Chapter 5: The Poachers and the Nen User
I was moving through the deeper sections of the forest, testing the limits of my Sequence 8 range by stealing objects from increasingly greater distances, when I first noticed the tracks.
Fresh tracks. Multiple people, moving with purpose and carrying heavy loads. Poachers. The forest around the Kurta village occasionally attracted themâ€"they came for rare herbs, exotic animals, anything they could sell on the black market.
I should have ignored them and continued my training.
Instead, I found myself following the tracks.
It was partly curiosity. Partly a desire to test my abilities against armed opponents. And partly, if I was honest with myself, a sense of responsibility. These poachers were in Kurta territory, and if they were dangerous enough, they might pose a risk to the village.
The tracks led to a clearing about two kilometers from the main camp. There, I found them.
Eleven armed men stood around what appeared to be a captured rare deer creature based on the way its fur seemed to shimmer with faint energy. The men were rough-looking, clearly experienced poachers. They carried crossbows, tranquilizer guns, and regular firearms.
And standing at the center of the group, giving orders, was a woman.
She was perhaps thirty years old, with sharp features and cold eyes. When she moved, her Nen was visible to me even at a distanceâ€"a Nen user, and a powerful one from the feel of it. Her aura had a distinctive quality: it seemed to slip away from perception, like trying to focus on something in your peripheral vision.
A Specialist-type, I realized. And her ability seemed to be related to perception or invisibility.
For a moment, I considered leaving. Fighting twelve armed people, including a Nen user, was significantly more dangerous than fighting a wild bear. The smart choice was to slip away, return to the village, and perhaps inform the authorities.
But I'd come this far. And I wanted to know how I would fare against a Nen user now that I'd reached Sequence 8.
I stepped out of the forest into the clearing.
The armed men reacted immediately, weapons rising. The woman turned to look at me, and her lips curved into a smile.
"Well, well," she said, her voice smooth and dangerous. "A local. And such a young one. Are you here to warn us away, or to try to stop us?"
"I'm here because you're in Kurta territory," I said calmly. "And you're taking something that doesn't belong to you."
The woman laughed. "Everything belongs to whoever is strong enough to take it. That's the first rule of this world, boy."
She snapped her fingers, and five of the armed men moved toward me, weapons raised.
I didn't hesitate. I focused my Nen on them and stole the certainty in their grip. Their hands suddenly felt uncertain about whether they were holding the weapons correctly. Five guns clattered to the ground as nervous fingers lost their conviction in holding them.
The remaining six men opened fire immediately.
I moved, using Ren to boost my speed. I wasn't faster than bullets, but I was faster than where the bullets were being aimed. I twisted left as a shot passed my right shoulder. I rolled forward as another shot whistled over my head.
But there was nowhere to run. Six armed men in a firing line, spaced to cover all angles. I would eventually get hit if I just dodged.
So instead, I stole the trajectory of the bullets.
As each shot was fired, I used my Sequence 8 ability to steal the bullet's course through space. The projectile would suddenly exist in my possession instead of in the air where I was standing. It was a desperate application of my power, requiring immense concentration, but it worked.
Six shots, stolen from mid-air. Six bullets now clustered in my left hand, having existed nowhere between the gun and my palm.
The armed men stared in shock.
"What theâ€"" one of them started, but he was cut off.
"Interesting," the woman said. Her expression had shifted from amusement to focused interest. "You're just a local Nen user. "
"My name is Ben," I said, dropping the bullets and settling into a combat stance. "And you're about to learn why you shouldn't come to Kurta territory."
The woman's smile widened. "My name is Vex. And I'm excited to see what you can really do."
She raised her hand, and suddenlyâ€"nothing happened. But I felt it. Her Nen had activated. The air around her seemed to become intangible, as if she could slip between moments of time and observation.
"My ability is called 'The Phantom,"" Vex explained, her voice now seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
She vanished.
Not completely invisibleâ€"I could still sense her Nen in the clearing. But she was right: she was gone from my visual perception. It was like trying to track something that existed in a part of my vision I couldn't quite focus on.
"Useless," she said. "You can't hit what you can't see."
But then she made a critical error. She stepped forward, becoming visible for just a fraction of a second as she crossed between two of her shadow positions.
In that fraction of a second, I acted.
I stole her location.
What I meant by "stealing her location" was more nuanced than it might sound. I didn't steal her physical body. Instead, I stole the concept of where she was. I stole the certainty of her position in space.
