There was a very good reason Lumos currently looked so deeply crestfallen and dejected. The legendary beast had proudly gone out hunting for a simple breakfast, and it had very nearly been eaten by its own prey for breakfast.
"Was it really that entirely embarrassing?" Liam asked, sounding genuinely surprised. He picked himself up from the dirt, brushing the thick layer of dust and dry grass off his clothes.
Jaku, who had been squawking loudly while perched safely on top of the head of the tiger, suddenly turned and looked down at Liam with its tiny head tilted sharply to the side, exactly as if it were trying to say: Excuse me, but you seem to have just been violently punched flying through the air yourself, right?
Liam simply stretched out his big hand and snatched the little gray bird right out of the air.
Caught in his grip, Jaku immediately behaved exactly like an angry chicken, aggressively pecking the thumb of Liam with its sharp little beak.
"Lead the way," Liam said, reaching out to comfortingly touch the big head of Lumos. "I absolutely cannot let my brother get bullied in the wild like this!"
Feeling supported, Lumos immediately led him away from the rocky edge of the deep rift valley and straight into the dense, dark mountain forest. Not long after walking through the thick brush, Liam saw the culprit. It was a massive black wild boar, standing almost as sturdy and tall as a full-grown elephant, possessing thick, violently curved, upturned ivory tusks. It looked incredibly imposing. Just casually walking through the quiet forest, it naturally possessed a kind of heavy, kingly aura that easily rivaled the presence of Lumos, the serious Tiger King.
Jaku was squawking excitedly and flying in rapid circles overhead, acting exactly as if it were physically simulating the previous brutal fight between Lumos and the massive black wild boar. Or, more accurately, the bird was mimicking the completely unilateral, devastating charge and merciless trampling the black wild boar had delivered. If Lumos hadn't been in absolute peak physical health, actively supported by a highly potent Star Mark recovery spell glowing on his body, the beast absolutely would have suffered multiple compound fractures at a minimum, along with highly serious internal organ injuries.
"It is completely normal that he cannot win a frontal fight against such a highly specialized beast right now," Bisky said, having quietly followed them from behind. She calmly evaluated the massive black boar as it walked its wild path, completely ignoring them.
Liam nodded in agreement. Of course, he could clearly see with his own eyes that this black wild boar didn't just physically look as majestic and immovable as a mountain. Its physical body really was completely overflowing with a thick layer of dense aura, possessing a degree of defensive "hardness" that was absolutely no less than that of a highly trained, ordinary Nen user.
However, while its defense was definitely "hard," it was absolutely not completely "hard" everywhere. Only the heavily armored front half of the body of the black wild boar actively glowed with a surging, protective white light, while the entire back half of its body was completely unprotected and as dim as a dark cliff. This was especially true for its thin, curly pig tail, which absolutely wasn't covered with even a single trace of defensive aura. Just looking at that exposed, highly vulnerable tail made people naturally want to reach out and violently yank it.
Bisky observed the creature and commented, "This entire game was meticulously designed exclusively for Nen users to play. Therefore, the fundamental physical design of every monster on this island was specifically tailored to gently force Nen users to actively practice various complex Nen techniques and combat theories. The designers were really incredibly thoughtful!"
Instead of using a clever strategy, Liam boldly jumped out of the bushes into the open clearing and shouted aggressively at the massive black wild boar, "Hey, you! Brother, the one who thinks he controls the heaven, the earth, and all the circles in between! It's you, you fat Black Whirlwind, who falsely thinks he dominates the world!"
Hearing the loud challenge, the massive black wild boar slowly walked in a heavy half-circle before finally looking back over its shoulder to glare at the highly arrogant human. It became so instantly, violently angry that its small eyes turned completely blood red. Its massive ivory fangs cocked a little higher into the air, and two thick streams of scalding hot air sprayed violently from its wide nostrils like sharp, hissing arrows. Its heavy, cloven pig hooves clicked loudly against the stones as they aggressively dug into the soft dirt, preparing to charge.
