Iron Bones as an Oath

Morning light spilled like water through the mist over the old streets on Tower City's eastern side, falling cold and mottled across the ground. Most people were still lost in dreams, and the streets and alleys stood empty.

Ryan had already strapped on his sandbag and taken his place at the start of the old road on the street corner.

A 50-kilogram load.

An 8-kilometer morning run around the city.

Once every day, without interruption.

He kept to a fixed rhythm, his steps landing as steadily as a pendulum. Sweat dripped from his temples down his neck, and his shoulders quietly broadened beneath the repeated impacts—but he never stopped, nor did he ever grit his teeth in anguish.

His training was not "enduring pain," but a rational reckoning—whatever he needed to improve, he would pay the corresponding price.

Ever since confirming that Nen Abilities truly existed, he had understood one thing:

"Simply approaching the threshold of Nen isn't enough."

Those who could truly survive in the world of Hunters were the ones who could force themselves through extraordinary growth even before entering the system.

To enter the circle of Nen, he had to possess the bearing of a Nen user while still without Nen.

After finishing his run, he did not rest. He immediately moved on to impact-resistance training.

In the corner of the old courtyard hung two sandbags he had tied up himself beneath a wooden beam, one soft and one hard, used respectively for "cushioned strikes" and "direct bone shock."

He took off his shirt and wrapped canvas strips around both hands.

His first punch shot out, driving straight into the lower hard bag—

"Thump."

The sandbag did not budge, but his knuckles trembled faintly. The second punch, the third... After fifty consecutive strikes, he stopped, adjusted his breathing, and began another round.

His requirement for himself was not "throw a hundred punches," but—

"Punch until my muscles stiffen, my bones shake, and my breathing turns unstable—yet my movements remain steady."

By the seventh day of training, his hands were covered in swelling and pale purple bruises. He merely iced them for three minutes, then continued.

His mother finally could not hold back any longer. At dinner, she set a tube of ointment heavily in front of him.

"If you keep hitting like this, your finger bones will dislocate." Her voice suppressed her anger. "You're only twelve. Why are you training yourself like this?"

Ryan lowered his head and looked at his slightly bleeding knuckles.

"If I train for a few more years, my body will start treating me like an adult."

"...What?"

"The place I'm going to won't care how old I am." His tone was flat as he said it, as though reciting some kind of clause.

His mother froze. "Did—did someone tell you something?"

Ryan raised his head, his gaze clear and resolute.

"I only know that true strength doesn't begin when someone learns a certain ability."

"It begins when, before gaining that ability, they can already bear every price it brings."

"I don't want to awaken Nen one day, only to find that my body, my will, and my tolerance for pain are still at the level of an ordinary person."

He paused.

"Rather than break down in pain later, I'd rather train every price into my bones now."

At that moment, the room fell completely silent.

His mother set down the ointment. She looked at his scar-covered yet calm hands, then at his blazing, determined eyes. In the end, she said nothing more and simply turned toward the kitchen.

After dinner, his father patted him on the shoulder and said only one thing:

"If you want to train, the family won't stop you. But remember this—you are not to use these things to hurt anyone unless they strike first."

Ryan nodded.

"I'll remember."

He returned outside, wrapped the canvas strips around his hands again, and faced the sandbags once more.

Tonight's wind was colder, and the sound of his fists hitting the cloth was heavier.

But in his heart, there was already a conviction clearer than the night itself:

"I will become a Hunter—not to prove that I can grow stronger, but to let this world know that I never intended to step back from the very beginning."

Late at night, the sandbags outside the old wooden house swayed in the cold wind. Their ropes creaked, as if warning that something was nearing its limit.

Ryan stood before the sandbag bare-chested, the lines of his shoulders and arms already unlike those of the boy he had been a few months ago. He slowly raised his fist. His right hand paused in the air for two seconds, then fell straight down.

"Bang!"

The sandbag shook. His wrist remained steady, muscle definition clear. The force of his punch no longer merely stirred the air; it carried an almost imperceptible pressure.

He stopped and closed his eyes.

At the instant he had thrown that punch, a current of heat had surged from deep within his abdomen, risen along his spine, flowed through his shoulder blade into his right arm, and synchronized once with the contraction of his muscles as his fist struck.

This was not the first time he had felt something similar.

But it was the first time he had consciously sensed that current of heat moving in sync with his body's exertion—rather than passively noticing it afterward.

This was a sign of Nen-Driven Muscle Response, a phenomenon that only appeared when Nen energy first began integrating into the body's control system.

He opened his eyes, took a deep breath, and punched again.

This time, before moving, he first summoned the sensation of aura, activating it from his palm before drawing it back into the crook of his arm.

"Boom!"

After the sandbag swayed lightly, a visible wave of air rose from the ground—not wind, but the momentum of air stirred by flowing Nen energy, like ripples spreading when water surged past the wall of a pool.

His arm burned, and his hand bones tingled, but he did not retreat.

Instead, he stepped forward and threw another punch.

With every strike, the layer of aura attached to it became more stable. He no longer needed meditation to touch his aura. In combat movements, he used his muscles, skeleton, shifting center of gravity, and breathing contractions as channels for Nen flow, allowing aura to naturally adhere to his actions.

This was the initial state of a Nen fighter advancing toward Ren.

Ten minutes later, he stopped. His breathing was disordered, his body temperature high, and both fists were red and burning. He dropped to his knees, not because of pain, but because amid his exhaustion, a new image appeared in his mind.

A weapon appeared in his consciousness.

Not a slingshot, nor a fist blade.

It was a short gray-silver staff with an extremely simple structural outline. Its surface was covered in recessed grooves, like an "energy-storage chamber" that guided airflow into its core. In his meditative image, he called it:

"Silence Arc · Initial Form"

It was not a physical manifestation, but the structural outline of an imagined Nen weapon.

He simulated its mechanism in his mind:

Nen flowed from his dantian → compressed through his shoulder and entered the Nen staff → the curved guide grooves compressed the aura → the end released it to form manifested projectiles;

With proper control, it could be shaped according to his will into three attack modules: "piercing strike," "scattershot," and "returning arc."

He immediately got up, returned to his room, and wrote:

[Prototype Design for a Conjuration Nen Technique]

Temporary name: Silence Arc

Structural properties: Conjuration × Long-range × Compressed Nen Beam Projection

Internal mechanism analysis:

Aura gathered → Nen grooves guided it → curved components bent Nen and stabilized pressure

Output classifications: Piercing Line × Scatter Fan × Pressure Ring

Control difficulties:

When Nen reserves are insufficient, stability is weak and output scatters

Emotional loss of control may cause the Nen arc to become chaotic and recoil

Without sufficient meditation, the manifested construct cannot be maintained for more than 30 seconds

He wrote another line beside it:

"With bones, bear pain; with fists, bear aura; with the arc, bear Nen."

He knew this was not its final form.

But he was no longer standing before the door.

He was now inside it, walking toward the world that belonged to true Nen Ability users.