Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 63 - Crushing Victory — The Fight Begins

Unlike the escalating battle on Gatmont's side, Wayne had already slowed his offensive. He was consolidating, letting his territory breathe. Timd kept producing Hollow Beast Mines. Subordinates with useful abilities were being cultivated. All the while, he waited for word from the front.

Seven days passed in a blur. Wayne's territory hummed with prosperity. Resources poured in. Technology advanced by the day. Everything was coiled potential, building momentum. And right on schedule, a messenger from the south arrived.

Woo-woo!

The sound of a Garganta splitting open echoed through the territory's center. Wayne felt the spatial ripple and knew exactly who it was. He called for Jekain, Nel, and a handful of mid-tier Adjuchas, then headed over to greet the new arrival.

"What... what the hell happened here?"

The messenger had barely set foot in the territory before the tangle of Reiatsu signatures hit him. Yinfeng's Reiatsu was still there. The Adjuchas under his command, all still present. So why hadn't they tied down the two northern alliances? And what were those strange Reiatsu signatures? Why were there entire fields of Gillian resources underground? What in Hueco Mundo was going on?

"Yinfeng! Where is Yinfeng? Show yourself!"

No one came to receive him. After standing there for a moment, the messenger's patience snapped. He roared into the open territory.

"Stop shouting. I'm right here."

Wayne landed nearby with Jekain and the others. Jekain's voice was flat with irritation, the messenger's grating tone had already worn thin.

"What's wrong with your territory?"

"What do you mean, what's wrong? Isn't everything developing nicely?"

"You, " The messenger's temper flared at Jekain's dismissive attitude. "Lord Gatmont is on the front lines facing four allied forces at once! Why haven't you flanked them from the rear? Why aren't you harassing them?!"

"We have been. The Northern Alliance's territory is already ours. We're preparing to hit the Northwest Alliance next."

"Bullshit. We've seen Northern and Northwest Alliance troops on the battlefield. You say you're preparing to strike them? Then why are we still getting blocked by their forces?"

"Gatmont brought this on himself. He pissed everyone off, provoked two alliance lords into riding a thousand miles to hit him. You can't pin that on us." Jekain's tone dripped with mockery.

"You,! Yinfeng, are you trying to rebel?!"

A few sentences were all it took. The messenger understood now. The dismissive attitude. The Hollows closing in around him. Everything made it clear, he wasn't walking away from this.

"Not trying to rebel. I was never loyal in the first place." Jekain shook his head. "My loyalty was never to Gatmont. He was nothing more than a tool for my king to achieve his dream."

"Your... king?" The messenger stared, uncomprehending. Where had this so-called king even come from?

"That's right. My king. The sovereign I've served faithfully since I was a low-level Hollow."

Shunk!

Steel pierced flesh. The Sky-Rending Greatsword drove through the messenger's chest. Blood ran down the blade and dripped to the ground in blooming crimson splashes.

"And that sovereign... is me."

Wayne stepped forward from the crowd of Hollows. "I'm sorry, but you won't be reporting back to Gatmont. I can, however, tell you how this ends. This forest is just a stepping stone. In the future, I'll go higher. I'll see a wider world."

He withdrew his sword and walked away. The Hollows surged forward as one. In the next instant, the messenger was torn to shreds.

"My King, we've torn off all pretense with Gatmont. What now? Do we attack directly?" Jekain asked once the grisly work was done.

"We keep waiting. The next messenger won't come for about two weeks. We'll keep developing the territory. Keep training Adjuchas with abilities that suit us." Wayne's voice was utterly calm.

"The three alliances will need time to finish Gatmont off. We drag this out a month. By then, both sides will have taken losses. Meanwhile we'll be waiting for word from the front. Two-pronged approach, then we move in and reap the harvest."

"Yes, my King." Jekain nodded. "But what about the four alliance lords? Do we harvest them too?"

"Not necessary. The Forest of Menos still needs them to function. When the Holy War begins, we'll take everything we have and leave for the Northern Forest. Everything here stays with them."

"My King... why? The domain we fought so hard to build, we're just handing it to them?"

"Jekain, understand this. Our goal was never to stop at the Forest of Menos. And when we move toward the inner circle, we need a stable rear line behind us. If we threaten the alliances' interests, they'll rebel eventually no matter what. Better to ally with them first. Find a chance to share a bigger prize. That's the only way they'll cooperate willingly.

"We give them one forest entirely, and we go take another. From then on, the Northern Forest and the Central Forest won't have Holy Wars anymore. When that day comes, do you think taking the Southern Forest together is far off?"

