"That Nen Beast of yours is pretty nice. Cute, too. But you haven't finished developing its ability, have you?"
Cheadle casually kneaded the soft, squishy Misty with both hands, making it continuously puff out large amounts of mist.
By then, the mist throughout the training ground was thicker than the steam in a sauna, reducing visibility to barely a meter.
Beside her, Dio sat at ease, watching the Nen Beast spew mist and make strange noises as he said:
"Right. I wanted to use it to deal with groups of enemies, but for now, all this mist can do is block their vision."
"You want it to suppress the enemy's En as well, right? In that case, you'll need [Restriction and Pledge]."
Cheadle immediately caught on, guessing Dio's intentions and offering a solution.
If [Restriction and Pledge] was broken down into its two components, pledges and restrictions, each was a separate variable that affected the power of a Nen Ability.
Restrictions were the essence of Nen Abilities, using risks, costs, and rules to guide an ability's development in the desired direction.
The risks involved were established according to an objective principle of equivalent exchange, but also depended on the user's talent and certain subjective beliefs.
That subjective element meant that, in a sense, the user also had to believe they had truly paid a tremendous price.
Pakunoda's restriction against touching Chrollo, for instance, was a classic example of a subjective cost.
Although it did involve an objective limitation, anyone with eyes could tell that the subjective significance it held for her carried far more weight.
As for why some people's restrictions seemed unremarkable or even almost nonexistent, yet their abilities were still immensely powerful, that was where pledges came in.
A pledge was a more subjective variable, depending almost entirely