2 Chapter

"Blegh!" I spat out a piece of Adjuchas that I hadn't chewed yet. My predator's instinct demanded that I eat everything I got, but my body protested: I couldn't physically push a single piece into myself!

The fact is that after several experiments, I realized that the more I eat, the denser the mass of reishi in my stomach becomes, but as it turned out, the denser the mass, the more often there are failures, as a result of which my reishi are replaced with "perfect" versions. In other words, if I get drunk enough, I'll become a Vaster Lord faster. And given that prey is not often found in the desert, I have to hunt constantly to keep my stomach full. So I hunt. Even if I can't eat my prey completely. No matter, here the law of life is simple: eat or be eaten.

Speaking of which, once I had sorted out my body and my plans for the future, I started thinking about something else. Namely, how do I kill my prey? You can't get very far on one Gray. So instead of exploring reisha, I turned to reiatsu, because this energy is the sword and shield of the void. And not just empty ones. And the more I explored this energy, which most often happened in motion, because I was constantly looking for new prey, the faster I realized that my original analogy with chi and chakra was not correct. Or not quite right. Yes, reiatsu is generated by the body of the empty, just as chi is generated by the body of a human. Yes, I can control reiatsu in the same way as I controlled chi, but reiatsu had a number of properties that were not peculiar to chi, but were very similar to other, familiar energy. I'm talking about mana, magical energy, the energy of nature, or whatever you want to call it.

In my previous lives, these two energies were very different. Mana is the energy that is spilled all over the world, and wizards, magicians, sorcerers, and others usually absorb it, then manipulate it to change the outside world. For the most part. On the other hand, the chakra is the energy generated by the body, and is most often used to strengthen and manipulate the body. But here it is necessary to explain that by "body" I mean the "whole" body, including the aura surrounding any person. Reiatsu could manipulate my body and aura, but at the same time, it could be controlled separately, without being tied to the body, as with mana. Interesting, very interesting... This opens up huge opportunities. And of course, I was not slow to start experimenting with the use of reiatsu for combat purposes. What else should I do with it? Learn to knit without using your hands? Which I don't have anyway...

"Hmm, the smartest one, huh?" "I've been circling my next victim for the fourth time, looking for a suitable angle of attack. I usually ignore such strong Adjuchas, but I've made a lot of progress recently in terms of my combat capabilities and wanted to test them on a stronger opponent. And now, in front of me, a creature crawls across the desert, looking like a hybrid of a slug and a turtle. It didn't look like much, and if I had attacked him without thinking, I would have been trapped in a real trap. Fortunately, I noticed in time that some of the streams of his reiatsu went somewhere underground, and when I looked more closely, I realized that this empty spider network of mobile, snake-like tentacles, spread out under the sand, and having a radius of thirty meters.

In principle, it is quite an effective strategy: why hunt yourself, when you can pretend to be weak and wait for the prey to come to you? But I didn't want to become prey, so I circled around this guy, looking for weak spots in his web. Which, to my regret, was not there. So, what should I do? Well, for starters, you can try a proven method: Gray! The instantly collected reiatsu cluster immediately shot a dense beam in the direction of Adyukas, which hid my prey for a couple of seconds. And when the raised sand calmed down, I was disappointed to see the unharmed Adjuchas. Aha, now it is clear why he needs the armor: if the prey saw the trap, and decided to kill him from afar,it will not be so easy to do it. So how do I kill him? Gray is inefficient, and getting close is dangerous. Or should I still approach? I can manage my reiatsu perfectly, I can nourish my skin with it, making it stronger than steel, and my speed, thanks to the strengthening of my muscles, is impressive. Although I don't think it's Sonido and Hierro yet, as far as I can remember, they're Arrancar techniques, so I probably learned a pathetic imitation. And still, these "pathetic likenesses" made my life a lot easier. But is it worth hoping for them now? Judging by the spiritual pressure, my opponent is no weaker than me in terms of reiatsu, which means not the fact that my skin will withstand the impact of his tentacles, but the fact that his tentacles are literally everywhere, makes my speed not very effective.

