Chapter 8

The dead world of Eternal Night. The neighborhood of the newborn. The Forest of Menos.

Hunting. What is hunting to a reasonable person living in a so-called enlightened society? It is a way to have fun with friends or alone in the wilderness, to get a trophy to brag about. For the backward societies of humans, elves, orcs, etc., hunting is the only way to feed themselves and their families. A hunter in such a society is an honored job. For me, hunting was the only way to dispel the fog that clouds the mind. It added color to this gray, at first glance lifeless, but in fact frighteningly diverse world. It drove away the madness.  Each new strong game, extracted and eaten, brought incomparable sensations - satisfaction, enthusiasm, confidence in the future.  However, I had become too strong for some, yet I was too weak for others.  The mere lowly Voidlings, with their maximum tenth level, were one tooth away. The giants that roamed the forest, on the other hand, were so strong that I couldn't even approach them. I am literally pressed into the sand in their presence.  Gilians, as the system called them, are the next stage in the evolution of my new species. A fight between an inferior and a menos larva can be compared to a fight between a man and a monkey: the monkey has a chance, but it is so small that it is not taken into account.  Even the rabbit hare, whose birth I witnessed, had forty-first level, nine thousand flesh with eight thousand spirit, as well as a curious inscription in the status: Immune to any manifestation of spiritual power of low density. Isn't that funny? This fool, who is fifteen meters tall, can be killed using only physical force. But the furry ones won't give up.  A plan has been devised for the most dangerous and serious hunt of my life. And possibly the last.

  -I wonder if I'm an idiot or a moron. It's a good idea. But will it work? Oh, what a nice nose he gave him. - Mrya!

I was talking to myself, sitting on a tree branch, watching the fight between the two Guilians.  It was a sight to behold, I must say. It started with a sluggish firefight with red beams. How they managed to survive a hit from one of them, I can't imagine. Each gray ray took off five or six hundred flesh, and that was with their resistance. 

The duel of the grays lasted a long, long time. Until the larger menos with the nasal mask jammed something in his head. He yelled and ran toward his opponent, ignoring the rays as if they weren't attacks at all, just a breeze. 

Not reaching some ten meters away, the menos with the standard nasal mask swung his thin arm, during the backward movement the monster's arm lengthened by an order of magnitude, as if it were rubber, and with a whistle hit his opponent on the head. Menos Grande did not expect such a trick from his supposedly stupid opponent. Menos Grande, as the certificate tells me after using the skill of observation, should be superior in everything to its wild brethren. But it seems there are exceptions. Although for my wild plan, this situation is even better. What is this great miscarriage of my half-crazed brain? Oh! It's very simple! Find a menos that has taken the path of evolution, follow it, and at a convenient moment, after a serious fight, kill it. 

How do I kill someone my strongest attacks don't work on? There's a move I've been practicing lately. The paw pad strike worked very well. The only strange thing was that I intuitively knew how and when to use it correctly. In general, my fighting style has changed with the class. Now I do not jump around the opponent like a hare, my movements have lost their randomness, became more smooth and orderly. Perhaps this is the proverbial understanding of combat. 

So, if I get the chance, I'll try to eliminate the winner of the menoso battle with a surprise paw strike on the mask. If I don't get the chance, I'm in no hurry. 

While our hero was for some reason explaining to himself the logic of his actions. Menos Grande woke up from the blow of his brainless colleague. His eyes glowed blue, the mouth of the cartoon raven mask opened, and the monster roared into the enemy's face.  The sonic attack was aimed with a cone at the face of a mere menos. And that attack was enough to stun the once frisky blank.  A moment later, the raven-headed man created a powerful red sero and fired it at the enemy. The impact threw the mindless giant a fair distance away. 

"Here's a chance! The menos grande has less than a thousand flesh left." The cat tensed, he was currently putting all his spiritual power into the pseudo-muscles of his paws. 

The raven-headed man waddled toward his defeated foe. Saliva began to drip from the mouth of his grotesque mask in anticipation. The monster had made a mistake, he had let his guard down. The hunter, on the other hand, did not miss the opportunity. With all his strength in a spurt forward, the cat rushed toward the prey, which at the moment passed near his hiding place. One movement, one strike, one death. There was no epic overpowering, no bloody fight. Hunting is about killing your game in the quickest way possible.

Zing!

Attention! You have defeated an opponent twenty levels higher!

Attention! You have defeated the opponent above you on the ladder of evolution!

Gained 6450 OPs [Experience converted to essence points]

As a reward, you get a skill: 

  [Cunning]{Passive} 1 level:

+5% that your ruse will succeed.

[Soft Paw Style]{Style/Skill} level increased 

[Soft Paw Style]{Style/Skill} beginner level 6.

