrapped in old burlap sheets inside the cramped room of the Kenway household. The hay poked at his neck. His blanket smelled faintly of smoke and damp wool.
Edward had chosen to sleep in their house that night, which meant Alaric had the room to himself.
'Small mercy...' He stared up at the low ceiling.
One hundred and three reales short.
His parents needed food, his mother needed medicine, and his father needed help he would never ask for.
And Alaric needed power, because without power, all he could do was count the ways poverty planned to kill them.
His small hands curled into the burlap.
'I'll pay it back,' he promised silently, though no one had accused him aloud. 'Every sack. Every scrap. Every coin. I'll pay it all back a hundred times over.'
The promise did not make him feel better.
But it gave him something to hold.
As sleep crept over him, one final thought surfaced.
It had been a while since he had seen Uncle Bernard and Aunt Linette.
'I wonder how they're doing,' he thought. 'And whether their latest crops sold any better than ours.'
Outside, the wind moved over Swansea, cold and patient.
Inside, Alaric dreamed of blue screens, warm houses, and hands large enough to change fate.