Year 4 - Nen

"I'll tell you about all the advanced techniques in one go so you can try them out as you see fit, so bear with me. There are seven advanced techniques that all build on the four basic techniques. They are Gyo, In, En, Shu, Ko, Ken, and Ryu.

Gyo is an advanced form of Ren but rather than an overall output, you concentrate it on one body part. Most practitioners use Gyo on their eyes to see aura and Nen constructs hidden by In. In is the advanced form of Zetsu, but rather than stop the aura from flowing it hides it, making it nearly imperceptible to other Nen users.

En is an advanced application of Ten and Ren. Ren extends your aura only a few feet away from you but En extends it further than normal while using Ten to give it a shape, usually a sphere. The minimum requirement for it to be considered En is to extend it 2 meters and hold it for 1 minute. Shu is an advanced form of Ten where you enshroud an object with your aura, strengthening the weapon or object.

Ko is a combination of Ten, Zetsu, Ren, Hatsu, and Gyo where you concentrate all of your aura on one body part. Gyo focuses the aura, Ten stops it from dispersing, Zetsu stops the flow to other parts of your body, and Ren increases the amount of aura further. Ken is the advanced form of Ten and Ren where you maintain a state of ren for a long time, except the amount of aura is 10 times that of Ten.

And finally, Ryu is when you use Gyo in a state of Ken to make adjustments as needed. Gyo uses 100% on offense while Ken splits it 50/50, Ryu is using your aura as 70/30 or 10/90 or whatever is needed at the time. This is one of the more difficult to master as you have to be precise in your control of aura and make sure you're using the right amount against your opponent. I still have trouble with this one.

Phew, well that's all of them. If you need me to explain any one of them further, please let me know. If not, I'm going to go rest." he said after a long explanation.

"No, I think I got the gist of it. Thanks for staying up for me, if I have any questions I'll wait until another time." I said before he nodded and walked to his tent to rest.

'Nen is much more complicated than I realized. I should've watched Hunter x Hunter in my past life, but I always found the beginning a little bland and could never get past it. Shame on me, I guess. Anyways, let me try out the advanced techniques before I go to sleep.'

Shutting my eyes to focus, I began to go over what Guts had said about Gyo, which I think is the easier of the advanced techniques.

'Concentrate a larger than normal amount of aura into one body part. I'll try my fist first then my eyes.'

Increasing the output of my aura before guiding it into my fist, I saw the aura around my fist materialize similar to Whitebeard when he used his devil fruit. Punching forward with my left, I saw the power I had before I punched with my Gyo'ed right.

WHOOSH

The wind that was stirred up from punching with my right confirmed to me that I had successfully applied Gyo to my fist, so I decided to try it on my eyes. Repeating the same process as with my fist, once I felt I had done it, I opened my eyes and everything seemed clearer. It was as if it wasn't nighttime. I could also see the faint traces of aura that were left behind from when I punched and from when I used my Ren earlier. The surroundings were tinted with a red aura that let me know that was the traces my bloodlust left behind. Apparently, it was so strong that it tainted the environment a little bit.

'Note to self. Don't use bloodlust on normal people unless I want them to possibly die from fear.'

I stopped using Gyo before I realized that I still felt like I had more aura in the tank. Thankfully it seemed like I awakened with a big tank of aura.

'Okay, let's try out In now. I think this might be the hardest one for me to understand.'

The idea behind In is to hide your aura's flow while Zetsu stops it completely. The best way to try this out is to will my aura to become invisible, if that doesn't work which I feel like it won't, I'll try to minimize the amount of aura flowing to the bare necessity.

First, I started to will my aura to become invisible or at least become transparent. After a few minutes of trying, I realized it didn't work so I moved on to making the bare minimum amount of aura flow out. I forgot to mention it, but I was keeping my eyes open throughout this so I could confirm whether or not I succeeded in using In. But after a few attempts at making the bare minimum amount of aura flow out, I realized I did it. I could no longer sense the aura that I was moving around my body. It was as if it had disappeared.

'Interesting. To use In I have to use the bare minimum amount of aura. So In is more of a test of one's control and precision with aura while Gyo is more of one's control of power. En and the rest should be a test of both.'

After continuing to test In for a couple of minutes to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I started to move on to trying En out.

'Extend my aura further out than with Ren but give it a shape with Ten. Sounds simple enough. I'll try to meet the minimum requirements first before I go any farther, don't want to spread myself too thin. But now that I'm taking some time to think about it, I'm picking up on these techniques really fast.

Is my talent in Nen that monstrous or is it because I have experience with shaping formless energy? Would Yoruichi be able to do the same thing? Who knows, I'll think about that stuff later right now, let me continue to train.'

~~

CHIRP CHIRP

"Wake up." I heard someone say as they shook me awake. Opening my eyes to look at who awoke me, I saw Guts standing over me.

"How long have I been asleep?" I asked sitting up.

"Two days. Seems like you went overboard while training. The others were going to wake you up, but I stopped them. You should be more careful with Nen. Even if you have that monstrous talent and huge tank, running out of aura is not good." he explained.

"Oh right. I remember now. I had just finished trying out Ken when I got really tired and fell asleep." I said rubbing my eyes.

"Ken? How many of the techniques did you train in?"

"All of them minus Ryu since I fell asleep before trying it out."

"You really are a monster. You've managed to use all the techniques in one day. That's talent on par with Meruem."

"Who's Meruem?"

"When I got the training manual for Nen, it also came with some stories of the greatest Nen users in the world where it comes from. Meruem was born knowing how to use all the techniques and had a superhuman amount of aura. It seems like your talent is on par or slightly lesser than his."