"Yes, my King..." Jekain still felt the bitterness in his throat. Everything he'd fought for, handed over just like that. But Wayne didn't seem troubled by it, so he let it drop. His king had his reasons.

---

Two weeks passed since the messenger's death. Wayne spent them in quiet development. Several more Adjuchas were born in his territory during that time. His forces now numbered well over a hundred, most were low-tier, but that didn't matter. The plan was still on track.

Frontline intelligence reported the alliances and Gatmont had entered a white-hot phase. His forces had killed countless enemies, but the sheer weight of numbers was grinding them back. They were on the verge of being pushed into the Southern Alliance's territory. Wayne had no intention of missing an opportunity like that.

And at that exact moment, the second messenger arrived.

"Yinfeng! What the hell are you doing?!" The messenger was screaming before he'd even fully entered the territory. "The Great Lord has been summoning you! Why haven't you responded?! And why did the last messenger never return?! What exactly are you, Guah!"

"Noisy."

Wayne didn't bother with words. He dropped into concealment, drove his sword through the messenger's back, and took his head off with a casual follow-up slash.

He pried the Hollow Mask from the corpse and brought it to his mouth. Then he threw his head back and let out a long howl that carried to every corner of the forest.

Within moments, Adjuchas began gathering around him. Dozens. Nearly a hundred. Low-tier. Mid-tier. Several lord-class. Finally, Jekain and Nel landed at his sides, left and right.

As one, every Hollow dropped to a knee and waited.

"The time is about right. It's time to show this entire forest our strength. My comrades-in-arms, bring a thousand Hollow Beast Mines and as many smoke bombs as you can carry. Prepare to move out. We're going to sack Gatmont's lair."

"We obey our King's command!"

Wayne turned and tapped the air. A massive Garganta tore open. Nearly a hundred Adjuchas filed through in orderly succession. Moments later, the rift sealed shut. The territory returned to silence. Only the messenger's corpse remained in a nearby clearing, slowly breaking down into Reishi and scattering into the air.

---

On the other side, Gatmont was boiling.

Two weeks without word from his messenger. The alliance armies were pressing in from the front. He could withstand wave after wave, but his subordinates couldn't. No matter how strong they were, fighting one against three — or four — was a losing game.

The death toll among his forces had already passed thirty. The alliances had lost more, but with four of them combined, their Adjuchas numbered well over a hundred. Gatmont had no advantage in numbers at all.

And his rear support — Yinfeng's territory — had gone completely silent at the worst possible moment. How could he not be frantic?

"There's no way Yinfeng's forces were wiped out. If they were, we'd have heard something." Gatmont slammed both fists into the ground, venting his fury.

A decisive battle was bearing down on him, and his forces were critically thin. If this dragged on, he'd be driven out of his own territory. His rear lands were still producing Adjuchas, but not fast enough. Combat-ready Adjuchas that evolved on their own tended to head straight for the inner circle of Hueco Mundo, they had no interest in serving forest lords.

"My Lord! Those alliance bastards are attacking again. What do we do?" A subordinate Adjuchas rushed up to report.

"Fight!" Gatmont's temper exploded. He ordered a full general offensive. "Listen up! Reinforcements are on the way! No matter what, hold the line!"

Reinforcements? What reinforcements? He was lying to boost morale, lying to himself. Sure, he could retreat to the southern line, all the way back to the hinterlands where Wayne was based. But if he did, his territory would shrink to nothing. Expanding again afterward would be nearly impossible.

Fight. That was his only hope. If he could smash through one alliance with overwhelming force, break their spirit, he'd have a chance to turn this around.

With the resolve of a man burning his own ships, Gatmont led every Adjuchas under his command onto the battlefield.

"Gatmont! You treacherous rebel scum, surrender now!" Oglant's voice boomed from the far side of the field.

"Bah! I am the king! You're the rebel!" Gatmont's Reiatsu erupted as he charged straight for Oglant. Behind him, his Adjuchas flared their own Reiatsu and sought out their targets. The final battle had begun.

"Hmph. Is that all."

Oglant let out a cry and his body gleamed with a metallic sheen, his ability. Full-body Hierro hardening. As long as his opponent didn't outclass him in Reiatsu tier, he wasn't going down easy.

BOOM!

Gatmont's attack landed dead-on. The collision sent Gatmont stumbling back several steps. Oglant, however, went flying. The Hierro on his arm had cracked, but he himself wasn't seriously hurt.

"That's all the force you've got? What right do you have to call yourself king?!" Oglant pushed through the pain and kept mocking. Wayne had taught him this personally. Before the campaign, Wayne had given him explicit instructions: draw Gatmont into your formation, separate him from his subordinates. Once that happens, not even Negación can save him.

