Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 82 - Advancing to Vasto Lorde

Two years passed, day after day. Two full years since the day Wayne entered seclusion. And as expected, ascending to Vasto Lorde was not a simple thing.

In those two years, Wayne's stronghold had been transformed. Not just in construction, the technological investment alone had reached the point where they could transmit messages across a thousand miles.

Around the Cliffside, Timd had built a massive communication base station. Unlike standard electromagnetic signal transmission, Timd had developed something entirely different: a Reiryoku Spectrum Transmission Device that ran on Reiatsu as its foundation.

With it, any Hollow Beast's Reiatsu could serve as an energy source. Any device that had been scanned by Timd's Reiatsu could transmit information through faint Reiatsu signals.

Apply your own Reiatsu to the device, and long-distance communication became possible. Of course, there were limits. Spiritual power constraints and interference from other Hollow Beasts' Reiatsu kept the current range to roughly a thousand miles. The farther the distance, the weaker the signal. The stronger the interference, the worse the reception.

To guarantee clean transmission with zero disruption: five hundred kilometers was the sweet spot. At a thousand kilometers, faint fluctuations would begin to creep in. At three thousand kilometers, as long as no other Hollow Beast was nearby causing interference, you could just barely make out the other end. Beyond three thousand kilometers, pure luck.

Still, pushing defenses three thousand kilometers out was more than enough.

And it wasn't only the signal stations. Timd had also erected a tower, anchored in the central zone of the Cliffside, built tall by the combined abilities of the Hollow Beasts under his command, a sharp spire reaching nearly a full kilometer into the sky. For Hollow Beasts who could use Sonído, that height was nothing. Two or three steps and you were at the top. No one worried about it being too high. In Hueco Mundo, Hollow Beasts over a hundred meters tall were commonplace.

The tower's purpose was to house the transmitter for the signal base station. Once in place, the Reiatsu signals radiating outward would resonate with the Main Signal Tower. Wayne's forces could then monitor Reiatsu fluctuations across the entire coverage area, useful whether tracking an incoming enemy or coordinating a hunt.

Down the line, Timd intended to build mobile base stations as well, pushing the coverage range even further.

Two years of growth had also produced results in personnel. Wayne's territory now had three peak-stage Adjuchas. Besides Nel, there were Jekain and two battle-hardened Hollow Beasts, Dokkatia Ram, who specialized in offense, and Rikstone Defensor, who specialized in defense.

Beyond those four, a number of High-Class Adjuchas had emerged as well. Unfortunately, a large portion of them had hit their ceiling there, unable to advance a single step further.

But none of them complained. Under Wayne's faction, these Hollow Beasts faced little genuine risk to their lives. The protection of the faction meant the odds of being hunted by outside forces were far lower. So when they reached their limit, they made their choice: stay in the Inner Circle and fight for Wayne, or return to the Forest of Menos and help hold the rear.

Either way, the numbers spoke for themselves. Seven High-Class Adjuchas now stood under Wayne's banner.

Four peak-stage Adjuchas. Seven High-Class Adjuchas. Hundreds of Mid-Class. Thousands of Low-Class. Wayne's faction had firmly planted its roots in the Inner Circle. Within a thousand miles, nothing could challenge them.

To mark it, Timd had established a peak signal zone at the top of the tower, the brightest beacon in the entire territory. Any lost Hollow Beast could follow the flashing light and find its way here. They would either become food, or become another comrade fighting alongside Wayne.

Relying on output from the Forest of Menos alone would never be enough to fuel real expansion. Absorbing capable fighters was the right move. And as the faction grew, more territory would need long-term personnel to hold it. Sub-towers could be raised to extend Wayne's sphere of influence further still.

"Lady Nel, Lord Jekain — this is the new hunting ground our forces have located today."

Beside Wayne's new throne, Nel was still curled up in her usual spot, lazily stretching. Jekain sat at one end of the conference table, listening to the subordinate's report.

"Good. Send people to make contact directly. If they can be brought in, all the better. If not, handle it on the spot — and make sure the low-tier fighters stay careful." Jekain glanced over the Bone Tablet that had been presented and gave the order.

As the stronghold developed, Jekain and Timd had come across many Hollow Beasts with unusual abilities. They weren't necessarily combat specialists, but their abilities had proven useful in building up the base's technological and administrative side.