"Whew, it worked. However, this method of food extraction can't be used all the time. Who knows if I'll be lucky next time. But I'll think about the next time. I achieved the most important goal - the fog that had begun to envelope my mind was dispelled. But for how long?  Will it be easier after evolution? Maybe I should just use the first method, join the crowd of empty people and go through the rainbow circle. But my gut tells me that I'll regret it if I take that step. 

"By the way, the level was still twenty-five. The experience scale hasn't even moved. It looks like I've reached the peak of this body's development. Now I can only develop my skills slowly." Thought the cat leisurely approached the dead giant. Sniffing the corpse's mask, he sniffed at the sight. The face of the raven-headed man was almost unharmed, only the imprint of a cat's paw on his forehead stood out....

"It's probably not a good idea to use the absorption skill. I'd rather do it the old-fashioned way. I wonder what menosas taste like?" With these thoughts, I sank my fangs into the most nourishing part of the mascara, the mask. Then my memory faded away, I remember only the incomparable pleasure. It was many times stronger than the first time. 

"Yeah. Wow. Did I eat both carcasses? I don't remember a thing." 

Zing!

You've absorbed 10,000 e.s.!

Skill [Absorption] level increased by 2

[Absorption]{Active/Passive} 14 level:

+24% of the beneficial elements of the ingested food

54% of Essence is absorbed when killed by contact.

When activated at a distance of 440 meters, all available essence is absorbed, 50 ohm activation.

...

Spiritual gene [Menos Legacy] increased in complexity to 2 (max)

[Menos Legacy] difficulty 2(mah):

...

By absorbing strong null souls you can go beyond the abilities of an inferior void.

With a small probability of absorbing a plus soul, your soul will stabilize or gain positive status.

...

Essence: 16450(free essence)/41450(all essence mined while living in this form)/1000(minimum number of essence units required for evolution) 

Task [First Step] Updated!

...

2.Menos are a race capable of assimilating parts of null and positive souls. What happens if you change your diet and start eating strong zero souls? - 25%

3. .Menos are a race capable of assimilating parts of zero and positive souls. What happens if you change your diet and start eating positive souls? - 25%

4. .Menos are a race capable of assimilating parts of zero and positive souls. И? - 5%

-Mrya? Souls-plus? Zero souls-rare?  What's my soul, then? I thought I had a zero soul. Hmmm. Maybe I should go back to my tree house and meditate.

As I ran home, while monitoring the area, I praised the creator for once again giving me the monk class. The [Meditation] alone outweighs all the other bonuses of the class.

[Meditation]{Active/2x mode} 3rd level:

Know thyself: by immersing yourself in inner meditation you can follow the processes happening to you at the level of the pseudo-body. It also speeds up the work of the mind by 3 times.

Know the world: by immersing yourself in outer meditation you begin to understand the world around you more fully on a pseudo-physical level. You can understand weaker beings on a spiritual level with a 75% probability within a radius of no more than 150 meters. Also the work of the mind is accelerated by 2 times.

When I used this ability for the first time, I looked inside myself and was a bit shocked. First of all, I have no insides, just meat and bone. Instead of blood, my veins are a mixture of liquid flesh and spiritual power, what I took for internal organs, gutting another victim of my hunt, is actually an imitation of meat. In the second place, the whole body is only ten percent essence, the rest ninety in the mask. Third, I'm genderless...I'm fucking genderless, neither boy nor girl (thank the creator). Fourth, I have no brain, all mental processes occur in the mask. So theoretically, if my body is destroyed, if the mask is intact, I can recover. But it doesn't work. The reason is not clear to me, but it is experimentally established that when the mask is intact, the body does not recover, although the mask does not disappear. Perhaps, when I develop meditation, I will have access to the spiritual level as well, then I may be able to understand it. 

Now the first task upon arrival in my hole is to develop the most important ability up to the fifth level. Then the next bonus will be available, and then we can move on from there.

It was business as usual at home. Deserted and lonely. I went to the wall and made another notch on the wall with my claw. This habit appeared to me recently, some three hundred and twenty notches ago. And how else can you tell time? This counting is another of my tricks, an anchor that brings some order to the chaos of existence. 

-Which meuditation to start? Inner or outer? It is probably better to start with the internal one, since I have already thoroughly studied myself, I am unlikely to be able to understand anything new. What's in the instructions about the vnyashnya meuditation? Uh-huh. Unfocus your gaze, relax, concentrate on the spiritual power in your skin and hair, try to deny your body and expand your consciousness...Ok, let's get started.

