Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 45 - The Gran Rey Cero

Wayne's advancement was a natural progression. Ever since he evolved into an Adjuchas, he had been leveraging Jekain's standing within the Forest of Menos to seize resources.

He ate the meat; his subordinates naturally got a share of the broth.

Unlike other territories, Wayne had planned the distribution of Gillians within his own domain with considerable thoroughness.

Every Gillian that possessed consciousness would be found by Wayne and engaged. Those who refused to submit, or harbored any divided loyalties, were eliminated early.

Those Gillians without consciousness became the food supply for his Adjuchas. This way, Wayne could consolidate resources to the highest degree, preventing a rogue Adjuchas from suddenly emerging within the territory and disrupting the established order.

As for the lower-tier Hollows that had not even reached Gillian level, those with consciousness had a zone designated for them, where Wayne would place mindless Hollow beasts and even Gillians for them to train their combat instincts and feed on to grow stronger, then advance them based on the degree to which their intelligence had awakened.

If one successfully advanced into a Gillian with consciousness, it was allowed to continue hunting. If it accidentally became a mindless Gillian, it was added to the food supply.

Naturally, among them there were also some Hollows with special abilities.

Perception ability, for instance, or healing ability. Or Hollows whose traits would be useful in constructing the territory's fortifications. Should any of these Hollows lose consciousness at the Gillian stage, Wayne would assign a dedicated Adjuchas to focus on cultivating them, until they broke through to Adjuchas level and regained their consciousness.

At that point, they would meet Wayne again, and based on their intelligence, their final ability, and whether they were willing to submit, a judgment would be made on whether to admit them.

Those who refused and those who resisted were given no opportunity to open a Garganta and leave, nor to travel to the inner ring. They would be killed on the spot by Wayne and his company and consumed, to ensure no future threat was left behind.

Regardless of what the inner ring of Hueco Mundo currently looked like, Wayne intended to begin from the Forest of Menos and cultivate the forces that would one day accompany him into Hueco Mundo proper.

Wayne himself was a combat-type Menos, and so unlike other territory lords, he was not limited to keeping only Hollow beasts of a matching disposition, non-combat types gathered solely to reinforce his own centralized power.

Within the Central Forest, Wayne treated all types of Hollow beasts equally. His only two requirements were loyalty and sufficient ability. As long as both were met, Wayne would spare no effort in developing them.

When Wayne's elite-quality approach triggered a qualitative shift, what others called a holy war would be nothing more than child's play.

No matter how many Gillians came pressing in, Wayne's side would need only a handful of Adjuchas to annihilate them entirely. By that point, in a war fought between Adjuchas, what reason would Wayne have to lose?

"My King, I sense seven Adjuchas-class Reiatsu signatures closing in on us. Three of them have already reached mid-tier Adjuchas-class."

Beside Jekain, an Adjuchas with bat wings and an ant-like skull spoke up. This was the Hollow beast with the strongest perception ability currently within Wayne's forces.

Wayne had brought it along for this raid specifically to rely on it for pinpointing enemy positions.

"Seven?" Wayne glanced in the direction of the distance.

"Get airborne. Check if there are any natural caves nearby."

"Yes!"

The Hollows received the order, and immediately all of them ascended into the air on Sonído.

"My lord, over there." Nel spotted a range of hills to the north from a distance. Even without a natural cave, it would be enough for Wayne to go there and carve one out on the spot.

"Let's go take a look." Facing the direction Nel had pointed, Wayne led the group toward the location.

After roughly three quarters of an hour, Wayne arrived at the foot of the hills. Fortunately, a natural cave was already there.

He ordered everyone to wait in place, then suppressed his Reiatsu, concealed his presence, and flashed directly into the cave. After confirming the depth of the cave and that it held no dangers, Wayne brought the others inside.

The cave was reasonably spacious, roughly one-third the volume of the entire hill. There was enough room to use Sonído or Cero freely. It was a decent stronghold.

However, considering the destructive output of Adjuchas-class beings, it would not hold up without reinforcement using the special Reishi materials of Hollow beasts. A few dozen Ceros would likely bury the place entirely.

"Nel, stand right here and don't move. I'll go buy — ahem. I'll go outside and set up an ambush."

"My lord, is there anything you need me to do?" Nel had long since stopped being surprised when Wayne said strange things.

"Work with Jekain in here, use the spatial lockdown to cut down the enemies. At the same time, if they fire a Cero in, use Cero Doble to send it right back."

"Understood, my lord." Nel never refused Wayne's orders. Because the tasks Wayne arranged were, for the most part, well within what she could handle. For those she could not, Wayne would communicate through the code phrases the two of them had agreed on, so that plans could be coordinated and adjusted accordingly.

"Jekain, three Adjuchas or fewer, you all handle it yourselves. More than three, just hold them — I'll take care of the rest outside and form a pincer attack."

"Yes, my King." Jekain had also grown accustomed to Wayne's unusual turns of phrase.

With that, Wayne disappeared from everyone's sight, already heading outside to prepare his ambush.

"Lady Nel, how should we face the enemy? Do we set an ambush?"

After Wayne left, Jekain turned to consult the second-in-command here: Nel.

In Jekain's eyes, rather than seeing Nel as a subordinate of Wayne's, it was more accurate to say Nel was Wayne's companion. So at any time, Jekain maintained a degree of respect toward Nel, one part because of Wayne, the other part out of respect for a superior warrior.

Even though Hollows did not possess the complex emotions that humans did.

Still, once intelligence truly awakened, it would naturally open up.

"Hmm... Wayne said I should stay right here and not move, so let's use me as bait. If it's a Cero, I'll return fire. If it comes to close combat, come out from hiding, use the spatial lockdown, and engage." Nel tapped her cheek with a finger in a thinking pose, considered for a moment, and said, though it was through her Hollow Mask.