After Wayne brought back a large haul of books, Timd began standardizing the script and running lessons for the non-combat Hollow Beasts, getting them literate as fast as possible, then putting them straight to work.

The Bone Tablets they were using now were a substitute for paper. A Hollow Beast under Mude, one with an ability that produced a wax-like bone layer, manufactured them. A bit of simple processing, and you had a usable surface.

Given that even the weakest Hollow Beasts were physically powerful, the bone-like material was well-suited for carving. A light wrapping of Reiatsu around a limb was enough to etch clean characters into the surface.

Until they had access to more advanced technology, the Bone Tablet was the best information-recording tool the stronghold had.

"Yes, my lord." The subordinate bowed and backed out of the hall.

"Lord Wayne has been in seclusion for two whole years now. Jekain — when do you think he'll finally come out?"

Nel had settled back into her pile of grass and started her daily complaints. Without Wayne around, she had no drive to do anything. Beyond the occasional hunt, Nel spent most of her time sprawled in her grass pile doing nothing, or drifting over to the entrance of Wayne's training ground, circling outside, and only leaving once she had confirmed there was still life inside.

"Lady Nel, that is the thirty-second time you have said those exact words today." Jekain's tone was resigned, though he understood it. He hadn't seen his king in two years either.

In those two years, Jekain had finally reached the peak of the Adjuchas level himself. But that was where his road ended. He had made peace with it. Below the Vasto Lorde tier, he had climbed as far as anyone could. That made him no small combat asset.

Vasto Lorde were rare to begin with. The total number of Vasto Lorde across all of Hueco Mundo might not even reach two hundred. Jekain had come to terms with that quickly enough. He was close to the top of the ladder. That was enough.

Nel, who had advanced ahead of him, was a different story. Her Reiatsu was still climbing, slowly, but steadily, inching upward without pause.

And because of her Absorption trait, Nel barely needed to eat. Most of the resources the stronghold hunted got redistributed to the Hollow Beasts under her. Yet her combat power remained the highest in the stronghold. Even the two battle-specialist peak Adjuchas couldn't last thirty exchanges against her before going down.

"On another note — Baraggan's subordinates have been here waiting for over half a year now. All of them waiting for the King to come back. He hasn't shown the slightest sign of movement this entire time, and according to what they've been telling us, if the King doesn't show up soon, Baraggan himself is going to come over."

"Nothing we can do about that." Nel propped her cheeks in both hands, all lazy indifference. "Lord Wayne advancing to Vasto Lorde basically means he's becoming a top-tier force in all of Hueco Mundo. And none of us have any experience with that kind of advancement, so there's no telling why it's taking this long."

"For us Hollows, two years isn't really that much time. Our lifespans can stretch into the thousands or even tens of thousands of years. Most of the time, we die to each other in hunts. Dying peacefully of old age is basically not in the cards. So honestly, compared to the wait, I'd much rather see our King come out stronger."

"That's true. Lord Wayne's spiritual power was already more condensed than ours to begin with. Once he's advanced, his Reiatsu should definitely..."

BOOM!

The word died in Nel's throat.

An explosion of Reiatsu detonated across the entire stronghold in an instant. The force of it came down so hard it nearly crushed some of the low-tier Adjuchas outright.

Fortunately, the standing orders Wayne had drilled into them held. The moment that Reiatsu hit, every low-tier and mid-tier Adjuchas moved, Negación shields snapping into place around the Hollow Beasts nearest to them. In an instant, a sheet of orange light connected wall to wall, inside and outside the stronghold.

"This Reiatsu... has our lord come out of seclusion?" Nel could barely breathe under the pressure, but as a peak Adjuchas, she could just barely hold on.

She didn't wait. She fired off a Sonído toward Wayne's training ground the moment the thought crossed her mind. Jekain fell in right behind her, equally unbothered by the crushing weight pressing down on them both.

The same impulse hit everyone else at once, Timd, Mude, and the others in the research lab. Every Hollow Beast who had followed Wayne from the beginning broke into motion, converging on the training ground from every direction. The Vasto Lorde-level Reiatsu ground into them with every step, but the heavier it pressed, the more alive they felt. The stronger the pressure, the stronger their king.

They pushed through it and gathered outside the training ground's main gate.

The gate was already gone, blown apart, reduced to rubble by the pale-gold Reiatsu erupting from inside. The Hollow Beasts stood at the threshold and didn't dare take a single step past it.