Nothing happened for a while, but that's normal, it didn't work right away with the inner one either. Then I started to feel everything around me. I realized that the tree in which my house is organized is not really a tree at all, but something like a mushroom. And it's not dead, it's more alive than ever. Slowly the radius of perception began to increase. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. It was an unusual feeling, as if you were a hundred times bigger and still growing at a mind-boggling speed. I began to look around, feel, taste every physical object in a huge radius. The empties that lived in this forest smelled almost identical and tasted almost the same, only the menos had a much richer flavor. Focusing some of my attention on one of the giants, I tried to get inside, to realize it, as I had done during my inner meditation, but it didn't work. Some kind of barrier kept it out. "Maybe with a pumped up skill I'll succeed, but not now." A thought-affirmation came.  For a very long time I've been learning about the forest around me. I watched the birth and death of menosas. When I was about to call it a day, fatigue began to press on my consciousness, something strange, out of the general picture of the world, attracted my attention. On the edge of my perception, six creatures appeared. They were not empty, rather closer to humans, but something prevented them from being called so. There was some difference, elusive, intangible.

  These non-humans walked calmly through the forest and easily destroyed the empty ones they came across. The Menos, on the other hand, were bypassed. All their actions said that the creatures were highly intelligent. 

"We need to check it out. If they are representatives of the local society, then following them will give us some information about the world. I'd like to talk, but they won't even listen to me, they'll attack me right away. But how I want to talk to someone!"  The excitement did not leave me, and I wanted to meet the locals, but I was afraid. I gradually began to come out of external meditation, and I am no longer a giant a thousand kilometers in diameter, but an ordinary frightened cat.

"I've got the direction memorized. I'm gonna go look at those six." This decision was very difficult. Fear was overwhelming the former invalid. It is always difficult to decide to change his life, and that his life after the meeting will change dramatically, our hero did not doubt. Whether for good or bad, but intuition whispered to the cat that as before will never be. Even madness for a while gave way to fear. But Void realized that if he backed down now, if he lost his resolve, it would all be over for him. How long could he survive alone, fighting and hunting all the time? And here was the solution to all his problems.  Just stay out of sight of the local intelligences, watch from afar. Of course, it's a bit naive to think of himself as a master of stealth, but what else is left? 

Our hero jumped down from the mushroom tree and smoothly stepped on the sand and ran towards his future. This time he didn't kill anyone, he just pushed away especially fierce wild monsters with his paw. For some reason, the big cat thought it sacrilegious to mar such a moment with killing. Slightly crouching down, with his ears perked up, the silver void carried on through the forest of undead mushrooms. Due to the intense worry and excitement, the cat slightly released its spiritual power, and the darkness of the dungeon was illuminated with a soft silver-blue light. It seemed that in front of us was not an ordinary void, but some mythical creature composed of moonlight. 

In time, the cat forgot about all his plans, all his worries. He simply gave in to his strongest desire at the moment. The desire for change.

Pride, laziness, lust, anger, curiosity, desire, joy, loneliness are some of the strongest feelings that overwhelm the mind throughout its life. After death, what we call personality is erased. First all knowledge disappears, next comes the turn of consciousness and only then feelings and emotions disappear. The last to disappear is the vice of personality, the strongest feeling that dominates the mind throughout life. However, if the soul is destroyed, the vice becomes the anchor that prevents it from disappearing. Empty are the very souls that are destroyed, that live only because of their vice.  Usually, in the lower minded void ones, the vice is not emphasized in any way, only the evolution into a vaster lord changes the character sufficiently. But our hero's situation is a bit different. His soul was bound not by his own vice, but firstly by something like the will of a lot of empty focused on him and secondly by the seed of the creator, which further strengthened this will. Therefore, the vice of our hero is very strong, so strong that it can completely take over the consciousness and thoughts. Which is exactly what's happening right now. The empty cat is so fed up with loneliness, constant uncertainty, that he wants to communicate, so much so that the vice has directed all the actions of our hero. And he rushes to meet the six just to fulfill his desire.

***

A world of sunshine. The Japanese continent. West Rukongai. Asx family mansion.

Harlequin Asx.

Harlequin Asx followed her brother. The girl wasn't stupid, as Labir's snooty sister thought. Of course, she had a hard time with theoretical subjects that her older sister cracked like peanuts, not to mention Shinsi's tank. Arle has yet to learn the multiplication table and writes with difficulty, but that doesn't mean she's stupid! Even if the girl is physically much stronger than her brother and sister combined, it's no reason to call her wah-l-ki-ri-eya (who is this walgotgototam little girl did not know, but it sounds offensive). And now the youngest decided to prove to everyone that she was a cunning ma-n-goo-sta, and not some valka. As her brother flew past her and her sister-slash-slice scuffle, Arle felt something wrong. How so? Usually her brother always broke them up and fixed their bruises and scratches, but here he didn't even pay attention. At that moment, Harlequin realized that if she didn't want to screw up again like she did with the stupid flycatcher, she had to act. Quickly throwing sister in the bushes (then she will surely apologize...maybe), she quietly sneaked into her father's laboratory and hiding in her favorite place under the table with all kinds of glass (why only daddy so much junk?) began to eavesdrop (because that's how ma-n-goo-sts should do). And she was right! My brother persuaded my father to buy a pathetic, inferior, empty slug instead of the strong and cool Verey Slug! Why we need such a weakling in the family, the girl didn't understand, because everyone knows that lowly slugs are the weakest animals in the world (Arle is confused, not in the world, but in the Hueco Mundo Desert - that's what Sensei Isako told her). Especially Shinshi-baka always indulges the red-haired mop, and so even among the weaklings she will choose the slowest and most clumsy.

