New Life

Time passed slowly as a baby. At first, I could barely make out the world around me. Everything was too blurry, and it constantly sounded like I was underwater because of how sounds reached me. However, even though I was practically blind and deaf, I drank as much milk as possible. This was to ensure that I could grow and develop smoothly. Plus, I was certain that the liquids I was drinking were already laced with poison, which was working to develop my future poison tolerance. 

While the knowledge that I was born into the Zoldyck family wasn't comforting in the short term. Every member of this family turns out to be a beast both physically and Nen-wise. There was probably no better family for someone like me, from a modern world without ever having suffered too much to be thrown into. It would be trial by fire, but with the promise of power, I was certain I could survive being thrown into the deep end.

Speaking of power, with the ample amount of free time I had as a child, I spent most of it working on developing my aura. First, I rolled onto my stomach and placed both hands out in front of my head under the blankets. I did what I could to avoid the cameras in my room. I doubted anyone was watching me 24/7, but I was better safe than sorry. 

With my hands out in front of me, I imagined a floating ball in the middle. This was the most standard basic exercise to start sensing one's aura. It would normally take particularly talented individuals around a week of performing the exercise three times a day for ten minutes to sense their aura, but I had chosen Prince Tserriednich's talent for a reason. Within seconds, I could feel the presence of my aura.

I had to sit back for a few minutes after feeling the aura. Not due to being tired or anything like that, but out of amazement. If there had been any doubt before that, I was currently in a fantasy world. It all went out the window the moment I could feel my own innate power. While I couldn't see my aura yet due to my aura nodes being closed, I moved on to transferring the ball of aura between my hands.

I spent the rest of the day repeating this exercise to build up the amount of aura I could sense and interact with. While I did this, my mind drifted to plans for what I could try to achieve next. I could try to open the aura nodes in my eyes to gain the ability to see not only my own aura but everybody else's as well. However, what I wanted to do most at the moment was perform a Water Divination test to determine my Nen affinity.

While not exactly crucial in the short term, it was the most important thing to know for the long term. I would prefer to know my affinity sooner since I can use my relatively unproductive years as a child to plan out my future abilities more carefully. Although I knew it would be a long while before I even had the opportunity to get a shot at Water Divination. 

For the time being, I dedicated myself to more practice sensing and manipulating my aura. I also spent a few hours every day meditating to feel my aura nodes. I didn't try to open them; I just worked to sense them all to make sure that when I was ready, I could open them all at a moment's notice. 

. . . 

Time passed, and gradually, my eyes and ears adjusted to the world, allowing me to see and hear clearly. While I was glad to have greater awareness of my surroundings now, it also brought with it new challenges that needed to be overcome. The language barrier hit me like a freight train, adding an entire other layer of things to work on. 

Luckily, as I grew, I was picked up and carried around more frequently. This exposed me to more of the language as servants, and my new family interacted with one another in my presence, which I greedily drank in. Every new piece of information I could gather made the acquisition of this new language easier, but it still took months to begin to learn even the most basic words and phrases this way.

By that time, I had already begun to crawl around and even started to walk in short bursts. I had done this to try and gain greater mobility sooner since I was sure that nobody in the family would blink an eye at an abnormally gifted child being able to walk after only a few months. Plus, the physiques in this world were already superhuman, so I didn't think it was much of a stretch to start walking before I was even six months old.

In fact, walking around independently seemed to allow Silva and Kikyo to give me greater freedom and speed up my training. Now, all my clothes had just enough weight added to force me to struggle to walk normally, and every time I adjusted to the new weight, more was added. I was also moved off milk to diced but still mostly solid chunks of food and, most importantly, water. 

Of course, this new mobility came with its fair share of cons. Firstly, there was now almost always a servent following me around, if not my mother herself. My mother's interest, in particular, came with a whole set of challenges. It was obvious that she cared for me, but Kikyo seemed to delight in placing me in perilous situations and making me struggle my way out of them.

She would either pick me up and place me in the middle of a steep flight of stairs or on high furniture and encourage me to get down. If it were any other family, I wouldn't have been too worried, certain that I would get caught if I fell or moved back to the ground if I failed, but this was the Zoldyck family. I doubted that I would be saved from anything short of a life-threatening fall.

Even if it took hours for me to shimmy my way down a large table leg or dresser, Kikyo just stood there watching me with one violet eye blazing in the center of her visor. Despite the dangers that came with my mother's attention, there were also benefits. She seemed keen on reading me stories and trying to get me to learn as fast as possible, both mentally and physically. 

She commonly demonstrated how to move silently while walking and running, which proved to be fairly easy to copy. From there, she demonstrated other advanced techniques like the Rythm Echo, which leaves afterimages of the user's body to confuse opponents. The advanced techniques she tried to teach me took longer to catch on, but in the end, I was still able to memorize them even if I couldn't perform them myself.

. . .

Eventually, a short time before my first birthday, I was given a rare opportunity to act completely independently. Every member of the family, minus Illumi, was out on a mission. However, Illumi had the servants distracted with his most recent bout of joint training, where they would dislocate every joint in his body and have him pop everything back in himself. By now, Illumi was eight years old and practically a master of this, so I didn't have much time to act.

I guessed that I only had around five minutes before someone would come to check up on me. Using the time I had available, I silently rushed to a kitchen area in the house, grabbed a glass of water and a leaf from one of the many poisonous plants around the house, and rushed back to my room. There, I placed the glass on the floor away from the camera and placed the leaf on top of the water.

Then, I took a deep breath and placed my hands on either side of the glass. Closing my eyes, I hoped for either Enhancer, Transmuter, or Specialist. I took a few moments to send up a silent prayer before shaking my head free of thoughts. Then I manipulated my aura and pushed it into the glass of water.

Waiting with bated breaths, I watched the glass of water. After a moment, I stood, jaw hanging wide open as the glass of the cup turned into sand. Water spilled all over the floor as I looked down at the pile of wet sand before me. Despite the mess that I only had a few minutes to clean up, my mouth split into a grin. I'm a Specialist, I thought in excitement.

A whole new world of possibilities had just opened up to me, and I was ready to capitalize on one now. My aura node training had paid off since I was easily able to locate all the nodes in my body and figure out roughly how to open them without actually doing so. Now, with a thought, I forced them all open, and a warm, viscous aura spilled from my body in a small tide.

I only took a moment to admire seeing the aura for the first time before I channeled my Nen and desire to achieve a certain effect. I had no experience with creating Hatsu, but as a Specialist, I knew it would be much easier and more instinctual for me than if I had any other affinity. To help me focus my mind, I channeled all the aura I could, along with my raw desire, between my two outstretched hands.

After a moment, I could hear the clattering of running footsteps as some Nen-aware guards, undoubtedly feeling the surge of aura, ran to investigate. Before they arrived, I envisioned certain conditions for the ability I was crafting, and then I singularly focused everything on the point between my hands. 

After a moment, the door exploded in a shower of splinters as a surprisingly slender man entered at a run. Three more guards funneled in behind him. They held their guns out, so I assumed they were preparing to fight with Nen, but I couldn't see any of their auras. In fact, I couldn't see nor sense my own anymore. 

It was as if I had never awakened or sensed my aura in the first place. Nor would I have access to my aura for another 10 years.

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Hatsu: High-Stakes Investment

Type: Pure Specialization

Description: The user gives up a portion or all of their aura for a certain amount of time in exchange for a massive boost to aura reserves afterward.

~ Conditions ~

* The minimum amount of time that the ability can be set for is 5 years

* The user dies if they try to access any stored aura during the set period

* This ability can only be used once

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