Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 55 - Type Zero Storm

"Kill them! Kill them all!" Gross's roar tore across the entire battlefield.

The final berserk surge of Reiatsu. That yellow-green energy took form once again. The acid mist domain contracted, condensing into eight yellowish-brown tentacles. With every swing, droplets of acid rained down, wherever they hit the ground, a white-smoking hole appeared.

The next instant, Gross launched himself into the sky and lashed out at an Adjuchas-class that had no time to dodge. The blow split the Adjuchas clean in two from the point of impact, dissolving it at a speed nearly matching the cut itself.

"Atak! Even if I die today, I'm dragging you down with me!" One strike to put down a Low-Class, and Gross was already charging the next. Atak's Subordinates had been casting Negación over their comrades one after another, but there was always one Hollow Beast that ended up isolated. That was the one Gross was hunting.

And beneath him, his own Subordinates kept up the harassment. The isolated Hollow Beast had nowhere to go but sideways, dodging left and right, scrambling in pure desperation.

No one could stop Gross in his rampage. All Atak's Subordinates could do was stall for as long as possible. Whether fleeing or fighting back, their only job was to wait, wait for Atak to recover.

"Surround them! Four on one! The moment they step out of Negación, kill them!"

His eyes glazed with bloodlust, Gross lashed furiously at Negación barrier after Negación barrier while issuing orders to his Subordinates.

The command worked. Four Hollow Beasts to one, there was never any doubt about the outcome. The targeted Hollow Beast was cut down fast.

Atak's Subordinate count began to plummet.

Gross in his madness was terrifying, and his tactical control left no gaps. In just a few short minutes, they had already killed six Adjuchas-class. But the seconds kept ticking by.

Finally, after losing an eighth Subordinate, Atak recovered. His Reiatsu spiked upward once more.

"It's over, Gross!" The instant the Negación vanished, Atak launched skyward, square hammer leveled straight at Gross. One blow drove the rampaging Gross from the air and buried him into the earth, and Atak followed it up with three Cero blasts in quick succession.

He wasn't done. Before the dust could settle, Atak was already diving toward where Gross had landed, hammer raised overhead. He poured every last shred of his erupting Reiatsu into it.

Twin Sky-Shaking Hammers!

Brilliant silver Reiatsu blazed to its absolute peak. Both hammers came crashing down on Gross where he lay in the crater.

The earth caved. Gross was hammered straight into the depths, and all sound of him ceased.

The burst ended. Atak crumpled back into exhaustion.

"Hah... hah... Kill them all!" Atak pointed his hammerhead at Gross's Subordinates and sent his forces in. That last strike had shattered the rampaging Gross completely. All that was left now was mopping up the remnants.

"It didn't go quite the way I planned, but I've taken another territory. The losses are bad, though. Not a good time to go head-to-head with Yinfeng."

Watching Gross's Subordinates scatter in full flight, Atak let out a long breath. This battle had cost him nearly as much as it had cost the enemy. Recovery was going to take a while.

"Giving up Peromon's territory means sharing a direct border with Yinfeng. If a fight breaks out, that puts me at a disadvantage. No choice — I'll have to pull back first and let my allies... Uwah!"

BOOM!

A muffled detonation, the sound unmistakably a Cero, cut Atak off mid-thought. He had barely relaxed when a violent surge of Reiatsu slammed into him from behind. He let out a strangled cry and looked down. A bowl-sized hole had been punched through his chest, blood hissing and spraying outward.

"What... How is this possible!" Atak couldn't believe it. Even as death closed in, he couldn't understand, why had he been attacked, and by whom? Gross was dead. So where had this Cero come from, carrying Reiatsu on par with a High-Class Adjuchas?

"Nothing is impossible." A voice edged with mockery brushed against Atak's ear.

"Thank you, Lord Atak. I'll handle the rest from here."

With those words, Wayne stepped out of the shadows. Beneath his Hollow Mask, a pair of amused eyes shimmered with pale gold light.

The next second, pale gold Reiatsu erupted. A pillar of light drove straight into the sky. The dull yellow heavens began to darken. Reiatsu and stormclouds rolled in together, blanketing the entire war zone.

As the dark clouds pressed down, Wayne stood at the center of it all and let four words fall from his lips, the final movement of this battle's requiem.

"Zero... Storm!"

The pale gold Reiatsu detonated inside the Zero Domain, and pale gold lightning forked through it in every direction.

One bolt. Two. Ten. A hundred.

Lightning tore through the domain in all directions. Within seconds, tens of thousands of bolts were rampaging through every corner of it.

Trees splintered and shattered. Boulders cracked and turned to powder. The Adjuchas-class Hollow Beasts caught inside the domain had nowhere to run, they burst apart and fell, one after another.

Thunder crashed. Lightning screamed. From inside the Zero Domain came a chorus of howls and dying shrieks. Blood sprayed into the air and exploded into a fine crimson mist the instant it touched the lightning. Shredded limbs tumbled through the smoke. It looked less like a battle and more like a descent into hell.

