In the medical world Aris Thorne came from, six months was the time it took for a specialized surgical resident to master the basic sutures of a dural closure. It was the time a patient spent in grueling physical therapy after a traumatic brain injury just to relearn the mechanics of a swallow.
For the current Leorio Paradinight, six months was the duration of a systematic, brutal, and increasingly frustrating war against his own physiology.
He stood on the muddy banks of the river outside Yucanto, the dawn light hitting his frame. He was no longer the skeletal teenager who had stumbled through the Yorbian forest half a year ago. The 188 cm frame was now packed with functional, dense muscle. His shoulders had broadened, his chest had thickened, and the constant caloric surplus from his bi-weekly hunting trips had fueled a growth spurt in muscle density that most bodybuilders would kill for. He looked like a heavyweight rower—long-limbed, powerful, and efficient.
But as he sat cross-legged on a flat stone, closing his eyes to begin his daily meditation, he own method to try opening nen nodes.
Internal Monologue: Nothing. Still absolutely nothing. I can feel the blood rushing through my carotid arteries. I can hear the rhythmic contraction of my diaphragm. I can even map the slight inflammation in my left patellar tendon from yesterday's squats. I have the anatomical awareness of a god, but the spiritual awareness of a brick.
He was trying to feel his Aura Nodes. In the Hunter x Hunter series, he knew that Nen was the life energy flowing through the body. He knew about Ten, Zetsu, Ren, and Hatsu. He knew that geniuses like Gon and Killua could feel their aura like a warm blanket or a raging fire almost instinctively.
Leorio? He felt sweat. He felt the bite of mosquitoes. He felt the dampness of his trousers. But the "steam" of life energy remained locked behind doors he didn't have the key to.
"I'm not a protagonist," Leorio muttered, opening one eye to stare at his reflection in the water. "I'm a supporting character with a neurosurgeon's ego. That's the diagnosis."
He wasn't being self-deprecating; he was being clinical. He had spent the last 180 days experimenting with every meditation technique he could remember from his old world—Zen breathwork, transcendental mantras, even the rhythmic breathing used by snipers to lower their heart rate between heartbeats.
He had pushed his body to the point of structural failure. He was running eighty kilometers a week through the rough terrain of the Saherta outskirts. He was lifting boulders until the capillaries in his eyes burst. His physical stats were skyrocketing; he was arguably stronger now than the original Leorio was at the start of the Hunter Exam.
Yet, the nodes remained shut.
Internal Monologue: The 'Initiation' usually happens through two ways: slow, painstaking meditation over years, or 'Shingen-ryu' style baptism where a master forces the nodes open with their own Nen. Since I don't have a master, and I'm not a freak of nature like a Chimera Ant or a Zoldyck, I am stuck with the slow path. My brain wants to skip to the end of the textbook, but my body hasn't even learned the alphabet.
He felt a flare of genuine anger—the old Aris Thorne pride. In his previous life, he was the youngest Chief of Neurosurgery in his hospital's history. He had never met a technical skill he couldn't master through sheer repetition and intellectual dominance. To be "average" in this world's power system was a bitter pill to swallow.
"Am I really just a normal human?" he asked the trees. "Is that the joke? Reincarnated with all the spoilers but none of the talent?"
He gripped a nearby stone, his knuckles whitening. With a sudden burst of temper, he hurled it across the river. It skipped six times before sinking.
He took a deep breath, forcing his heart rate back down. Emoting wouldn't open his nodes. Cortisol was a neurotoxin; it wouldn't help him achieve the calm required for Nen.
To maintain his training, Leorio had transformed his life in Yucanto. He had become a ghost in the orphanage, a "big brother" who occasionally brought back large quantities of salted meat and wild fruits, but otherwise kept to himself.
He had also started a "clinic" of sorts in the slums. Without a license, he couldn't perform surgery, but he could set bones, diagnose infections, and provide basic pharmacological advice. It was a way to sharpen his diagnostic mind and earn the few Jeny he needed for supplies—gauze, antiseptic, and heavier weights for his training.
Tonight, he was stitching a deep laceration on the arm of a local dockworker who had been caught in a winch. There was no anesthesia.
"Steady," Leorio said, his voice deep and commanding. It was his "Operating Room Voice"—the one that made terrified nurses and screaming patients fall silent.
The worker winced, staring at the 185 cm teenager who was handling a curved needle with the grace of a concert pianist. "You've got steady hands, kid. Too steady for a gutter-doc."
"I've practiced," Leorio said shortly. He was focused on the tension of the silk. Horizontal mattress stitch. Minimize scarring. Maximize blood flow to the edges. "Don't move. I'm almost done."
As he worked, he tried something new. He tried to focus his "intent" into the needle. If he couldn't feel his aura internally, perhaps he could project the will of his profession onto the tools of his trade.
I am a surgeon. This needle is an extension of my nervous system. The thread is my will. Close the wound. Heal the flesh.
He felt a momentary tingle in his fingertips—a warmth that wasn't just friction. His heart leaped. Was this it? Was this the first spark?
He finished the stitch and waited. He closed his eyes, searching for that warmth again.
Nothing. It was just the heat of his own blood, the result of a long day of physical exertion. The nodes remained stubbornly, mockingly closed.
After the worker left, Leorio sat in the dim light of his small room. He looked at a crude calendar he'd drawn on the wall.
"Six months in. Eighteen months until the Exam."
The weight of the task began to press down on him. In the original story, Leorio was often the comic relief, the "weakest" member of the core four. But as a man who had actually lived as an adult, Aris realized how terrifying the reality of that gap was.