"Is this thing supposed to be a wild boar, or is it a raging bull?" Bisky muttered, completely speechless at the exaggerated animation of the beast. The massive wild boar had just turned its heavy head incredibly stiffly to look at them. It seemed to be a highly intentional, glaring "loophole" specifically left behind by the clever game designers, actively meant to encourage players to defeat a physically strong opponent with a physically weak character purely through the use of cleverness, agility, and flanking maneuvers.
However, some highly stubborn people vastly preferred absolutely not to exploit obvious loopholes. After the massive black wild boar finally started its thundering charge, building incredible momentum, it violently hit Liam head-on exactly like a falling black meteorite.
Liam didn't dodge. He firmly planted his wide stance, his breathing instantly sinking deep into his core. The thick muscles of his arms violently bulged and piled up under his skin, the heavy blue veins curling and popping. The entire, massive reserve of aura in his body aggressively poured directly into his arms and heavily gathered in his open palms. The blinding white light of his aura spread rapidly across his skin, and he finally caught the charging black "meteorite" head-on with a deafening impact.
BOOM!
Screeeech—Liam was immediately knocked violently backward by the sheer kinetic force of the black "meteorite." His two locked legs acted exactly like two massive iron nails being dragged through the earth, violently plowing out two perfectly parallel, incredibly deep furrows more than thirty meters long in the solid ground. It would be a genuine shame for the local farmers not to use these perfect trenches for planting crops.
Liam finally ground to a violent halt, his boots buried deep in the dirt. He was tightly grasping the thick, upturned ivory tusk of the wild boar with one hand, and heavily pressing his other palm directly against the flat, armored forehead of the beast. The blinding aura in his arms surged and flared violently as he successfully withstood the massive, crushing impact. The black wild boar looked completely crazed with fury, its heavy hooves flopping and tearing uselessly at the muddy ground, its massive head struggling and twisting violently from side to side, but it could absolutely no longer escape the iron grasp of this terrifying human.
Liam shouted low in his throat, the thick veins twisting dangerously on the bulging muscles of his arms. With a sickening crack, he brutally broke off one of the massive wild boar tusks entirely with one bare hand, and simultaneously slapped the side of the head of the beast incredibly hard with his other hand. The wild boar suddenly released all its gathered strength, its red eyes immediately rolled completely white into the back of its skull, and it tilted heavily to the side, crashing into the dirt exactly like a falling mountain.
Standing safely out of the way, Lumos and Jaku shared the exact same entirely stunned, wide-eyed expression as they watched the display of raw, terrifying physical power.
Bisky watched the brutal confrontation intently for a while, analyzing his aura flow, then slowly walked over to the crater and asked, "How exactly do you feel after that?"
Bang! Exactly one second after the massive wild boar was officially defeated and rendered completely unconscious, its massive physical body suddenly transformed into a glowing magic card with a loud pop.
No. 501, Charge Boar, F-122
Description: A highly aggressive wild boar living strictly in mountainous areas. It can absolutely only charge its targets head-on. Its charge is incredibly powerful, but it is very, very bad at changing its direction once moving. The complete lack of defensive aura on its rear half is its greatest weak point. This is especially true for its curly tail, which can easily be torn entirely off by a quick player, immediately leading to its instant death.
Liam reached down and picked up the glowing card from the dirt. "The official difficulty of obtaining this specific card is only ranked as an F. On a scale from SS-rank down to H-rank, this sits firmly in the absolute bottom three difficulty levels of the entire game! This really doesn't feel like much of an achievement."
He casually tossed the glowing card directly into his open card album, letting it slot into place. He figured he could easily go to a local trading store in the nearby city later and quickly exchange the monster card for a highly useful Jenny card.
