The Will of Stone

Tower City's winter was dry and cold, with wind carrying dust through the gaps between the high-rises. At six in the morning, the streets were still dim and hazy. Most children were still sleeping beneath their blankets, waiting for the school's wake-up bell, but Ryan had already completed his second lap of the morning run.

He ran along the road around the residential district, his pace steady and his breathing even. Every step landed on the balls of his feet, minimizing the impact fed back into his knees. A simple weighted harness wrapped around his body. It did not seem heavy, yet it kept every muscle in his body slightly tensed.

Running was not a warm-up. It was the foundation—the first thing he did every day, something he had never once abandoned over the past few years.

After his morning run, he spent fifteen minutes warming up his joints and checking the state of his core strength. Then he washed up, ate breakfast, and left on time with his schoolbag.

School was the only part of his daily life that required him to "blend into the crowd." At school, he kept a low profile while maintaining top grades. He never fought for attention or showed off. Teachers liked his composure, while the students treated him with a hint of awe—they neither bullied him nor approached him easily.

After school, he did not play or fool around. He went straight to his backyard, changed clothes, and entered the second stage of training.

This stage focused mainly on strength and reaction training. His training system had developed from the initial sit-ups and kicking exercises into a complete set of modules:

Weighted squats combined with dynamic footwork;

Continuous evasion simulations under resistance-band traction;

Segmented resistance training for both shoulders and his wrists;

Low-speed precision correction drills targeting an old wooden post.

Each exercise had its own schedule, number of repetitions, rest ratio, and weekly feedback log.

He was disciplined to the point of being harsh.

It was not because anyone was supervising him. He had long since come to regard "training" as the "root structure" of his daily existence—as long as he completed those tasks, his existence had direction, rhythm, and a place to belong.

At night, the aroma of dinner filled the house. As usual, his mother asked, "How many laps did you run today?"

"Eight." His answer was neither more nor less than necessary.

His father bit down on his chopsticks and laughed. "This kid has his life more planned out than I did when I was young."

"He's already ten, but he's still this self-disciplined. He doesn't even crave candy or ask about the game console." His mother sighed.

"Other people's kids are always shouting for this and that, but you spend every day staring at that notebook, writing and drawing, and sitting cross-legged with your eyes closed whenever you get the chance. Just how old are you, anyway?"

Ryan neither argued nor denied it.

He simply smiled, calmly took a sip of soup, and replied, "It's faster this way."

"Faster?" His father raised an eyebrow. "Faster for what?"

"To grow up." After saying that, he continued eating.

His answer left the dinner table silent for a brief moment.

There was a complicated look in his mother's eyes, while his father frowned. In the end, though, he merely shook his head with a smile. "Sigh, what kid thinks about things like this?"

But they both knew that this child had long since become different.

That night, Ryan sat on the meditation cushion in the corner of the room as usual. The room was so quiet that he could hear the ticking from the water meter box. He slowly sank his awareness into his body, relaxing as his breathing rose and fell in rhythm with his heartbeat.

He knew that he was still one layer away from the door to "awakening aura." But his heart was utterly calm. If someone asked what his strongest ability was now—

It was not strength, speed, or technique.

It was—stability.

He was so stable that no disturbance from the outside world could disrupt his will, so stable that he never grew tired despite doing the same thing day after day, so stable that even without any progress, he could keep moving forward.

That was the true starting point of his becoming a "Hunter."

Not through talent, but through a will as unmoving as stone.

Night fell, and the city's clamor gradually sank beneath the lights and shadows. The houses in Tower City's western district seemed especially quiet in the winter night. Only the occasional sound of a gas stove from a corner and the barking of dogs reminded him that the neighborhood was still breathing.

Inside the house, Ryan sat alone on a small mat in the farthest corner of the training room.

For two weeks straight, he had extended his nightly meditation to thirty minutes. Before entering the state each time, he washed his hands and feet and adjusted the line of his spine, ensuring that not a trace of unnecessary tension remained in his body.

That day, he no longer deliberately "visualized aura," nor did he force himself to "search for a sensation."

He did only one thing—gently pushed his awareness beyond his body.

He was not leaving his body, nor was his spirit wandering away.

Instead, he let his "core of perception" gradually move from his head, chest, and abdomen toward every boundary on the surface of his body.

Fingertips. Toes. The backs of his hands. Shoulder blades. Jaw.

Under the gaze of his intensely concentrated awareness, these parts at the outermost edges of his body became more "sensitive" and yet more "blurred" than before.

They were sensitive because he seemed able to feel the movement of the air. They were blurred because something invisible seemed to exist within that movement—a "screen" much like a membrane in water, thin and unseen, yet clearly capable of "bouncing back tactile sensations."

He did not open his eyes, but he "saw it":

A line of "aura," neither light nor flow, slowly circulated one inch beyond his skin.

He knew it was not an illusion.

It was the outermost "Pre-Aura Sensory Membrane" in the Nen Ability system.

He had not yet awakened "aura."

But he was already standing before that door, his fingers lightly pressed against it, able to sense the warmth and breathing beyond the wooden panel.

At that moment, he felt no excitement.

He merely drew in a deep breath.

He slowly withdrew his awareness from meditation and opened his eyes, their depths calm and undisturbed.

After standing up, he walked to the wall, tore off a memo sheet, and wrote:

[Critical Experience Record · Pre-Aura Sensory Membrane Response]

Time: Meditation Day 326 (10 years, 2 months old)

Experience:

Awareness successfully projected beyond the body's surface

Felt "spatial echoes" and a "floating epidermal membrane sensation"

No aura movement, spontaneous heat, or self-generated spinning/flow sensation appeared

Judged to be a "boundary displacement micro-sensation" in the pre-aura structure

Conclusion:

The training system is effective. Bodily sensations have entered a "non-conscious-imaginative" state, making continued contact with aura possible.

He carefully pasted the note at the top of the "Perception Log" section in his notebook.

At that moment, he understood:

True "awakening" would not be an explosive miracle. It would be the faint instant when, after hundreds of meditations and training sessions each day, aura finally answered your call.

And he had already touched the edge of that glimmer.

The next morning, he ran eight laps, finished breakfast, and went to school with his schoolbag as usual. As he passed a familiar neighbor at the street corner, the neighbor teased him:

"Well, look at that. The little grown-up isn't late again? I saw you sitting alone in the yard with a notebook for an hour yesterday. Practicing immortality or something?"

He smiled politely. "Writing in my journal."

"You really don't seem like you're ten. You're more like an old scholar."

He did not respond, merely nodding with a smile.

—He had long since grown used to other people not understanding him.

Because they did not know that what he recorded was not a diary, but the steps of his ascent toward the world of Hunters.

They also did not know that he was not walking through childhood, but through the tenth year of his path of cultivation.