Chapter 4: Above the Shadow of the Tower
Ryan, not yet four years old, sat in an old chair, his legs dangling far from the floor.
Spread before him was a newspaper his father had left on the table. To his parents, it was just a free circular. To Ryan, it was a crack in the wall of the world. His small fingers, careful to avoid the frayed edges, turned the page.
"Hunter Association's Eastern Branch delegation arrives at Tian Port for new round of professional qualification assessments."
"Following council approval, the Regulations on the Management of Special License Holders will be updated by year's end."
The keywords made his fingers freeze. He read the lines three times, his gaze dropping to the blurry photo below: a handful of men and women in trench coats, their expressions sharp, standing before a massive airship.
He recognized their bearing. Their aura. They were Hunters.
Not a fictional job from a cartoon, but a real, official combat group that existed in this world. A tremor ran through him. The reality he had meticulously pieced together in his mind was now undeniably confirmed.
A quiet voice whispered in his soul, You were right. This is the world you've come to.
Yes, he had known for some time. Even before he could form coherent sentences, the memories of his past life had led him to one terrifying conclusion: he hadn't just been reborn in a random world. He was in the world of Hunter x Hunter.
But he was too young, too weak, his mind trapped in a body governed by instinct. He'd had no way to be certain. Now, this flimsy, ink-stained newspaper was his proof.
He carefully folded the page, hid it in a small pouch he'd sewn into the lining of his closet, and sealed it shut. It was his first piece of collected intelligence.
That evening, his mother took him to the corner store for rice. A flickering advertisement played on a large screen—a colossal glass tower piercing the clouds, an external elevator ascending its face.
"Heavens Arena—Challenge your limits. Surpass yourself."
Ryan stood frozen at the entrance of the store, his eyes fixed on the screen. His breath hitched.
He knew that tower. He remembered its battles, its rules, its champions and its dead. He wasn't an observer; he was an insider who knew the script. But that knowledge was a curse, because none of it belonged to him. He was a child, quiet and reclusive in his mother's eyes. And that tower belonged to monsters. To those who wielded Nen, who killed without a trace, and who bent reality to their will.
Ryan's fists clenched. He looked down at his own hands—small, soft, not yet strong enough to lift a single brick.
In that moment, he understood his purpose. He hadn't come to this world to watch or to reminisce. He had come to climb.
Even if every floor was paved with blood, even if his foreknowledge of the plot was eventually torn to shreds, he had to ascend.
Because climbing that tower was the only way to prove he belonged here. He was an anomaly, an outsider. His knowledge of the future was his only weapon, but it was also a chain.
If the future he knew diverged, the world's narrative would correct itself, and he would be erased—devoured by a fate he couldn't predict. To survive, he had to become a part of the story and seize control of his own role.
That night, his training in the courtyard had a new, terrifying weight. He wasn't just building his body; he was preparing for a future where he would stand before a Nen-user and not be annihilated in an instant.
The wind rustled the leaves, and his feet pounded the earth— but he knew his true footprints would one day be etched into the stone at the tower's peak, no matter how distant that day seemed.
The next morning, Ryan made a fundamental change. He would no longer wait for clues. He would build his own bridge to the world of Hunters.
He memorized the newspaper fragments, then began methodically combing through his father's old books. Buried within texts on engineering and urban planning, he found shimmering threads:
"...mining area sealed after suspected intrusion by ancient ruins exploration team."
"...Class-3 magical beast captured in the Northwest Wastes, confirmed not to be of natural origin."
These were the sanitized whispers of a secret world. He began to cross-reference them with geography atlases and biology encyclopedias from the library, meticulously piecing together a map of the world's hidden truths from the residual images left in public information.
On it, he circled areas of suspected Hunter activity in red, marked magical beast habitats in blue, and noted sites of historical "paranormal" events with green triangles.
To anyone watching, he was just a child doodling— but in his eyes, he was charting the battlefields of the next fifteen years.
More importantly, he began to formalize his plan for growth. He broke his life down into a three-stage plan.
Phase One: The Foundation (Age 0-8). The goal was complete assimilation: master the language, perfect his social camouflage, and absorb all common knowledge. His training would remain disguised as play, his intelligence gathering hidden behind literacy and map-reading.
Phase Two: The Shadow (Age 8-13). Here, the focus would shift inward. He would attempt to perceive his own aura, to build the mental and physical discipline needed to control it. He would begin simulating advanced combat, creating a "fighter's persona" beneath his quiet exterior.
Phase Three: The Game (Age 13-18). This was the endgame: awaken his ability, construct a Nen system, and prepare for the Hunter Exam. He would use the Hunter license as his legal entry into the real world, building a combat style designed for practical, non-standard combat.
He drew a symbolic tower on the back of a notebook. The base was his current life. The middle was his training system. And at the very top, a blank stone slate, upon which he wrote a single word:
Hunter.
From that day on, he was no longer a passive observer. He was not waiting for the plot to happen. He was a boy who had set his sights on the world's greatest monument to power and declared it his starting line.
Sunlight slanted through the window, illuminating the corner of his map. Amidst the chaotic web of red, blue, and green, he wrote a new annotation in black ink.
[Current Coordinates: Tower City, West District]
[Phase One, Week 18. Physical Training: In Progress.]
[Education: Initiated.]
[Objective: Ascend in Silence.]