Day in and day out, I strive in my training. Now that Quinn is born, I feel refreshed and can put even more effort into training.
In the pouring rain, Quinn does muscle training using the Main Body ant as a dumbbell. I just started, but my arms are already shaking. This body is too frail. I couldn't even do 10 push-ups without aura reinforcement. Using aura wouldn't be muscle training, so I am currently in a state of Zetsu.
The Main Body weighs about 5 kilograms, I guess. True to its metallic appearance, it is relatively heavy. Since Quinn is constantly supplied with aura from the Main Body, it is more efficient to stay attached like this if possible. Quinn has almost the same body structure as a human, but cannot produce aura, only consume it. This aura is the very component that forms Quinn and cannot be lacked.
By the way, Quinn is completely naked. I couldn't conjure clothes. I don't think I want to use up more memory to make clothes at this point, but I do want clothes. They say the three elements of food, clothing, and shelter are essential for living a human life. Food is managed (Quinn doesn't need to eat as long as she has aura), but clothing and shelter are catastrophic.
Not to mention clothes, there is no house to protect against rain and wind. My Home is too narrow for Quinn, so I am currently expanding a burrow of suitable size. Even in the rainy season, the temperature is high, so I won't catch a cold from the rain, but getting continuously wet is annoying, so I do want a roof.
Trees grow sparsely in the wilderness, so can't I manage something using them? I have no tools like saws, no nails; building a house only with naturally growing trees... well, let's do it gradually. Now, focus on training.
I have incorporated physical training recently, but the main focus is Nen training. Anyway, to compensate for Quinn's fragility, improving Nen ability was an urgent task. Due to the Vow, her death equals my death. Even before that, although she is a Nen Doll, she is my alter ego, or rather, an existence I can call myself. Even without a Vow, I have no intention of easily letting her die.
Quinn's specs are certainly high. Her talent is remarkable. However, the constitution of being a Specialist was a bottleneck in becoming strong.
Specialists have a very low appearance rate and learn unique and powerful abilities. However, when compared to other types, they have the worst compatibility with 'Enhancement', and are inferior in pure combat power without abilities. I have to think about how to train.
Nen training is broadly divided into three categories. First, the basic 'Four Major Principles', the 'Applied Techniques' that combine them, and 'Type-Specific Training' focused on Hatsu. Among them, Type-Specific Training becomes important for increasing the power and precision of Hatsu. It is said that by training not only one's own type but also the adjacent compatible types in parallel, one can raise the level of their basic strength.
However, leaving aside the point of training efficiency, there is no need to desperately learn one's incompatible types. If one firmly grasps their strong type, applications will work endlessly, so there is no need to force the cultivation of other types to a level usable in actual combat.
However, 'Enhancement' is the exception. This type is the ability to strengthen the power or function possessed by things, allowing one to increase the power and durability of oneself or equipment. Since it is an ability that strengthens powers directly linked to combat such as attack power, defense power, self-recovery power, and the five senses, one cannot neglect this no matter what type they are. This is the reason why Enhancers are said to be the strongest single class.
As I mentioned earlier, Specialization has the worst compatibility with Enhancement. Just that alone places one in considerably disadvantageous conditions. Specialist users cover that weakness with powerful unique abilities, but in Quinn's case, she doesn't have that advantage either. A Specialist who can't use special abilities...
What worries me more than anything is the strength of the body. The momentary maximum output of aura outside the body is called 'Apparent Aura Output (AOP)'; the larger this is, the higher the power of techniques one can use, and the greater the power one can divert to defense. Quinn has a fairly high value for this compared to the Main Body, and although she is a Specialist, I think she is maintaining a certain reinforcement rate.
However, the offensive and defensive power (effective reinforcement rate by aura) is far higher in the Main Body. This is because offensive and defensive power is greatly influenced not only by aura but also by the raw strength of the body. The Main Body, which originally has a strong exoskeleton, increases its defense power many times over with simple aura reinforcement, but Quinn with her soft upper arms will not reach that realm no matter how hard she tries to reinforce.
