Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 64 - Closing Moves, Preparing for War

BOOM!

For a long moment, the space binding Gatmont shattered. He stumbled out of Jekain's sealing ability, gasping for breath. He wasn't injured, but during those sealed minutes he'd been completely cut off from the outside world, unable to draw in Reiatsu from his surroundings. Add the enormous number of Reiatsu Cannon blasts he'd fired, and the drain on his reserves was real.

He broke free and opened his mouth to curse.

The words died in his throat.

He was surrounded. Countless Adjuchas, packed in on every side. His own forces were already on the ground, some torn apart, some leaving nothing behind at all, only broken limbs and severed arms bleeding into the dirt. Less than three minutes sealed. His entire inner circle, slaughtered to the last.

Who? What kind of ability could do this?

Gatmont still had no idea what Wayne's ultimate technique looked like. If he had, he never would have let Wayne use it. Now all he could do was scan the battlefield from where he stood, past the terrified stares of the alliance Hollows, and lock onto the one responsible.

Ace Wayne.

The Hollow Beast Mines' paralysis for control. Wayne's Zero Storm to sweep the field. The massed Hollows to finish the harvest. What should have been a pitched melee had been turned, by Wayne alone, into a one-sided slaughter. Gatmont, who had once stood as an equal against the combined alliance lords, had been wiped out in minutes.

"Gatmont. It's over." Wayne had already shaken off the paralysis. He stood at the very front of the assembled Hollows, calm.

"Ace Wayne!" Gatmont surged his Reiatsu. The cannons on his shoulders swung up and aimed straight at Wayne.

BOOM! CLANG!

The blasts fired, screaming toward Wayne at full speed, and slammed into a wall of golden light. They detonated against it and vanished into nothing.

Negación. With hundreds of subordinates surrounding him, there was no angle from which Gatmont could catch Wayne off guard.

Since Timd had joined, most of the mid-tier Adjuchas in Wayne's territory had been learning to use Negación to shield their allies. To keep releases from overlapping, Timd had assigned every Hollow a number. They released in order. If one fell in battle, the next in line stepped up, until the Negación walls linked together into a single unbroken chain.

The one who had cast it for Wayne was Nel, who read him best. If Nel was occupied, Jekain was next. Then the line continued down from there.

"Don't waste the effort, Gatmont. Your era is over." Inside the Negación, Wayne's voice was level. This victory hadn't been difficult. With everything he'd built up over time, he'd seen the ending coming long before it arrived. And even if something had gone sideways, he had options.

"Ace Wayne — I'll give you that, you're ruthless." Gatmont abandoned the assault. He knew that punching through Negación, even if it was possible, would bleed him dry. "But I don't accept this. You haven't even reached high-tier Adjuchas. What right do you have to lead? You can't command respect with that."

"I don't need you to accept anything. From the very beginning, I was never planning to let you walk away from this."

"Coward. Fight me one-on-one. Beat me, and I'll acknowledge you."

"One-on-one?" Wayne tilted his head, looking genuinely amused. "I've got over a hundred fighters right here, and you want me to duel you? What kind of idiot do you take me for?"

The Hollows around them erupted in laughter. A duel? Sure, you can duel all hundred of us at once.

"Gatmont. You're a strong fighter — don't say things that get you laughed off a battlefield. You were lord here once. I'll give you that much. But your time is done." Wayne's voice dropped, unhurried. "So I'll give you one chance. Take yourself out. You'll at least die looking like you had some dignity."

Killing the will before the body. An opportunist to the core, Wayne wasn't about to waste the opening. If Gatmont broke right now, that was a few more of his Adjuchas who'd walk away from this intact.

"Dream on." Gatmont snapped back into fighting stance. Two Reiatsu Cannon blasts fired from his shoulders, less a tactical choice than a scream made of energy.

This time, Wayne didn't raise Negación.

He manifested the Sky-Rending Greatsword and drove it down through one of the blasts. The dark-gray cannon fire split cleanly in half and dissolved into the air.

The second blast, Nel caught with her mouth open wide. A Reiatsu Cannon from a high-tier Adjuchas hit far harder than a standard Cero. But Nel had already run the numbers. Her body swelled round as she absorbed the impact, and she held it, then let it out with a shout. A pale pink Cero Doble screamed back toward Gatmont, faster and harder than what had come in.

BOOM!