"This specific F-rank strictly refers to the intended difficulty of a player actively using intelligence and strategy to smoothly attack the glaring weak points of the wild boar to subdue it," Bisky corrected him, crossing her arms. "That massive, raw impact force you just successfully blocked head-on was at least mathematically equivalent to a direct, frontal attack from a skilled combatant possessing exactly 10,000 aura."
"With only 10,000 aura, how incredibly hard can a person actually hit anyway?" Liam smiled, dusting off his hands. "It is just so-so. No matter what the enemy throws at me, I currently possess over 30,000 aura in my reserves. I am absolutely not afraid of facing raw, physical power. By the way, Bisky, regarding the specific, advanced training of the Enhancement category. You casually mentioned before that it heavily focuses on achieving a profound enhancement effect, so how exactly is that specific effect mathematically evaluated by masters?"
"If you successfully practice the Enhancement category completely to the absolute fifth level of mastery, you can effortlessly exert exactly one single portion of your base power to hit with exactly ten times the physical force," Bisky explained, her tone turning entirely into that of a strict teacher. "Or, depending on the individual, there may actually be absolutely no upper mathematical limit to the multiplier at all. There is truly, absolutely no real, definitive end to the physical path of Enhancement. The only thing in the universe that actually has a definitive end is the fragile human heart. Human willpower and manpower are sometimes completely exhausted."
Liam tilted his head, asking highly curiously, "The legendary Chairman Netero absolutely seems to be an incredibly pure Enhancement type. Is he actually currently sitting in this profound realm of mastery?"
Bisky nodded without a single second of hesitation. "Of course he is."
Liam pressed further, asking eagerly, "Then exactly how many times the base physical power can he actually exert using only one single portion of his aura?"
Bisky sighed slightly, looking away into the forest. "I am honestly not entirely sure. I haven't actually seen Chairman Netero take action and fight completely seriously in many, many long years. But it absolutely must be sitting far above the ten-times multiplier level. The Ryu technique of Chairman Netero is flawless; he has practiced it to the absolute, terrifying point where absolutely no visual traces of aura flow can be seen by an opponent. The exact same is true for his Hatsu. There are absolutely no readable traces or tells in his physical moves at all."
The two of them chatted casually about Nen theory while walking slowly back toward the camp.
Bisky suddenly fell completely silent for a long while, her expression thoughtful, before finally saying, "Actually, Chairman Netero himself personally calls the specific, ultimate realm he currently resides in the 'Extreme.'"
"To climb to the absolute top of the mountain and finally reach the ultimate Extreme? That sounds really incredibly cool!" Liam exclaimed, genuinely impressed by the concept. "So, does that mean the fifth level of practical training is officially considered the ultimate Extreme?"
"Yes and no," Bisky said, walking with her small hands clasped neatly behind her back. "The specific training levels numbered one through five are entirely based on my own personal, practical experience as a teacher. I am absolutely not incredibly talented like some monsters, so I vastly prefer to see clear, highly intuitive progress every single day of my practice. Even if that progress is just a tiny inch of improvement. Back when I was very young, seeing a highly measurable, small improvement in my technical skill would easily keep me entertained and motivated for several full days."
It was incredibly rare for her to openly show this kind of nostalgic emotion. Some wise people say that when a person officially starts heavily missing the past, it simply means they are truly getting old in their heart. At this specific moment, even though Bisky physically looked exactly like a highly energetic, young teenage girl, perceptive people could still easily realize she was actually a middle-aged person possessing an incredibly rich, heavy lifetime of experience.
"Chairman Netero, however, only broadly divides all Nen training into exactly four distinct levels. The first baseline level is called 'Good,' the second intermediate level is called 'Excellent,' the third advanced level is simply 'Talented,' and the fourth, absolute final level is the 'Extreme,' representing a person finally reaching the absolute pinnacle of human potential."
Having finally returned to the quiet tent camp set up beside the deep rift valley, Shizuku, who had been peacefully reading a book inside her tent when she heard their loud, crashing movements in the forest, also stepped outside. She arrived just in time to see Bisky picking up a thin wooden branch and meticulously drawing a large, perfect hexagon directly into the soft dirt. At every single corner of the geometric shape, she carefully drew small circles, and within every single circle, she precisely drew four concentric rings expanding from the inside out.
