Monster.
That was the only word Naomi could think of as she stared at the man training just a few paces away. She sat back against the grimy wall of her shabby shop, a cigarette smoldering between her fingers, its cherry a lonely pinprick of light in the gloom of the alley.
The air was thick with the scent of old paper, stale incense, and the faint, sweet-sickly smell of death that always seemed to linger near a Hunter. It had been four days since he walked into her life, a duffel bag stuffed with money and the insane request to "teach me Nen." Four days, and she was already questioning whether she had unleashed something dangerous upon the world.
Naomi had been a Hunter once. A well known and high ranked hunter. She had traveled to places where death was a constant companion, met some monsters before the world even had a name for them, crossed swords with Exorcists, and fled from monsters that lurked at the edges of human knowledge. She had met geniuses. She had met prodigies. She had met killers. But she had never met someone like this. Kenji Takahashi was not normal.
When he had asked her when they should start, she had immediately said they should start then and there. She had told him she would only teach him for a week, and if he didn't grasp it, that was on him. She wouldn't care, and she wasn't going to return a single jenny of the three million.
He had agreed, like it meant nothing, a casual shrug of his shoulders, his confidence so absolute it felt like a silent taunt. She had seen countless fools like him, swaggering in, thinking they could stroll in, learn Nen, and become a god.
All of them had failed, barely learning anything before giving up, some dying outright because they couldn't control the flow of their own life force as it bled away from them. But this man, this monster wearing a human face, was not one of them.
She had unlocked his aura nodes, a process that usually took minutes, even for those with a natural affinity for Nen to learn how to control.
Most people stumbled, overwhelmed by the sudden flood of energy coursing through their bodies for the first time. The sensations were often so intense that they would pass out, their bodies violently rejecting the new flow.
But within a minute, he had figured out how to close and open his nodes at will. Her jaw had nearly hit the floor, and she barely suppressed a gasp.
He was no longer just someone who wanted to learn in that moment, he was something else in her eyes. He was an anomaly. The bastard just opened and closed his aura nodes in succession before turning to her and asking, "What's next?" He was smiling as if it were nothing more than a simple party trick. A child, playing with a new toy. A chill crawled up her spine.
It was a complete violation of everything she knew, a terrifying talent that made a mockery of every grueling day she had spent mastering her own aura.
She sat him down and, with a deep sigh, began to explain the Four Major Principles of Nen.
Ten (Envelop/Shroud): Keeps your aura from leaking away, forming a defensive shroud, and preventing exhaustion. It is a state experienced users maintain even while sleeping.
Zetsu (Suppress/Null): Halts the flow of aura completely. This hides your presence from other Nen users but leaves you vulnerable to attacks.
Ren (Refine/Enhance): Projects a larger, more intense output of aura than Ten, increasing your physical strength and durability.
Hatsu (Release/Act): Your personal expression of Nen, where you create a unique ability based on your innate aura type.
Naomi took her time, explaining each principle in-depth, showing him examples with her own subtle aura. With that, she had sent him away, telling him to come back only when he had mastered the first three principles, not just used them, but mastered them.
She had expected to not see him again for at least a while, maybe even longer. A creature like him might learn faster than most, but mastering something still took time.
So when he appeared the very next morning, she had been ready to throw him out, convinced he was a fraud, only for him to declare, calm as ever, that he had mastered them.
She couldn't believe it. She had demanded proof.
And proof did the monster provide. He showed the ease with which he could use the abilities, his aura a seamless, fluid part of him. He could shift from a powerful, surging Ren to a complete, untraceable Zetsu with a speed that defied logic.
He could maintain Ten while engaging in a casual conversation, a feat that took most Hunters weeks if not months to achieve. She had no choice but to acknowledge it, her mind still reeling. The sheer speed of his progress was incomprehensible. It was a cold, terrifying fact that she, a veteran Hunter, had just been effortlessly outpaced by a man she'd known for less than twenty-four hours.
Then she moved on to the advanced Nen techniques.
Gyo (Focus): An advanced application of Ren that concentrates a larger-than-normal portion of aura into one specific body part.
In (Conceal): An advanced version of Zetsu that renders a user's aura or Nen constructs completely imperceptible.
En (Circle): A technique that combines Ten and Ren to extend a user's aura into a spherical shape around their body, allowing them to sense anything that enters the area.
Shu (Enfold): An advanced form of Ten that allows a user to extend their aura to an object and treat it as an extension of their own body.
