Kevin was back in his basement laboratory, the air thick with focused intensity. The moment he'd obtained the mysterious petals from Mito yesterday, his mind had locked onto a single goal. Now, after a full night's rest to restore his peak condition, he stood before his materialized pharmaceutical table.
The experiment, with this new fusion agent, had been startlingly smooth. The petals were a perfect catalyst, a natural harmonizer for the copper scale. With them, over half of his existing potion recipes could see marked improvements in quality or efficiency. More importantly, they were the key to the two most precious, craving-inducing materials in his possession—materials that had previously defied all other fusion attempts.
Today, he would attempt the ultimate combination.
The scales gleamed under the lab lights.
Gold Scale: The Two-Headed Wolf's Shed Horn.
Silver Scale: The Moon-Milk Opal.
Copper Scale: The Unknown Petals, crushed to a fine powder.
The text glowed on the table's base: [Effect: Nen becomes more sensitive to emotion and will, allowing for subtle feedback.]
"With the aura I've cultivated to this point… it should be enough," Kevin judged, though a thread of tension ran beneath his calm. Both the horn and the petals were unique, irreplaceable items in his collection. Failure would be catastrophic.
Yet, after months of deepening his understanding and control, he felt his aura reserves and precision were up to the task. Even minor fluctuations should be within acceptable margins.
He took a deep, centering breath. His aura flared around him—and then was violently siphoned away as he entered a forced state of Zetsu. Every ounce of visible energy surged into the pharmaceutical table.
The three scales began to spin. They accelerated from a whirl to a furious, screaming blur, merging into a single, shimmering ring of light.
Thirty minutes. Sweat beaded on Kevin's forehead, tracing lines down his temples.
One hour. His face had lost its color, waxen and pale. His clothes were plastered to his skin with perspiration.
One hour and thirty minutes. Weakness radiated from his core. His vision swam, and he had to brace one trembling hand against a nearby workbench to keep from buckling. He was at his absolute limit.
The agony was the uncertainty. The table gave no progress report, no indication of how much longer it would demand. It would spin at this impossible speed until it either succeeded or drained him dry.
Black spots danced at the edges of his sight. He clung to consciousness by sheer force of will.
Hold on. Just a little longer.
By his calculations, even accounting for a margin of error, the process should be nearly complete. The cost shouldn't be this high. He couldn't fail now, not with everything on the line.
Click!
A crisp, mechanical snap, sweeter than any music.
With the last dregs of his strength, Kevin's hand shot out, fingers closing around the vial that ejected from the base.
Thud.
The strength left him utterly. His legs gave way, and he crashed face-first onto the cool concrete floor, plunging into unconsciousness. The pharmaceutical table dissolved into motes of light. The precious vial slipped from his limp fingers, rolling a short distance before coming to a stop. Its custom-made, reinforced glass held strong against the impact.
It was night when consciousness returned, a slow, painful swim upward from a deep, empty void. A profound, soul-deep weakness clung to him, a mental and spiritual exhaustion more debilitating than any physical injury. Every movement was a monumental effort. Trembling, he pushed himself up.
Moving like a man a century old, he shuffled to a storage cabinet. With unsteady hands, he retrieved several vials of low-grade potions—concentrated restoratives for fever, nutrient deficiency, and systemic shock. He downed them all in one go.
Fifteen minutes later, the basic medicinal effects took hold. The crushing weakness receded to a heavy, manageable fatigue. He could stand without swaying.
His eyes found the vial on the floor. He picked it up, holding it to the light.
The liquid inside was a mesmerizing purplish-pink, swirling with faint, twinkling motes of light like captured starlight. It looked less like a potion and more like a fragment of a dream given form.
Sinking onto his sofa, Kevin let out a long, shuddering breath.
"It succeeded… That was too close." He examined the luminous vial. "But this… it's still a C-Grade potion. This must be the upper limit of the tier."
In his personal grading system, beyond the material cost and effect, the true measure of a potion's grade was the sheer time and aura tax it levied during creation. The chasm between a D-Grade and this—a potion that had nearly consumed him entirely—defined the boundary. He had reached the peak of what his current power could forge. The next step, if it existed, would demand a price he wasn't yet ready to pay.
More than a month ago, crafting a D-grade potion had taken Kevin a maximum of ten minutes. At that time, a standard C-grade potion required an hour or more of sustained focus.
If he were to quantify his aura in arbitrary units, a D-grade potion consumed no more than 1,000 'points'. The average C-grade demanded over 5,000 points, with the demand scaling directly with the potion's potency.
Kevin estimated this new, starlit concoction had drawn close to 10,000 points from his reservoir.
In his own classification system, if the aura cost breached the 10,000-point threshold, he believed the resulting potion would qualify as B-grade. But he sensed his total latent aura hadn't yet crossed that critical line himself, so the potion he could produce naturally couldn't either. Thankfully, this one had teetered just on the edge, allowing him to scrape through to completion.
Holding the luminous vial, he pondered its true strength. It was difficult to gauge precisely, but its effect was undeniably unique: to make his Nen sensitive to emotion and will.
Nen inherently possessed such qualities; the potion's role was to amplify them. But to what degree? Using his aura to detect an opponent's emotional state? To sense hidden hostility? With only a fifteen-minute duration, its application would be highly situational, a specialized tool for a specific moment.
"Essence Sensing Potion," he named it quietly.
Regardless, its successful creation was a milestone. It confirmed the upper limits of what A Moment of Dream could achieve with his current power and clarified the kind of Nen-based effects he could instill. This was the knowledge he'd been seeking.
"Now that this is settled… it's time to construct my own Nen ability."
His relentless experimentation with these ultra-rare materials hadn't just been for the potions themselves. It was a deep dive into the functional limits of his inherited ability—to see if he could imbue his Nen with specific, transferable properties or alterations. The old lab notes and fragmented memories offered no guidance here; the original Kevin had never been strong enough to push into this high-grade territory.
The Strength Potion, for instance, worked by stimulating and enhancing the body. The change in Nen produced by the Essence Sensing Potion was the different kind of answer he'd been hunting for. It was a crucial piece of the puzzle.
For the past three months at Heaven's Arena, beyond his own fights and training, Kevin's primary activity had been spectating. He attended every single match held on the 200th floor and above—the exclusive domain of Nen users. The fights were infrequent, spaced days apart, but he missed none.
From the stands, he would activate Gyo, leveraging his exquisite control to study the combatants. He analyzed the nature of their abilities, deduced their Nen types, and theorized the specific conditions and limitations of their Hatsu. He then cross-referenced his deductions with the actual battle outcomes, using the real-world data to stress-test and refine the theoretical knowledge Bisky had imparted.
Observe. Analyze. Deduce. This triad of actions felt like a core part of his being.
This rigorous process led to rapid, profound advancements in his comprehension of Nen. He developed his own framework of understanding, distinct from rote learning.
Understanding of Nen mechanics. Insight into his own unique constitution and flaws. Familiarity with the 'Golden Scale' of his alchemy—the pinnacle materials and their effects.
These three strands of knowledge began to weave together in his mind, guiding him toward the blueprint of an ability he had envisioned from the start. An ability that would synergize perfectly with his innate talents, work around his body's learning disability, and unify his disparate strengths into a cohesive whole.
And now, with the final, crucial piece of experimental data from the Essence Sensing Potion confirmed, the direction was clear. The framework was solidifying in his mind. The theoretical work was done. The next step was to will it into existence.
Patreon Seasay