Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 47 - Battle

Wayne stopped dead in his tracks.

He spun around and swatted a Bala out of the air, then gathered Reiatsu in his right hand. Lightning crackled, trailing sharp, keening shrieks like a bird's cry.

Lightning Strike!

His right claw swept out in a blaze of lightning. The swarms of Bala and Cero detonated on impact, throwing up a wall of dust and smoke that swallowed him whole.

Peromon and the other Adjuchas-class Hollow Beasts pulled up short. They didn't advance. They waited.

At this level, charging blind into a cloud where you couldn't locate your enemy was suicide. Even if Peromon sensed Wayne fleeing again, he wasn't moving until he was sure there was no ambush waiting.

This time, though, it was different. The dust settled, and Wayne was still there, hanging in the air, perfectly still, no longer showing any intention of running.

"Hmph. You stinking worm. Finally stopped running?" Peromon halted his pursuit and shifted into a ready stance. "What, decided you're ready to die?"

"You really think..." Wayne's voice came from above. His position during the retreat had put him at a higher altitude; Peromon's group hovered a full level below. "...I'd be afraid of a few bottom-feeders like you?"

"Since you're in such a hurry to die — I'll grant your wish."

Pure disdain. He looked down at the five Adjuchas-class Hollow Beasts below and slowly raised his left hand. The Sky-Rending Greatsword began materializing out of Reishi, taking shape piece by piece, until it was fully manifested. The moment it solidified, the Pale Gold Reiatsu around Wayne's body surged.

Pale Gold light punched straight into the sky. The pressure hit the opposing Adjuchas like a wall, forcing them down. Only Peromon managed to hold, he had instinctively spiked his own Reiatsu in the instant before it landed, and that alone let him weather the suppression.

"This... this is really what a mid-tier Adjuchas can put out?" The perception-type Hollow Beast — the one who had just used his ability to pull Wayne out of Concealment, was struggling to breathe. He forced his head up and stared at Wayne above him, a figure that looked less like a Hollow and more like a god descending from the sky. Terror filled his chest.

If his lord weren't standing right in front of him, he would have already turned and run.

"We underestimated him." Peromon felt the Reiatsu rolling off Wayne, equal to his own, maybe a shade more. His chest tightened. "He's only mid-tier Adjuchas, but the quality and density of his Reiryoku are way too high. That Reiatsu is almost on par with a peak-tier Adjuchas."

There was no chance to call for reinforcements now. All he could do was push his Reiatsu as hard as possible and hope some nearby Adjuchas in a neighboring territory would sense it and come.

"Everyone, full Reiatsu release! This bastard is not going down easy!"

"Yes, my lord!" All four Adjuchas responded in unison, each of them driving their Reiatsu to maximum output. Alone, none of them could match Wayne. But when all five released together, the Pale Gold pillar above them began to waver.

"Five at once — that's a little dangerous." Wayne smiled and gave his blade a casual twirl. "But how do you push past your limits if you never take risks?"

He stamped the air and launched himself downward in a Sonído-driven Air Flash. The speed was so great that only Peromon managed to track it. The rest didn't even have time to react.

Wayne flashed in front of Peromon and brought the greatsword hammering down toward his Hollow Mask. Peromon reacted instantly, he surged his Reiryoku and raised both arms to intercept, putting his hardest limbs between himself and the blow.

The impact never came.

The greatsword vanished the instant before contact, leaving only the hilt in Wayne's grip.

"GAAAH!"

The scream came from behind Peromon. He turned.

The Adjuchas directly behind him, the one who had been tracking and locking onto Wayne, had been split in two. Blood sprayed into the air and across Peromon's body. In front of the bisected Hollow, a spatial rift pulsing with dim light hadn't fully closed yet. Behind it, a Pale Gold slash was still streaking off into the distance.

Dimensional Slash!

The feint had worked perfectly. A strike loaded with massive Reiryoku, delivered through a spatial rift, landing on a mid-tier Adjuchas who never saw it coming. One hit. Dead. The moment that Hollow died, the violet glow around Wayne faded and vanished.

Concealment was back online.

Wayne didn't give Peromon a second to collect himself. He caught the flash of vacancy in Peromon's eyes and moved, Air Flash Sonído, instant displacement, a decoy afterimage left behind to mess with Peromon's sightline. His real body materialized beside another Hollow Beast: a bizarre, alien-looking thing with a semi-humanoid frame.

The Space-Rending Slash's distinctive light fell and landed clean.

But the Hollow had braced for it. The strike didn't kill, it broke his guard and carved deep wounds into both forearms he'd raised to block. Damaged, but still breathing.