"Yes." Jekain nodded, then led the Perception Bat Hollow away from Nel's side and into concealment.

After roughly two to three hours, the seven Hollows pursuing them had arrived at the mouth of the cave. Wayne, hidden in the shadows, had already spotted them, he could even hear them speaking.

"They're here." Among the seven Hollows, one resembling a giant hunting hound sniffed at the ground.

"These are the last Reiatsu traces they left. They're inside the cave."

"Are they resting?" A misshapen Hollow nearby asked.

"Hard to say. But anyone who can take out Shuki and the other two in an instant is no small fry. Be careful — it could be a trap."

"Do we go in?"

"What if we hold here and go back for reinforcements?"

"Out of the question. Our lord gave us such an important task. To go back and ask for help would be an embarrassment." The one who was loosely leading the group, a mid-tier Adjuchas, immediately rejected the idea, then waved a hand and selected four of the Menos.

"Scout ahead first. All four of you together — watch yourselves."

On the order, three initial-stage and one mid-tier Adjuchas-class Menos slowly slipped into the cave.

Wayne made a quick mental count of the timing, and at the same time raised a finger. A Cero of maximum concealment had already begun charging and compressing.

It was said that Hollows above Adjuchas-class could master an ability that transcended the Cero, the Gran Rey Cero.

It was a flash of energy several times more powerful than a Cero. However, not many Hollows were capable of mastering it. From the time Wayne advanced to Adjuchas to the present, he still had not mastered it.

Not that he had failed to master it, it was more accurate to say Wayne had not yet fully developed it.

At present, Wayne could compress his Reiatsu on his own to produce a Cero with several times the force of an ordinary one.

To put it in numbers: an ordinary Gillian's Cero had a power rating of roughly 1 to 2; a low-tier Adjuchas-class Cero sat around 5 to 10; mid-tier could reach 15 and above. The Gran Rey Cero's value should hover somewhere between 60 and 100. But Wayne? At this stage, his compressed charged Cero had already broken past 50.

This left Wayne in a state of uncertainty, did what he was using actually count as a Gran Rey Cero?

The charged Cero he was currently using was considerably more powerful, but it had not yet caused spatial distortion.

Wayne himself suspected that perhaps because his own nature was spatial, his Cero naturally maintained spatial stability very well, reducing the Reiatsu expended on collapsing and distorting space.

But from start to finish, Wayne still held the view that the charged Cero he used was not what could properly be called a Gran Rey Cero. After all, this charged Cero was extremely slow to charge. Were it not for the concealment trait bolstering it, whether he could actually land it on an enemy was an open question.

So he kept experimenting, kept compressing his Reiatsu, kept charging. Hoping that one day his Cero would break through the structural limits of a Cero, reach a power value a hundred times that of a Gillian's Cero, and truly become a Gran Rey Cero.

Working in concert with his concealment trait, Wayne compressed the Cero bit by bit. The instant he sensed a surge of Reiatsu activity inside the cave, Wayne fired that invisible, colorless, nearly Reiatsu-signature-free Cero directly at the three Adjuchas remaining outside.

BOOM!

A thunderous explosion rang out. The three Adjuchas took the full force of that long-charged Cero simultaneously.

One initial-stage Adjuchas was reduced to nothing. The other two mid-tier ones were both injured.

"Damn, I didn't control the output well enough." Wayne looked at the finger he had just fired the Cero from and gave a self-deprecating murmur. He had intended to simply kill the initial-stage one outright rather than obliterate it entirely, as it stood, he had lost one Adjuchas-class Reiatsu signature he could have consumed.

"What a waste."

"This — what kind of terrifying Reiatsu is this."

"How is that even possible?" The two heavily wounded Adjuchas were written all over with disbelief.

How had they taken a Cero without any reaction at all, and a Cero at that, with power rivaling a Gran Rey Cero.

"Information is a fine thing. A pity you never had any of it." Wayne smiled faintly, and at the same time raised his left hand. A surge of pale-gold Reiatsu gathered, and the Sky-Rending Greatsword materialized in his grip.

"Damn it! Into the cave!" The two surviving Menos activated Sonído and bolted for the cave entrance, hoping to regroup with their companions and mount a counterattack together.

But as the one whose innate gift was spatial, Wayne was not about to give them that chance. Two steps of spatial flash closed the distance, and then Shadow Step drove one Adjuchas straight into the wall. The greatsword punched clean through its chest, and a torrent of blood sprayed across the stone.

And that was not all, Wayne raised his right hand and released a point-blank Cero that grazed the face of the other Adjuchas, detonating it directly against its Hollow Mask. The Hollow Mask shattered apart.

"Controlled the force this time." Wayne's voice was as flat as ever. He pulled the greatsword free and swung it toward the other Adjuchas's neck.

Spatial energy drove the Reiatsu blade-edge forward. This Adjuchas, a mid-tier peer, was cleanly beheaded by Wayne with a single stroke.

"How, how can anyone be this strong?" The Adjuchas with the sword through its chest stared out with eyes full of despair. It had never imagined that a fellow mid-tier Adjuchas could leave it without a single chance to fight back.

"Who knows." Wayne turned and looked at the Adjuchas on the verge of death. He shook his head, raised the blade, and brought it down on its neck. The mid-tier Adjuchas's Hierro offered no protection at all. A large head was sent tumbling into the air once more.

After stripping the Hollow Masks from both corpses and pushing them into his mouth, Wayne finally walked deeper into the cave. There, four portions of quality nourishment were waiting for him to harvest.

➤ Next: Lock-On — Steel and Blood