The pink blast hit him dead-on. It wasn't that Gatmont hadn't tried to dodge, the moment he fired up his Sonído to move, his body locked. He glanced sideways. Jekain, not far off, eyes blazing black. His binding ability, clamping Gatmont in place.

The Cero connected. A force stronger than his own sent Gatmont flying.

Wayne was already moving. Void Flash, closing the distance in an instant. One slash. Then a second. Then a third.

SHADOW WALTZ.

Sword light cascaded across Gatmont's body in rapid cuts. Even a high-tier Adjuchas couldn't eat this kind of sustained punishment, and Wayne's Reiatsu had long since climbed to that same tier.

WHAM! Gatmont's tail hammer swung through the blur of blade light and smashed straight at Wayne's head. Wayne caught it on his sword, but the impact cut the Shadow Waltz short.

The dozens of sword gleams collapsed. Wayne Void Flashed clear. An instant later, the accumulated damage detonated across Gatmont's body. Sword wounds opened across his huge frame. Blood ran freely.

Wayne hadn't come out clean. The tail hammer, even blocked, had left his entire arm numb. His expression hardened.

He turned the greatsword over and came in again. His right claw swept out a Space-Rending Slash, the air around them fractured. A Concealed Cero punched through the spatial rift. At the same time Wayne stepped into Void Flash, leaving two afterimages to tear at Gatmont's focus. Then the Dimension Slash and the Concealed Cero arrived together.

The spatial coordinates locked. Gatmont had nowhere to go. He erupted his Reiatsu and took it straight, but Wayne wasn't the only one hitting him. Nel and Jekain had their Ceros loaded and waiting, holding for the moment Gatmont's guard cracked.

WOOOM!

Two blasts, one pink and one black, drove toward Gatmont's Hollow Mask. Already burning through his reserves just to stay upright, he threw up a Reiatsu Cannon to intercept.

Cero met Cero. The explosion threw a wall of dust into the air.

"Hff... hff..." In the settling cloud, Gatmont was breathing in ragged bursts. He'd been ground down to a frightening degree. Only the raw reserves of a high-tier Adjuchas were keeping him on his feet.

Across from him, Wayne, Nel, and Jekain had taken attrition. But none of them needed to step back yet.

"Again." Wayne swung his greatsword and launched forward on a Shadow Flash. The Sky-Rending Greatsword traced a line of black light, driving straight at Gatmont's chest.

Gatmont raised his tail hammer to block, and hit nothing. Wayne's body twisted in the air, a small but precise adjustment. The sword arc that should have met the hammer redirected downward, angling for his leg.

Gatmont was fast. The tail hammer swung back around, aimed at Wayne's gut.

WHAM!

It connected. Wayne's whole body was driven downward by the blow. But just before the impact, the greatsword in his hand had already lit up with the spatial colors. At Gatmont's tail, the Dimension Slash bloomed, and the tail hammer was severed at the root.

ROAAARRR!

Gatmont threw his head back in a howl. He lunged for Wayne, and the moment his tail came off, Jekain's binding power clamped down on both his arms.

SHUNK!

Lanzador Verde punched through Gatmont's chest. Blood poured in sheets. Before the lance's force had even bled out, Nel was already moving on Super Acceleration, she headbutted straight into one of his shoulder cannons and shattered it. Spinning back, a second Lanzador Verde formed in her hand and drove toward his lower abdomen.

Gatmont broke free of the binding. He drove his fist into Nel's head through the pain, putting enough force behind it to nearly crack her Hollow Mask. Nel got her arm up just in time, she traded the arm for her mask.

"Useless trash! All three of you and you still can't put me down! Hahaha!" Critically wounded, bleeding from everywhere, Gatmont had gone somewhere past rational. Pushing three mid-tier Adjuchas to their limits in his final stand, it was the last thing he had left.

"Out of respect for a strong fighter, I gave you that match." Wayne picked himself up off the ground and dusted off his clothes. A patch of Hierro on his lower abdomen had been pulped by the tail hammer. Not a vital area, fortunately. "I'll admit it — a high-tier Adjuchas near the peak is no joke."

He looked at Gatmont.

"Courtesy's over. Rest now."

If you can't win alone, you don't fight alone. Wayne raised his hand toward Gatmont. A pale-gold Cero took shape, humming as it built. Then it flew.

Nel's followed.

Then Jekain's.

Then the line behind them opened up, and over a hundred Ceros streaked toward Gatmont at once, swallowing him in an endless cascade of detonations.