Vex suddenly appeared in the middle of the clearing, completely visible and unable to move. Her Nen flared in panic as she realized she'd lost her primary advantage.
"What did youâ€"" she started, but I was already moving.
Using Enhancement Nen, I closed the distance in three rapid strides. Vex threw up her hands defensively, her Nen flaring as she tried to reestablish the perceptual invisibility.
But I was faster.
I stole the invisibility itselfâ"or rather, I stole her ability to make herself imperceptible. The Nen that had been supporting her power suddenly became... mine. For a moment, I felt the foreign Nen in my possession, understood how it worked, grasped the mechanics of creating perceptual distortion in Nen space.
Then I released it, letting it dissipate.
Vex gasped, her Nen temporarily disrupted. In that moment of weakness, I could have killed her easily. Instead, I stepped back.
"You use Nen beautifully," I said. "But your ability has a critical flaw."
"What?" Vex asked, breathing heavily.
"It relies entirely on perception," I explained. "It relies on other people's inability to see you. But if you steal perception, steal the certainty of sight, steal the ability to remain unseenâ€"then your entire ability collapses."
Vex's eyes widened as understanding dawned. "You're a Specialist."
"Yes," I confirmed. "And my specialty is theft. I steal things. That includes abilities, certainty, perceptionâ€"anything the universe agrees can be stolen."
She lunged at me suddenly, her Nen flaring with renewed intensity. This time, instead of trying to create perceptual invisibility, she was attempting something more directâ€"a Nen-enhanced physical attack.
I stole her momentum.
The attack that should have been powerful and fast suddenly had no force behind it. Vex's fist reached me moving at a normal human speed. I sidestepped easily and stole her balance. She fell forward, unable to control her body's movement.
As she fell, I stole her consciousness.
For exactly five seconds, Vex experienced complete sensory deprivation. She couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't feel. She existed in a void of perception, cut off from the world entirely.
When her consciousness returned, she was on her knees, disoriented and terrified.
"You see?" I said quietly. "Stealing isn't just about objects. It's about understanding what makes something work and taking that away."
While Vex and I had been exchanging words and abilities, the remaining six armed men had been deciding what to do. Three of them tried to use the distraction to flee into the forest.
I stole their legs' function.
They collapsed, suddenly unable to feel their own legs. Without the ability to feel their limbs, they couldn't walk or run. They would recover in a few minutesâ€"I wasn't permanently damaging them, just stealing the neural feedback temporarilyâ€"but it was enough to stop their escape.
The other three men made a coordinated attack, trying to overwhelm me through numbers.
I stole their weapons from their hands, the guns appearing in my possession even as they tried to fire them. Then I stole their coordination. Their movements became uncoordinated, their thoughts muddled. They stumbled into each other, tripping over their own feet.
One of them, a large man with scarring on his face, managed to draw a knife and came at me with raw desperation rather than strategy.
I stole his pain tolerance.
The moment the knife was about to cut me, I stole away his body's ability to register pain. The knife sank into his own armâ€"his confused hands not registering why his weapon had shiftedâ€"and he cried out. The wound wasn't deep, but the sudden, overwhelming pain he felt from his self-inflicted cut was far worse than any attack I could have made.
He dropped the knife and fell backward, shocked.
The other two men stood frozen, realizing they were outmatched. I stole their will to fight. Not their consciousness, not their ability to move, but the fundamental conviction that they should continue attacking. Their shoulders sagged. Their weapons lowered.
"Enough," one of them said. "We surrender. Please."
I stood in the clearing, surrounded by defeated people. The armed men were incapacitated, Vex was kneeling on the ground looking at me with a mixture of fear and something elseâ€"respect, perhaps?
I should have simply taken Vex and the poachers to the authorities. Reported them for trespassing and illegal poaching. Let the law handle them.
But I thought about what they represented. Predators coming to Kurta territory with weapons and Nen, ready to take whatever they wanted. If I let them go, they would simply come back with better preparation. If I turned them over to authorities, there would be questions, investigations, attention drawn to the Kurta village.
And in two years and four months, worse predators would come.
The Phantom Troupe wasn't interested in animals or rare herbs. They were interested in Kurta eyesâ€"and they would kill everyone to get them.
If I wanted to protect my clan, I needed to be the kind of person who could prevent such things from happening. I needed to be willing to do what was necessary.
And then I stole their lives.
