The Hunt Begins

Wien had no idea how long he had been walking, but he had not stopped once along the way. It was as though his strength were inexhaustible, and he felt no fatigue at all. The Beast Hollows and some Low Rank Ordinary Hollows he occasionally encountered on the road all became his rations. They did not add much to his Spiritual Power, but they kept him from expending too much of it on the journey.

"Whew... finally here." After who knew how long, Wien arrived at the forest he had seen before.

Rather than a forest, it was merely a collection of white, weathered dead trees. When enough of them gathered together, they formed what was called a forest.

Of course, this was not the Forest of Menos, just a small forest. It was much like the one where Wien had once gone to great lengths to lie low, perhaps even a little smaller than that forest.

Wien entered the forest. Before he could investigate his surroundings, several mid-level Ordinary Hollows fell upon him.

Of course, as an outsider, Wien was bound to face this. And there were only two possible outcomes: either the Ordinary Hollows tore him apart, or he made lunch out of the blind fools.

"Four Ordinary Hollows?" Wien narrowed his eyes slightly. Four Hollows had surrounded him. Two were Humanoid Hollows. One had a face like a stag beetle's but a massive build. The other was relatively small and thin, a size smaller than even Wien, and his arms were a pair of spears, presumably his weapons.

Of the other two, one was a round-faced Mutant Hollow covered in tentacles, and the other was a giant centipede Beast Hollow.

Before Wien arrived, the four Hollows had probably been fighting, since all four Hollow Beasts bore traces of battle, and their Spiritual Pressures were somewhat turbulent.

But they seemed to have spotted Wien at the same time, so the four evenly matched Hollows abandoned their fight and turned their attention to him instead. Perhaps the consciousness in their unformed Intelligence thought that if they ate Wien, they would gain enough strength to eat the other three Hollows.

Reality, however, was cruel. The two Humanoid Hollows attacked first. A fist and a spear shot toward Wien.

Wien did not stand idle. He circulated his Spiritual Pressure and lunged at his attackers. He raised his right claw to deflect the incoming spear while clenching his left hand into a fist and meeting the burly Humanoid Hollow's punch. For a moment, neither gained the upper hand.

The difference was that the two Hollows had already put everything into their attacks, while Wien had only just begun to exert himself.

He parried with his right claw and steadied himself. His left fist met the other's, and he used the opposing force. Pivoting on his right foot, Wien spun backward. He punched the spear he had already parried aside, then turned his whole body and swung his right claw at the spear Hollow's right arm.

Splurt!

His hand rose, and the spear fell. The Humanoid Hollow lost his right arm in an instant.

The first exchange over, Wien quickly retreated. After losing the spear on his right arm, the spear Hollow let out a howl of pain and charged him again.

This time, he was not alone. Three Hollows charged, the centipede Hollow beside him writhing toward Wien as well. The Mutant Hollow behind them opened his mouth and released a burst of invisible sound waves.

The sound waves were naturally faster than the other Hollows. Though fired later, they arrived first.

Wien leaped to the left to dodge the attack. Behind him, a small tree shattered under the sonic blast.

If it hit him head-on, even though Wien's Spiritual Pressure was a level higher than the Mutant Hollow's, he would surely be hindered, to say nothing of the three attacks from different Hollows coming after it.

By jumping away, Wien had put some distance between himself and the other Hollows. The first one he faced was the centipede Hollow.

Gathering Spiritual Power in his right claw, Wien slashed fiercely at the centipede Hollow's face.

The centipede Hollow opened its great mouth and bit at Wien. Sharp teeth met pointed claws.

There was no grating clash of metal, only the teeth-jarring sound of flesh being split apart.

With a single strike, Wien's claw split both of the centipede Hollow's fangs. Without losing force, his powerful Blade Claws continued down into its face, and blood sprayed everywhere.

The strike landed, and the centipede Hollow was no longer able to fight. It lay on the ground, twitching incessantly. At this rate, it would soon die.

On the other side, the two Humanoid Hollows had already attacked Wien. Of course, Wien also needed to recover after landing his strike, so he simply parried their attacks.

This time, he did not sever the spear Hollow's remaining spear as he had before, because another sonic attack from the Mutant Hollow had already reached his side.

To avoid injury, Wien had no choice but to retreat and defend.

The second exchange ended. Wien was unharmed; one of his opponents was dead, and another injured.

After steadying himself, Wien took the initiative and charged forward. This time, his target was the Mutant Hollow flailing his limbs to Wien's side. Though his sonic attacks were not very powerful, they were simply too fast and too much of a nuisance, so Wien decided to take him out first.

Wien redirected his Spiritual Pressure, and his speed abruptly increased. But as he charged, the Mutant Hollow hurriedly opened his mouth and spat out a sonic blast.

To keep the initiative, Wien did not dodge this time. He crossed his arms in front of himself and took the attack head-on, then continued charging at him.

Seeing this, the Mutant Hollow panicked and spat out a second sonic blast. At the same time, he floated rapidly backward, intending to kite Wien until he was completely worn down.

