It needed more and it needed to consume a greater quantity or quality if it was to start to grow more than it currently was.
Ash needed to decide whether to keep hunting more and risk bringing down the overall population of the balls of light in the area or whether she should look to other locations to capture them.
There was an option to begin looking for less harmful and easier-to-capture Spirits or Evil Spirits but Ash was quite uncertain if they would go unnoticed too.
If there was a large drop in Spirit activity in one area then some Balancers or Watchers would soon begin to notice such changes.
They would only be able to conclude that other Balancers were hunting down the Spirits or Evil Spirits outside of their knowledge and outside of the structured organizations that they had in place.