Chapter 24: This thing is as stupid as I remember

After a small sigh, Nemuri lovingly hugged the little one who seemed lost in his thoughts and asked with a beautiful smile on her face.

“Well, Kai, which room do you want to be ours?”

“Huh!? Ours?” Kai couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise, jolted out of his thoughts by Nemuri’s words.

“Yes, ours. From now on, we will share a room.” With a serious tone and a beautiful smile on her face, Nemuri replied while looking into Kai’s beautiful blue eyes, to which he responded with evident discomfort.

“But that would be uncomfortable for you, Onee-chan. Besides, this house is very big. There are plenty of rooms; we don’t need to share.”

“There’s nothing to discuss. We will share a room, and since you didn’t want to choose, I will choose it.” Nemuri quickly cut off Kai’s argument and, after looking around a bit, nodded and announced without leaving room for discussion, with a cute smile on her face.

“It will be the one at the back with access to the terrace. There’s already a lovely king-size bed there, after all.”

“...”

...

...

...

The next day, Kai woke up with the first rays of morning sunlight, only to find himself nestled between two enormous, soft, and plush mountains barely covered by a black silk pajama. He was mere centimeters from a face of indescribable beauty, with features seemingly sculpted with nanometric precision, without any flaw.

After carefully extricating himself from Nemuri’s embrace to avoid waking her, Kai quickly took off the embarrassing cat pajamas Nemuri had made him wear the night before. He then put on a comfortable black sweatshirt and ran to the main hall, where he grabbed a key ring.

Kai quickly reached the gym and opened the doors, finding a place equipped with everything one could need for training. Everything had an elegant and futuristic look, and there was even an octagon-like structure with what seemed to be practice robots.

“Well, I suppose what I need to train first is my stamina. I’m really bad in that area, but let’s try these toys first.”

While doing a small stretching routine, Kai commented curiously. He then approached one of the treadmills in the gym, and after studying it a bit, he figured out how to turn it on, starting with a light jog.

“Mmm, I should actually increase the pace a bit…”

After tinkering with the treadmill's touch panel, Kai managed to set it to 20 km/h, so he continued jogging at a steady pace while still examining the treadmill. Before long, he managed to make some good heavy metal music resonate throughout the place.

“This is more like it, hehe.”

After about 30 minutes on the treadmill, Kai did barbell squats, deadlifts, bench presses, barbell rows, etc., making sure to try every machine until, by chance, he found what appeared to be ankle and wrist weights on a shelf in a corner.

“Wow, if these babies weighed a couple of tons, maybe I could pull off a Rock Lee, hehe. Although the heavy clothing of the Z warriors would be cooler. But, anyway, let’s try how these feel first.”

Quickly, Kai started casually lifting the weights, looking for ones that suited him, soon realizing that some were so heavy he couldn’t even lift them. This made him wonder what the shelf that could hold them all together was made of.

After some time, Kai found weights he felt comfortable with, so he put one on each limb, then jumped a bit, ran, and threw a few punches in the air to see how they felt.

“These things seem very effective; I really feel my muscles working... although now that I think about it, will using these affect my height?...”

Kai looked at the weights with a complicated expression. After all, he didn’t want to be short, but he quickly shook his head and murmured to himself in an attempt to calm down.

“No, calm down. It won’t necessarily affect my height. Besides, I still have my nen with 100% efficiency in enhancement, and if Gon was able to grow so much with a pact, there should be a way to fix my height if it really affects me. What’s important now is training… yes, I like that, let’s think positively.”

Kai continued exploring the gym, trying out things while still wearing the weights, until he finally decided to enter the octagon. It had a style quite similar to MMA, though with a more futuristic look, and there were various robots that seemed to be for practice.

“Mmm, how do I get these things to work?”

While muttering to himself, Kai started examining the robots from all sides, looking for any kind of screen or controller, but finding nothing, he assumed they must operate by some kind of voice command.

“Alexa?! Siri?! Jarvis?!”

After trying out random commands for a while, Kai remembered that his father had a natural language assistant at home with a rather curious name.

“Sage!”

“Yes, sir?”

In response to Kai's words, a synthetic female voice answered, which brought a smile to the blue-eyed boy’s face. Then he quickly asked.

“Explain how the practice robots work.”

