The rain fell in a fine, steady drizzle.
Water dripped from the eaves outside the window, striking the blue-gray bricks in the courtyard and filling the house with a dense patter. Inside, the smell of medicinal herbs, gauze, iodine, and warm water had become the entire backdrop to Ryan's life over the past few days.
Four days had passed since the injury. The scrape on his left arm had scabbed over, but a slight tear in the fascia still prevented him from performing high-intensity movements.
His mother stayed by his side almost all day. She changed his dressings three times a day and checked the wound over and over for signs of infection, afraid he might be in pain, afraid he might develop a fever, afraid he might silently endure it all without saying a word.
"If you'd turned back sooner, you would have seen him... How could you have let him save you first?"
His father had said those words on the second night after the accident. His voice had been very low, but it was the first time he had expressed genuine guilt in front of Ryan.
That night, Ryan had merely looked at his father and said quietly:
"It wasn't your fault. You didn't see him. I just happened to."
There had been no blame in those words, no complaint, and none of the childish grievance one might expect. He had spoken naturally, as if explaining why the answer to a math problem was B.
His mother's eyes reddened, and she turned away to wipe them.
They were finding it increasingly impossible to explain everything this child did with the word "age." He never cried or fussed. Even when he had been hurt the worst, he had not cried out once. He endured even the pain of turning over in bed at night by himself. He had even turned around and comforted them, saying, "I'll recover in a couple of days"—as if he were the one taking care of them.
But they did not know that it was not "premature maturity."
He had truly understood their anxiety and guilt, and had chosen not to burden them further.
Ryan was not "pretending to be sensible." He genuinely understood that this concern had to be repaid with emotional composure.
Pain did not mean stagnation, either.
He completely adjusted the rhythm of his training, shifting from his original focus on dynamic bursts of power to "static control training."
He arranged his morning training as follows:
One-handed grip exercises: He focused on his right hand, gradually increasing the duration and contraction force of each grip within a controlled period. His goal was to maintain a clenched state for more than ninety seconds at a time, repeating the exercise in sets.
Pain threshold testing: He alternated warm water and cold towels on his uninjured arm and shoulder, combining this with meditation to try to compress the "pain-response window" and train his willpower.
Consciousness-perception meditation: He continued sitting in meditation for fifteen minutes every day, attempting to shift his awareness away from his bodily center of perception—redirecting his focus to his uninjured side, his ankles, or his shoulders and back, and testing his attention's "ability to mobilize between regions."
He gave this stage of training a label:
[Restorative Stillness · Will Refinement Phase]
At the same time, he devoted more of his time to a module he had planned for a long while but had not yet systematically developed:
[Hunter World Knowledge Archive]
His father brought him a stack of old newspapers. They were public publications sent over the past few years from the northern harbor, Heaven's Arena, and the outskirts of the Hunter Association. They had originally been stored at the bottom of a chest as "work records." When Ryan saw them, he asked, "Can I read these?"
His father paused. "You can understand them?"
Ryan nodded. "I want to know what's happening outside."
His father hesitated, but still pushed the stack of papers toward him.
"Don't read for too long. You'll strain your eyes."
"Okay."
From that day onward, Ryan began his first systematic process of reading and organizing information.
On a newspaper page with a damaged edge, he saw a passage that made him stop writing:
"In the report submitted by the C-rank Hunter group 'Wind Eye' after completing its investigation into the migration of desert creatures, it was mentioned that traces of unregistered Nen flow existed in a certain area... The area was currently being designated as a gray zone by the Association."
He was not surprised by the word "Nen"—he had known of its existence for a long time. What surprised him was that the words Nen flow, traces, and Association archives had appeared together for the first time, confirming that this world's knowledge of Nen was not an absolute secret but something controlled in layers.
He wrote in his notebook:
"At the Hunter Association level, Nen is a 'recognized phenomenon,' but it remains semi-confidential to the public."
"The Hunter ranks are divided into levels, and the differences in authority between them are enormous."
"Ordinary civilians have almost no way to come into contact with Nen, but its existence can be inferred, hinted at, or glimpsed through peripheral terminology."
