The living room of our suite had been pushed clear of furniture. For the last twenty minutes, it had served as a sparring ring.

  Elian stepped inside my guard, his newly awakened aura flaring around him as he threw a heavy, ascending hook. I didn't block it. I simply shifted my weight backward by a fraction of an inch, reading the subtle twist of his hips. The force of his fist breezed past my chin, and I swept my foot behind his ankle, lightly tapping his center of mass.

  He hit the carpet with a heavy thud.

  "Your rhythm is completely off," I said casually, tossing him a hand towel from the sofa.

  Elian caught it, wiping the sweat from his eyes. "I forced my Ren out to catch your speed, but the moment I swing, it feels like the energy trails behind my fist instead of staying inside it."

  "Because you aren't controlling it properly," I explained, walking over to the glass coffee table pushed against the far wall. "You're treating your aura like a separate weapon instead of moving in sync with it. You have to find that perfect harmony between your body and your Nen. Right now, your flow is a mess. But before we start fixing your control, we need to figure out exactly what kind of aura you're actually working with."

  I picked up a crystal water glass, filled to the brim, with a single green leaf floating gently on the surface. I set it on a towel in the center of the room.

  "Water Divination," I said, gesturing to it. "It's a diagnostic test. Hover your hands around the glass—don't touch it—and push your Ren into the water. Let's see your natural affinity."

  Elian climbed to his feet. He squared his stance, held his hands around the crystal, and focused. His orange-tinted aura flared, washing over the glass.

  For a second, nothing happened. Then, the surface of the water trembled.

  A moment later, it began to violently bubble, as if sitting on a hot stove. The water swelled upward, spilling over the rim and soaking the towel beneath it.

  I smiled faintly. "Enhancer. Perfect."

  Elian dropped his hands, looking at the spilled water. "Is that good?"

  "It's the most structurally sound category there is," I told him, leaning back against the windowsill. "You don't need to overcomplicate things with complex Conjuration or Manipulation. Enhancers excel at maximizing pure impact and power. Your baseline martial arts are already elite; Enhancement just acts as the ultimate multiplier for your body."

  I picked up the glass and set it aside.

  "You've got options," I continued. "You could focus on localized durability—hardening your skin to absorb massive hits like living armor. You could focus on cellular regeneration, becoming a fighter who just outlasts everyone else. Or, you could take the traditional route and focus entirely on raw destructive power—turning a single punch into a cannon shell."

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  I looked at him, keeping my tone entirely neutral. "I'm not going to tell you which one to pick. A Hatsu isn't just a technique; it's a reflection of who you are as a fighter. Take a break. Sit with it, think about how you naturally want to fight, and let me know when you have a concept."

  Elian nodded, his mind already turning the possibilities over. He walked over to the corner of the room, sat cross-legged, and closed his eyes to meditate on his aura.

  With the room quiet, I let my own thoughts wander.

  Guiding Elian was straightforward, but my own arsenal was a different problem entirely. Genius Override was constantly running in the background, expanding my aura pool with every new realization. But against top-tier opponents, passive intellect and flawless martial arts wouldn't be enough. You can't redirect a Hatsu like Feitan's—one that produces a scorching, literal sun-type blast—with a perfect parry. I couldn't fight everyone with just bare-handed martial arts. I needed a direct combat Hatsu.

  I sat down on the floor, crossing my legs, and started sifting through the mental archive of my past life. I thought about the countless fictional powers I had seen in anime and manga. I immediately tossed out the magic systems, the abilities born from pure emotion, and anything that relied on the power of friendship.

  I needed something grounded. Something governed by absolute physics, completely immune to an opponent simply having "more raw power" than me.

  My mind snagged on a specific memory. A white-haired esper standing in a dark alleyway, effortlessly reflecting a sniper bullet back at the shooter without moving a muscle.

  Vectors.

  The thought hit my brain like a spark catching a pool of gasoline.

  Everything in the physical universe is a vector. Every punch thrown, every bullet fired, the shockwave of a bomb, the friction of the ground, the flow of the wind—it was all just mass moving with a specific magnitude and a specific direction.

  If I could use my aura to manipulate the directional value of a vector... I wouldn't need to punch harder than an Enhancer. I wouldn't need a massive aura pool to block them. If an opponent threw a punch with a thousand pounds of force, I would just touch their fist and mathematically invert the direction. They would shatter their own arm with their own impact.

  A rare, genuine thrill of pure adrenaline washed over me. I couldn't help but grin. It was beautiful. It was the ultimate, flawless defense and an infinitely scaling offense, built entirely on structural physics.

  But as quickly as the excitement spiked, my analytical mind slammed into a brick wall.

  Computation.

  To intercept and invert the vector of a supersonic attack, my brain would have to calculate its velocity, mass, trajectory, and spatial coordinates in a fraction of a millisecond. If I tried to do that in a real fight right now, my organic brain simply wouldn't be able to calculate at that speed. The ability would be completely ineffective.

  It was the exact same principle as the Gojo family members from my past-life memories: inheriting the Limitless technique was essentially useless if you didn't also possess the Six Eyes to handle the immense, atomic-level processing load.

  It was a god-tier ability, but the computational limit was a massive reality check.

  I couldn't just will a futuristic supercomputer into existence to do the math for me. That isn't how Nen works. I needed to log this. I opened a mental notebook in my head—a project tracker. I needed to map out a highly detailed, feasible path to make this work.

  I broke it down. Phase one: I would have to use Enhancement to forcefully overclock my own brain, pushing my processing speed past its normal limits just to do the spatial math. I'd only be able to use it in short, highly focused bursts, dealing with the intense mental fatigue it would cause.

  Phase two: I needed an external hard drive. I needed to eventually Conjure a physical processor—maybe a metallic crown—to sit on my temples and do the heavy lifting. But to do that, I'd have to find a Technology Hunter. I needed to study real-world silicon architecture and computer engineering to safely boost the processing speed.