Well, but Quinn has Quinn's good points. She can demonstrate agility that the ant body cannot, and delicate movements are also possible. She is also working hard on strengthening her base body through muscle training. Her Apparent Aura Output is also still in the growth stage. The room for improvement is large.
Kichi, Kichi
Just as I started thinking about doing sit-ups next, a harsh metallic sound reached my ears. Ants emerged in droves from within the red forest. It was the faces of King Ants and the Royal Guard.
When the Chimera Ant Queen's colony grows to a certain scale, she stops producing soldier ants and periodically produces only King Ants. These guys must also be new King Ants born from the colony in the center of the forest.
Moreover, the number of King Ants is not just one or two. They impregnate females of other species to make them produce the next generation of Queen Ants, but there are no mating partners in this wilderness. That is why it is assumed that King Ants have become saturated within the forest.
And if asked why they are swarming in front of Quinn, it is probably for that purpose. Quinn is a human girl.
Alright, let's kill them.
I don't want to kill my own kind if possible, but these guys are different. I can dispose of them without any hesitation. Just looking at them makes disgust well up. I cannot suppress the murderous intent.
Punching with Quinn's bare hands hurts, so I use a stone lying nearby reinforced with 'Shu' as a blunt weapon. 'Shu' is an applied technique of 'Ten' that reinforces equipment like weapons with aura to improve durability and destructive power.
It consumes far more aura than simple 'Ten', and unless it is a beloved tool one is used to using, the efficiency of reinforcement also drops. Strengthening just a stone with Shu produces known limits, but it is perfect for training.
The ants' movements were slow and posed no threat. Any guy who gets caught by this and impregnated must be quite a moron. The Main Body will handle the annoying Royal Guard appropriately.
I smashed the approaching King Ant with the stone. The inefficient lethal weapon, speaking through Quinn's Apparent Aura Output, slammed into the ant's armor. As expected, it is hard, and I cannot scratch it. The shock probably passed through to the inside, but I cannot kill it with just one or two hits.
Rather, that durability was exactly what I desired. Blow by blow, carefully putting murderous intent into it, I swing the stone down. I feel like there was training like this. I recall it is the 'Stone Breaking' of Enhancement type-specific training. Keep hitting the target while reinforcing the stone weapon so it doesn't break. If you don't reinforce it with balance, not putting in too much or too little power, the stone will shatter easily. Although simple, it is a task that uses quite a bit of nerve.
After that, Quinn continued to swing the stone silently.
With Quinn's birth, the precision of 'Mental Synchronization' steadily increased. I became able to handle sensory sharing with the Main Body without problems. Now, I don't feel which one is the subject. Both became subjects, able to take separate actions while sharing consciousness.
I also succeeded in making the consciousness dwelling in the eggs independent with restrictions. However, there is still little this can do. The main use is withdrawing aura. They have turned into Quinn's battery. Sending aura into a Nen Doll is the first step of Nen Beast manipulation, and sending aura directly from the eggs to Quinn is not difficult.
In the first place, regarding these eggs, even if I say consciousness dwells in them, there is the question of how they are thinking when a brain hasn't even formed. Perhaps consciousness is working not as a physical function but as an existence like a soul. There was no other way to explain it than as a product of the supernatural phenomenon called Nen ability.
Regarding consciousness sharing with these eggs, several questions have been clarified.
The first point is whether the increase in total aura amount would allow for an immediate boost in reinforcement rate. If I pour two people's worth of aura into reinforcement, wouldn't I get double the strength? If three people, three times?
To state the conclusion, that was not possible. No matter how much aura I pour in, I cannot output power exceeding the Apparent Aura Output (AOP). It means no matter how abundant the water source is, the force of water coming out of the faucet doesn't change. Since my Potential Aura Output is significantly superior to humans, it is true that I excel in sustained combat ability and am strong in a war of attrition, but I feel a little disappointed.
Currently, it is too wasteful that the only use for the eggs is as fuel for Quinn, so I am exploring whether this can be applied to other techniques.
The second question. What is happening with the capacity (Memory) possessed by the eggs? Before, I likened it to "a state of holding a thousand Nen users in my stomach," but if this is literal, I no longer need to worry about Memory problems. No matter how powerful the ability, I could create as many as I want.
