March still held a chill in Tower City. Rain had washed the paving stones bright, and moisture dripped from the locust tree at the street corner.
Ryan sat by a fourth-floor window in the east wing of the municipal library. Spread before him was an old book—Old City Hunter Bulletin: Records of Frontier Missions.
Its cover had yellowed, its page corners curled, and its typeface looked dated, but its contents made his eyes light up.
For the first time, those pages brought him face-to-face with real Hunter missions: someone had stumbled into a trap in the ruins because they lacked information; someone had misread signals identifying friend and foe, leaving a teammate badly injured; someone had known the enemy was stronger but made the right call and escaped.
None of those stories were about winning in style. They were about surviving.
That was what he wanted to learn.
Ever since he had subdued the criminal at the grocery store, a shadow had lingered in his mind:
What if there had been no packet of lime handy? What if the man had carried a knife instead of a club? What if... he had been a Nen user?
It wasn't that Ryan lacked confidence. He simply saw things clearly.
No matter how strong he became, strength alone couldn't handle the unknown or the unpredictable. Strategy could.
From that day on, he added something to his schedule alongside daily training and meditation: mission case analysis × tactical model simulation.
He gave the section a name in his training notebook:
[Tactical Cognition Growth System · TCS]
Every evening, he selected useful case studies from the Hunter Website's public database, city newspapers' strange-occurrences columns, and the library's Hunter records, then sorted them into categories:
[Mission ID: HX-019] Mission type: ruin investigation × unknown quarry Cause of failure: the team entered the ancient well area without placing guide markers, lost their chain of reference points, and ultimately disappeared Lessons: Neglecting the ability to retrace a route is a serious beginner's mistake Set "movement anchors" during an operation to quickly reestablish bearings if disoriented Further training: → Set a "marker axis" in the simulation ground; retrace the route within five minutes to test spatial awareness [Mission ID: UR-103] Type: urban interception mission How it succeeded: the Hunter used cement pipes in an abandoned building to misdirect the enemy with sound, causing them to blunder into a trap Tactical key: When the enemy has an overwhelming advantage in strength, "route misdirection × shaping the terrain" is central to improving the odds of victory Related training module expansion: → Stack tires and pipes to create a mock "echo field" and train the ability to exploit confusion over a sound's source
He even drew diagrams predicting possible enemy behavior during missions: Which enemies would rush in pursuit? Which would pause? Which would probe for an opening? Which could be provoked? Which would turn a trap back on him?
For each type, he established a minimum response template—
"Assess the enemy's type in three seconds. Form a dispersal strategy in five."
One day, his mother opened the door and found him scribbling densely beneath his bedside lamp again. "You're eleven already," she asked softly. "Don't you ever want to go play?"
Without looking up, he answered, "I'm reading stories."
"What kind of stories make you write so much?"
"Stories about... how to win." He gave a small smile.
His mother paused and looked at him with a complicated expression, then left him undisturbed.
That night, he wrote in his training notebook:
[Strength is the bone, strategy the blade]
Strength alone could protect him from dangers he knew;
wisdom could keep him alive amid the unknown.
The best Hunter wasn't the one who fought hardest—
it was the one who saw the situation first and was still standing at the end.
He knew the awakening of his Nen Ability was drawing near.
But without wisdom as its foundation, it would be nothing more than a bullet that couldn't fly.
Wind brushed the tires in the corner of the training ground, drawing a low hum from them, as though they sensed something approaching. Dusk deepened, and the utility poles along Tower City's old streets stood like bones supporting the sky, casting mottled shadows in the yellow lamplight.
That evening, Ryan did not follow his usual training routine. He sat in a corner, opened his notebook, and wrote the day's objective on a single line:
"Combat simulation: multiple-enemy pressure structure × no direct attacks × single-route counterattack + evasive repositioning."
Then he entered the Stillness Field.
