Conrad understood that theory alone was not enough.
A Nen ability lived or died by its execution.
Names, concepts, and vows meant nothing if the effects could not be created via Nen mastery and control.
Conrad knew from within that each of his "spells," the White Death, Aura Blast, and Echo Pulse, could be classified as simple hatsu, but his mind did not add them as "nen abilities."
Only weaker-level nen users and not-great nen users would consider his "spell" and such applications of "nen" as "hatsu" or "nen abilities" in his perspective.
He leaned back in his chair.
"Now comes the hard part."
He ordered a meal, ate without rushing, and allowed his body to recover a little.
Training Nen while exhausted only built bad habits.
Once he was done, he cleaned up, stretched lightly, and stood in the center of the room.
His priority was clear.
Unlike Aura Blast and White Death, both of which relied purely on emission, the sensing spell required mastery over En.
Without it, Echo Pulse would collapse into nothing more than wasted aura.
Conrad closed his eyes and entered Ten, stabilizing his aura around his body.
Slowly, he expanded it outward, pushing his awareness beyond his skin.
At first, the result was clumsy.
His aura spread unevenly, pulsing instead of flowing.
The room felt distorted, as if he were trying to listen through thick walls.
Conrad frowned but did not stop.
"Control first," he reminded himself.
He reduced the range, pulling his aura back until it barely extended past his arms.
From there, he expanded again, this time focusing on the smoothness and power of the aura instead of the range it covered.
Minutes passed.
Sweat formed on his brow as his concentration deepened.
His senses began to shift.
He could feel the edges of the furniture, the faint vibration of the building, and the empty spaces between objects.
"This is it," he thought.
Maintaining En drained him quickly.
His breathing grew slower.
"So, Zeno was right on what he said, "En" is a really exhausting technique." He remembered and smirked.
After several attempts, he stopped and sat down.
"This won't work in sustained combat," he said quietly.
Conrad recalled how En functioned in practice.
It was one of the most demanding techniques in Nen, not because of raw aura cost alone, but because it forced the user to maintain perfect control while extending their awareness outward.
Most Nen users never mastered it.
Many never even attempted it beyond the basics.
"Not everyone can do En," he thought. "And even fewer can use it well."
Despite believing that Emission users were naturally better suited for En due to their familiarity with separating aura from the body, there were clear exceptions.
Kite came to mind.
A conjurer, yet capable of deploying En across a massive range, close to forty-five meters.
That alone proved that category affinity helped but did not decide everything.
Then there was Kortopi.
Conrad's eyes narrowed slightly as he remembered him.
Among human Nen users, Kortopi stood out in Conrad's mind as one of the most terrifying Nen specialists, not because of raw range, but because of function.
Gallery Fake let him make copies of objects, and those objects were capable of working as extensions of awareness.
Buildings, walls, and entire structures became substitutes for En itself.
"His copies function as 'En,' and considering the size of his copies, it is safe to say that Kortopi could be aware of a five hundred to one km diameter 'En' via his copies of building similar things."
Instead of expanding aura into open space, Kortopi embedded perception into form.
And then, inevitably, his thoughts drifted to Neferpitou.
"That En wasn't human. He should be the most powerful "En" user in the whole series," he thought.
It was not circular like all the other people using "En."
It moved like a living thing, stretching and contracting.
A hostile, beast-like En that crushed the air itself.
Compared to that, human users were children playing with what they don't know.
Conrad returned his focus inward.
Ten hours passed in fragmented cycles of failure and adjustment.
His room became silent except for his breathing.
Again and again, he entered Ten, shifted into Ren, and pushed outward only to lose cohesion seconds later.
Sometimes the aura thinned too much.
Other times it became unstable and collapsed inward.
Each mistake taught him something.
Too much force caused distortion.
Too little intent caused dissipation.
By the end of the tenth hour, his aura finally stabilized.
Three meters.
A small, imperfect sphere surrounded him.
It was uneven at the edges and required full concentration to maintain.
Within that space, his awareness sharpened.
"When 'En' is active, I can sense everything that enters my 'En,' down to the speck of dust and small meaningless objects..."
Conrad opened his eyes slowly.
Three meters was nothing compared to the monsters he had just thought about.
"It's a start,"
He now understood the texture of En, how it behaved, how it resisted, and how it demanded respect.
"One week," Conrad thought, resting his back against the wall.
"One week should be enough."