"Despicable!" Peromon knew he'd been played. In the span of a breath, he'd lost another subordinate. He wheeled around and stepped into a Sonído, driving his fist toward Wayne. Wayne vanished with another Air Flash.

"Die!" Peromon's arms smashed into empty air. A massive orange-red shockwave blasted outward toward Wayne's position, ripping through everything in its path. Even the air made muffled popping sounds as the wave tore through it.

Earth-Rending Shockwave!

Apparently Peromon could use his ground-targeting attack in midair too.

Wayne didn't stand there and let it hit him. He let the air beneath his feet stop supporting him and dropped, straight down. The shockwave had tracking, though. It curved and came after him.

Just before it connected, his figure disappeared.

He reappeared beside the already-injured alien-headed Hollow and drove his sword through its chest like a ghost. The shockwave, unable to make the turn in time, slammed into the ground below. The earth cracked open in a network of massive fracture lines.

Shadow Step!

And he wasn't done. In the same motion, Wayne opened his mouth and fired a point-blank Pale Gold Cero directly into the Hollow's face. Its head separated from its body in an instant. Not even the Hollow Mask was left behind, obliterated, gone.

BZZZ!

The two remaining Adjuchas attacked at once. Two Cero screamed toward Wayne.

He'd just finished a sequence and hadn't recovered yet. He turned and barely got his greatsword up in time, blocking both, but the explosions still caught him. When the smoke thinned, he shook the blood off his arm, then grabbed his right claw where the blast had twisted and bent it out of shape and wrenched it back into position.

The Sky-Rending Greatsword disappeared from his hand. He raised his left hand and leveled it at the three Adjuchas facing him. Pale Gold light flashed behind his eyes.

Dozens of spatial rifts tore open simultaneously in every direction. Centered on the three Adjuchas, Bala fell like a downpour from all sides, churning up Reiatsu storms with every impact.

Bala: Ethereal!

The Bala came in from everywhere, erratic, unpredictable trajectories pouring in from angles that should have been impossible. Against Adjuchas-class opponents, Bala alone wasn't going to deal killing damage. But the three of them felt the pressure. They held their Reiatsu steady and tracked every incoming shot, reading the bizarre paths and putting up the right defenses.

Still,

BOOM!

One Bala punched straight into an Adjuchas's back and sent him staggering.

"It hit? How?!" He'd blocked everything he had sensed. Every single one. So how had that landed?

BOOM!

Before the shock even left his face, the Adjuchas beside him took a hit too. Not lethal, Bala wasn't going to one-shot an Adjuchas, but it drew real damage.

For a point of reference: if the Bala Yammy had thrown at Wayne back when he'd force-pushed himself from lower-tier High Hollow to peak Gillian counted as 1, then the Bala of an ordinary low-tier Adjuchas would come in around 20. Wayne's Bala, driven by condensed and refined Reiryoku, was at least 50. Against a Lower Hollow it would mean instant erasure. Against Adjuchas-class, inflicting damage was already enough.

"Something's wrong." Peromon's eyes narrowed. Even with this density, he should not have been hit. He had not made errors. He was certain of that. And yet several Bala had landed on him anyway.

Then it clicked.

He hadn't failed to dodge them. He had never perceived them at all.

"He has a second ability. He's masking the Reiatsu signature of his Bala!"

"Give the man a prize." A beat. "Oh wait — there isn't one."

BZZZ!

A colorless Cero shot from a strange angle and punched clean through one of the injured Adjuchas. The beam cored him completely.

He wasn't getting up from that.

Here was what had actually happened: while Wayne ran Bala: Ethereal, he had simultaneously begun gathering a concealed Cero in the background. Even with his considerable Reiryoku reserves, splitting his focus that many ways was a lot to manage at once.

Bala cost Reiryoku. Bala: Ethereal added a second layer, activating the spatial property to build out the coordinate structure demanded its own share of attention. And on top of both of those, Wayne was running Concealment to keep the charging Cero invisible.

The divided focus had caused something he hadn't planned. A fraction of his Concealment had bled into the Bala themselves, suppressing their Reiatsu signatures and creating what amounted to Bala: Silent Kill. That was why some of those shots had landed without any of the three Adjuchas ever sensing them coming.

It was an accident. But a useful one.

And before the three Adjuchas had time to pull themselves together, the Cero, condensed to a level barely below a Vasto Lorde's Flash, had fully charged and fired. One Adjuchas down, just like that. The setup had been worth it.

Two enemies left.

➤ Next: Alright