Gaze Beneath the Ring

As dawn began to break, Ryan left the makeshift forest camp and set out once more for Heaven's Arena. His backpack was small, yet exceedingly heavy. It held not only the basic survival gear needed for wilderness hunting, but also an obsession he could not share with anyone else—the yearning for Nen, his forecast of the limits of survival in the future, and the hidden anxiety he had to bear as someone who "knew the truth of this world."

The district surrounding the arena was already teeming with people, while enormous LED screens cycled through information on the day's matches on every floor. Floors 1 through 20 were the domain of newcomers, filled with street fighters, retired underground boxing champions, and young people simply hoping to try their luck. Ryan did not rush into battle. Instead, he took a registration number for the lowest floor and moved quietly through the crowd. He did not see himself as a "challenger," but as an "examiner"—he wanted to see whether Heaven's Arena truly contained Nen Ability users.

He fought his way from the 1st floor to the 10th without suspense. He barely used his full strength; with reaction speed, judgment of angles, and disruptions to his opponents' expectations alone, he could end a match within thirty seconds. The audience called him a "calculating fighter," but he did not care. After every fight, his attention was instead drawn to the stands: he was looking for someone.

Not a relative, nor prey, but a figure from his memories.

In the original story, Gon and Killua arrived at Heaven's Arena after the Hunter Exam. When they finally reached the 199th floor, the Nen released by a defending fighter nearly paralyzed them. For the first time, they experienced a world where "there were rules beneath power." That oppressor was not an enemy, but a "gatekeeper before the door."

Afterward, the bespectacled man named Wing appeared before them and, with the bearing of a teacher, opened the door to Nen. Gentle, restrained, and never showy, he taught them the basics of Ren, Ten, and Zetsu in the shortest possible time, then used Water Divination to determine their affinities.

Ryan remembered it clearly: that guidance had not happened atop some lofty stage, but in a corner of the arena.

And at this point in time—the original protagonists had yet to arrive at Heaven's Arena. If the timeline had not shifted, Wing and his disciple Zushi should currently have been observing the lower floors and conducting private training. Zushi was only ten back then. He had not yet awakened Nen, but already possessed an excellent foundation in combat.

That was why Ryan had been searching for them from the 1st floor onward.

Then, before the third match on the 13th floor had ended, he finally saw two familiar figures.

Near the back of the spectator stands sat a tall, thin man in gold-rimmed glasses and a light gray shirt. He sat quietly, his expression focused and his gaze sharp as a carving. Beside him was a boy of around ten, dressed neatly in training clothes, with his backpack placed flat at his feet as he diligently recorded the movements in the ring.

The boy's center of gravity was stable. His neck was often tilted toward his mentor in a listening posture, and he turned the pages of his notebook with remarkable speed—this was a method of "recording the structure of live combat in real time," not a training technique an ordinary gym coach would use.

Ryan did not need confirmation.

Wing—the Shingen-ryu instructor; Zushi—his only disciple. In the original story, the two of them had sat quietly by the corridor below the 200th floor, watching two boys challenge the threshold of Nen.

They were right before his eyes.

But he did not approach them.

A truly respectable strong person could not be disturbed simply because someone "knew the plot." Wing was not a Nen Ability "missionary"—he was only willing to guide those willing to believe and seek for themselves.

So Ryan chose silence.

He did not strike up a conversation. Instead, he returned to the ring and prepared for his next fight. He would make Wing notice him through his methods—not through words, but through the logic of his actions.

In his own way, through strength, judgment, and a structure of awareness "beyond Nen," he would enter that door.

From the 14th floor onward, Ryan's fighting rhythm began to change. He no longer pursued "quick victories," instead choosing to "complete multi-step structural tests in an extremely short time"—he would deliberately let opponents enter mid-range, intentionally mislead them with feints, then deflect incoming attacks from unconventional angles while maintaining minimal movement. Many spectators mistook this style for "showboating," but by the third match, Wing frowned slightly and turned his gaze toward him.

Zushi quietly asked beside him, "Was that an intentional opening?"

Wing answered, "He was luring the opponent in to test the elbow-angle route... This kind of handling does not suit ordinary martial artists, but if he has Conjuration potential, then this behavior could be categorized as a 'projected reactive framework.'"

Zushi did not understand, but he wrote it down.

In that fight, Ryan ultimately finished the match in 3 minutes and 11 seconds. Though it had taken longer, he had dragged a large-built fighter known for overwhelming pressure from the opening into a defensive blind spot, completely breaking his rhythm until he voluntarily surrendered in confusion.