Ko (Temper): A high-risk, high-reward technique that concentrates 100% of a user's aura into a single body part for an extremely powerful, focused attack.
Ken (Fortify): A defensive technique that maintains a sustained, uniform state of Ren across the entire body.
Ryu (Flow): The most advanced technique for Nen control, allowing a user to adjust the distribution of their aura in real-time by rapidly shifting between Ken, Gyo, and Ko.
Teaching him all of this and watching this creature perform them, even if they were shaky at first, was frightening.
He seemed to focus on a technique until he learned it, even if just a little bit, before moving on to the next.
After performing every one at their lowest forms, he started focusing on one at a time. That's when she noticed that with each try, he got better and better. His initial attempts at Gyo were clumsy, his aura a blunt force that didn't quite settle.
But within a few hours, it became a razor-sharp blade. His En, which she thought would take him weeks to even manifest, was a faint, wavering bubble by the end of the day, but by the next day, it was a solid, undeniable sphere. By the end of the day, he had already reached a level most Nen users would envy, even those who had trained for years.
He had said his goodbyes and left for the day. That night, she had to break out a few bottles, drinking herself into a stupor just to find unconsciousness, her mind still stunned by the man.
He was terrifying.
She felt like she had just armed a wolf with claws sharper than steel, and she was terrified of what he would do next. But she wasn't going to stop teaching him. It was just....she couldn't explain it, but she would not stop.
By the third day, he came around. He seemed to already be messing around with Nen in ways others would only dream of. She had thought he would be ready to learn Hatsu, but he surprised her, saying he was going to wait a few days as he perfected the advanced techniques. She had left early that day, and on the fourth, he had already surpassed her in the advanced techniques. She was baffled. She had taught him everything she knew, and he had learned it all in less time than it took most people to master a single principle..
Now they stood at the edge of Hatsu. It is the unique supernatural ability created by a user that expresses their individual aura in a specific way. A person's Hatsu is often a reflection of their personality, life experiences, and emotions, which in turn determines what type of Nen they are most compatible with.
Enhancement: Strengthens an object or a person's body parts and improves their natural abilities.
Transmutation: Changes the properties of a user's aura to mimic something else.
Emission: Separates a user's aura from their body, allowing it to be projected over a distance.
Manipulation: Controls living or non-living things by infusing them with aura.
Conjuration: Creates objects out of aura.
Specialization: A category that lies outside of the other five and includes all unique abilities that don't fall into the other types. It is the rarest Nen type.
To determine Kenji's Nen type, she decided to use the water divination test. The result, to be honest, wasn't shocking. She was half-expecting it. She had watched as Kenji stared at the glass of water on the counter.
She had explained the test, but he didn't seem to be listening. Instead, the water shimmered oddly, neither rising nor shifting. A pulse of something foreign ran through it, twisting the reflection in unnatural ways.
Specialist.
'Of course. What else could he be?' Naomi exhaled smoke, muttering to herself. "Figures, this monster would roll Specialist." It was the most unpredictable, the most terrifying, the most dangerous category of them all. She had a chilling premonition that whatever Kenji created would be horrifying.
Kenji didn't seem surprised. He simply stared at the cup as though the result confirmed something he had already suspected. His lips quirked in the faintest smile.
Inside, Kenji felt a hum in strange resonance with Nen.
A Specialist. The most unpredictable, the most flexible category. It fit him. His life had been about systems, learning new skills, and exploiting mechanics.
Not all that surprising, Specialists were more like that group where people didn't really know much about. It was where the ones that didn't fit the other types fell into.
Kenji had already had a feeling that he would get this type of nen, he linked it to his systems being the cause. They are, in a sense, a deep part of him, and unlike other things, his system was all about freedom to any path, in a sense like a specialist.
A wave of morbid curiosity washed over him. What would a Hatsu based on his Gamer System even look like? It was a frightening thought. He could create an ability that granted him a temporary stat boost on top of his normal stats, or a way to manipulate the very "rules" of a fight. His mind ran through possibilities.
A Hatsu that let him "save" a moment in time, only to revert to it if he got into trouble. This was beyond just creating a magical ability.
Naomi stubbed out her cigarette, uneasy. In four days, Kenji had gone from a complete novice to surpassing her. And now, with his Specialist affinity revealed, she knew one thing for certain, if this man lived long enough to master Nen, he would be a calamity.
And calamities never passed unnoticed.
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