"Doubt it. I think it's because I'm used to manipulating formless energy from my tk that I'm able to progress so fast. If I hadn't gotten my tk, I would probably have average talent." I explained to him my theory.

"Interesting, but unimportant. You've got a basic understanding of all the techniques so I think it's time we test what your aura type is. The faster we do this, the faster you can create a Nen ability."

"Sounds good. Let me freshen up real quick and get a bite to eat, I'm starving."

~~

"I'm about to find out my aura type, you guys want to watch?" I asked the group after I finished eating.

"Ooh, I want to watch." said Amelia.

"Okay, let's do it here Guts." I said as he went to bring a glass of water with a leaf.

"Place your hands around the glass and focus a lot of aura around your hands. Depending on the change, it will determine your type." he explained.

"Got it. Here I go." I said before placing my hands around the glass and using Gyo.

After a few seconds, the water began to flicker before it started showing random scenery.

"What does that one mean?" I asked.

"That means you're a Specialist."

"And what does that mean again?" asked Amelia.

"There are six types of Nen users, enhancers, emitters, manipulators, transmuters, conjurers, and specialists. Specialists are the most unique of the six since their Nen ability does not fall under any category and sometimes has properties of the other five. Though in the case of specialists, how the water reacts shows insight into what their ability might be." said Guts hard in thought about what my divination is revealing.

"Those are my memories. I've been to those places before."

"Memories, huh? That means your ability might be related to your memories in some way. Or perhaps your mind. Unfortunately for specialists, most of their abilities are determined the moment they awaken their nen. And some of them take a long time to realize what their ability is.

The only thing you can do for now is continue to train your Hatsu through Water Divination and hope something happens. Meditating is also a good thing to do for training your Nen in general, so you should try that as well." explained Guts.

"That sucks a little. I was hoping to get used to my new ability as soon as possible. Oh well, can't be too sour considering I've managed to master most of the techniques to a basic level." I said standing up to stretch.

"Agreed. You've shown remarkable progress and it is only a matter of time before you find your nen ability." said Guts, trying to make me feel better.

"True. Well, what's on the agenda everyone? I think I stalled our trip by a few days." I said.

"More traveling." said Yoruichi.

"We should get going then. Make up some ground."

~~

We had managed to arrive at a town right before the inn closed, after a few hours of travel. After getting our own rooms, I was now sitting with my legs crossed about to meditate.

'Guts said meditation is a good way to train your nen so I'll do that. Maybe I'll get some clues about my Nen ability.'

Making sure I was comfortable and I wouldn't be disturbed I began to slowly breathe in and then out. Thankfully it was nighttime so the sounds typical of being in a medieval town were absent and I was able to stay undisturbed.

Right as I was about to reach the five-minute mark, I was disturbed by someone dropping something on the floor above mine.

'Damn it, I was doing so well. Let me try again.'

After getting myself comfortable again, I began to breathe rhythmically and after five minutes something awesome happened.

"What the hell? Where am I?" I asked as I looked around. In front of me was now a giant castle surrounded by lush gardens and beautiful trees. I was standing on the path leading right to the castle door.

"Don't tell me this is my Nen ability? The water showed my memories and I'm standing in front of a castle. My Nen ability is a Mind Palace? Awesome. So I have to meditate before I can enter my mind palace. How do I get out of here?" I said before my eyes shot open.

'Whoa. So I just have to think about leaving, interesting. Time to explore.' I thought before meditating and ending up back in front of the castle.

'I wonder if I change what the castle looks like. It's too gothic for me, I want it to look more fantasy rather than realistic.' I thought before I saw the castle change before my very eyes. If before the castle looked gothic now the castle looked like it was ripped straight out of a fantasy novel.

'Cool. Let's see what I can find inside.'

As I made my way up the steps leading to the castle I looked behind me to see the gardens. Currently, it was just a simple grass lawn with bushels of flowers here and there with a tree each on both sides.

Turning back around to the castle, I looked at the door. A beautifully and intricately carved redwood depicting scenes of nature, gilded with silver accents. As I was approaching it, the door creaked as it slowly opened itself, welcoming its owner.

With the door opening, I was able to see a great hall that was sparsely decorated with only a small table and a chandelier seemingly made of wood. The floor was made entirely of a white stone material that made a wonderful noise as I stepped inside. At the back of the hall was a staircase, one on each side, leading up to the second floor. While to both the left and right were doors that were currently closed.

Making my way to the doors, I tried to open them but to no avail. Trying the same thing on the other one, I was similarly unsuccessful. Seeing no other way to go but up the stairs, I began to climb them. What greeted me at the top was a corridor with closed doors that ended with two big double doors just as intricately designed as the entrance.

Approaching, it also opened for me to lay my eyes on a sight of wonder. A gigantic library bigger than I had ever been in with wooden shelves and a table near the entrance. On the table, unlike the shelves, laid a book. Nearing it, I was able to read the cover and it said "Matt Garetty."

"Agh!" I yelled as I held my head, before I awoke back on my bed, panting and extremely tired.

"Shit looks like I have a time limit. Still, that is very cool, but there has to be more I can do. A mind palace is awesome, but any Nen ability has more aspects to it. It seems I'll have to slowly find out." I said with a smile on my face.

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AN

In regards to how easily he was able to figure out the techniques, I genuinely believe that anyone that has experience with shaping and manipulating energy, like tk, would be able to do the same. I think one of the reasons humans find it hard to use Nen in HxH is because they've never done something similar. Still, his talent is pretty good but it's not at Meruem or Netero levels, close though.

So he would have been able to last longer than he did if he didn't change the appearance of the castle, but he obviously didn't know that. He will slowly find out more of the intricacies of his ability over the next year and in the future.