Chapter 5: Training Day

The training facility was underground.

Three stories beneath the Association's research campus, carved out of bedrock and lined with the most advanced skill-isolation wards Jin had ever felt—not that he had much basis for comparison. The air was cool and sterile, lit by fluorescent arrays that didn't rely on any awakened ability. Everything down here was designed to function without skills, which Jin found darkly appropriate.

"This is the Deprivation Chamber," Dr. Sato said, leading Jin through a corridor lined with reinforced doors. Each door had a small window; through them Jin could see rooms of varying sizes, some padded, some bare, one that appeared to be filled entirely with water. "Built thirty years ago for testing how awakened individuals perform when their skills are suppressed. Very expensive, very classified, and as of today, repurposed entirely for your training."

"My training in what?"

"In everything." Haruki stopped at the largest door and pressed his palm to a biometric scanner. The lock chunked open like a vault. "You've got one of the most powerful skills on the planet, kid. But power without control is just a disaster waiting to happen."

The room beyond was cavernous—a hundred meters long, fifty wide, with a ceiling high enough to echo. Impact-absorbing mats covered the floor. The walls bristled with sensors and cameras. At the far end, a row of equipment racks held weights, training dummies, and devices Jin didn't recognize.

Standing in the center of the room was a man who looked like he'd been assembled from slabs of granite.

He was in his sixties but built like a war monument: broad shoulders, thick arms, a torso that tapered to a narrow waist in a way that defied his age. His hair was iron gray, shaved close to his skull, and his face carried scars that told stories Jin wasn't sure he wanted to hear. His eyes were the color of winter sky—pale, clear, and merciless.

"Jin Takeda," Haruki said, "meet Marcus Black. Retired S-rank, former commander of the Hunter Corps' elite strike division, and the man who's going to make sure you don't die within the first six months of your new life."

Marcus looked at Jin the way a butcher looked at a side of beef, evaluating where to start cutting.

"You're thin," Marcus said. His voice was a low rumble, like stones shifting underground.

"I was working at a convenience store."

"How's your cardio?"

"I walk to work. Walked."

"Combat training?"

"None."

"Martial arts?"

"No."

"Weapons experience?"

"I once used a mop handle to chase a raccoon out of a dumpster."

Marcus turned to Haruki. "You brought me a civilian."

"I brought you the only complete Null-type in recorded history."

"A *civilian* Null-type. He can negate every skill on the planet, and he can't throw a proper punch."

"He punched a C-rank robber and knocked him out."

"Lucky shot. Adrenaline. The robber wasn't expecting it." Marcus looked back at Jin, and something shifted in those pale eyes—not warmth, but assessment. He was seeing past the skinny frame and nervous posture to something underneath. "Your skill negates abilities. That means every fight you're in will be against someone physically stronger, faster, and better trained than you—because the only reason they'll be fighting you is that you've already taken away their real weapon. You understand?"

Jin understood. When you strip an S-rank of their skill, you're left with a person who's spent years relying on supernatural power instead of physical conditioning. That didn't make them helpless. It made them desperate. Desperate people were dangerous.

"You're going to teach me to fight?" Jin asked.

"I'm going to teach you to survive." Marcus cracked his knuckles, a sound like small-caliber gunfire. "Fighting is step six. Step one is not dying when someone hits you."

"What are steps two through five?"

"Also not dying. In increasingly creative ways." He pointed to the mats. "Start running. You stop when I tell you to stop."

Jin ran.

---

Marcus didn't tell him to stop for forty-five minutes.

By the end, Jin was on his hands and knees on the mat, lungs burning, legs trembling, vision spotted with dark flowers. Sweat had soaked through his shirt and was pooling on the mat beneath him. He'd vomited once, at the twenty-minute mark, and Marcus had watched with the detached interest of a scientist observing an experiment.

"Your cardiovascular baseline is garbage," Marcus said, standing over him. "Your muscle tone is nonexistent. Your body mechanics are sloppy—you run flat-footed, which means your ankles will give out before your lungs do. Your core strength is adequate for standing behind a counter, not for taking a hit." He paused. "But you didn't quit."

"I was thinking about it," Jin gasped.

"Thinking about quitting and actually quitting are different things." Marcus offered his hand. Jin took it and was hauled upright with a strength that seemed impossible for a man in his sixties. "I retired at fifty-five after a combat injury that cost me thirty percent of the function in my right leg. Before that, I spent thirty years as one of the most feared hunters on the continent. You know why?"

"Your skill?"

"[Iron Will]. S-rank. It enhanced my physical resilience, my pain tolerance, my reaction speed to superhuman levels." Marcus held up his right hand—steady as stone. "But skills can be disrupted, suppressed, or, as you've demonstrated, negated entirely. The hunters who relied solely on their skills died in the field. The ones who survived could fight without them."

"You trained to fight without [Iron Will]?"

"I trained every day of my life as if I didn't have it. Martial arts, weapons combat, tactical analysis, physical conditioning—all at baseline human levels. My skill made me better. But even without it, I was dangerous." He fixed Jin with that pale stare. "That's what you need to be. Dangerous without your skill, devastating with it."

Jin wiped sweat from his eyes. "How long will that take?"

"To be competent? Six months. To be good? A year. To be what I think you need to be?" Marcus's expression darkened. "Longer than we probably have."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you've got a target on your back, kid, and the people aiming at it aren't going to wait for your training montage to finish."

---

The afternoon session was worse.

Marcus started with basic striking: how to throw a punch without breaking your own hand, how to kick without losing your balance, how to use elbows and knees in close quarters where skill-powered combatants would try to grab you.

