#Self-Taught Specialization — Founding a School

Contents

Scope declaration / opt-in. This issue extends the type "Self-Taught Style (自己流)" of co-04-03 Schools; it is a co-99-01 Variant. The attributes, the round, Critical Hit/Heavenly Mandate/Karmic Retribution, and the stage caps on Licensed maneuvers/secret arts are used exactly as in canon, and this issue only adds the process of "raising a school through observation and experiment" in place of "choosing a school from data." Before it is adopted, it does not affect the co/ex/fc baseline. In a numeric conflict, canon co takes precedence.

The combat effects of Critical Hit, Heavenly Mandate, and Karmic Retribution (the 2 Wounds of a Critical Hit, the Decisive Moment Table / Fatal Mistake Table of Heavenly Mandate/Karmic Retribution, and so on) occur just as before. The "observation" and "mastery" this issue adds are a separate layer that rides on top of those checks, and do not rewrite canon combat results.

This issue references the roughly 116 techniques of ex2's roughly 47 schools and the fc03 Chronicle of Japanese Swordmasters as an opt-in material catalog for the "Observation Record."

---

#Brief — What This Issue Is

The martial arts of Konsei have countless schools. But most of them are "types already brought to completion." You knock at the gate, pay your tuition, and inherit your master's stroke — that is what it means to "learn" a school. This issue goes the opposite way. One who has no master, no dojo, and no fellow disciples takes the stroke they saw and the stroke they received on the battlefield as a seed, and raises up — one stroke at a time — Licensed maneuvers and secret arts that are theirs alone, borrowed from no one. It is an issue that reframes the fate of the Self-Taught — "self-study, no fellow disciples" — not as a shortcoming but as a single story of growth.

• What the Self-Taught Style is, and General Benefits — the definition of the Self-Taught Style you raise, the opening setup, and the small benefit derived from the kit. (01)
• Observation and Record — in the moment of a Critical Hit/Heavenly Mandate/Karmic Retribution, you "see/receive" another school's Licensed maneuver/secret art and make it a seed. The EX2/fc03 material quick-reference table. (02)
• Designing the Interlude — Five Methods — converting records into techniques via Reproduce/Prevent/Guard/Overcome/Imitate, Incomplete → trial → Mastered, and the Critical Hit/Heavenly Mandate bonus. (03)

---

#Commentary — The One-Line Thesis

Thesis. A school is not something you learn, but something you found. Rather than inheriting a completed type, you author a stroke that is yours alone, taking the technique you saw and the technique you received as a seed.

The canon Self-Taught Style (the Nito-ryu and the Gassen-ryu of co-04-04) is a path of "choosing a finished product" whose type is already fixed. Pay one school slot and, in that instant, you obtain the Licensed maneuvers and secret arts. The Self-Taught Style of this issue differs there. The weight of paying the slot is the same — but the Licensed-maneuver/secret-art column begins blank. That blank you fill in, one character at a time, by your own hand, through observation (02), interlude design (03), and the trials of real combat. Just as Sasaki Kojiro, starting from a single Self-Taught Style, arrived at the signature technique called "Tsubamegaeshi (燕返し)" — the process by which a blank school crystallizes into a single stroke. That is this issue.

---

#Meta Card

---

#Contents

Reading order: front → 01 → 02 → 03. To run it at the table, the quick-reference table of 02 + the five-methods table of 03.

Closing fiction. At the end of this issue is a pure Scent fiction — 99. Seriousness ★☆–★★.

---

#Production Notice

This issue is the 11th of the Konsei Reiyotan zn (one-shot) series. The theme of "founding a school" takes its inspiration from the historical fact of real swordsmen who independently raised up a single school — Miyamoto Musashi's Niten Ichi-ryu (二天一流), Sasaki Kojiro's Ganryu (巖流). The growth engine is an opt-in Variant that rides on top of the school, Critical Hit/Heavenly Mandate/Karmic Retribution, and Licensed-maneuver/secret-art system of canon co-04, and it creates no new attributes and no new checks. It actively references the roughly 47 schools of ex2 and the roughly 116 techniques of the fc03 Chronicle of Japanese Swordmasters as material for the "Observation Record," and binds them with quick-reference tables and links rather than re-printing them.

#AI Use Notice

A substantial part of this material was produced with the help of generative AI (LLM) in planning, drafting, prose tidying, and proofreading. The GPT Image 2 model was used in the image generation process. The Japanese edition is the original; Claude Code and Codex were used to produce the Korean and English editions. Final editing and the responsibility for publication rest with the creator.

Should there be changes to domestic or foreign law regarding AI-assisted works, those laws will be followed.

---

#Scent — One Sentence

"A stroke you were taught belongs to someone else. Only a stroke you founded is your own."