The Reiatsu dissipated slowly. When the light cleared, the center of that blast zone held nothing. Gatmont was gone. Not defeated. Not retreated.

Vaporized.

"We lost a high-tier Adjuchas's Hollow Mask." Wayne turned toward the alliance lords and started walking. "But we won."

"Gentlemen. Thank you for not interfering during the fight. Wayne is grateful."

"Ha — haha, think nothing of it, Lord Wayne. Please, forgive us for not being able to help." The lords glanced at one another. The ones who had doubted Oglant and Babons were now eyeing Wayne's forces with something harder than skepticism, watching those strange bombs go off, watching what a handful of his fighters had just done to a high-tier Adjuchas.

Apprehension was putting it mildly.

Thank goodness they were on the same side. If Wayne had decided to move through these territories one by one, none of them could say with confidence what the end result would look like.

"Think nothing of it." Wayne waved the thanks off. "Gatmont brought this on himself. And you lords fought hard at the front — Wayne knows that. Now that he's dead, we should be talking about what comes next. The Sacred War is a few years out. It's time to start thinking."

Every lord tensed up at once.

The Sacred War, the decennial clash between forests. Each side committed more than a third of their full strength and resources. The winner claimed a third of both forests' resources. The loser walked away with nothing.

A single forest held somewhere between three hundred and five hundred Adjuchas.

With Wayne's faction now established in the Central Forest, he already commanded over a hundred Adjuchas. The alliance side was comparable. If they cooperated and grew together, two years would be enough to bring the Central Forest back up to three hundred or more.

If the lords refused to work with him, Wayne wouldn't mind reshuffling the entire forest. Progress would slow, but it was manageable.

"Ha... haha. Lord Wayne speaks truly." The lords laughed along, keeping it pleasant. "Now that the Central Forest is settled, we can return to our territories. What does Lord Wayne intend to do from here?"

"My goal isn't only the Sacred War." Wayne looked at them steadily. "I have a score to settle with the bugs of the Northern Forest. I want to use this Sacred War to wipe them out entirely. So I'm asking, would any of you be willing to help?"

A sharp intake of breath ran through the assembled lords.

They heard what he wasn't saying. This Lord Wayne who had appeared from nowhere intended to swallow the entire Northern Forest. The resources that would represent. The people standing in this room right now...

"What exactly does Lord Wayne have in mind?"

"I'll be honest, I don't think I can manage the Central Forest alone. It needs all of you to keep it running and bring it back to what it was. So once I've settled my score with the Northern Forest, I won't be staying here. Word is the inner reaches of Hueco Mundo hold something far more interesting." Wayne let that land. "That's where I'm headed."

A murmur spread through the crowd. Only now did it click, he wasn't trying to hold onto this forest. If they helped him take the Northern Forest, when the time came, they'd be free to use that entire territory's resources. For lords who had been grinding in the same patch of Hueco Mundo for years, this was almost too good to be real.

"We understand, Lord Wayne. As Hollows of the same forest, we stand together against outside threats. The Northwestern Alliance is first to support your plan."

"Western Alliance as well."

"Southwestern Alliance too."

"The Northern Alliance will follow Lord Wayne's lead."

Wayne let the voices settle, then raised his own to carry across the whole gathering. "I thank you all. Wayne is grateful. The war in the Central Forest is finished, return to your territories and recover. Two years from now, we meet again at the Sacred War."

"Lord Wayne — what do we do about the Central Tree?"

"The Central Tree is the heart of this forest. Each lord's people may enter and manage it freely. No fighting there, under any circumstances. The Central Tree is the dividing line, Wayne will settle his people in the Eastern Forest. The west and northwest belong to you lords. The Central Forest itself will serve as our shared road, the main artery for communication between us." Wayne paused. "Wayne asks only one thing: before the Sacred War, each of you should be able to send fifty Adjuchas or more to the campaign. There's no ceiling on that number. The more you contribute, the larger your share of what we take."

Giving up half the territory might have stung. But fifty Adjuchas was a number the lords could live with. The enemy wouldn't field more than that either, and with Wayne's faction going in at full strength, numbers several times greater than the opposition, plus those bizarre bombs... they might actually get to enjoy a clean mop-up for once.

"We follow Lord Wayne's will." The Hollows inclined their heads and pulled their forces together, peeling away from the battlefield one group at a time until the field was Wayne's alone.

"My King, we won." Jekain stepped up as the last of them left. "But, truly ceding half the territory to them? Won't that cause them to..."

