Timeline: January 1988 Location: Republic of Padokea — Heaven's Arena (Floor 200) Age: 12

  A week into our hiatus, the sprawling 200th-floor suite was completely quiet.

  I sat on the carpet of the empty master bedroom, my legs crossed. Beneath my clothes, the heavy tungsten bands kept my posture rooted to the floor. Letting my breathing slow, I mapped out my aura chart in my head.

  Specialization sat at the top, a flawless one hundred percent. Conjuration and Manipulation at eighty, Transmutation and Emission at sixty. And at the absolute bottom of the spectrum? Enhancement, sitting at a miserable forty percent.

  I shook my head slightly. Fighting offensively with a forty percent affinity is a massive waste of aura. If I poured my energy into a physical punch right now, sixty percent of it would just bleed out into nothing. For a Specialist, relying on raw physical combat is a trap. I had to bridge that gap. I refused to walk into a high-level fight wasting more than half my energy on a basic strike.

  Forging a direct combat Hatsu right now would be a strategic error. I couldn't efficiently wield a weapon when my underlying affinities were flawed. Instead of focusing on offense, I needed an ability designed exclusively to force my own biological and intellectual evolution—a Hatsu that didn't just use my potential, but actively expanded it.

  I established the core condition of my first Specialist Hatsu. I called it Genius Override.

  It wasn't an active switch I would turn on for a fight. It was a passive background state in my mind, fueled by discovery. Every time I decoded a complex system, internalized a new mathematical truth, or solved a high-level problem, the Hatsu would absorb that epiphany. It would use that conceptual knowledge to permanently expand my neural pathways, increasing my cognitive processing speed. More importantly, it would act as a slow dragnet, naturally pulling my lower Nen affinities—especially that forty percent Enhancement—upward.

  I didn't want my intellect to just be a trait anymore; I wanted it to physically feed my Nen.

  I let the aura settle, locking the condition into my mind. The shift wasn't explosive, just a quiet, absolute clarity. Looking at the walls, my brain automatically began breaking down the structural physics of the suite, and with that tiny spark of understanding, I felt a microscopic, permanent expansion in my aura pool.

  It worked. But as I sat there thinking about the future, reality set in.

  Passive growth is slow. It would take years, maybe decades, of constant high-level discovery to naturally push my Enhancement to a hundred percent. If I ever ran into physical monsters like the Phantom Troupe's Uvogin or someone like Netero, I would need raw Enhancement just to survive the impact. With normal progression, reaching that level of power would take way too much time.

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  To bridge that gap and actually fight, I needed to accelerate how fast my affinities increased. That meant I was going to have to draft a strict set of Vows and Restrictions.

  I filed the thought away for my next session. The combat application and its rules would come next.

  Standing up, I adjusted the cuffs of my shirt and walked out into the expansive living room.

  Elian was sitting cross-legged on the floor, sweating slightly as he tried to meditate and feel his life energy naturally. It had been a week, and his progress was entirely normal for an unguided human. Which meant it was incredibly slow.

  "Stop for a second, Elian," I said quietly, walking toward him.

  He opened his eyes, wiping sweat from his forehead, and climbed to his feet. "I'm trying, Kaelo. I just can't feel the flow yet."

  "Meditating to open them naturally takes months," I told him. "We don't have that kind of time. Instead of waiting, I'm going to force your nodes open right now. I won't lie to you—it will feel like you've suddenly been dropped naked into a blizzard. Your life energy will immediately try to leak out of your body. Your only job is to visualize that energy as a fluid and wrap it around yourself to keep it contained. That is the basic principle of Ten."

  Elian swallowed hard, his posture stiffening, but he nodded. "Do it."

  I flared my Ren, projecting a dense, heavily controlled wave of aura directly at him.

  The invisible impact struck Elian like a physical blow. He gasped, his eyes widening in shock as the microscopic pores across his entire body violently snapped open. Instantly, a thick, turbulent shroud of orange-tinted aura erupted from his skin, venting wildly into the air like steam escaping a ruptured pipe.

  "Contain it," I instructed, my voice cutting through his panic. "Don't let it bleed out. Wrap it around your shoulders. If you lose too much, you'll pass out."

  Elian gritted his teeth, his hands trembling as he closed his eyes. He struggled to conceptualize the energy. The aura flared uncontrollably, thinning out in some places and pooling heavily in others.

  True, one-in-ten-million anomalies could master this retention in a matter of minutes. Elian wasn't a freak of nature; he was simply a highly talented, highly disciplined martial artist.

  For the first ten minutes, he simply bled aura, sweating profusely as he fought the severe physical drain to grasp the slippery sensation of his own life force. By the twenty-minute mark, his breathing finally stabilized, and the wild, venting steam began to condense closer to his skin.

  I sat on the sofa, casually analyzing his progress. He had excellent stamina and a firm will.

  Exactly thirty-two minutes after I forced his nodes open, Elian let out a long, controlled exhale. The turbulent orange mist smoothed out, settling into a steady, unbroken shroud of energy hugging his body perfectly.

  He opened his eyes, panting heavily, completely exhausted but smiling.

  "I've got it," he whispered, looking down at his glowing hands.

  "Not bad," I said, a faint smile touching my lips. Thirty-two minutes was an exceptional time for a grounded fighter. "Now that you have your aura, catch your breath. We'll start practicing the basic Nen applications right after."