He divided an entire notebook into two columns:
On the left was the [Physical Development Progress Table]: his daily training and the state of his injury.
On the right was the [Hunter Common Knowledge Summary]: the Association's structure, rank divisions, examination system, frequency of dispatched missions, and examples of publicly known Hunters.
He was not blindly yearning to become a Hunter.
He was laying the foundation for becoming a Hunter—a foundation of knowledge.
Only when information was symmetrical would his goal not become an illusion.
That night, as he watched the rain still falling outside the window, he had never felt more determined.
His wound had not healed, and he had not thrown another punch.
But he knew—
He had taken another step toward the world of Hunters.
On the third day after the rain stopped outside, daylight pierced through the clouds and spilled across the old bricks in the courtyard, warm and clear.
Ryan's left arm could now be raised normally. Although he still could not put weight on it, the sharp pain no longer came with each movement. When his mother removed the gauze, she gently blew on it. "It's mostly healed, but you still need to rest it for a few more days."
"I know."
His tone was calm.
Those days of recuperation became the quietest and most contemplative period he had experienced so far.
The framework of the Hunter world grew clearer and clearer in his notebook:
The Hunter Exam was held once a year, though the schedule could be adjusted when there were "changes in Association management."
The examination sites were usually undisclosed locations, and the elimination rate was extremely high.
The exam content was not limited to combat. It covered survival, deduction, communication, psychological resilience, and many other areas.
Those who passed could obtain a "Hunter License." Its privileges exceeded those of most senior government permits, granting special access throughout the fields of finance, travel, intelligence, hunting, and more.
He devised a simulated question for himself: "If I took the Hunter Exam right now, which stage would I die in?"
His answer was direct:
"I might pass the physical screening in the first stage, but I would be eliminated during the psychological games or ability verification."
He was not pessimistic. He was simply clear-eyed enough to assess that he had not truly mastered Nen and therefore lacked his core competitive advantage.
That conclusion did not discourage him. Instead, it made him even more determined.
On the final page of his notebook, he drew a flowchart:
[Goal Simulation: Hunter Exam Preparation Model]
Target age: Take the Hunter Exam at twelve
Current age: Eight
Remaining preparation period: Four years (approximately 1,460 days)
Tasks for each stage:
Year One: Complete comprehensive physical module enhancement (target: surpass the basic adult combat threshold)
Year Two: Explore and stabilize the boundaries of Nen perception (sense aura for the first time, construct a Nen entity)
Year Three: Expand tactical cognition and establish a complete "response model database"
Year Four: Develop a combat personality and conduct simulated combat training
That night, he lit a lamp, looked at this "growth plan," and softly read it once.
He was not intimidated by its scale. Instead, he felt something he had never experienced before—a sense of belonging.
Once a goal had been given structure, it was no longer insubstantial.
At that moment, he was no longer a bystander who "knew the future plot," nor was he a child passively waiting to grow.
He had become—a "Hunter candidate" who used a clear will to chart his own path forward.
Outside the room, his mother quietly watched his hunched back as he worked at the desk, her brows faintly furrowed.
She was not unhappy. It was just that... she increasingly felt that her son was "not acting his age."
He no longer had to be urged to eat, and he never dragged his feet when doing his homework. He never cried or fussed over something he wanted to play with, and he never competed with the neighbor's children. Even when injured, he had not made a scene.
"Don't you think... he sometimes seems like a little adult?" she asked her husband tentatively.
His father scratched his head. "He's a little mature for his age. But look at how disciplined and sensible he is. In times like these, having a child like that is a blessing."
"It is a blessing." His mother nodded, then added quietly, "But it also... breaks my heart."
A few days later, Ryan resumed his training.
But the first thing he did was not resume weight-bearing exercises. Instead, he removed his old gloves, resewed the inner seams, and added a thicker layer of cloth around the palms.
It was not to make them look "professional." Rather—he was ready for the intensity of the next stage of training to enter its "stress-testing phase."
He wanted more than simply to keep practicing. He wanted to shift from "building his foundation" to "testing the limits."
Because he knew that the four-year countdown to the Hunter Exam had already begun.
And the first step was to bring both his body and consciousness into a "full-effect forging state."
Before you continue