“Of course. The practice robots are mechanical and electronic devices designed to simulate different tasks, behaviors, or movements encountered in situ—”

“This thing is as stupid as I remember…”

Kai couldn’t help but facepalm in frustration as the synthetic voice recited an extensive explanation of some nonsense it must have found on the internet. But since he had weights on his wrists, the impact hurt him more than expected, so he quickly commented irritably.

“Sage, shut up.”

“Yes, sir.”

After complaining for a bit, Kai calmed down and announced loudly again.

“Sage, list the gym ‘routines’.”

“Of course. Monday and Thursday: Barbell squats—”

“Sage, shut up!!”

“Yes, sir.”

A vein on Kai's forehead throbbed violently, a sign of his anger, but after a few deep breaths, he calmed down and announced again with an obviously irritated voice.

“Sage, list the gym ‘protocols’.”

“Of course. Protocol ‘strength routine’: Activate the weightlifting program, including warm-up, main exercises, and cool down—”

“Finally, damn artificial retard, I swear one of these days I’ll dismantle you and make my own assistant with gambling and hookers!!”

While the female voice recited a long list, Kai couldn’t help but exclaim angrily. But knowing it was useless to fight with that pathetic excuse for an assistant, he calmed down and started punching a boxing bag in the gym while listening to what the assistant was saying.

After a while, Kai heard what he needed, so he silenced the assistant and quickly returned to the octagon before announcing loudly,

“Sage, activate ‘Combat Level 2’ protocol.”

“Yes, sir.”

With Sage’s words, one of the robots in the octagon seemed to come to life, while all the others exited, leaving the area free for combat. Kai watched with interest as the humanoid robot began performing various jumps, punches, and kicks in the air, as if warming up in some way.

Not long after, the humanoid robot approached Kai and, after a respectful bow, took a stance similar to Muay Thai. Then, it launched itself towards the blue-eyed boy, who barely managed to dodge but was quickly besieged by a barrage of elbow strikes, knee strikes, punches, and more.

(Damn, a machine has no intentions. What an idiot I am!)

Faced with the onslaught of the practice robot's attacks, Kai could barely defend himself, frantically fortifying his entire body. But he quickly reacted and shouted.

“Sage, stop everything!”

“At your command.”

With Sage's announcement, the robot returned to its place, followed quickly by the other robots returning to their previous positions. Even the music stopped immediately, while Kai sat on the floor, somewhat in pain, lost in his thoughts.

(Well, it's only logical that machines have no intentions. I was a fool not to see it coming, although in my defense, in the original work, the characters were able to avoid barrages of projectiles and even attacks from the Pacifistas, which are supposedly robots.

Then again, they're supposed to be ‘human weapons,’ so maybe that has something to do with it, or maybe they just have good reflexes. Or perhaps my ‘Haki’ is different, or maybe it's a misunderstanding, and it isn't Haki at all…

Anyway, the point is that now I better understand the limits of my ‘Observation Haki,’ although I need to do more tests. For now, I'll say it works only against living organisms, or better put, those with a ‘voice,’ making it pretty useless against robots and such. But I guess that’s where [En] would come in, to fill that gap.

The problem is, if I remember correctly, [En] was a high-level technique that required a lot of training and was quite costly in terms of energy and concentration. But well, that’s just one more problem on the list, nothing out of the ordinary, just more training.

For now, I should focus on improving my strength, stamina, and, above all, learning to fight for real. I suck at it, plus I still have to deal with Nen and the Hakis... seriously, I have so many things to do that I don't even know where to start…

Maybe I should start with Nen intensification. If I remember correctly, with intensification, you could heal, and if I apply that to my muscles, I should be able to recover faster from muscle pain or fatigue, which means results in less time. Although I first need to do tests to be sure.

But for now, let’s set that aside and focus on the basics: my stamina and aura capacity. So, the goal would be… Hmm, yes, the goal is to stay in [Ken] state for at least an hour without it being exhausting.)

After a tired sigh, Kai got up from the floor and stretched a bit, then announced loudly while walking towards one of the treadmills.

“Sage, play the ‘Kai's music for work’ playlist.”

“At your command.”

As heavy metal resonated in the gym, Kai started running at full speed on the treadmill with the weights on, while simultaneously activating [Ken], making his aura fully activate throughout his body.