"Hmph. Cowardly wretch. You think a petty trick like that works on me?"

Gatmont didn't take the bait. Instead of charging deep into enemy lines, he used Sonído to slip into a skirmish at the edge of the battlefield. Oglant pounced on empty air.

Seeing the trap had failed, Oglant didn't press forward. He couldn't face Gatmont head-on alone, and right now he needed to heal.

Gatmont waded into the skirmish and blew apart a low-tier Adjuchas with a single punch. The nearby low-tiers scrambled away from him. Mid-tiers moved in from behind to engage.

Entanglement tactics. Use numbers to wear down the enemy commander. The alliance's plan was simple: stall Gatmont while their allies devoured his subordinates.

But Gatmont was a Great Lord who had survived countless battles. He had seen this before. He used Sonído repeatedly, trying to break out of the encirclement, and every time someone moved to intercept, he met them head-on. Hollows too slow to dodge were grabbed, their Hollow Masks slammed against the Reiatsu cannon on his shoulder, and a single Cero blew their heads clean off.

It burned stamina, but it was brutally effective. And his subordinates fought like they had nothing left to lose. Some, seeing their strength about to give out, chose to self-destruct and drag enemies down with them.

A dying charge was the most terrifying thing on the battlefield. For a long moment, none of the alliance lords dared step forward. They were separate factions. No one wanted to be cannon fodder.

That gave Gatmont room to breathe.

His Adjuchas were dwindling, but the ones who remained were only getting fiercer.

"A bunch of double-dealing cowards! Still cowering at a time like this! Hmph, you'll never amount to anything! Get over here and die!" Gatmont was only growing more ferocious. He chewed on the Hollow Mask of an Adjuchas he'd just killed, recovering his Reiatsu, and glared at the distant lords who refused to advance.

Bzzz! Bzzz!

Not advancing didn't mean not attacking. Dozens of Ceros — every color — streaked toward Gatmont simultaneously. His own Hollows answered in kind, charging their Reiatsu to the limit and unleashing volley after volley.

Explosions ripped through the battlefield in rapid succession. For a moment, the blossoms of detonation were the brightest flowers beneath the dim yellow sky.

The Cero barrage ended. Neither side had taken heavy casualties. But the alliance still refused to push forward. No one wanted to be the stepping stone.

"Trash!"

Seeing his enemies frozen in place, Gatmont began charging his Reiatsu cannon instead. The plan: a fully charged Cero, a Sonído to close the distance, blast another Adjuchas apart, then Sonído back out.

But just as he was about to move, a massive rift tore open at the rear of the battlefield.

The Reiatsu that erupted from it seized every Hollow's attention. A Garganta yawned wide, so vast it looked like the sky itself had split open, far beyond anything the Hollows had ever seen.

The Garganta fully opened. A humanoid Hollow, less than two meters tall, stepped out calmly.

Wayne. Yinfeng's subordinate.

"Wayne? Why you? Where's Yinfeng?" Gatmont's first thought, absurdly, was that his reinforcements had arrived.

"He's behind me." Wayne smiled.

"We pay our respects to our Lord!"

Wayne's words had barely landed before Oglant and Babons stepped forward from the alliance side and bowed.

Every Hollow on the field took notice.

"We pay our respects to Lord Wayne." The Northwest Alliance lords hadn't sworn fealty to him, but with the threat of Hollow Beast Mines hanging over their heads, they bowed their heads and offered their salutes.

"You're too kind, my fellow lords."

"Wayne." Gatmont's eyes narrowed. The warmth had left his voice entirely. "What. Is. Going. On."

The plan — Yinfeng stalling the alliance lords — had clearly gone wrong. Very wrong.

"You killed Yinfeng. Took his place as lord." Gatmont was grasping. He assumed the messenger's disappearance and Yinfeng's silence meant Wayne had staged a coup.

"How could that be? Jekain, ah, I mean, Yinfeng, is my loyal subordinate. Why would I kill him?" Wayne's voice was perfectly even. "He's on his way with the troops. We ran into the Kōtotsu in the Garganta. I had to open a spatial barrier so they could take shelter. Time flows differently in the Dangai, so they fell behind. They'll be here shortly."

"Jekain? Yinfeng?"

Gatmont's mind caught up. He'd been played.

"Yinfeng and I have known each other since we were low-level Hollows. I just never expected we'd meet again here." Wayne was stalling now. "Do you remember the Gillian and the low-tier Adjuchas that barged into your forest back then?"

