NOVEL WEB 10 – Hollow Hunting
Hisashi is hanging from the side of a building as he stalks a hollow he has been watching since he sensed it earlier today. He feels fairly certain he is stronger, but he isn't willing to take any risks on his potentially first fight with a hollow. Making sure to both stay out of it's line of sight and running his [Spirit Power Concealment] he has managed to track it down and stalk it without being caught for the last hour and it just seems to have set its mind on plus that must have looked particularly appetising to it. The closest thing to compare the hollow to would be an overgrown rat-like creature with elongated limbs and a hollow mask running over most of it's snout and skull. Though it was very big compared to an actual rat, it was still dwarfed by Hisashi's size as it was only reached around 5-6 foot tall. What it lacked in size and in turn likely strength it more than made up for with its burst speed being almost as fast as Hisashi's regular speed despite him religiously pumping his free stat points into his dexterity.
Leaping from building to building as silently as he can he keeps tracking the hollow watching it like a hawk as it chases the plus through the streets until it finally manages to back it into a corner. He crouches tensing his legs in preparation to pounce and notices the hollow letting down its guard a little as it knows it has finally cornered its prey with no way out. Hisashi does his best to predict the hollow's trajectory and the moment he notices the hollow's hind legs tense he leaps at the location he predicts with the maximum amount of power he can afford without losing control. The hollow leaps at the plus cowering in the dead end, but Hisashi has a clear aim for its head and draws back one of his arm blades as he rapidly descends down on the unsuspecting hollow.
At the last moment before reaching the plus, the hollow seemed to notice something and at the last moment dodged to the side as fast as it could. It managed to avoid being beheaded, but still lost one of its hind legs that was just too slow to get away from the slash. The ground shook and the pavement is cracked where it had been a moment ago, now revealing Hisashi with its missing leg pierced on the end of one of his blades before pops in his mouth like a small snack.
It only takes a few moments before the rat hollow's High-Speed Regeneration starts to kick in and the leg begins to regenerate at a speed fast enough to see with the naked eye. Hisashi isn't going to give it a chance now that it temporarily couldn't make use of the majority of its speed which heavily relies on its hind legs. He has to finish this before it manages to regrow it though and regains its lost mobility. It tries to intimidate him with a piercing screech like hollow roar, but when combining its diminutive size when compared to him and the missing leg it makes it laughably ineffective.
He spins around and launches himself at the rat hollow again his right arm slashing at it. The rat dodges to right, but fails to realise it's a feint in time and Hisaki manages to chomp a big piece of its mask off. This immediately causes the rat hollow to drop and struggle to even maintain its life. It's obviously dying, unlike a missing limb a heavily damaged mask isn't something it can recover from. Hisaki doesn't have time for this as every second more of the rat hollow's spirit body is dispersing losing him his precious spirit power. At this point it is completely incapable of resisting as he devours the rest of it in seconds.
[+500 XP]
[XP: 517/550]
[+10 Spirit Power]
[Spirit Power: 62]
'Holy shit!' Hisashi was blown away by the numbers he was seeing.
'Isn't this a bit much compared to human souls?' he immediately asked the system.
[Answer: Hollow souls are most optimal for devouring as conversion of the spirit power has the highest efficient. Even though the amount of spirit power contained by this hollow isn't ten times that of the humans you devoured before due to the compatibility in devouring hollow spirit power much more of the spirit power is retained after converting the spirit power you devour from a hollow. This is the reason hollow turn to consuming each other rather than human souls to be able to evolve to a Gillian and beyond. Shinigami souls are better than human souls, but mostly due to their spirit bodies containing far more spirit power. Their conversion efficiency is barely above human souls. To summarise Hollows are the best when considering risk to reward for consumption.]
'I guess deciding to switch from animal souls to hollow was the right decision. Pluses might be safer, but although I can stomach devouring people that I absolutely know are bad like those that attacked Reina I don't feel comfortable attacking regular pluses while knowing they are likely just innocent people. I could go to prison to devour people there, but honestly with Japan's conviction rate I really don't feel comfortable judging that the people incarcerated are guilty of what they have been sentenced for with any certainty. The risk in this attack was controlled and manageable, there was barely a chance of me to be harmed and the reward was immense. If I continue my strength should grow far faster than it has been munching on animal spirits. Finally there is little to no guilt when eating basic hollow. Though Adjuchas and beyond regain some semblance of consciousness beyond their baser instincts this isn't really the case before that point. The closest was Orihime's brother and really he had barely transformed and was actively losing his mind to the point where he ended up harming his sister in the end anyway. By that standard there is no need to feel guilt over devouring what are in essence mindless beasts with little consciousness controlled by their base desire to consume which only end up harming innocent people.' he justifies to himself that it's no different than killing a dangerous predatory animal that's terrorising the city and doing so also happens to help him towards his goals. He is pretty much being a Good Samaritan.
When he turns away he leaves behind a scared and confused plus unsure why it is still alive after running in to not one, but two powerful monsters. It's senses were screaming at it that they were its natural predator and that it was going to die from the moment it ran into them.
