Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 52 - Dispute — Face to Face

After finishing the Hollow Beast Mines, Wayne ordered Mude and Pantelin, the pangolin-type Hollow Beast who specialized in digging, to carve out a dedicated underground space for manufacturing them. He supplied both with enough resources to keep their Reiatsu topped off.

Based on the four Hollow Beasts' Reiatsu consumption, producing a single mine took roughly five minutes. Their daily output came out to somewhere between a hundred and a hundred twenty units.

Once the first batch was ready, Wayne had Pantelin bury them throughout Peromon's territory. The purpose was to slow down the neighboring lord Atak whenever he decided to move. It also bought Wayne time to slip in and cause chaos, assassinating Adjuchas-class targets across multiple fronts simultaneously.

The buried mines were concentrated along the routes leading into Atak's territory. In other directions, Wayne only ordered a handful planted as tripwire alarms. At the same time, he sent Jekain and Mude to map out the spots inside Peromon's territory where Gillians tended to cluster, the groundwork for redirecting their movement.

Over the past month, Wayne had been running large-scale resource harvests across Peromon's territory. A month of continuous effort had left it nearly gutted. Only about twenty percent of the original Gillian population remained. The redirection plan was designed to catch the rest before they drifted back in, funneling them along preset routes, slowly drawing them into Wayne's own territory instead.

The result: Peromon's territory would become a natural buffer zone between Wayne and Atak, buying Wayne time when the fighting finally started.

Strategic setup complete. Wayne moved into the infiltration phase.

With his own territory in order, he went in alone, straight into the heart of Atak's domain.

Assassination was almost beside the point. The real goal was to stir up conflict between Atak's faction and his neighbors. Same old trick. Break the enemy from the inside.

According to Jekain's intelligence, Atak was a rare speed-type Hollow Beast. His offensive skills weren't particularly refined, but his burst output was extreme. In a way, he was the same type as Wayne, an assassin-type, built for sudden kills. The difference was that Atak had grown to seven or eight meters in size. That kind of mass turned what should have been a ghost into a wrecking ball, sliding him out of the "skilled fighter" category entirely. Because once you survived his opening burst, there wasn't much left to be afraid of.

That said, Atak hadn't clawed his way up to lord by being reckless. He'd spent a long time stockpiling forces and developing his territory, climbing step by step until he secured the position. And he knew how to compensate for his limitations, he used his subordinates to build formations that amplified his burst potential during hunts.

None of that changed Wayne's approach. He had no intention of meeting Atak head-on. Not now. This stage was about erosion, not direct confrontation.

When the mine stockpile grew large enough, Wayne could flatten every territory through sheer technological advantage. For now, the mines were a nuisance at best. But nuisances scaled. Enough small changes stacked together, and something bigger would break.

It took about three days to reach the deep interior. Wayne arrived at the border region where Atak's territory met that of another lord, Gross Robe.

Gross Robe was a mid-tier Adjuchas-class lord, unremarkable by the standards of the thirty-six lords. But his abilities were unpleasant to deal with. He was an Aberrant Hollow, sludge-like in form, who wielded corrosive liquid and acid mist. Not the kind of thing you wanted to get close to. Fortunately, Wayne's long-range options were solid enough.

Still, that was a problem for later. Right now, the priority was weakening both sides.

Unlike his previous operations, Wayne could now maintain his concealment with real ease. As long as he kept his Reiatsu-based skills unused, the chance of a leak was minimal.

Against unprepared low-tier Adjuchas-class targets, the pattern was simple: one burst of Reiatsu, then instant concealment and gone. Enemy deaths would be picked up by the local sensor-types anyway, no need for excessive caution. And that single-instant Reiatsu spike? Unless the target had exceptional perception abilities, they wouldn't even catch the scent before it vanished.

Wayne had already dealt with every sensor-type Hollow Beast in the Forest of Menos with the range to detect him at a distance, cleared out when he first entered. The only real risk was bad luck: being exposed at the exact moment a sensor-type happened to be standing nearby.

He'd thought it through. He started the hunt.

The first day, he didn't move. He spent it mapping the enemy's rough distribution and marking the Gillian gathering spots. After running the numbers, he moved on day two, tracking his first low-tier Adjuchas-class target.

The target belonged to Atak's side. It looked like a standard patrol unit. Deep inside what it considered safe ground, it had dropped its guard completely.

Wayne had been concealed the entire time. He walked right up in front of it.

It didn't react at all.

One stretch. Head parted from body.

Wayne stripped the Hollow Mask off quickly and pulled back into concealment. Then he settled at a distance and waited for the other Adjuchas-class to notice.

He didn't wait long. A low-tier Adjuchas-class came in on Sonído, converging on the scene. By the time it arrived, another low-tier Adjuchas-class from Gross Robe's territory had already shown up.