Gon and Killua were monsters. Kurapika was a genius driven by a suicidal vendetta. If he entered that Exam as just a "strong guy with a medical degree," he would be a liability. He wouldn't be able to protect anyone, let alone himself.
Internal Monologue: I remember the fight with Hisoka in the Numere Wetlands. Leorio stood his ground with a wooden pole, knowing he was outclassed. That was brave, but it was also a death wish. I didn't get executed and reborn just to be a brave corpse. I need to be an asset. If my spirit won't wake up yet, I'll make my body so formidable that the aura will have no choice but to manifest.
He stood up and began a series of hand-stand pushups, his blood rushing to his head.
One. Two. Three.
His muscles burned. His 185 cm frame was a long lever, making the physics of the exercise harder than it would be for a shorter man. He leaned into the pain.
Four. Five. Six.
"I will not be the weak link," he grunted, his face turning a dark shade of red. "I will not be just 'the doctor' in the back. I will be the surgeon who cuts through the battlefield."
He thought about the "wish" he had made to the original Leorio's soul. Compensation. The original Leorio wanted to save Pietro. He wanted to make sure no child died because they were poor. That required money, yes, but in this world, money followed power. If he couldn't even master the basics of his own life energy in six months, how was he going to survive the Zoldyck estate? How was he going to handle the Yorknew City auction?
He pushed himself faster.
Twenty. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.
Sweat poured off him, pooling on the floor. His vision blurred. He pushed until his triceps screamed, until his shoulders felt like they were being crushed under a hydraulic press.
When he finally collapsed, he lay on the cold floor, his chest heaving. He reached out with his mind again, searching for that elusive "steam."
Still nothing.
He gave a dry, raspy laugh. "Well, Aris. It looks like you're a late bloomer. Or maybe you're just stubborn. Either way, we're doing this the hard way."
The following weeks were a blur of routine.
4:00 - 6:00: Meditation. Attempting to feel the "pores" of the soul. Total success rate: 0%.
6:00 AM - 9:00AM: Weighted run to the outskirts and back. Carrying fifty kilograms of scrap metal in a reinforced backpack.
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM : Working at the docks or the makeshift clinic. Observing the "anatomy of the world."
5:00 PM - 9:00PM : Hunting or heavy resistance training.
9:00PM - 10:00 PM : Medical study. He was rewriting medical textbooks from memory, adapting Earth's neurosurgical techniques to the biology of this world.
He was becoming a man of steel and ink. His hands were becoming increasingly calloused, but he spent an hour every night performing fine-motor drills with a set of tweezers and grain of rice to ensure he didn't lose his "surgeon's touch."
He was terrified of becoming a "muscle-brain." He needed the strength to survive, but he needed the precision to be himself.
One evening, while returning from a particularly grueling hunt with a brace of mountain rabbits, he stopped by the edge of a cliff overlooking Yucanto. The city was a grid of flickering lights, a hive of millions of people living, dying, and suffering.
Internal Monologue: I used to think the brain was the most complex thing in the universe. Billions of neurons, trillions of synapses. A biological computer of staggering intricacy. But Nen... Nen is the software that runs on top of it. If I can't access the software, I have to optimize the hardware to its absolute limit.
He looked at his hands. They were steady. No tremors, despite the exhaustion.
He had calculated his trajectory. If he continued at this pace, he would be at the peak of human physical conditioning by the time the Exam started. He would be able to run for days, lift tons, and react with sub-second timing.
But he knew, deep in his bones, that it wouldn't be enough. The "monsters" of this world didn't play by the rules of physics.
"One year," he whispered. "I'll give it one year of this. If I don't awaken a single node by then... I'll have to find a more 'drastic' way to trigger the initiation."
He wasn't a fan of the "baptism" method. Being hit by Nen when you were unprotected was like being hit by a freight train made of ghost-fire. It could kill you, or worse, leave you permanently disabled. As a doctor, the idea of intentionally causing that kind of trauma to his own nervous system was abhorrent.
But as a man who had already been executed once, he knew that some things were worse than trauma. Being helpless was one of them.
Leorio walked back into the orphanage. The matron, a tired woman who had long since stopped asking where he went, nodded to him.
"You're getting bigger, Leorio," she said, looking at his broad back. "You're starting to look like a man who could actually make something of himself."
"I intend to, Matron," Leorio replied, his voice a low baritone.
He went to his room and sat down. He didn't light a candle. He sat in the darkness, feeling the weight of his own body.
He was 188 cm of reinforced bone and muscle. He was a neurosurgeon trapped in a brawler's shell. He was a man who knew the future but couldn't even control his own aura.
He closed his eyes.
Inhale. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Hold. 1, 2, 3, 4.
Exhale. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8.
He searched for the spark. He searched for the warmth.
Inside the darkness of his mind, he visualized the brain—the lobes, the cerebellum, the brainstem. He imagined the electrical impulses firing along the axons. He tried to "push" those impulses outward, beyond the sheath of the nerves, into the space around him.
Open, he commanded his body. Open the gate.
Silence.
He didn't scream. He didn't cry. He simply reset his posture and began again.
He was Aris Thorne. He was Leorio Paradinight. And if he had to knock on the door of the soul for a thousand years, he would eventually break it down.
Internal Monologue: Gon and Killua might be the geniuses of this story. But I am the one who knows how to operate on a genius's brain. I have patience that a twelve-year-old can't conceive of. I'll wait. I'll train. And when the nodes finally open... I'll be ready to do more than just glow.
He spent the rest of the night in total stillness, a statue of flesh and frustration, waiting for the sun to rise so he could begin the grind all over again.
Six months down. Eighteen to go. The countdown to the Exam continued, and in the quiet of Yucanto, a monster was slowly being built—one horizontal mattress stitch at a time.