Nel stood at the very front. Jekain held position half a step behind her. Behind them both, Timd led the rest, rank after rank of Hollow Beasts, all of them holding their ground in silence.

Every one of them stared into the gate.

The training ground was saturated with pale-gold light. Chains of spiritual energy whipped through the air, dragging up curtain after curtain of sand from the floor, filling the space with a roaring, churning haze.

Then the storm began to ease. The chains slowed. One by one they began to coil back, flowing inward toward a figure standing deep inside the training ground.

"My lord!" Nel's voice broke before she could stop it.

The figure was still under two meters. By the scale of Hollow Beasts, that was small, almost slight. But the Reiatsu pouring off that slight frame was something you felt in your chest before you understood it.

Wayne walked out slowly.

The dust settled around him as he moved, and his new form came into focus.

The Hollow Mask still sat fastened to his face, bat-like and stark. The pale-gold hair still fell loose behind him. But where bulky bone plating had once encased his head, there was nothing, just the mask, adhered directly to his face as though held by its own gravity. His jawline and the line of his neck were fully visible now for the first time.

The heavy bone armor that had once sheathed his body like plate mail was gone. In its place, a layer of Hierro clung to him like fitted light armor, clean and close. The misshapen claw that had always marked his right hand had changed too, it looked like a gauntlet now, sleek and bladed, no longer awkward, no longer limiting. He could grip a sword with it the same as his left.

He drew the last of the energy back into himself. The pale-gold chains withdrew and vanished. Wayne stood before his people in a form none of them had ever seen.

"We welcome our King's return from seclusion!"

Hundreds of Adjuchas dropped to their knees at once. Not a single word of grievance among them, only pride. Their faction had a Vasto Lorde now. That placed them in the top hundred powers in all of Hueco Mundo, at minimum, by any count of Vasto Lorde alone. And their king was already on good terms with Baraggan, the ruler of Hueco Mundo himself. The top of the ladder didn't feel so far away anymore.

"Mm." Wayne gave a single nod, swept his gaze across the assembled Hollow Beasts, and vanished.

When they searched for his Reiatsu, he was already outside the stronghold, hanging in open air.

ROAR!

The sound tore across the entire stronghold like a dragon's cry. No Reiatsu behind it, just Wayne, releasing something he'd held in for two years. Pure, unrestrained noise. And even so, even without a trace of spiritual pressure behind it, the low-tier Adjuchas felt the blood go cold in their veins.

Every Hollow Beast in the stronghold went to its knees.

Their king had stepped into the Vasto Lorde tier. Across all of Hueco Mundo, fewer than two hundred beings could say the same.

"So this is what Vasto Lorde-level power feels like."

Wayne hung in the air above the desert and let himself feel it, the energy moving through him, vast and uncoiled, nothing like anything he'd carried before. How many years had it taken? He'd finally made it. With his current strength, he could handle an ordinary Captain-class opponent without much trouble. The tricky ones, the Captains with unusual abilities, would still require careful probing before he committed. But ordinary? He could manage them now.

"As expected. Once you become a Vasto Lorde-class Menos, you stop needing to devour other creatures to grow."

He could feel it clearly: the energy inside him wasn't sitting still anymore. It was moving. Flowing. He was drawing Reishi straight from Hueco Mundo itself, passively, constantly, at a rate roughly equal to one low-tier Adjuchas worth of spiritual power per day.

Before, his spiritual power had been a stagnant pool. You could only fill it with buckets, one hunt at a time, and the pool never seemed to get any fuller no matter how many you poured in. Now there was a stream. Small, but real, feeding into the pool without stopping, drawing from all of Hueco Mundo as its source. It would keep flowing. One day, it would push him somewhere new.

And if he ever encountered another Vasto Lorde, another pool's worth of spiritual power he could absorb directly, that would accelerate things considerably.

"Sōsuke Aizen." The name surfaced quietly in his thoughts. "A man who can skip incantation entirely and pit himself against high-ninetieth-level Kidō. Reiatsu above Captain-class, possibly approaching Head Captain Yamamoto himself. Against that kind of opponent, being a low-tier Vasto Lorde might still not be enough."

He looked out across the distance.

The silver moon had turned the sands of Hueco Mundo white. But beyond that pale expanse, the dark closed in and swallowed everything. No light anywhere out there, as far as he could see.

