As Alfred looked around the abandoned warehouse, he noted the thick layer of dust coating nearly everything. Broken crates, shattered glass, and rusted metal lay scattered across the floor signs of age and long-forgotten use.
Rubbing his hands together gently, he walked toward the center of the warehouse. His steps were measured and calm; there was no rush. After all, no one was supposed to be here but him… right?
This place had served him well in the past back before he had the Tower, he had used it to experiment with magic, train in private, and test out new ideas. It was off the grid, tucked away in the forgotten outskirts of Gotham a city where no one had their own territory and reasons to mind their business. The warehouse sat right on the edge of those unspoken boundaries, making it the perfect location for someone who wanted to be left alone.
As he reached the center of the warehouse, Alfred closed his eyes and focused, shutting off all his senses all except one.
He kept his breathing calm and steady. The only sound he could hear was his own heartbeat rhythmic, steady… not too fast, not too slow. Just like any normal human's should be. But he wasn't here to listen to his heartbeat.
There was a reason he came here: to see if he could absorb the magical energy of the world around him to test if his newly formed core could draw mana from the environment.
Shifting his attention away from the steady thump of his heart, he directed his focus to the center of his chest, where the core had formed. Slowly, patiently, he reached out with his senses, trying to feel anything… anything at all.
Then he felt it
a faint warmth radiating from just behind his sternum. Subtle at first, but unmistakable.
A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. That warmth was magic. It was energy. It was proof.
He had succeeded.
As Alfred smiled, he channeled the energy from his core toward his hand, creating a small flame in his palm. It glowed with a bright, deep red color, dancing around his fingers. The fire was warm and radiant—intense enough to burn anyone who came too close. But not Alfred. The flame was his, born of his own energy, and so it could not hurt him.
A smile tugged at Alfred's face as he aimed the barrels in front of him, locking his figure onto the targets.
Span.
Snapping his fingers again, an explosion occurred in front of him, causing the barrels to ignite in flames and metal chunks to fly into the air. One of the metal pieces flew straight toward Alfred, but with just a slight tilt of his head, he dodged it effortlessly.
But then, a sudden realization struck him as he looked at the screen showing what he had done. He was in Gotham, and there was no way a man dressed in a bat costume could appear here. He chuckled wryly before leaping into the air, moving at incredible speed. He erased every trace of his presence, making it seem as if he had never been there in the first place — disappearing completely from the screen.
Alfred ran and ran, taking the long way back to the orphanage. He could have gone to the tower, but entering and exiting it required a lot of energy—and at the moment, he was low on it. Caught up in his excitement after his successful test, he had used most of his core energy on the explosion... which, frankly, he hadn't even intended to happen.
If he entered the tower now, his shadow clones might vanish, and that would lead to a whole mess of problems he wasn't in the mood to handle. He could've used some substitution techniques, but there wasn't any cursed or magical energy nearby for him to switch with. So instead, he slipped through the narrow, dark corners of the streets, his face covered by a veil of cloth, staying hidden in the shadows.
Thanks to the nameless assassin's skill from Fate and a bit of Loid's subtlety, he blended into the darkness almost perfectly. It made him look less suspicious practically invisible to the average onlooker. But this was Gotham, and this was DC. And DC had some bullshit characters that even his mid-level power would have a hard time dealing with.