For the first time, Wing stood after watching a match. Before leaving with Zushi, he gave Ryan one last look.

The next day, after his match on the 20th floor, Ryan was notified that he had received an "observation training invitation." The location was the Martial Arts Hall on the 26th floor.

He knew it was time.

He was not going to ask for guidance, nor to become a disciple. Rather—he would verify in his own way whether the "door of Nen" was willing to open to him.

He brought his notebook and wrote a line on the blank first page:

"The final verification before entering the system. Only one who breaks the impasse deserves to speak of creation."

As the sun slanted westward, light and shadows stretched beyond Heaven's Arena. Standing before the glass window, Ryan looked past the cityscape and saw something that stood a level higher than Nen:

His own fighting style.

From the 14th floor onward, Ryan's fighting rhythm changed noticeably. He no longer fixated on ending matches efficiently, but began consciously controlling the pace. Even when opportunities arose to finish an opponent directly, he chose to "yield," giving them room to catch their breath and regroup.

But it was not mercy. It was testing.

His movements remained precise, but the frequency of his attacks shifted. He would deliberately expose one side of his body, forcing his opponent to attack on instinct. Then, exploiting the momentum of their assault, he created "misleading responses" at several critical angles before finally completing his counter with minimal energy expenditure.

For instance, in his match on the 15th floor, his opponent was a powerful fighter with a boxing style, skilled at straight punches and hooks. His attacks beat like drumbeats, sharp and relentless in rhythm. Ryan deliberately maintained a bowed-head defensive posture for the first six seconds, luring the man into concentrating his force on high attacks. Once the attack frequency stabilized, Ryan suddenly leaned back, shifted his feet diagonally two inches, lowered his center of gravity, and sent him reeling with a single backhand elbow—though the entire sequence took no more than three seconds, it contained as many as seven movements.

Someone in the stands shouted that he was "putting on a show," and some even accused him of wasting time.

But Wing did not misjudge him.

At the edge of the viewing platform on the 16th floor, he frowned slightly, his gaze fixed on Ryan's footwork as though calculating something.

During a break between fights, Zushi softly asked, "Was that... an intentional opening on the left? But hadn't his left foot been angled forward in a misaligned position just now?"

Wing nodded lightly and said evenly, "He was luring the opponent in to test the elbow-angle route... But he did not truly use an elbow strike. Instead, he made a slight adjustment to his shoulder line and twisted into a counterattack ahead of the opponent's conscious prediction. That was not reaction. It was structure."

Zushi's eyes widened slightly. Although he still did not fully understand, the "complex yet restrained" structure of that fighting style had already deeply attracted him.

"Teacher, is that kind of style more common among Conjurers?"

Wing did not answer directly. Instead, he said in a low voice, "If his Nen affinity is Conjuration, then this is the mindset of a 'reaction-map construction type.' It is simply that—right now, he is using muscle and judgment rather than aura."

Zushi did not understand, but he wrote it down. One day, he would understand.

And after finishing that fight—a battle lasting 3 minutes and 11 seconds, in which he had never truly exerted himself, yet had led a pressure-based opponent into a tactical trap and ultimately forced him to surrender in disarray—Ryan turned and left without looking back.

But he knew someone had noticed him.

For the first time, Wing stood after watching a match. He adjusted his cuffs, took Zushi with him, and before the crowd had fully dispersed, looked at Ryan once more.

It was neither encouragement nor selection.

It was merely confirmation.

Confirmation that the fighting style this boy had constructed was not merely superficial—that outside the door of Nen, he had truly begun to sketch out a structure that had yet to be named.

The next day, he received a "private training invitation" from the Heaven's Arena management system. It listed only one location: 26th Floor · Martial Arts Hall.

He was not surprised.

He was not going to ask for guidance, nor to become a disciple—he had long understood that true strength never depended on external instruction, but on a penetrating understanding of one's own structure. Wing did not teach "the strong." Wing only taught those "who had already reached the doorway and were one step away from breaking through themselves."

And he was someone willing to break through.

That night, Ryan sat at the crude desk in his dormitory and opened the first page of his tactical notebook.

Using black ink, he wrote:

"The final verification before entering the system. Only one who breaks the impasse deserves to speak of creation."

Outside the window, the city lights blazed. Towers rose like a forest, and Heaven's Arena pierced the sky. The light at its peak swayed amid the clouds like some distant, unreachable signal.

He rose and walked to the window. His gaze passed over neon lights and streetscapes before settling on the tower. He did not know whether the world above that tower was truly filled with powerful people as he expected, but he knew—

If he did not master Nen, he could never become someone who truly made it to the end.

But now—

He had already taken the first step.