Chương 7: The Ability

"Aren, I'm going to sleep. What about you?" Machi put her steel thread away and looked up at him.

"You sleep first. I spent half the day unconscious, so I'm not tired yet." It was only half a joke. Aren really did not feel sleepy. More importantly, he wanted to wait until Machi fell asleep so he could go outside and test what had happened to his body. She nodded and did not pry. When she reached the mattress, she drew an invisible line down the middle with one small hand.

"I sleep on this side. You sleep on the other. Cross the line and I kick you out."

"I won't." Aren gave her a helpless look. Apparently, he looked that suspicious. Machi said nothing else. She lay down, pulled a worn but clean blanket over herself, and closed her eyes. Her breathing gradually slowed. When Aren thought she had fallen asleep, he rose from the wall where he had been sitting. He softened his steps, opened the door, and went out to the empty clearing. He did not know that the moment he left, Machi opened her eyes and watched his back disappear into the dark.

Outside, garbage heaps surrounded the base on all sides. Aren stretched lightly. Too much had happened in one day. He had been thrown into another world without warning, woken in a brutal place where people preyed on one another, and landed in one of its most dangerous corners. Then his body had changed in ways he could not explain. So far, those changes seemed beneficial, but as long as he did not understand them, he would not feel secure. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent.

Report sightings. His thoughts were a mess.

"Whatever else is going on, the body comes first," Aren murmured, looking up at the dark sky. With Meteor City's pollution, there was no hope of seeing a clean field of stars.

"First, regeneration." He looked around at the surrounding piles of unknown waste. The idea of using anything from them to injure himself made his mouth twitch.

'No. Absolutely not.' Instead, he lowered his gaze to his right hand. His nails were just long enough to scratch himself. He pressed one nail into his left forearm and forced a shallow cut open, just deep enough to draw blood. This was only a test. If he was wrong, there was no need to make it worse. The wound vanished almost as soon as it appeared. Even the pain disappeared with it. If not for the trace of blood under his nail, he might have thought he imagined it.

"That speed is beyond what I expected." Shock flashed through his eyes. At that rate, his regeneration might be stronger than Wolverine's.

"Too small. I still can't judge much from that." His eyes hardened. Aren dug his nails into his left arm again, this time dragging a long line from elbow toward wrist.

"Hiss..." Pain forced a breath out of him. With no tool and no one else to help, testing self-healing meant being ruthless with himself. The result was worth it. In less than a second, the flesh shifted and closed. The entire wound vanished. Aren stared at his arm, then turned it over again and again, excitement rising in his chest. This level of healing was absolutely enough to become one of his greatest survival advantages in Hunter x Hunter. Next came the food.

He turned his right hand over, and another juicy Kobe steak appeared in his palm. Aren stared at it for a long while, still unable to understand why it had to be steak. He had been imagining braised pork belly. After several attempts, the result remained steak.

"Why?" He replayed the first moment in his mind.

"Was it that instinctive stirring?" The first time, that sensation had appeared, and then he had simply known he could make the steak real. This was where psychology helped. Aren guided himself into a light self-hypnotic state and recreated the feeling from earlier: watching Uvogin and the others eat black ration bars, remembering that disgusting image from his old world, feeling revulsion rise in his body. Then he tied that disgust to a strong desire for braised pork belly. The stirring returned.

Following the instinct, he opened his hand. A thick slab of braised pork belly appeared. Aren's mouth curved.

"Success. As expected of me." If creation was tied to that stirring, and the stirring came from physical rejection and desire, then perhaps food was not the limit. He sat cross-legged on the ground and began thinking. His gaze fell on the arm he had just injured.

"If rejection is part of it, then maybe..." He acted as soon as the idea formed. The pain in his arm had happened only moments ago, so it was easy to reconstruct. This time, however, he changed the image in his mind. Instead of nails, he imagined the cut being made by a kitchen knife. The sharp imagined pain made his body stir again. Something began forming in his hand. Aren grabbed the handle on instinct. Solid wood pressed against his palm. His eyes widened. It had actually worked.