Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 33 - Nel Returns

Chapter Thirty-Three: Nel's Return

Cero Doble!

The sight rekindled the red light of hope in Wayne's eyes. He could feel it, Nel's Reiatsu had reached the Adjuchas-class. Still a step below Riat's, but she held an absolute advantage.

Cero Doble.

The pink Cero streaked straight at Riat. Less than thirty meters. Nowhere to dodge. The sudden counterattack caught him completely off guard.

It hit dead-on, several times hotter than any Cero Riat could produce. The scorching heat began to sear through his body. One attack, and he was already heavily wounded.

Nel's timing had been perfect. Wayne had drained part of Riat's Reiatsu. Wayne's near-death state had lowered Riat's guard. And Wayne's provocation had knocked Riat's mind out of its cold focus. Three conditions, all stacked.

After that rage-fueled Cero, Nel's Cero Doble landed its decisive blow.

Hit them when they're down, finish them off. That was one of the combat principles Wayne had drilled into her. Nel had never forgotten it. The instant Cero Doble ended, a double-headed spear materialized between her hands.

"Lanzador Verde!" Her soft, childlike voice carried an edge, something cold, something angry. The silver-gleaming spear trailed a ribbon of pink Reiatsu. Before the dust from the Cero had even settled, she hurled it at the target.

A muffled thud. The sound of a spear punching through flesh reached Wayne's ears, followed immediately by Riat's howling shriek.

Then silence.

Because a second emerald spear had already appeared in Nel's hand, hurled straight toward the source of that scream.

Clean kill.

Nel's decisiveness startled Wayne, but only for a moment. He accepted it quickly. Many Hollows underwent a shift in temperament after evolving. And in a sense, what Nel had become was inseparable from him. The techniques and principles of lethal combat had been taught to her by his own hand.

What Wayne didn't know was that she had attacked with such ferocity because she had sensed it, his Reiatsu, faint and flickering, barely clinging to life.

In that moment, her mind had moved like a current of electricity, calculating, deciding.

The mercy of a kind heart is never meant for one's enemies.

For an enemy who sought to kill Lord Wayne, Nel had only one response.

Kill.

"Haah... saved." Riat's Reiatsu faded and went still. Wayne, flat on his back in the dirt, released the last of his tension and let out a long, slow breath. He stared up at the sky.

A hero-saves-the-beauty moment, straight out of a novel, except it had happened to him. No, wait. Beauty saves the hero.

"Is this my good karma?" He exhaled again, gazing up at the dusky yellow sky. Even the pain from his severed limb seemed to ease, just slightly, in this moment of release.

"Lord Wayne, are you alright?" The battle was over. Nel — her evolution long since complete — turned and ran toward him. Her antelope body circled around him in anxious loops, scanning his injuries. Her gentle voice was thick with worry.

"Ah, I'm fine." Wayne struggled upright and leaned back against a tree. Even sitting, the ten-plus-meter Gillian towered over Nel's sub-two-meter frame. He reached out and rested a large hand on her head. "Thanks to you, Nel. I made it. Thank you."

"Ehehe." Hearing that he was unhurt, being praised like that, Nel ducked her head and let out a bashful little laugh.

Her Hollow Mask hid her face, but Wayne could feel her joy. It seemed that after evolving, she no longer worked to hide her emotions in front of him the way she used to. "Lord Wayne, let me treat your wounds first."

She walked to his severed arm, extended her tongue from behind her Hollow Mask, and began to lick at the stump. With each glistening pass, the burns healed a little. Her healing ability had clearly strengthened along with her evolution. In under five minutes, the wound was completely repaired, though no new limb had grown back.

"Alright, Nel, that's enough." Wayne patted her head gently with his intact hand. "After evolving, you seem to have gotten quite strong."

"Yes," she said. "The Adjuchas-class is on a completely different level from before. Strength, skills, senses, even intelligence — all of it improved. Compared to the mindless Hollow beasts that evolve, it seems like naturally conscious ones gain a much more noticeable boost in intelligence."

"Good." Wayne stood. "Let's leave this place first. We can talk more later."

This forest was still the Lord of the Northern Forest's territory. No time to ask more questions. He urged Nel to move. Even now that she was an Adjuchas, she was no match for the combined Adjuchas-class and Gillian hordes that could be called down on them. The only smart play was to run.

"Yes, my lord." Nel dipped her antelope head and dashed off. She was back in less than a moment, and when she returned, she had a massive Hollow Mask clenched in her mouth. Riat's mask.

"Heh. Almost forgot. You can destroy the evidence too." Wayne took it and shoved it whole into his mouth, replenishing his badly depleted Reiatsu.

"Lord Wayne, where do we go now?" Nel looked up at him.

"Out of this forest first," Wayne said. "It's not safe anymore. With Riat dead, every Hollow in the core will come after us. We leave now, then make our next move."

"Yes, my lord."

"One thing — can your Super Acceleration carry a body as big as mine?" Wayne ran through the numbers in his head. At his own speed, the Lord of the Northern Forest's forces would catch up before they cleared the tree line. But with his body this large, and Nel's Super Acceleration...

"Mm... probably not." Nel shook her head. "Lord Wayne only has one arm right now. If I use Super Acceleration, you probably couldn't hold on. You'd be thrown off."

"I see." Wayne went quiet, turning the problem over.