The distance between them had closed, so Wien did not take the second attack head-on. Instead, he leaped high into the air, dodged the sonic blast, and swooped down with a slash of his claw at the Mutant Hollow.

Splurt.

Wien severed the several tentacles the Mutant Hollow had used to block and cushion the blow, and four claw marks appeared on his face. Blood bubbled out of the wounds. Clearly, he could no longer fight.

With the second Hollow dealt with, Wien immediately turned and glanced at the two Humanoid Hollows.

If all four Hollows had launched an all-out attack together and injured Wien earlier, perhaps the two of them would still have stood a chance against him. But now Wien had only taken one sonic blast head-on, and his injuries were negligible. They were no match for him.

Acting on instinct, they wailed at the sky, turned, and fled.

The roles of hunter and prey reversed in an instant. Wien immediately raised his Spiritual Pressure to its peak and caught up with them in a single breath, with no intention of giving them a chance to escape.

Perhaps because Wien had raised his Spiritual Pressure to its limit, they panicked as they fled, and their speed dropped considerably. This allowed Wien to catch up with them easily.

He raised his hand and cut them down in one smooth motion!

In fewer than five exchanges, Wien had easily taken down all the Hollows.

After the battle, Wien swiftly stripped off the four masks and fled far away. He left only four broken corpses, steadily turning into Reishi and dissipating in the forest.

Jogging along, Wien reached another part of the woods and checked the area, finding no enemies there. He then used his sharp right claw to scramble up a large tree. Sitting on a high branch, he took out the four masks and stuffed them into his mouth piece by piece.

Soon, Wien felt four rich streams of Reishi flow into his body. After he digested them, they spread throughout his body and were stored there. Although none of the four Ordinary Hollows had strong Spiritual Pressure, their numbers made up for it. The four streams of Reishi not only replenished what he had expended over the past few days, but also added a good deal of strength, bringing Wien one step closer to breaking through the Ordinary Hollow level and becoming an Elite-Level Beast Hollow.

"Whew... this place is good. I'll set up a base here." Having finished digesting, Wien shook out his body and returned to the place where he had just fought. After all, he had entered from there, and four enemies had appeared there all at once. More Hollows would likely choose to enter and leave through that area as well.

So, after clearing out the first group of enemies, Wien returned to establish the place as his hunting base.

When he returned to the woods, the Reishi of the four Hollows had dissipated, and Wien had just unleashed his power. Any Hollows nearby with even a little rudimentary intelligence had chosen to leave. Only a few Beast Hollows and a newly evolved low-level Ordinary Hollow were wandering around.

Wien casually dealt with the small fry, stripped off their masks, and stuffed them into his mouth one by one. Even a fly had meat, and Wien was especially in need of greater strength right now.

As for why he ate only the masks and not the flesh, in Wien's words, the Spiritual Power contained in a mask accounted for nearly eighty percent of a Hollow Beast's total power. Spending a great deal of time devouring the body for the little Spiritual Power that remained was not worth it.

After clearing the area, Wien headed toward the outskirts of the woods. At the forest's edge, he raised his right claw, infused it with Spiritual Power, and cut down the weathered trees around him, none of which were particularly tall. It was as though he had opened an entrance to the woods.

He carried the felled trees to the place where he had just fought. Using the bone blade on his right hand, Wien chopped off the tops, leaving the trunks, then gradually sharpened them into enormous spikes.

He climbed the huge dead trees nearby and placed the spikes on the branches of the tall trees, making the simplest of traps.

These traps relied on the force of free fall, the weight of the trees themselves, and the impact of the spikes.

They were almost deadly to ordinary-level Hollows without good protection and could also wound Elite Hollows. Of course, they could be dodged, and to High-Level Hollows, they were merely decorations. Their only possible use was to fall to the ground and impede movement for a fraction of a second.

Even so, in this small forest, such traps could already be considered powerful hunting tools. Unless Wien was truly unlucky and encountered someone here at the same level as or even higher than the giant Hollow covered in totems from before, there was almost no Hollow in this forest capable of killing him.

Wien made around seventeen or eighteen of these giant wooden spike traps and distributed them throughout the small patch of woods. He also crisscrossed the small branches into crude mats, then dug pits about four or five meters deep, covered them with the branches, and buried them under sand and soil to form small pitfall traps.

Combined with the giant wooden blades in the trees, even if seven or eight Ordinary Hollows around Wien's level attacked, he could escape unharmed and even turn the tables and kill them!

After who knew how long, Wien had finally turned the entire area into a trap zone. He had cut down the trees at the forest's edge to open a gap, so the Hollows coming to forage would enter the trap zone one by one.

Judging by their current level, these unintelligent Hollows had no idea what a trap was. Even those with some intelligence would fall into these traps as long as they had not reached the level of an Elite Hollow. Only top-level Elite Hollows and High-Level Hollows would not be lured in.

But one must not forget that the traps were not the only things here. There was also a top-level Ordinary Hollow with high intelligence.

Next, Wien only needed to capture a mid-level Ordinary Hollow, injure him, and trap him at the center of the trap zone as bait. Then he could wait for prey to come to him.