As I trained, I realized something. A factor that I haven’t considered before, but it became more and more obvious. Nen mastery requires control over one’s intent. And I didn’t have that.

It was probably because of my upbringing. Back on Earth, there was no good way to exert one’s intent. No matter how determined you were to do something, it didn’t change a thing. And because of it, I never developed it. Nobody did. And that was a problem.

Intent was a cornerstone of nen. No matter how determined one is to achieve his goals, there is no visible effect on aura. Sure, one can create abilities powered by his passion but intent is still required. How can the passion to grow stronger emit the intent to slice appart?

And so I had to find a way to train it. And as it just so happened, I had a few ideas.

I pulled out the pendant knife and put my aura into it. The strange pendant sucked it all in and expanded into a long knife.

It had value both as an object to study and as a training tool. The knife was strange. The aura that passed through it became tainted by its intent and turned violent. If I tried to cut myself with an object I infused with [SHU], the damage should be far lower, but that wasn’t the case. I tried it with various different items and without exception, the damage caused on me was tiny compared to what it should have been.

This knife somehow erased the connection I had with my aura. The aura wouldn’t listen to me. It listened to the knife and the only thing the knife wanted was to slaughter, even if the target was it’s wielder it wouldn’t care.

But this was something I could use to train. What if I overpowered the knife? Overpowered the intent left behind by the mass murderer? Wouldn't that be amazing?

And so my battle with the knife started.

***

But I didn’t enter intense training. I had enough training for a while. It wouldn’t be any good for me to overwork myself and start disliking training.

It was time to go on a sidequest!

***

I left the hill and went towards the orphanage. On the way, I saw a few kids looking at me strangely. They probably thought something about the ‘crazy monk’ returning. The kids didn’t dislike me. They just thought I was odd. If it weren’t for me, they would be bored all of the time. To insane amounts of games I gave them all the entertainment they needed.

I just smiled and waved while passing by them. Some returned the gesture, while others only nodded.

After a few minutes of walking, I reached my room. It was filled with strange items and all sorts of materials. Since I didn’t spend much time here, I could easily use it to store less important things.

The reason behind the large collection was simple. Experimentation. What materials mix with aura and which don’t? Well most of them ignore it completely. Only a few rare ones can influence the energy. For starters, all things that are living or used to could store a varying amount of it. Secondly, most metals weren’t useful, at least that was the conclusion I reached from the limited amount of them I had. The only two I found were silver and a strange black alloy that didn’t exist back on earth. Silver could allow aura to pass through it, but it would still radiate it relatively quickly. However, the black metal was the best thing I could wish for. It could flawlessly push aura through it and even prevent it from escaping. How anyone could throw this metal away was beyond me. Well, they probably weren’t nen users so it made sense.

Other than that, wood had some ability to hold in aura and so did animal skeletons and shells.

It was time to do some art. Yes, art. Expression of one’s thoughts through creativity. To be more exact, I will focus on painting and sculpting. Both will be used to help with my visualization and intent (explained later). It was time to pick up some materials.

After I took everything I needed, I went to a nearby hill top. I could see the growing town from up there. The geometric patterns were clearly visible. It was fascinating.

With that thought in mind I started carving. I brought a large rock and infused my aura into the ‘pendant knife’. At first the cuts were coarse. Even though I sliced through stone like butter, the knife’s ferocity tore the material apart. Or that was until I suppressed it with my will. The cuts were now smoother and I began carving a sphere on a pedestal. It took me around two minutes to create it.

Happy with the result, I continued my experiments. I started carving in shapes. Shapes that would remind one of Earth’s continents. After that was done, I moved to giving the sphere texture. The vast seas were smooth, while the mountain ranges were full of scars. I allowed the knife to exert its ferocity on those areas.

Hours later, the sphere was almost done. The only thing left to do was to mark it. And so I did. I engraved text on the bottom of the pedestal saying: ‘Carving #001 | Time taken: 04:27:11 | Energy spent: 2722 AP | Aura retention: <0.1%| Created at 5.8 years’

[AUTHOR NOTE: 1 Aura Power (AP) equals 1 unit of aura spent in passive battle mode (REN?). If the MC can hold REN for ~1.1 hour, it ends up being 4000 AP. He spent about 67% of his aura (ignoring regeneration). It might seem a lot, having 4000 AP, but he just spent 10 months training ‘optimally’, it should usually result in 6000 AP + he had some from before. You might argue that he didn’t purposefully train aura quantity but still. The second thing is Aura Retention. It is the percentage of aura that remains in the carving after 1 hour. END OF AUTHOR NOTE]

With that done, I layed on the ground tired. The amount of intent required to control the knife was huge. I couldn’t hold it for hours. Maybe I should find a simpler way first? No. Just using killing intent with [REN] is too easy. I tried infusing other intentions on it and it was far more difficult. It was extremely difficult to project the feeling of happiness, but I managed. From then, whenever I need something from others, I emit a weak aura filled with intent. It made convincing people way easier. It even somewhat worked on animals. But my natural aura did that anyway. Hunters are naturally good with animals and I was no exception.

***

Later in the day I went to play a few games with the kids.

The kids were happy to play. I didn’t mingle with them much, but when I did, I made sure they all had fun. Even the caretakers joined in.

First we played some tightrope. Everyone could easily walk on it, so we had two people try to throw the person off. Needless to say, I was the undisputed champion. It felt nice.

After that, we played catch, stick combat, swung from tree to tree, climbing rocks and so on. When most kids got tired, we swapped to playing board games. Paper was cheap enough to use as cards and the boards were carved out of wood. There were dozens of variants of chess and we played a lot of them. Some kids didn’t like chess, so we swapped to other games.

And so, a week of fun went by. Surprisingly, I enjoyed it too. Was I getting softer? Who knows. I just liked the feeling of raising the children. The education arrangements in the orphanage were horrible. Most of these kids would end up with severe mental issues, but I hopefully prevented it. Regardless of what I did, I would still have to spend time with them, at least a little so helping them grow up in a positive direction was beneficial for me. And it just so happened I will need such experiences in the future, if everything went as planned.

With these thoughts in my mind, I closed my eyes and went to sleep.