NOVEL WEB 18 – Eye Of The Tiger
For the next year Hisashi focused on grinding as many hollow as he could to grow his level and spirit power. The higher his dexterity became the larger the area he could effectively patrol became in turn speeding up his gathering speed. Although mind-numbing at times there is a certain addictive quality to bringing up levels and stats, even more so when they have an effect on your real life abilities unlike in-game ones.
He also spent a large portion of his available time outside of clearing the city on pushing his Illusory Aura skill to its absolute limits. He already had a feeling this was going to be one of if not the most important skill he has in the long run due to it's sheer versatility compared to most of his other skills.
Something like a Cero or a Bala is a great attack, but Sonido for example is far more important due to its sheer versatility and Illusory Aura definitely falls on the Sonido end of the spectrum making it a must to master. It also didn't take a long time for it to become a core of his combat. Whether it was using it to stealthily sneak around town landing surprise attacks on hollow lowering the risk of hunting immensely or if that failed using it during battle to confuse his enemy. This became easier and easier as he got faster and deploying the skill and more adept at its fine manipulation.
He managed to get so good at it that he could now even imitate his former human form with it including all the mannerisms he used to have while still alive. He had started to use this form when talking with his sister to make her more comfortable. Although she had grown a lot more comfortable with his Hollow form there always remains a certain amount of discomfort with a 10 foot giant insect.
Achieving this may sound like it's no big deal, but if it was merely imitating his form he would seem like some kind of uncanny soul-less puppet version of his former self. He had to imitate breathing, blinking regularly, the movements your eyes make when interacting with other people, the blood under your skin, how wrinkles form when making different expressions and the many many involuntary motions you make all the time without even realising it.
Though the end result seemed simple the sheer amount of mental capacity it consumed to mind all these things while maintaining the skill was staggering. Due to this it was an amazing way to train his proficiency in the skill though.
He also spent some of his free time teaching his sister the ins and outs of the operating system he had been on the verge of completing before he died which was created with knowledge of OS UI from nearly 30 years in the future. Even if it had been delayed 10 years it was still 20 years ahead of any competitor on the market in usability and features. It might not be of any use to him anymore, but it could still make his family very wealthy if his sister could become proficient enough in it to be able to troubleshoot and update it she could take over and release it as a product like he was originally intending to do himself.
Once released and it starts making enough profit she can easily just hire employees to continue development leaving it as mostly a source of passive revenue. Then his family wouldn't have to worry about anything financial anymore. Maybe his father would be able to finally work less or quit completely and spend more time with the family. He had always only been there on the weekend and breakfast often not returning until later at night. It would be better for his health too.
It took a while, but she had already been studying it for years. It's just that without someone to teach and explain it it was quite hard to understand the programming and design philosophy behind it since there was nothing like it yet. The popularisation of Microsoft Windows and Apple Lisa helped her a little, but just on a bare bones level. Not on any of the far more developed elements.
After a year of him tutoring her though she had a firm grasp on the entire thing and was able to start updating it to address the 10 years of new hardware developments that had occurred since Hisashi originally programmed it.
Finally he got one more emergency mission when his mom and sister were in danger by another Hollow attacking them while they were out shopping together. It was getting easier to protect them though as his power was now well above an average base Hollow. He actually managed to get his first non-Hollow skill from this and was quite satisfied. It seems like he had hit another jackpot this time around.
[+1 Year]
[+182500 XP from Hollow]
[+18250 XP from Animal Spirits]
[+1800 XP from Pluses/Humans]
[+5474 Spirit Power from Hollow]
[+36 Spirit Power from Pluses/Humans]
[+365 Spirit Power from passive absorption]
[+19 Levels]
[+19 Stat points]
[Emergency Mission completed]
[Skill Blut granted]
'System, show me my status panel.' he told the system.
=Status Panel=
[Name: Saito Hisashi]
[Soul Age: 50 -> 51]
[Race: Hollow]
[Rank: Hollow]
[Level: 35 -> 54]
[XP: 52973/14900]
=Stats:=
[Strength: 20 -> 25]
[Dexterity: 30 -> 35]
[Constitution: 15]
[Intelligence: 6 -> 15]
[Spirit Power: 1422 -> 7297]
[Available Stat Points: 1 -> 0]
=Passive Skills:=
[Spiritual Energy Absorption]
[High-Speed Regeneration]
[Acidic Touch]
=Active Skills:=
[Soul-Body Separation]
[Spirit Power Concealment]
[Illusory Aura]
[Blut]
He had boosted a lot more into intelligence this year because he found it had a rather noticeable effect on the improvement of his skill proficiency growth and spirit power control both of which had a rather large impact on his use of [Illusory Aura] finally convincing him it was worth to invest a bit more in intelligence.
[Blut] seemed to rely a lot on intelligence to control it without suffering backlash and his spirit power being the fuel to run it. The more spirit power he pumped into it the stronger it's effects were, but at the same time it became harder to control the spirit power running through his veins and making a mistake with that could lead to serious backlash. It took a lot of effort figuring out how to use it while not receiving backlash, thankfully the strength of his Hollow physique along with his [High-Speed Regeneration] allowed him to practice without worry that he couldn't recover if he did suffer some backlash. With the increase in intelligence though it became easier to keep more and more of it in control at once.