"But Lord Wayne, there might be another way." Nel extended one finger and tapped lightly at the air. In an instant, a black fissure split open in the empty space, a gaping, yawning mouth of darkness.

"Gar... Garganta?" Wayne's eyes went wide. Of course. Nel had evolved into an Adjuchas. Learning to open a Garganta was within her reach. "Ha! Nel, you keep giving me surprises."

Nel said nothing in response. Her tail wagged steadily behind her, speaking for her.

"Then our destination is clear." Beneath his armor-like Hollow Mask, threads of red light gleamed in Wayne's eyes. "Nel, connect the Garganta to the central region of Hueco Mundo. We're heading to the central Forest of Menos."

A Garganta was a special passage that linked different dimensions. Through it, a Hollow could cross between worlds, to Soul Society, to the World of the Living, or between the outer and inner circles of Hueco Mundo. It didn't just tear open dimensional space; it also compressed travel time. A journey that would have taken a year could be covered in a single month.

The only drawback was that opening and closing one both required time. Otherwise it would make for a useful life-saving skill in its own right.

Walking through the Garganta, Wayne asked Nel about her advancement. The summons she had felt from the Forest of Menos when she evolved into a Gillian. The insights into her abilities after crossing into the Adjuchas-class. Her answers surprised him.

During her advancement to Adjuchas, she had been mostly asleep. When she woke, the understanding of her own traits, abilities, combat techniques, and sharpened intelligence were already imprinted in her mind, clear and complete.

But when she had advanced to Gillian, only the most basic summons and a rough understanding of the rules had surfaced in her mind. Nothing like the dialogue with the Forest of Menos that Wayne had experienced. He kept that to himself and said nothing.

Maybe she had lost consciousness during advancement, and that was why she hadn't learned more?

The thought crossed his mind, but he let it pass.

At this stage, there was no point dwelling on it. When the time came, he would face it directly and find out then.

They walked on through the Garganta. Time moved differently inside it, even Wayne's injuries struggled to heal properly here.

"Lord Wayne, we've been in here for several days now. Should we step out for some fresh air and find food?" The endless sameness was starting to wear on Nel. On top of that, neither of them had eaten in days. For herself, she could manage. But she was more worried about Wayne.

Since swallowing Riat's Hollow Mask days ago, he hadn't eaten anything. His severed arm had slowed its regrowth from lack of energy, and the distorted time inside the Garganta wasn't helping. Prolonged injury accumulation like this, Nel was afraid it might cause damage that couldn't be undone.

"Might as well. Several days, and this much distance — those bugs couldn't possibly catch us now." Wayne agreed.

His arm did need to recover. And he could feel it: if he didn't properly adjust and compress his Reiatsu, advancement wouldn't be far off. He needed his body in peak condition first, so the compression and refinement would go cleanly.

Nel cheerfully tore the Garganta open. They stepped out together.

Outside, the world was its usual dusky yellow. But after the gloom inside the Garganta, even this felt like a relief. Reishi flowed through the air here, unlike the stagnant heaviness inside.

Nel quickly sensed a modest-sized forest nearby. That became their first stop.

A Gillian and an Adjuchas walking into that forest was not something its inhabitants could handle. The moment they pushed into the core, the high-level Hollows scattered and fled in every direction.

They were probably thinking: where the hell did these monsters come from, bullying the little guys?

Nel gave them no chance to escape. A few Sonído passes, and several high-level Hollow Masks ended up clenched in her teeth. She handed them to Wayne, then swept through the rest with a single Soul Absorption, swallowing up the weaker Hollow beasts in one clean pass. Nel didn't enjoy killing, but with Wayne in this state, she didn't have room for that. She swept the forest bare.

She was already a near-peak existence in the outer circle as an Adjuchas-class Menos, but with Wayne compromised, she needed to maintain her own strength. Full Reiatsu meant better protection for him.

Dozens of high-level Hollows. Over a hundred mid-level Hollows. Countless low-level ones. Gone. All of them, devoured clean.

Once the forest's core was empty, Nel chopped down several large trees and built a simple enclosure, somewhere she and Wayne could lie down and rest, a small measure of safety for him to recover in.

Time passed.

A full day slipped by, and Wayne's severed arm had begun to grow, a tiny nub pushing out from the stump, just a few centimeters.

"One day, and it's already this far?" He studied the new growth, genuinely surprised. Did he have a natural Regeneration talent that exceeded the ordinary?

Regeneration was, at its core, an ability all Hollows inherently possessed. Everything except the Hollow Mask and the brain, limbs, appendages, skeleton, carapace, eyeballs, internal organs, all of it could regenerate, provided Reiatsu was sufficient and the environment was stable.

But ordinary Hollow beasts regenerated slowly. Growing this much in a single day was already fast by Gillian standards. An ordinary Gillian would need two or three years to fully recover a severed arm.

At this rate, Wayne's arm would be back to full in a few months. With enough Reiatsu, faster.

By speed, this rated as mid-tier Regeneration, still well below High-Speed Regeneration or Ultra-Rapid Regeneration.

High-Speed Regeneration was visible to the naked eye. Ultra-Rapid Regeneration could regrow a severed arm in an instant.

But as he advanced and his Reiatsu climbed, this ability had room to evolve further.

That was a good thing. If he reached Adjuchas, or pushed even further, all the way to Vasto Lorde, this Regeneration would become one of his trump cards.

He was counting on it.

➤ Next: Growth — Inner Fire