1991.
6 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.
Early morning, sunlight streamed through the second-floor window onto the wooden floorboards.
A tapping sound interrupted the boy's focused pencil-sharpening.
He looked up and saw a round, bulging shadow cast on the floor.
When he made out the owner of the shadow, he couldn't help but mutter.
"I know I'm not an ordinary person."
"But this is a bit much."
The eleven-year-old boy stood a head taller than other children.
His tall, slender frame was clad in a gray-blue vest and small suit, the gold pocket watch chain on the vest making the pencil sharpener in his hand look as elegant as a wine glass.
He stood up and walked from the shadow into the sunlight.
Sunlight spilled over his black, silky hair, and his feather-like eyelashes fluttered against the light streaming through the window into the room.
His red-brown eyes squinted slightly against the sunlight, and beneath his handsome, refined nose, his pale red thin lips pressed together faintly.
The boy, with half Slavic blood, had none of the freckles typical of Western boys; his fair, delicate features looked like those of a young nobleman stepped out of a fairy tale.
He placed the pencils neatly on the desk, as elegantly as if arranging his own works of art.
John Wick stared outside, where an owl kept tapping on his window, trying to get in, a letter held in its beak.
This made him fall into thought.
An owl alone wasn't strange-after all, this wasn't the era of advanced messaging apps, and sending letters wasn't unusual.
But an owl delivering a letter was strange.
He observed the letter carefully. The envelope was made of thick parchment, and the writing on it was in emerald green ink.
That much was fine, but the problem was the wax seal in the center.
It was a shield crest with a capital 'H', surrounded by four animals: a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake.
"Could it be that one?"
From John's name, one could tell he was a peace-loving person, and he also had a secret unknown to others.
Yes, he was a transmigrator.
From the moment he arrived in this world, he knew he was no ordinary person-after all, he was John Wick.
Sharing a name with the god of death from the John Wick series, who slaughtered an entire gang over a dog, such a name destined him for an extraordinary life.
To that end, he had specially trained in how to kill three people with a single pencil, and had honed the technique well on his peers, earning the title of Pencil Killer.
He was confident that even in a dangerous situation, he could calmly pull out a pencil and threaten the other party into dropping their weapon.
But he truly hadn't expected that he was indeed in an unusual world-just not an ordinary one.
This world had wizards who could wave a wand and make someone forget everything, or enter your mind without hesitation to get whatever information they wanted.
A group of humans with supernatural powers, and among them no shortage of twisted madmen like Grindelwald and Voldemort.
"So my pencil-killing technique was trained for nothing?"
John glanced regretfully at the neatly arranged pencils. Ten years of relentless training, and it turned out to be a magical world.
No matter how skilled a killer you are, could you really kill a wizard?
For wizards, even the most complicated illnesses could be easily cured, let alone their elusive magic.
"Forget it. What did Confucius say? 'When you arrive, make yourself at home.' Since I'm here, let them be buried here."
After agonizing for a moment, he reached out and opened the window.
The owl, left outside for so long, could finally fly in, and angrily threw the letter at John's face.
The owl turned and flew away, not even bothering with its usual food-begging routine.
That annoying child was actually a Hogwarts freshman-how unlucky.
"Tsk, no manners. Speaking of which, are these owls raised by Hagrid? How does he put up with them?"
John took down the envelope, complained about the quality of Hogwarts' owls, and opened the letter.
"Dear Mr. Wick:
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Deputy Headmistress
Minerva McGonagall"
"September 1, still some time away."
At the same time, a voice sounded in his mind.
[Ding, discovered a hidden corner of the world. Series quest activated: Hogwarts.]
That's right-a cheat.
So-called transmigrators come with cheats.
At age five, John discovered a panel that had suddenly appeared in his mind.
This was also an important reason why he could master the pencil-killing technique by age eleven.
The panel was very simple. Aside from issuing quests, it had only two functions.
Blessing, and stat points.
Blessing, as the name suggests, was similar to stacking various buffs in a game.
Stat points could raise skill levels.
Both Blessing and stat points could be obtained by completing randomly issued quests.
For example, John's Short Weapon Mastery had already reached level 7-even with just a pencil, he could easily defeat three adults.
According to his original plan, he would use stat points to become an all-around athlete, or get into the top universities.
None of that had come to pass before this acceptance letter threw everything into disarray.
A new entry had appeared on the panel: Magic.
This undoubtedly confirmed the letter's authenticity.
It was now July.
Next, John needed to figure out how to make his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wick, accept the fact that their son was a wizard.
"John, this joke isn't funny."
Mr. Watson Wick looked at his son, expression serious: "You can use a pencil to successfully make your father run from the company to the school to apologize to four children on your behalf, but you cannot torture your father with this unfunny joke."
Watson Wick was John's father in this life. Watson had golden-brown hair and red-brown eyes, a large nose bridge paired with a well-fitted suit-the typical look of the British elite.
Actually, John took more after his mother. Mrs. Wick had the same black hair. This beauty from the bear country-even the dress she wore carried a mature charm.
As middle-class elites, the Wicks didn't believe little John's words.
Mrs. Wick was on the same side as Watson, holding a gold-rimmed bone china cup filled with coffee, her eyes showing the helplessness of a parent dealing with a child who lied.
"It was three, and I'm not joking." John retorted.
It was clearly three people-the remaining one had run over and fallen by himself, it had nothing to do with him.
"Is that so? That little chubby kid named Dudley didn't say that. He ate the entire apology cake by himself last time. Good heavens, I don't know how he managed to eat it all."
Watson looked at his son with a half-smile.
Now that he understood he was in a magical world, the more John thought about it, the more something felt off. That chubby kid Dudley-could he be Harry Potter's cousin?
In the end, after John argued his case vigorously, Mr. and Mrs. Wick still half-believingly said they were willing to give John a chance.
And so, the days passed one by one.
John also gained a new affectionate nickname from the Wicks: Little Wizard.
But somehow this news got out, and a group of kids who didn't get along with John teamed up to mock him-only to be so scared by him pulling out a pencil that they ran home crying for their mothers.
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