"Your fist is wrong." Marcus adjusted Jin's hand for the fifteenth time. "Thumb outside, not inside. Tuck it under your fingers. Hit with the first two knuckles, not the flat. You hit wrong, you break your metacarpals, and the fight's over."

Jin threw the punch. It hit the training dummy with a dull thwack that wouldn't have bruised a peach.

"Again."

He hit harder. His wrist ached.

"Again. And this time, don't telegraph. You're pulling your arm back before you punch. That tells your opponent exactly what's coming."

"I don't have an opponent. It's a dummy."

"Every dummy is an opponent. Every opponent is a dummy. The only question is which one you are." Marcus moved behind Jin and placed his hands on Jin's shoulders, adjusting his stance. "Widen your feet. Drop your center. Power comes from the ground, not from the arm—your legs push, your hips rotate, your shoulder follows, and your fist is just the delivery system."

Jin tried again. The impact was different this time, sharper, heavier, carrying the weight of his body instead of just his arm. The dummy rocked on its base.

"Better." The word came from Marcus like a concession extracted under duress. "Now do it a thousand more times."

Jin did it a thousand more times. His knuckles bled. Marcus taped them and told him to continue.

By evening, Jin couldn't lift his arms above his waist. His shoulders burned. His hands were swollen under the tape. Every muscle from his neck to his calves ached in ways he hadn't known were possible.

He sat in the training facility's locker room, a spartan space with metal benches and a row of showers, and tried to unwrap the tape from his hands. His fingers wouldn't cooperate.

"Here."

Maya appeared in the doorway, first-aid kit in hand. She sat beside him and took his hand without asking, gently peeling away the tape to reveal raw, bleeding knuckles.

"Dr. Sato said Marcus's training sessions were 'character-building.'" She applied antiseptic and Jin hissed through his teeth. "I think he meant 'character-destroying.'"

"Marcus said I need to be dangerous without my skill."

"Marcus once fought an A-rank [Acid Blood] user in a fistfight and won. His definition of 'dangerous' is not a reasonable benchmark for a normal human being." She wrapped his hands in clean bandages, precisely, methodically, with the practiced care of someone who'd done this before. "How's the rest of you?"

"Everything hurts."

"Scale of one to ten?"

"Twelve."

She almost smiled. "I'll get you ice packs. And painkillers." She paused, still holding his hand. "Jin?"

"Yeah?"

"Your Null meter spiked during the training. Did you notice?"

He looked at the wristband. The light was green now, but she was right. He'd felt it flicker during the more intense moments. The door inside him had rattled—not opened, but shifted, as if something on the other side was pressing against it.

"I didn't activate it."

"I know. That's what concerns me." Maya's expression was carefully neutral, but her eyes were troubled. "Skills activate under physical and emotional stress. Null might respond to the same triggers—pain, exhaustion, fear. If it activates during close-quarters combat, anyone near you loses their abilities instantly."

"That could be an advantage."

"It could also be an accident. What if you're training with Marcus, and his [Iron Will] suddenly shuts off? His pain tolerance drops to normal, his durability drops to normal, and whatever hit he's in the middle of absorbing suddenly does full damage to a sixty-year-old man?"

The image landed like a punch. Jin looked at his bandaged hands and saw, for the first time, that his greatest weapon was also his greatest risk—not to his enemies, but to anyone close enough to be caught in his radius.

"I'll be careful," he said.

"Be more than careful. Be aware." She released his hand and stood. "Every skill user in this building walks around with their power as naturally as breathing. If you accidentally shut them down, it's not just inconvenient—it's disorienting, frightening, and potentially dangerous. Imagine if someone's [Enhanced Vision] cut out while they were driving. Or if a [Levitation] user was fifty feet in the air."

Jin hadn't thought about that. The collateral damage of his ability wasn't just negation—it was the chaos that negation created.

"Dr. Sato wants to start training your control," Maya continued. "Not your combat skills—your *skill* skills. Learning to keep Null dormant when you don't want it, and learning to direct it precisely when you do. He thinks that's actually more important than learning to fight."

"Marcus would disagree."

"Marcus thinks everything less lethal than hand-to-hand combat is a waste of time." She picked up the first-aid kit. "Your first control session is tomorrow morning, before combat training. Dr. Sato will be running it personally."

She left. Jin sat in the locker room, flexing his bandaged hands, feeling the ache in every joint.

He pulled out his phone. Three messages from his mother—she was packing, had given notice at her job, was arguing with her landlord about breaking the lease early. One message from Rena Fujimori, checking in on his first day. And one notification forwarded by Maya from the Association's internal network:

**SECURITY ALERT — CLASSIFIED**

**SUBJECT: SKILL TYPE NULL — PUBLIC INTEREST ESCALATING**

**Multiple inquiries regarding recently flagged Null-type individual received from: Pinnacle Guild (A-rank+), Aegis Corporation (S-rank division), Ministry of Defense (classified), and 14 unidentified private entities.**

**Assessment: Containment of subject identity is no longer viable beyond 72-hour window.**

**Recommendation: Accelerate integration protocol.**

Jin read it twice.

Seventy-two hours. That's how long he had before the world came knocking.

He looked at his battered hands and thought about what Marcus had said. *Dangerous without your skill, devastating with it.* He had seventy-two hours to start becoming that.

The green light on his wristband flickered yellow—just for a moment—then settled back to green.

Jin noticed it. Filed it away.

Then he went to find ice packs.