The kill had happened on the border. Neither side bothered with words, the moment they laid eyes on each other, tension snapped taut. The one from Gross Robe's side almost regretted showing up. Hard to look innocent when you're standing over a corpse you can't explain. Each side held its ground, each accused the other, and in the end they settled it the only way they knew how, trading blows and hoping reinforcements would arrive to sort things out.

Which was exactly what Wayne wanted.

One Adjuchas-class was a modest return on its own. But one kill setting off a dispute between two factions? That was a fine opening move.

About ten minutes in, the Reiatsu from two Adjuchas-class brawling had drawn in four or five more from each side. They fought in bursts, stopped to trade insults, then fought again, the original reason for it all apparently forgotten. But once blood was in the air, casualties followed naturally. Gross Robe's side lost two low-tier Adjuchas-class before both factions finally stepped back.

Wayne was too far away to catch the words, but the Reiatsu told the story clearly enough. Atak's side had decided they'd drawn enough blood and came out ahead, time to pull back. Gross Robe's side was furious, but they were outnumbered right now. They let it go. First order was to report back and regroup.

"A bloodbath over a single Adjuchas-class." Wayne shook his head, somewhere between amused and resigned. Still, the result was what he'd been aiming for.

He didn't linger. He left the area and disappeared into a Gillian nest. For the next two days, he'd lie low there, hunting Gillians to keep his Reiatsu from bleeding dry while his concealment trait stayed active.

Two days later, Wayne came back.

Same target zone. Same objective: find an Adjuchas-class from Atak's side and put them down. The patrol had cycled out, fresh face, same fate. One clean kill. But this time Wayne took an extra step: he faked the wound pattern, then moved the body and left it just inside the border. For authenticity, he ate half of it before pulling back into concealment.

If the first incident could be written off as an accident, this one read as naked retaliation.

Sure enough, Reiatsu signatures from several Adjuchas-class lit up along the border almost immediately. They exchanged a few words, barely, and then they were at each other again. This fight hit harder than the last.

Casualties came fast. As the violence escalated, more Adjuchas-class poured in from both sides until dozens of them were tangled in open melee.

"Fight." Wayne leaned back against a tree trunk somewhere in the distance, relaxed, watching the Reiatsu detonate across the battlefield. "Let all of them fight."

"Everyone, stop!"

About ten minutes in, a column of silver-gray Reiatsu erupted into the sky. Atak. A heartbeat later, a bright silver Cero tore across the field toward the opposing side.

"Fall back, all of you!" On the other side, a yellow-green Reiatsu surged upward. A matching yellow-green Cero launched to meet the silver one, the two blasts collided and scattered into nothing.

Gross Robe. Both lords had arrived simultaneously, forcing the battle to a halt through sheer pressure. But the damage was done. Between them, both sides had already lost four or five Adjuchas-class each. There was no clean way to bury this.

"Atak." Gross Robe's voice was high-pitched and grating, saturated with menace. "You send your people to start a brawl inside my territory, and you think I don't deserve an explanation?"

"Those words belong to me." Atak's Hollow Mask bore a passing resemblance to a porcupine, not exactly the look of a speed-type specialist. "My people killed for no reason. Devoured." He pointed to one side, toward the staged corpse Wayne had left behind. "This is the second time. Gross Robe — don't you think you owe me something?"

"Ridiculous." Gross Robe let out a sharp, cutting laugh. "We're in different alliances, but right now every faction has its eyes on the territory Gatmont left behind. A few low-tier Adjuchas-class — you really think I'd bother making a move over that?" He wasn't giving an inch. Fully committed to his denial.

"And frankly — subordinates scrapping, getting killed, getting eaten? That happens. But a squabble between foot soldiers somehow spiraling into a pitched battle between dozens of Adjuchas-class, dragging out a lord who's supposedly busy seizing Peromon's territory?" Gross Robe's tone sharpened. "That's not nothing. So tell me — are you running a feint? Using this noise as cover to make a real move on my land?"

"Hmph." Atak's expression darkened. "Gatmont has pulled back from the Central Tree and taken his forces south against Solu's territory. Solu's alliance is fighting back hard, but every other faction is scrambling to grab the unclaimed land he left behind, building strength before Gatmont can regroup and counterattack. I have no time for you." His voice went flat and cold. "And yet in just a few days you've cost me six or seven subordinates. That delays my entire operation on Peromon. Tell me why I shouldn't come collect on that."

"Ha!" Gross Robe threw his head back. "You lost subordinates? So did I. Peromon's territory was already taken by Yinfeng, and your entire alliance missed it. Walked right past while someone else stripped the place bare. Now it's a hollow shell. You want to claim it, you have to push Yinfeng out first. And to do that, you need strength you don't currently have." The laughter dropped out of his voice. "So you look around for an easier target. You start picking off my Adjuchas-class. Go ahead, Atak, tell me that's not exactly what you're doing."

➤ Next: Confrontation — Clash