It wasn't violent. It wasn't cruel. I simply stole their heartbeats, stole their ability to continue breathing, stole their connection to consciousness and continued existence. Twelve people became twelve bodies in the clearing, their Nen dissipating into the air.
No blood. No struggle. No suffering.
Just stillness.
I stood among the bodies for a long time, processing what I'd done.
I'd killed twelve people.
The fact that it was done with clinical efficiency, without anger or cruelty, made it neither better nor worse. I'd crossed a line that couldn't be uncrossed. I was no longer just someone training. I was someone who would kill to protect his clan.
And I'd done it with Sequence 8 power.
The ease with which I'd defeated Vex, a Nen user with a Specialist-type ability, told me something important about my current power level. Vex had been skilled, creative, and powerful in her own right. Yet I'd defeated her almost casually, simply understanding her ability better than she did and adapting accordingly.
How did that translate to the Hunter x Hunter world?
I began to mentally compare myself to various characters:
**Versus Illumi Zoldyck**: Illumi's needle manipulation was powerful, but it relied on precision and control. I could steal his needles, steal his ability to sense their position, steal his confidence in his technique. Against my Sequence 8 theft, Illumi would struggle. I thought I'd have maybe a 60-40 advantage.
**Versus Nobunaga Hazama**: His combat style was direct and physical, enhanced by Nen. I could steal his strength, his speed, his timing. It would be a clear victory. Maybe 80-20 in my favor.
**Versus Hisoka**: This was more uncertain. Hisoka's Bungee Gum was unpredictable and creative, similar to how I wielded the Error Pathway. It would depend largely on who better understood their ability. I'd estimate 50-50.
**Versus Chrollo Lucilfer**: This was where I encountered a problem. Chrollo's Bandit's Secret let him steal abilities and use them simultaneously. If he used my Error Pathway against me while also using other stolen abilities... that would be extremely difficult. I'd estimate 40-60 in his favor, possibly worse.
**Versus Gon (Adult)**: Even Gon's powerful forms wouldn't help him against someone who could steal his ability to fight. 75-25 in my favor.
**Versus Killua (with his techniques)**: His speed was impressive, but against someone who could steal speed and certainty... 70-30 in my favor.
The conclusion was clear: at Sequence 8, I was roughly equivalent to the mid-tier skilled Nen users in the Hunter x Hunter world. Not at the level of the most powerful characters, but far beyond amateurs. I could defeat most Hunters, lose to Chimera Ants and the most elite fighters.
And I still had six more sequences to advance through.
Using my stealing ability, I dispersed the bodies. I stole their physical form's cohesion, and they simply... came apart, their matter returning to the natural elements of the forest. It would look like nothing had ever happened here, except for the abandoned equipment.
I stole that too, stealing the objects' existence in a way that made it so no one would remember they'd ever been there.
By the time I left the clearing, there was no evidence that anything had occurred.
I walked back to the village in silence, processing the fact that I was now a killer. The Kurta village welcomed me as I arrived, and no one seemed to notice anything was different about me.
But I knew. Everything had changed.
My father was meditating when I passed his room. He opened his eyes as if sensing something and looked at me carefully.
"You've been in another conflict," he observed.
It wasn't a question. I was surprised he could sense it.
"Yes," I confirmed.
"Did you win?" he asked.
"Yes."
Father nodded slowly, as if this confirmed something he'd suspected. "Then you understand now. Power in this world isn't just about strength or technique. It's about will. About being willing to do what must be done, when the moment requires it."
I felt cold hearing those words, as if Father somehow knew exactly what I'd done.
"Will you need to do it again?" Father asked.
"Yes," I said. "To protect the clan, I think I will."
Father closed his eyes, returning to his meditation. "Then I'm glad you're strong enough. And I'm glad you understand the cost of that strength."
Over the following week, I considered my position carefully.
I was still at Sequence 8. But I'd now killed twelve people, including one Nen user. I'd killed them without injury to myself. I'd killed them cleanly, almost surgically, using my power with precision and control.
That level of combat effectiveness corresponded roughly to the mid-tier powerful Nen users of the Hunter x Hunter world.
In two years and four months, the Phantom Troupe would arrive.
The most powerful members of the Troupe would still likely exceed my current level. But if I continued advancing through the sequences, if I reached Sequence 7, 6, or even higher...
For the first time since arriving in this world, I allowed myself to hope that survival might not be enough. That protection might actually be possible.
I had killed twelve people without mercy, but that was the price of that hope.
It was a price I had already decided I was willing to pay.