"The Northern Forest crushed the last Sacred War. After ten years of recovery, their numbers have only grown. Asking each alliance for fifty Adjuchas isn't unreasonable. And the more they commit, the more they stand to gain, which takes pressure off us.

"Yes, we only hold half the territory. But that was before Gatmont fell. Now they've seen the Hollow Beast Mines up close. They know what we can do. Going forward, they're going to want us out in front, using those mines to grind the Northern Forest down, because that's how they come out of this with their territories intact and their titles still attached, with a windfall waiting at the end. Why would they risk that by moving against us?"

Wayne smiled and turned to face his subordinates.

"Let's go home."

WOOOM!

The massive Garganta yawned open. The Hollows followed Wayne inside.

From first strike to last, Wayne had dismantled Gatmont's forces with absolute dominance and walked away with every alliance lord signed on. Two years. Then the Sacred War, and the Northern Forest after that.

---

"My lord, we've removed the biggest threat. What now?"

The campaign was over. Wayne had led his people back to the eastern territory, and that evening he sat in the assembly hall with Nel, Jekain, Timd, and the others, working through what came next.

"Let's assume the Northern Forest had three hundred or more Hollows back then. After ten years of development, their Adjuchas count has likely passed five hundred. Factor in natural cannibalization within their territory, and it stabilizes somewhere above four hundred. Which means in the next Sacred War, the Northern bugs will probably field over a hundred Adjuchas and tens of thousands of Gillians. They had a dominant win last time, this time they'll push that advantage as far as it goes. If that happens, our Adjuchas count won't be enough to match them head-on." Wayne leaned forward over the long table. "So Hollow Beast Mine production cannot stop. Over the next two years, we improve both the quantity and the quality, both, not one or the other.

"The Gillians aren't the problem. With enough mines, we drop however many they bring. The hard part is the hundred-plus Adjuchas, that's where we'd take serious losses. So my plan is to consolidate the Adjuchas from half the forest over the next two years and run a full-scale training push, all the way until the Sacred War begins."

"No reserve force?"

"After the Sacred War, we open a Garganta straight from the Menos Graveyard into the Northern Forest. There's an entire forest waiting for us over there, we don't need to haul resources. Every Adjuchas and Gillian with a working mind is a resource. We win big while keeping our losses small. And we use the other lords' people to scout ahead so we don't walk into any traps."

"I think I follow, my lord." Nel nodded slowly, still working through it.

"Jekain, start on resource collection tomorrow. And I need to go into seclusion for a while. This fight with Gatmont made some things clear. Against a high-tier Adjuchas, I still get outmuscled in raw power. I got lucky escaping that big worm back then. When I go back, I'm not dying to his peak-tier Adjuchas Reiatsu."

"My King — should we set up a dedicated resource line for you?"

"Any newly emerged Adjuchas who aren't interested in pledging loyalty..." Wayne's tone was even. "Keep them." He wasn't running a charity. And with Jekain's spatial blockade, none of them were going anywhere he didn't allow.

"Timd — two years. Can you optimize the Hollow Beast Mines?"

Timd scratched the edge of his Hollow Mask, thinking it through. "The quality of the mines comes down to materials, my King. In your subordinate's opinion, the best path is to prioritize raising the Reiatsu of the Adjuchas who produce them, that's the single biggest lever for improving the mines. Substituting materials comes second." He paused. "Currently, your subordinate has found no Hollow in our territory capable of elemental conversion, so refining a stronger explosive that way isn't possible yet. But there's still room for development through basic reactions. For example, healing bombs loaded with Lady Nel's secretion. Control the blast yield and pick the right shell material, and it's workable. There's also an Adjuchas in our territory whose healing ability manifests as a powder, that's another viable healing-bomb material, though the potency doesn't match Lady Nel's. And there's also, "

"Work that out on your own." Wayne cut him off with a wave. "The priority is keeping mine output where it needs to be. Everything else in the tactical-weapons line comes after that."

"Yes, my King."

"One more thing. Two years from now, I want every Adjuchas under our banner literate, language and writing both. And I want them fluent in tactical hand signals and smoke-signal use."

"Yes, my King. I'll arrange that." Timd nodded, visibly more at ease than he'd been during the combat debrief. This, at least, was territory he understood.

"Good. Everyone go get ready." Wayne stood and stretched out the tension in his back. "We've got a busy two years ahead of us."

➤ Next: Holy War