Monica wanted to try out fighting after seeing what my daughter was capable of. She had been left behind with a lingering magic power even after being completely freed from Dorothea, this power has been simply resting within her.
However, it felt strange she was so confident, has she been practicing with her powers secretly? Or maybe she just instinctively knew how to use them somehow? Like an imprint left behind by Dorothea into her body…
"T-Then maybe I should try… this?" Monica said, slightly timidly as she pointed her hands at the Legions far away. "Life… Draining Curse?"
The darkness gathered into her hands, quickly firing towards a nearby Hollow we were fighting, and suddenly covering its entire body on black flames.
The Hollow slowly started to melt, as I sensed their life energy being drained away back to Monica, until it ended dying, turning into a splattered mass of black mud, with a tiny black crystal on top.
Due to how powerful it was, we were all left quite speechless. Above all, Monica didn't even had a magic circle of her own, nor a physique or something.
That was all just her innate powers, supernatural abilities independent of magic circles engraved inside of a person's body.
"T-That was… quite something." I muttered. "You don't even have magic circles like us, yet you're so strong!"
"That was really amazing." Mark agreed. "Your power seems to be Curse-based, perhaps? A life draining curse seemed deadly enough. I can't imagine what else you could create."
"Maybe I should also learn how to conjure curses. I can, right? Seeing I'm a dark sorceress and stuff." Rita wondered.
"That was splendid, Monica, well done!" Lily clapped.
"Yeah… You seem not tired at all either, you maybe got a lot of Mana." Elena nodded.
"A-Am I?" Monica looked at her own hands. "Ahh… T-This is scary…" She stepped back, doubting herself.
She seemed afraid of her own powers after seeing how destructive they ended being, I couldn't really blame her for that either.
However, she needed to know that she wasn't alone anymore.
"Don't worry." I said, gently patting her shoulders. "You're not alone on this. Your power is strong, but if it ever goes awry, we're here to solve the problem."
"Yeah, we've revealed so much of our secrets to you because we trust we can deal with whatever you've got in store." Mark nodded. "Calm down and breathe slowly."
"But it is so dangerous…" Monica cried. "I-Is this even okay? For me to have this power…?"
"It's certainly not okay if you didn't want it to begin with." My daughter suddenly said. "But you can use it to help others, maybe? It doesn't really have to hurt people."
"I-I guess." I agreed. "Though, you didn't had to be so rough around the edges, Elena…"
"Anyways, just calm down, it's alright. You can keep using this power to destroy these things anyways." Rita said. "Look, they keep coming for a while. They're called Hollows and… I think they're born from corrupted mana and negative emotions."
"Negative Emotions?" Monica wondered. "Just how does that works?"
"All people, even people without Mana, exude energies from their bodies." I explained. "When we go through a lot of stress, anger, frustration, and other things catalogued as "negative emotions" we tend to let out a dark energy from our bodies. This energy would usually just dissipate.
But in big metropolitan areas where there are millions of people constantly letting out this energy, the energy will form invincible clouds and, once it absorbs mana from the environment, will give birth to them, Hollows. Perhaps the most ancient and primitive of all monsters. They're like rats, you can find them anywhere. Especially on big cities."
"I-I see… So this whole time, we've been living with these things around us?" My daughter asked, she was just as curious.
"Kind of… I think?" I wondered. "But we can't see them. Usually, normal people without Mana won't be victims of them. Hollows ignore them. They only chase Mana; they devour it and desire it to continue growing larger and evolving. The desire for survival and evolution most monsters possess.
The Great Spirit told me they can also reproduce once they devour enough Mana, and divide into smaller ones."
"Though sometimes, they will undergo evolution if they absorb enough mana, or eat one another." Mark said. "We've only fought a few Evolved forms, but they're much stronger. The Hollow Legions is one of them."
"Yikes, and we have to fight these guys anywhere?" My daughter asked. "I'm beginning to regret my decision of gaining supernatural abilities."
"It is part of the responsibility any super-powered person has ever had, even before the Awakening." I explained. "Though, Awakened People can now see them too, but are not actively hunting them because of how elusive they are. They often hide and come out at night. But we know ways to call them here, as I had done just now."
"So normal people can't even see these guys?" My daughter wondered, after having drank some Mana Potions I gave to her, she had refilled her Mana and was slaying a few as we spoke. "These guys are sure troublesome for how common they are!"
"Well, not really, seeing how we're hunting them right now." I said. "They're good to warm-up to, and if we gather a lot of their Crystals and purify them, we can use them to get stronger. Though it has gotten much slower now."
"I didn't knew that…" Monica said. "I wonder… what can they become?"
"Well, I can explain that." The Great Spirit manifested above my head. "Hollows usually go through special stages of evolution!
From mere Hollows, once they absorb a lot of Mana, they can either fuse together with more to become Hollow Legions, or keep evolving on their own and become Life Draining Hollows, which gain the dangerous ability to drain Life Force, no longer being just a threat for people with magic powers, but to all…"
"I didn't knew of that evolution. We've not meet one like that yet…" I was surprised.
"And that's not all… If A Life Draining Hollow ends up draining a lot of people, they can turn into the even more dangerous form." The Great Spirit said. "Soul Eaters."