"That was... you?"

"The Gillian was me. The Adjuchas was Nel." Wayne smiled. "And as luck would have it, the Hollow you sent to kill us, Yinfeng, turned out to be Jekain. An old friend. So we laid out a plan. Stall you. Buy me time to evolve."

"What?!"

"Jekain has been loyal to me from the very beginning. After I evolved, the scent of my Reiatsu changed. That's when he infiltrated the forest and killed Isrut, the only one who knew the scent of Nel's Reiatsu."

"You killed Isrut?!" Gatmont's Reiatsu detonated outward.

"I did. Surprised?" Wayne was calm as still water. "Once Isrut was dead, no one else knew Nel's scent. So we walked right into the forest, openly, and came under Yinfeng's, Jekain's, command. I orchestrated all of it. The assassinations. The provocations. The backstabbing. The loyal shield-blocks. Everything you saw, I planned it. All so I could separate from you, build our own power, and then... today... crush you completely."

"YOU,!"

Whoosh!

A figure landed in front of Wayne.

"My King. Jekain is late."

"Not late at all. Is everyone here?" Wayne smiled. He'd stalled long enough.

"Not a single one missing. The entire force."

"Good. Then... let's begin."

"Yes, my King." Jekain acknowledged the order, cast a cold glance at Gatmont in the distance, and let a disdainful snort curl at the corner of his mouth. Then he let out a long cry, summoning the Adjuchas arrayed behind him.

Nel was the first to emerge from the Garganta. She landed lightly on her four hooves beside Wayne. Then came the two lords who followed Jekain, along with their subordinates.

After them, Timd, Mude, and more Hollows, pouring out one after another.

One. Two. Ten. A hundred.

Over a hundred Adjuchas filled the sky in dense formation. The Reiatsu of hundreds of Hollows crashed over both the alliance and Gatmont's forces like a wave. When had Wayne's power grown this vast? Vast enough that even if they fought with everything they had, victory was far from certain.

"Lords of the alliances. What comes next is between us and Gatmont. If you're willing to help, Wayne thanks you. If you're not... Wayne will not make things difficult. But if anyone dares oppose me..." His voice dropped. "Don't blame Wayne for being ruthless."

Wayne's Reiatsu shot into the sky. Behind him, over a hundred Adjuchas launched their attacks as one. The surge of Reiatsu whipped up a massive storm that drove the alliance lords backward step by step. That pressure didn't bear down on them, it surged straight toward Gatmont.

"Bastard! DIE!" Fury consumed Gatmont. His Reiatsu erupted to its absolute limit as he charged at Wayne.

"Hollow Beast Mines!"

Wayne's shout sent over a hundred mines arcing through the air, smashing down toward Gatmont's Adjuchas. Borut let out a piercing shriek, and all hundred detonated at once.

Purple toxic mist swallowed Gatmont's subordinates instantly. Hundreds upon thousands of spikes embedded themselves in Adjuchas bodies. Paralysis seized them.

Hssss...

Every alliance faction drew a sharp breath. They had seen poison mist abilities before. Some Hollows had stronger toxins. But a mist that blanketed nearly the entire battlefield? That was almost unheard of.

"Nel, trap Gatmont!"

As a high-tier Adjuchas, Gatmont was immune to the mist and spikes, the only enemy combatant still fully mobile. Wayne had to lock him down.

"Yes, my Lord!" Nel charged. A Negación field descended directly onto Gatmont.

"Jekain, seal him!"

"Yes, my King!" A black sealing domain spread over Gatmont, cutting off his perception of his subordinates entirely.

"Zero-Form Storm!"

With Gatmont trapped, Wayne used a Flash Step to teleport straight into the enemy formation. He seized the moment of paralysis and unleashed his ultimate technique.

The sky went dark. Lightning converged from every direction. The air turned scorching. Countless bolts carved through the battlefield, slashing and dismembering the paralyzed Adjuchas. Blood mixed with the toxic mist and rained down onto the earth below, forming a murky purple mire.

A long moment later, the lightning faded.

Gatmont's subordinates were all gravely wounded. Every last one.

"Reap them!"

Wayne sucked in a deep breath. His body was locking up from the technique's backlash, but he forced a Flash Step anyway, clearing the toxic mist's range. His subordinates caught him and held him steady while his mobility returned.

"Yes!"

Over a hundred Adjuchas surged forward as one. Ceros of every color. Reiatsu techniques of every kind. The battlefield became a canvas of destruction. Adjuchas plummeted toward the ground in droves.

One by one, they lost their lives.

➤ Next: Closing Moves, Preparing for War