-Hello, father," came her brother's voice, and she listened, lest the king of spirits should miss a word.

-Oh! Shinshi, hi! Are you finally interested in my research? You're helping Daddy? That's great! I was so sad without the heir's help! As I imagine that we, father and son, grasp the essence of things and phenomena, make various discoveries, I immediately overflow with enthusiasm! It's a pity that you used to insist on a military career, but I told my dear Kay that the path of a researcher-scientist was your destiny! Shinxi, I'm so proud and happy that the Asx family's tradition of scholarship won't end with me!

-Dad, there's no point in this conversation. For the umpteenth time, I've tried to explain to you that my dream of becoming a shinigami has not gone away. Solomon may not be good for fighting, but there's still martial arts and kido. All the teachers praise Labir, and she's been caught in your lab more than once. The eldest of our family will definitely carry on the tradition, but not me.

"Again he's praising that snooty girl! What about me? I'm trying too, after all, and I like mixing colored water at Daddy's lab too!" Thought the little spy. Tears began to pour from her eyes. And the girl would most likely cry from resentment, if her brother had not started a conversation on a topic of interest to her. 

-Father, it's business. I understand you promised the girls a pet. Well, if memory serves, a couple months ago you mentioned your desire for long-term observation of the empties. Why not do the observations at home? Let's just combine your study of the empties' behavior with the sisters' desire. And even though the inferior is not menos, you have to start somewhere. And since the inferiors can be domesticated and the council of a hundred has nothing against it, even the ruling was that you can only kill domestic empties with the owner's permission - that would be the best solution!

-Daddy's happy! Only my son could come up with such an ingenious solution. Indeed, why did I concentrate on menosas, forgetting about unstable spirits! So many ideas, so many different studies could be done! I'm going to Hueco Mundo right away to get some samples.

Arle rejoiced. Even the tears stopped flowing. If Daddy goes, he will definitely choose the coolest and most powerful animals! No more plants! Maybe bring a big slug or even a ma-n-goo-sta! But reality turned out to be cruel. Shinshi had ruined everything. "Maybe he's conspiring with the redhead? Then it's clear." Tears came to the girl's eyes again.

-No. -It's a bad idea, Dad. If you go, the Momo clan will probably be interested. And when they find out there's a new tenant in our family, Lee Momo will think of something nasty. But if you defiantly don't want to deal with those inferiors, there'll be a chance to secretly open something up and spend in the council to bypass the rival clan. They just won't have time to negotiate with their allies. 

-Shinshi, you're right. I fully expect you to choose. In the meantime, I'll work on the research topics. 

The conversation was over. Shinsi hurried out, and Dodgy began to write something in a folder, muttering some gibberish to himself (in Arlie's opinion). After waiting a moment, the girl pulled herself together.

"This is no time to cry. The fate of my gift is being decided. I'll show them all." The girl sharply raised her fist upward, parading her father, who was very fond of the gesture. Arle slammed her fist down hard on the table she was sitting under. The table flew off with a clatter and crashed into the ceiling of the laboratory. Everything on it naturally shattered, spilled and mixed. The mixture of some of the compounds was very undesirable. There was an explosion. However, the girl in her father's underground laboratory was gone. Arle was not very smart, but the girl's intuition worked perfectly. Leaping out of the darkness of the underground corridor into the light of the pseudo-sun, the girl on instincts alone evaded her brother's gaze and snuck into the ornamental bushes. Shinshi looked toward the entrance to the lab for a while. After following the cloud of smoke, his brother heard his father's distant scolding, sighed and hurried towards the gates of the manor.

Arle waited ten minutes and sniffed at something. She wiggled her nose amusingly in different directions, as if catching her brother's scent, and followed him. The girl had an unusual talent. In addition to her strength, she also had one ability that was inherent only to the highest spirits of beasts. The girl could detect the scent of spiritual power. According to Arle herself, the ability was stupid and not cool, but at times the unusual sniff helped. For example, the little girl could track down anyone by the smell of reatsu.