"This specific, complex concentric circle design," Bisky pointed with the branch, "Chairman Netero personally calls it the 'attribute circle,' which is specifically used to accurately measure the precise degree of a person's Nen practice."
The six distinct, four-ring concentric circles were located precisely at the six outer vertices of the large hexagon. Since the circles themselves weren't drawn very large, their edges absolutely didn't intersect or overlap with each other.
"Every single person is born into the world possessing only one single, highly dominant innate Nen type, which perfectly acts exactly like a single, fixed point on a map. It is entirely nothing more than determining exactly where this specific point naturally falls on the massive hexagon chart of the comprehensive Nen system," Bisky explained, and the tip of her wooden branch pointed directly at the top four concentric rings on the chart. "Take the highly straightforward Enhancement type as our primary example."
Bisky continued her lecture, "The long, grueling process of dedicated training can actually be accurately seen as a slow, methodical process of actively entering deeper into the attribute circle of your chosen Enhancement type. If your point enters the outermost ring of the circle, you are officially considered 'Good.' If you push your training further in toward the center, you become 'Excellent.' If you go even further, you are 'Talented.' And if you finally manage to push deep into the absolute, dead center of the circle, that is exactly when the complex world suddenly becomes perfectly clear to you, and you officially reach the 'Extreme.'"
Shizuku tilted her head, asking highly doubtfully, "But looking at the chart exactly this way, isn't heavily training basically just forcefully changing your innate, natural Nen type to fit the mold?"
"It absolutely cannot be accurately described as a forceful change, it is only a highly precise adjustment," Liam chimed in, perfectly understanding the theory. "Or let's simply put it another, vastly clearer way. The entire process of practicing Nen is simply a process of constantly increasing your own internal purity. Let's just assume that a perfectly hypothetical, 100-purity Enhancement dummy is officially regarded by the universe as the absolute truth and the central, ultimate target of the Enhancement type. Then, the daily practice of the Enhancement type is simply actively adjusting our own flawed physical body and mind, little by little. It is the long process of successfully imitating, getting closer to, and eventually becoming entirely one with this perfectly 100-pure faker, this absolute universal truth, this central target. When you are finally completely in harmony with it, you truly belong there. That exact state of harmony is what they call the Extreme!"
"Oh, I see now," Shizuku said, her eyes widening slightly as she suddenly understood the profound concept. "It is exactly like a doctor carefully setting a brutally broken bone back into place, bit by bit. When every single one of the bones in the entire body is aligned just right, that is the so-called peak of health."
She adjusted her glasses and added curiously, "But according to this highly specific theory, what actually seems to be vastly more important to reaching the top is achieving complete physical and mental harmony and profound unity, entirely regardless of whether the specific Nen ability itself is actually physically strong or not."
"That is exactly right," Bisky said calmly, her tone turning slightly bitter. "Chairman Netero is an absolute, complete elitist and a true, uncompromising spiritual supremacist. He is incredibly impatient and absolutely hates having to deal with the weak, the fools, and the stubbornly ignorant people of the world. He vastly prefers to exclusively communicate with people who are deeply enlightened, extremely naturally talented, can easily understand highly complex concepts with just a few simple words, and possess extremely high, refined spiritual realms..."
"Well, that certainly sounds exactly like someone here harbors some incredibly deep, lingering resentment..." Liam muttered, looking sideways at Bisky with a knowing smirk.
"It sounds to me like Chairman Netero actually only truly cares about himself the most out of anyone," Shizuku stated thoughtfully, her blunt logic cutting through the sentiment. "Every single kind of talented person he actively chooses to get along with is completely selected just to better help him continue to cultivate his own Nen and reach higher peaks. In fact, he probably absolutely doesn't put anyone else in his eyes except himself."
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