It has been a month since the school year started. The library no longer had any significant appeal to me. All the knowledge inside wasn’t specific enough and was mostly aimed at school children. Besides literature and mythology, everything else was too simple. I had to search for a larger library. So a trip to the city library is in order. Another possible place, filled with all sorts of secrets would be the hunter organization, but I am not going anywhere near that tiger’s den right now. And for all I know, there might be nen curses or something alike in there. Until I can absolutely be sure of my safety and my secrets remaining hidden, I won’t go.

Currently I am focusing on the things that are within my reach. And as of now, there are over 6000 people in the school alone. Many observations are to be made and since I have a lot of subjects I can watch them for long periods of time. It will allow me to reach more accurate results. And with my current abilities, info about a student or teacher isn’t too difficult to obtain.

There are two aspects I must be able to judge. First is personality and second is talent. I have to be very careful who I put my trust in, so the best candidates are children.

The issue with personality can be resolved somewhat by studying psychology and increasing my social interactions and emotional intelligence.

However, to gaige talent, there will be some trouble. If it were easy, every talented individual would be snached up by nen users for their own reasons. So it must be at least somewhat difficult and would require a level of expertise.

With my prior knowledge, I was able to come up with a few ideas.

The simplest being to send a pulse of intent towards the target and observe their reaction. It is an intrusive method, but it should work relatively fine.

Another idea would be to test the senses. Simply put, I would create a circumstance that could test the senses. Something obvious like the coin test performed by the Zoldyck butler, or something more sophisticated and less obvious.

Yet another simple test would be to check their physique. All characters with some level of talent had incredible physiques. So the stronger the body, the likelier it is for the individual to be talented.

A similar test would be to judge intelligence, or more accurately mental prowess. While it certainly doesn’t reflect talent, Gon being a clear example, any intelligent individual is of great use to me.

The last area to check is the ability to bring people towards them. The main cast of the show are all incredibly talented individuals that became friends almost instantly. So if there is someone gifted, chances are that there will be more around him or her.

And using the last criteria, I would be defined as talented.

The reason? James.

James is, even by my crude and unrefined testing methods, talented. He is nowhere near the main character’s level, but should be somewhat comparable to Zushi. At least with the uncertain information I have.

He came from a somewhat rich family and was tutored since young, so he had a deep foundation for learning. Instead of having to learn information, his early education was on learning how to learn. Neat.

Long story short, we became friends. Both of us were way above average and with our opposing personalities, we made a strange but iconic duo.

Both of us were in the special program, together with 21 others. Since there weren’t many of us, they put students of all 4 years together. With all of the kids there, we had the opportunity to chat with a lot of like minded people . From what I could gather, they were mostly bookworms who studied a lot, either because of personal satisfaction or parental pressure.

It was interesting talking to some of them. Not because of the things they talked about, but because of how they talked about it. After all, there is a limit, how much can a middle schooler teach a grown man.

Instead, I focused on their behavior and relationship with learning.

How do they view learning? Is it something fun? Useful? Interesting? Necessary? Or is it forced upon them?

I was interested in figuring out how to teach effectively. My current plan sees a lot of that in the near future.

To be a good teacher, there are two main requirements.

First is the ability to convey information.

The second, far more important, is the ability to make the student WANT to learn.

No matter what you do, what sorts of instruments or techniques you use, you, as a teacher, can only do so much. And there is an accurate Chinese proverb about this.

“A teacher can only open the door, you must walk through it yourself.”

It summarizes everything in a good way. A teacher cannot force knowledge into your head. He must provide an incentive. Either a punishment or reward. And it is obvious which is by far the better one.

And I want to improve. I can always be better. I will never settle for mediocrity.

So conversing with the children gave me a few ideas. But this is only the opinion of the minority, who already have the motivation to learn.

The vast majority doesn’t.

Slowly, plans started coming together.

***

An ongoing project was the observation of students. I had to figure out as much as possible about talent, so I could confirm several pieces of information and get more accurate data.

So I started taking down notes on students. In order to gather as much information as quickly as possible, I came up with a plan.

Simply put, I would have a presentation in front of all the first years. While the teacher checked attendance, I would make notes of everyone. I would judge them and write down my discoveries and the estimate of talent.

Before my presentation, I would make some observations and see the influence my presence has on them. The stronger the change, the higher the possibility they are talented.

In the original show, non gifted characters mostly ignored the main cast. So something like that might be a thing.

My focus was the first years. They were just introduced to the system and weren’t influenced by it too much. I could also follow their entire time at school.

Another reason was the vast quantity of people. There are 6000 students in 4 years, so about 1500 per year. Divided by the average of 30 per class, leaves 50 classes, which is absolutely ridiculous. It will require a lot of work.

I have to find a way to effectively write down all the information. And the best solution I could find was plain paper. Electronic storage wasn’t advanced enough to effectively store gigabytes of info. And I didn’t even have access to a computer, so the option was quickly discarded.

So I got a lot of paper. It was a bit annoying, but I finally got the chance to get a pack of 500 sheets of A4 paper. Instead of buying it, I just created the circumstances for it to be ‘misplaced’. In any case, the school used thousands of sheets every day, so 500 gone missing wasn’t ever noticed.

So with sufficient preparations, I started the task.