The obstacle course he had built from scrap was no longer just a place to exercise. He had divided it into a Simulation Space, a stage where he continually tested combinations of perception, prediction, and action.
He rolled into the course, set up five cardboard human-shaped targets, and quickly recalled the enemy behavior type each numbered target represented.
This time, before training began, he did something he had never done before:
He took a deep breath, closed his eyes for five seconds, and made himself imagine that these were not dummies, but real enemies.
He chose an iron plate striking the ground as his start signal.
Clang—
He moved.
First, he rolled sideways close to the ground, evading the imagined charge of an "impulsive enemy";
second, he used a flashlight to bounce light off a reflector he had hidden behind a wooden board, exploiting the imagined "manipulative enemy's" blind spot and making them misjudge where he was hiding;
third, he stepped back and used a slanted tire rack as a passageway, drawing the imagined "spreading enemy" into a narrow stretch that slowed their movements;
fourth, he deliberately made a faint noise among the roof tiles behind him, creating the impression that he was retreating. When the imagined "lurking enemy" exposed themselves to attack, he slid into position to counter;
fifth, he held still for five seconds in a cramped corner, simulating the limits of his patience and judgment when facing an "unpredictable Hunter."
No step took more than three seconds, and he had to reconstruct every route on the fly. He pushed his mind relentlessly between speed and judgment. By the time he finished the sequence, sweat had run down his spine from the back of his neck and soaked his hem.
He crouched behind a broken log like a predator waiting to catch its breath after an ambush.
The air was still. The night deepened.
He slowly closed his eyes and entered meditation.
Not to relax, but to anchor the lingering sensations of every movement he had just made.
Every exertion, every turn, every error in judgment merged in his mind, layer upon layer, like echoes.
He did not guide his aura. He simply listened to his body as he reviewed what he had done.
—And at that moment, he sensed an almost imperceptible change:
A thread of warmth rose from his lower abdomen like a ripple in water. At first it had neither weight nor direction. It was only a current, gradually seeping outward from within. Then—
it began to turn.
Not quickly or violently. He could barely even call it noticeable, but it was real—
Like the faint "external pulse" he sometimes heard between his heartbeat and his eardrums when everything was perfectly still. This time, it welled up from within him, slowly circling his spine, shoulder blades, elbows, fingers, the backs of his knees, his ankles... before finally returning to his chest.
Ryan did not open his eyes. He simply felt it.
This was no fantasy. It was aura.
It was no longer the Pre-Nen Membrane Layer floating beyond his skin. It was the flow of life arising deep within his body, an energy of consciousness awakened on its own under tactical pressure.
At that moment, he finally understood:
Nen was not something poured into him from outside. It was not light. It arose from within.
It was as though, after he had looked at the world deeply enough for long enough, the world had finally glanced back at him.
And that glance was the first door to awakening.
When his meditation ended, he opened his eyes. Night had fallen.
No one else was in the Stillness Field. Only the iron plate beside the battered tire still swayed gently—the start signal he had dropped when training began.
Now it rang again.
But this time, it did not tell him to begin. It announced:
You have completed the first threefold fusion of tactics × spirit × energy.
Back in his room, Ryan wrote:
[Eve of awakening: inward aura rotation · initial conscious control] Status: Entered meditation spontaneously after training Aura activated within the body → rotated slowly → formed an internal loop Characteristics: Not a guided flow of aura, but a spontaneous one Emotions steady, body temperature slightly elevated, muscles not tense Proposed mechanism: The alignment of "tactical pressure × cognitive activation × stable consciousness" was the key trigger Future training adjustments: · Add a mandatory post-combat meditation and integration phase · Build a two-way "dynamic simulation → static awakening" system · Prepare foundational theory for "Zetsu × containment × gradual release"
When he finished, he held his pen still for a long time.
The night breeze tapped softly at the window frame. Moonlight spilled across the paper, illuminating the small line of writing.
It read:
Next time would be the day he truly awakened.
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