"....."
Ryuji stared speechlessly at the sky.
Only now did he finally understand why those martial-arts lunatics on the verge of a breakthrough loved nothing more than going solo and beating the ever-living hell out of the entire world, because only when the whole world came at them together could they be forced to use everything they had, pushing their realm to an even higher level amid blazing fighting spirit!
Right now, he genuinely wished his perception ability weren't so absurdly strong.
"So what, am I supposed to become a boss now?"
After being speechless for a while, Ryuji let out another helpless sigh.
"It seems that even taking shortcuts requires a certain foundation…"
This problem of his was actually fairly easy to solve.
He just needed to train his perception, so that even when fully focused on combat, with hot blood surging and battle instincts roaring, he could still precisely control his sensory power, so that every bit of perception was used exactly where he wanted it, without any waste.
That didn't mean his previous training was useless; on the contrary, it was extremely effective.
The problem was that it was too effective.
Under the stacking effects of multiple blessings and abilities, his potential had already reached a terrifying level. Just a little bit of training in perception caused his sensory abilities to grow even further.
Under different world rules, his power sometimes couldn't be fully displayed, but that didn't mean it didn't exist or that it hadn't been honed.
Ryuji sighed, closed his eyes and began trying to control his perception. While Mai was inside telling her parents and grandfather about her life, he continuously worked on reining in his overpowered Observation Haki.
"Try sensing just one thing… only perceive what I want to perceive…"
He kept reinforcing that thought, attempting to restrict himself to sensing only the mental fluctuations of the ant he was observing.
An ant's mental fluctuations were extremely faint, but under Ryuji's focused observation, those fluctuations gradually became clearer and clearer.
A vast sense of mission emanated from the ant through his Observation Haki, an overwhelming drive urging the ant to seek food, to sacrifice itself for the colony.
Ryuji suppressed the urge to sprinkle some sugar for the ants, nodding inwardly instead, because this meant his training direction was correct.
Concentrating Observation Haki on a single target; if I trained like this for a while, it should work.
"Even taking shortcuts requires hard work. Becoming stronger really isn't that simple..."
Ryuji muttered, then entered meditation again. Once more, he focused on sensing the mental fluctuations of an ant, continuously reinforcing his own will and directing all the power of his Observation Haki toward perceiving the ant's emotions and successfully felt the ant's powerful conviction once again.
But...
Ryuji heard some noise.
While perceiving the ant's emotional fluctuations more clearly than before, he realized that even in this state he could still sense the movement and sounds of the ant's internal structure.
"Did I lose focus?"
Ryuji frowned and tried entering meditation again, but this time it was even stranger. Because once more, while clearly perceiving the ant's emotions, he also heard the operations of its internal bodily structures.
"What's going on?"
A bad premonition suddenly struck him. He immediately spread his Observation Haki outward at full capacity and then discovered that during this short period of training, his Observation Haki's range had doubled. Moreover, he could now clearly sense the anger buried deep within this world's earth, the anger directed at humanity and the power derived from those emotions.
Ryuji: "..."
Clutching his forehead, Ryuji finally understood that there was nothing wrong with his training plan! The problem wasn't him, it was the King of Fighters world itself.
"Damn it, why the hell does this world boost perception so absurdly?? Don't tell me this is actually the Hong Kong comic version of KOF, with that 'Great Cosmic Power' and 'Absolute Domain power' nonsense?!"
Ryuji couldn't help but complain, but he was certain that this wasn't Hong Kong–comic KOF.
Because Hanzo Shiranui's aura was pitifully weak compared to his.
If this were the Hong Kong comic version, this old man would've been an Absolute Domain powerhouse!
"But if it's not Hong Kong comic KOF, then why is the amplification to perception so enormous?"
Ryuji frowned, running through the KOF storyline in his head, only to realize there was basically nothing to recall.
Because the KOF "story" barely existed. Most of it was fan interpretation or material from the Hong Kong comics.
A fighting game on arcade machines, its character backgrounds and world settings couldn't be too rich.
In fact, many villains' motives and sudden appearances are so ridiculous that you genuinely feel like the people writing King of Fighters' plotlines were treating players like idiots…
Not to mention all the retcons and self-contradictions in the settings. And because KOF is fundamentally a massive crossover brawl of a world, the age issues of many characters are outright absurd.
Ryuji stretched out his hand. The more he used his "Observation Haki" to perceive things, the more something felt wrong, because mental power in this world was excessively active.
His own mental power hadn't actually increased; what was abnormal was this world itself.
"At my current level, the only explanation is that the world's rules are different. But this world actually hasn't completely hidden its clues—you can see superpowered people everywhere, as well as all kinds of gods and monsters born from resentment, obsessions, and lingering thoughts… The amplification of mental power and perception is probably the reason why those things are so rampant in this world. After all, according to the later settings, Orochi is just a local god of Japan."
Ryuji shook his head, giving up on thinking about something that wouldn't have an answer anytime soon and instead muttered a complaint.
"Looks like if I want to train in this world, the only option really is to find a way to make everyone gang up on me."
When he tried to train his perception ability in this world, the result was always the same: for every single unit of control he gained through training, the world's amplification gave him ten more units of perception.
The more he tried to restrain and control his perception, the more this world boosted it instead, completely destroying his original training plan.
But after thinking it over, Ryuji realized that it wasn't impossible to continue training in this world.
"In that case, maybe I can keep training my perception by continuously raising the difficulty, using sheer accumulation to temper my mental will… After all, clashing wills with powerful opponents isn't the only way to rapidly increase one's mental power. It's just that this method is extremely tedious, much slower than fighting strong opponents head-on and completely incompatible with my personality…"
In plain terms, it was following the orthodox path of spiritual practice, slow, grinding progress over time.
But Ryuji wasn't one to easily get discouraged. He immediately thought of another possibility.
"With the world's amplification, I might be able to push my Observation Haki to the point where I can observe cells… maybe even atomic nuclei, or sense the emotions of heaven and earth themselves. That would be beneficial to my training."
Ryuji stroked his chin. He didn't know whether the world's amplification could really push his perception to that level, but at the very least, he needed to uncover the upper limit of his perception in this world.
Otherwise, it would just feel stupid to leave it unexplored.
"Well then, let's try pushing my perception range to its absolute limit."
Ryuji closed his eyes again and began continuously expanding his perception range, firmly firmly holding on to the desire to see farther and farther, relentlessly extending his Observation Haki.
This should have been an extremely tedious form of training, but just as Ryuji expanded his Observation Haki to the absolute limit, to the point he could barely perceive anything and had begun slowly retracting it, he heard a voice.
"Where exactly did you come from? Tifa, why can't I find any record of your identity? And how did you fall from the sky together with that meteor? Are you really an alien? Do aliens even eat steamed buns? And what about those monsters that fell down with you, what were they?"
Tifa?
~~~~~~~~~~
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