There was no such sweet deal. The shared consciousness entities created by 'Mental Synchronization' automatically acquire the same abilities as me from the beginning. In other words, they are forced to learn 'Mental Synchronization' and 'Idolatry', so there is no free Memory.
Actually, I tried making several new abilities, but none of them stuck. To give an example:
Ability Name: 'Unnecessary Death Makeup'
Effect: Recovers all damage sustained by the user and returns them to a healthy state.
Restriction: None
Vow: The user dies 10 seconds after the effect is activated.
It is an overly risky ability that shortens remaining life to 10 seconds in exchange for complete damage recovery. I can only think of uses like striking one last blow against an opponent I absolutely cannot beat, or leaving a final message on the verge of death. First, I must explain the history of why I tried to make such an ability.
This phrase 'betting the user's life' is a vow that can draw out top-class effects even among Vows. Gaining power in exchange for life. There is rarely a resolve that surpasses this. And instead of imposing a punishment with conditions like "if I do ~ I die" or "if I don't do ~ I die", if it becomes a Vow premised on dying from the start, the effect will be even stronger.
I have already used this Vow betting my life in 'Idolatry'. Quinn and the Main Body are one in body and soul. If one dies, the other half dies too. If taken literally, that should be the case, but actually, there was a certain calculation in this. I am not seriously betting my life. I had prepared a loophole.
For me, life is not a one-time thing. To be precise, death as an individual was not a significant problem. Like cells replaced by metabolism, the collective consciousness repeats life and death.
Of course, if the Main Body ant breaks, it's over, but the eggs in the stomach died often. Died from stress, died from physical damage during training, defective goods were made... the dead eggs were replaced by the next eggs made and replenished.
Death was a daily experience. As long as the Main Body is safe and even one of the collective consciousnesses remains, regeneration is possible.
Therefore, I thought that even if I were to die due to a Vow, I could get through it by sacrificing one egg. I have no proof, but intuitively I think I'm not wrong. What is important in making Nen abilities is that kind of intuition. It was a Vow incorporating that calculation.
I feel that death not being a big Vow might lead to devaluing its worth as a betting chip, but I still thought there was no way not to utilize this constitution. If it goes well, I can attach powerful Vows as much as I want.
That is the reason I thought of the ability 'Unnecessary Death Makeup'. Recover damage in exchange for death. The formal risk and return should be balanced. I included the 10-second grace period as insurance, but it didn't really need to be there. I can utilize this ability without demerits.
Well, I couldn't learn it though. It became proof that Memory is not infinite. Due to the nature of recovery, this ability belongs to Enhancement. Was it asking too much for a recovery ability, which is rare to awaken even among Enhancers, on top of having bad compatibility with Manipulation?
However, I cannot give up easily. I have already created two abilities, and I don't know how much empty Memory is left, but I might be able to create one more ability. I thought about other abilities too.
Ability Name: 'Substitute Doll (Provisional)'
Effect: Manipulate a doll to shoulder the user's damage.
Restriction: 1. Carry the doll. 2. Cannot be used if the doll is even slightly broken.
Vow: The user dies 10 seconds after the effect is activated.
A Manipulation ability, object manipulation. Manipulating a doll to move won't be very useful in combat, so it is a Hatsu created based on a special ability.
There is a strong perception that dolls are children's toys, but I believe they were originally created as cursed tools to ward off bad luck. If I sublimate that background through object manipulation, I might be able to use it as a special ability. It's quite a forced logic though.
This time it's an ability of my own skilled type, and I made the restrictions heavy so I thought it would work, but this was also no good. My empty Memory is either gone or only a tiny bit remains. Even though I went to the trouble of carving a wooden doll.
Maybe if I train for a long time like with 'Idolatry' I could learn it, but I didn't have that much motivation. Training on that level is too harsh no matter what. I thought of various abilities, but I feel like somewhere in my heart a line was drawn saying "this is impossible." Perhaps this is the very concept of 'Capacity (Memory)' itself.