Before dawn had broken, the residential district on the lower levels of Heaven's Arena was still steeped in the silence before sunrise. Ryan's steps home, however, were heavier than usual. His left shoulder throbbed faintly, and his dark coat bore a grimy stain of blood and dust that stood out all the more after drying. He had wanted to slip inside and tend to his wound quietly, but the old wooden floorboards in the hallway ultimately betrayed his slight stagger.
"Creak—"
The sound startled his mother, who was still busy preparing breakfast in the kitchen, like an alarm bell.
"Ryan, is that you?" His mother's voice cut through the half-awake dawn light, weary yet uneasy.
He had no choice but to answer, "Yeah, I just got home."
His mother came out of the kitchen carrying a bowl of hot porridge. She had intended to nag him, as usual, about coming home too late, but the instant she looked up, her pupils contracted—she saw the torn fabric at his shoulder and the bloodstains on the hem of his coat. Though he had dealt with them hastily, the injuries and damage were still glaringly obvious.
"What happened to you? Is that blood?" Her voice abruptly rose as she quickened her pace, even spilling some porridge from the bowl.
Ryan instinctively took a step back, then forced himself to remain calm. "It's nothing. I took a detour past the construction site on my way home yesterday, tripped, and hit an iron pipe."
He tried to keep his tone steady, thinking he could brush it off with that excuse.
But his mother was no sheltered, inexperienced woman. She had accompanied her husband from construction sites back home in her younger days and had seen all kinds of injuries. She looked at the unnatural stiffness in Ryan's left shoulder, the faint pattern of abrasions visible beneath the bandages, and the traces of gray mud and weeds on his pant leg—these were not marks left by a simple fall. They looked more like the sorry state of someone who had fought on the ground and been patched up roughly afterward.
"Did you go off by yourself again to do some kind of ridiculous 'self-training'?!" she demanded, the corners of her eyes reddening with anxiety. "You're still just a kid. Do you know how dangerous that is?"
Ryan fell silent. He knew that any further explanation would only make things worse. He did not want to tell a bigger lie, but he could not tell the truth either. If he did, all he would gain was his parents lying awake all night and worrying all day. He neither wanted them to think he had become obsessed to the point of madness nor wanted to lay "the truth of the world" before two ordinary people.
"I... really just fell down," he repeated softly, his gaze settling on the old boiler heating water behind his mother, as though it were the safest refuge he could look at right then.
His father came out as well. Older, his eyes carried the weariness and experience of years of labor. He did not rush to question him. He merely glanced at Ryan's injured shoulder, his brow furrowing deeply. Yet instead of scolding him, he sighed and said quietly, "Eat something warm first, then put some medicine on it. Whatever it is, we'll talk after you eat."
In that instant, the air seemed to grow heavy.
His mother's anxiety had not faded, but she turned back toward the kitchen to get the first-aid kit. His father silently sat at the dining table and set out the bowls and chopsticks, never once meeting his son's eyes. He only shook his head gently.
At this meal, all three had their own thoughts. His mother did not press him again, his father said nothing, and Ryan simply ate with his head lowered, as if every extra mouthful of food could swallow down all the pain and mud from the night before.
And that silence instead became the only tenderness they could protect together.
His injuries had not healed, but Ryan did not stop moving forward. He knew that a few days of rest could heal his body, but not the gap in his understanding that had been exposed. He had always been used to reviewing his battles, but this time—this was the first time he could not find a clear reason for his victory.
His victory that night had ultimately relied on the environment, planning, striking first, and a little of the enemy's stupidity. He had dodged blunt weapons, countered their pursuit, knocked down those who had been isolated, and escaped the encirclement. But he had not defeated anyone head-on. He could not even explain why, when the other side swung their clubs, he had been able to predict the trajectories of their movements and react so quickly—what he had relied on was neither skill nor muscle memory, but a vague "intuition."
"That wasn't a reaction I should have been capable of," he murmured.
At that moment, he realized that he had not controlled something. Rather, something had awakened an instinct within him. When adrenaline flooded his senses, he had faintly perceived the flow of the air around him, the direction of the enemies' aura, and even an indescribable "pressure" emanating from the motion of their raised clubs.
It was something he had never experienced before.
He began to think.
This world was not an ordinary one. The "power" that could shatter rock, control fire, and turn playing cards into killing weapons was not merely a spectacle broadcast on television to attract attention. From Hunter Exam clips he had watched as a child, rumors from his father's coworkers at construction sites, and notes he had casually come across in the library, he had caught that word countless times—
"Nen."
He did not know what it was, and no one had ever told him. But he could clearly feel that all the battles, training, patience, and physical conditioning he had experienced had reached a critical point.
He began searching for answers.
He went through the piles of old books at home, ran to the library to search for books on "aura," "inner power," and "meditation," and even pulled up fragmented recordings from old Hunter channels—those powerful fighters battling in the upper floors of the arena, those figures whose eyes held both sharpness and composure, surpassed ordinary people in every movement.
During a late-night meditation session, he suddenly felt a faint surge of warmth return with his breath—like some kind of gas pumped outward by the heart briefly gathering along the surface of his skin before being absorbed again. He immediately broke off his meditation and opened his eyes, staring at his empty hands. He saw nothing. But the memory of that flow was real.
He knew it was not an illusion.
This "aura" had always been inside him; he had simply never mastered how to use it. What he lacked now was a path, a body of knowledge that could turn chaotic power into something concrete.
"I need to figure out what it is," he said firmly. "Not imagine what it is."
This time, he was not going to guess. He was going to verify it.
He stopped practicing imagined weapon swings and stopped simulating those fictional battle routes. He began trying to control that aura: using his breathing as a guide, coordinating it with muscular movement and mental focus, attempting to "call forth" the fluctuations of that presence.
Of course—he failed most of the time.
But he was no longer anxious. He knew this was not a matter of willpower, but of method and understanding. What he needed was guidance.
Then he suddenly remembered. In the original story, Gon and Killua had come to Heaven's Arena to earn money and train.
But what had truly changed their fates was when they reached the 200th floor—the Nen pressure, like killing intent, released by the arena guard had nearly made them lose consciousness.
It was neither fists nor technique, but a kind of power they had never heard of and yet truly existed.
It was after that that they met the bespectacled Wing.
From him, Gon and Killua formally encountered the concept of Nen for the first time. They learned Ren, Shu, Zetsu, and Hatsu, and also used Water Divination to discover which category they belonged to.
Ryan remembered that scene with perfect clarity.
"Water Divination." He wrote those words in his notebook, his handwriting twice as heavy as usual.
He was not searching for the truth of Nen merely to become stronger. Rather, if he did not understand it soon, he might not even be able to deal with ordinary thugs.
Nen was no longer just some legend from the world of Hunters. It was a real line of survival.
Before you continue