I think the best opportunity to check out my latest developments will not be provided. The thing is, when I was experimenting with reiatsu, I remembered one life where I was dealing with almost the same energy. I was born in the temple of the Shonan Empire at that time, and the monks of that empire practiced the Nen skill, as they called the energy used. And although it was the energy of nature, in practice the monks used it to strengthen their own body, with occasional use of it to influence the environment. After quite a long time, which I spent on adapting the old techniques to the new conditions,I still began to succeed. Of course, the higher techniques like "Tiger Flash" are still far away, but the basic techniques in this case should be enough. Of course, the fact that I am a cat complicated and limited their use, because they were designed for people, but as they say on bezrybye and cancer-fish.

"Come on, go to Daddy... "I got in his way and waited for that turtle to crawl up to me. Aha, now its tentacles began to crawl half a meter below me, but so far it has not taken any hostile actions. Doesn't want to scare me off? Well, well... To wait... Wait a little longer... Time!

I activate the "Stimulating Breath" and make a lightning leap forward. At the same moment, several tentacles shot out from under the sand into my face, which also had small, toothy mouths. Except I wasn't there anymore! "Stimulating Breathing" is a basic martial technique of the Nen masters, which essentially removes the boundary between the physical body and the aura, allowing the Nen, and in this case Reiatsu, to freely cruise not only inside the body, but also at some distance from it. And reiatsu, these are my hands and eyes. I knew about the incoming attacks as well as if the opponent before the attack would slap me on the place where he wants to hit. But it's just a small thing: by dodging the first attack, I didn't really close the distance to the enemy before he attacked me again. Only this time I didn't dodge, instead cutting off the tentacles in vain, sealing my reiatsu at the edge of my aura, so that the lifeless scraps only slid impotently across my hide.

Here I am at the shell, but as expected, the shell was strong, and hundreds of tentacles were already approaching me from all sides. I won't shy away from all of them, and I won't cut them, but it was for such cases that I worked very hard on another trick from the past. Jump directly into the armor of Edukasi, after which the fraction of a second concentration... The Barrier Reiatsu! A transparent red sphere, only three meters in diameter, formed around me. Yes, it's a little tight, but I don't have enough control over reiatsu for more than that. In fact, I just created a Hierro on the outside of my body, without binding it to my skin. On the one hand, this requires much more control, but on the other, it allowed much more reiatsu to flow in, making the barrier many times stronger than my likeness of Hierro. Even now, all those tentacles were smashing into the barrier, and all they could do was slide helplessly over it and try to break through. Speaking of breaking through: I don't think my opponent has the strength to break through the barrier, but the problem was that the barrier itself can't hold for more than five seconds: reiatsu's energy is too unstable to maintain an impenetrable barrier for any length of time.

However, I don't need much: as soon as the barrier was formed, I brought my front paws together on the shell of this Adjuchas and simply created a clot of my reiatsu under the shell. The fact is that with the active "Stimulating Breath" and the close proximity of the enemy, my aura invades him, and although I can not control the flow of reiatsu inside his body as freely as I do just in the air, but so I do not need to create a full-fledged Gray. Just a small clot of reiatsu... Now just inject a destabilizing charge into it and... I felt the body beneath me shudder, and a second later the tentacles that had encircled my barrier fell limply to the sand, so that when the barrier fell apart, I was standing on a completely dead Adjuchas.

- Ha-a-a... I gasped, jumping down from my prey's armor and looking at it from all sides. The supply of his reiatsu was two-thirds depleted, with most of it spent on creating a barrier. We need to see if we can reduce its cost. And now I need to think about how I can turn this thing over: I'm not going to gnaw the shell, and some tentacles after such a grueling battle will not be enough for me!