Dozens of seconds later, the Zero Storm began to wind down. A sky thick with blood mist, torn flesh, and the pulverized remains of trees and stone all began to drift down together. Scarlet blanketed nearly the entire domain.

The battlefield went silent.

When the storm cleared, close to sixty percent of the Adjuchas-class were dead. Another twenty percent were critically wounded, hovering at the edge of death.

Every Hollow Beast on Gross's side had been wiped out. Only a handful of Adjuchas-class on Atak's side had managed to raise Negación in time, surviving through layers of attrition and delay.

Atak was among them. But Wayne's ambush had left him gravely wounded. A fivefold Reiatsu surge was beyond him for the foreseeable future.

"Huff..." Wayne let out a slow breath.

Zero Storm was effectively Wayne's ultimate technique at this stage. That single attack had consumed two-thirds of his Reiatsu. Fortunately, the Adjuchas-class still breathing no longer posed much of a real threat. If they had, Wayne wasn't sure he'd have come out ahead.

Before anyone could fully react, Wayne's feet flickered, Void Flash, again and again. He moved fast, ripping off the Hollow Masks of several nearby Hollow Beasts and consuming them to recover. Then he walked back to stand in front of Atak and fixed his gaze on the Hollow Beast that had cast Negación over him.

"Surrender, or die." Wayne released his Reiatsu and pressed it down on the one Hollow Beast in the open, the only one without Negación's protection. When the storm ended, this one's partner had been crushed along with everything else. Now he stood alone, facing Wayne with nothing between them.

"I... I—"

SQUELCH!

Blade up, blade down. The Low-Class Adjuchas's head was severed from behind in a single stroke.

The afterimage from Void Flash had shattered his focus. Wayne had flashed behind him in that same instant and cut him down.

The head arced upward. Before it could hit the ground, Wayne caught it in one hand and tore away the Hollow Mask. A Negación beam slowly faded out. Wayne worked the mask between his teeth and turned his attention to the Hollow Beast nearby who had just lost his protection.

"..." The Adjuchas-class stared back at Wayne. But the eyes beneath that mask were pure terror. He didn't move, whether because fear had locked him in place, or because he was simply waiting for Wayne's verdict.

BOOM!

A Concealed Cero fired point-blank. The Adjuchas's chest was burned through before he could blink.

"I shouldn't have to say it twice." One strike. Wayne shifted his gaze to the next Adjuchas about to step out.

Aside from the gravely wounded Atak, six Adjuchas-class Hollow Beasts still lived, three of them Mid-Class. If they had come out of Negación together and hit Wayne all at once, he might have ended up as badly off as he had against Peromon.

But they weren't going to do that. The Zero Storm had broken them. They huddled inside their Negación and didn't move. With Atak down, they had lost their anchor. Faced with Wayne standing there like that, none of them had any idea what to do.

"I, I surrender!" The Low-Class Adjuchas exposed in the open cracked first. He dropped the Negación he'd been maintaining over one of the Mid-Class Adjuchas and fell to his knees in front of Wayne.

"Good. And you?" Wayne's scheme had worked exactly as intended. He turned his gaze to the Mid-Class Adjuchas who had just lost his cover.

"Traitor! How dare you betray Lord Ata—"

SQUELCH!

The Sky-Rending Greatsword was already moving. A Dimension Slash opened across the Adjuchas's chest and crimson blood hit the ground in a sheet.

"Oh? You're still standing?" Wayne's eyebrow lifted slightly. He'd aimed for the chest instead of the neck precisely because the target was Mid-Class, a safer bet than risking a miss. He hadn't expected the Hollow Beast to be tough enough to take a Dimension Slash and still be alive.

"You,!" The wounded Mid-Class Adjuchas grunted in pain and dropped to one knee. Then, through eyes burning with fury, he fired a distorted orange-red irregular Cero straight at Wayne.

His ability: Light-Shadow Shift. It scrambled an enemy's perception of direction, making it impossible to read where the real attack was coming from.

He miscalculated.

Wayne didn't dodge. He released his pale gold Reiatsu, raised a hand in front of his Hollow Mask, and let the Cero hit him.

Condensed Reiatsu. The advantage was on full display. The damage was negligible, the blast scorched the back of Wayne's hand and drew blood. Nothing more. Wayne didn't even glance at it.

"An ability that scrambles your enemy's vision. Not bad. Except your attack still has to land on me in the end. So tell me, why would I bother dodging? Why guess at trajectories?"

"Damn you!" The Mid-Class Adjuchas pushed himself upright, ready to go again. Wayne didn't give him the opening. One Void Flash, and he was already in front of him.

"In a real war, that ability of yours would be decisive. A pity..." Wayne's voice was quiet. "Your loyalty isn't mine to claim."

SQUELCH!

The sword went in.

"But because of that loyalty — I'll leave you whole."

➤ Next: The Unexpected One