"One step at a time." He let the worry go. Getting here had already been hard enough. In the years ahead, he would encounter Aizen, probably, no, certainly. Aizen needed Hollows for his experiments. For Arrancar research. He needed fighters too. But that time hadn't come yet.

He still had a window.

"Right — Arrancar." Something clicked into place. Beyond the Hōgyoku-forced path, natural Arrancarification was real. It had happened before. One case in particular,

Coyote Starrk.

"Timd!" Wayne blinked back to the stronghold.

"My King. Your orders."

"Any news of Mr. Starrk in the past two years?"

"Coyote Starrk?" Timd had come to Hueco Mundo later than most, so what he knew about Coyote Starrk amounted to fragments he'd picked up from overhearing Jekain and the others talk. He didn't know much about the man. What he did know was that Wayne had been looking for him for a long time, along with several other names. The Panther King Grimmjow. The Black-Winged Demon Ulquiorra. The Alchemist Szayelaporro. Others. But not one of those names had ever turned up at the stronghold. Not from anyone they'd taken in, not from any of the scouts they'd sent out.

"None of the names you asked us to watch for have appeared, my King. Not one. However — Baraggan's subordinates have been waiting here for over half a year now." Timd shook his head, then relayed the full situation about Baraggan's people.

"Hm." Wayne paused. "How long was I out?"

"Two years."

"That long?" He was genuinely surprised. Though, thinking about it, it made sense. He hadn't just advanced, he'd received the gift of the Laws from the Dominator of Hueco Mundo. That alone would account for extra time. Or maybe this was simply how his constitution worked. True bottom-to-top climbers were rare in Hueco Mundo. Most Vasto Lorde simply came into existence at that level, and the world seemed built around that fact. Hollow Beasts who clawed up through every stage one step at a time were the exception, not the rule.

"All right. Tell whoever came that I'm awake. I'll go to Baraggan in a few days. Have them transmit the message remotely — they should have the means for it."

"Yes, my King." Timd dipped his head. Then something in his posture shifted, a faint swell of pride. "On that note, my King — we have those means now too." And he launched into a full account.

Signal base stations. The Reiryoku Communicator. The long-range Reiatsu detection radar. He walked Wayne through every invention he'd developed over the past two years. Wayne listened to all of it with genuine satisfaction. His faction's communication range wasn't close to matching Baraggan's, they couldn't cover all of Hueco Mundo yet, but within their own territory, what they had was more than workable.

Expanding coverage to the full breadth of Hueco Mundo would require Hollow Beasts with specific abilities, the kind Baraggan apparently had on hand. Otherwise, they'd be laying base stations one at a time across open desert. Which was its own problem: a single low-tier Cero would reduce any unguarded station to powder. You couldn't post a guard at every relay point across a continent.

And if they ever could blanket all of Hueco Mundo with stations and personnel, that would basically be ruling it. Baraggan would never allow that.

"Well done, Timd." Wayne put a hand on his shoulder. "Because of your work, our stronghold is safer and our expansion has gone further than it would have otherwise. You've done well." He let that land for a moment. "Our road is still long, and we'll keep pushing forward. If the chance comes up, I'll also make a trip to the World of the Living. When I do, I'll bring back more books for you. Including manga."

The light behind Timd's mask went sharp and bright. "Really?!"

Wayne looked at him and had a sudden, very specific fear: that the moment new manga arrived, Timd would do exactly what Nel had done, and spontaneously advance on the spot.

"Don't worry. It won't be long now. Once I'm back from Baraggan's, we'll go." He gave the promise without ceremony and moved on.

"Jekain. You've worked hard holding everything together these past two years. Get everyone back to their posts. I need a few days to work with my new abilities. Let Baraggan's people know to be patient, I'll bring them home shortly. And keep the scouts searching for Coyote Starrk. Tell him I want him to come back."

"Yes, my King." Jekain bowed and accepted the order quietly.

He watched Wayne turn and move, and felt something settle in his chest that he hadn't been able to name in two years. From the days when they were both Lower Hollows, when Wayne's strength hadn't even matched his own, to this. The same road, the same king, every step of it. Wayne was standing now in a place where fewer than two hundred beings in all of Hueco Mundo could follow him.

Jekain had not followed the wrong person. He never had.

"Nel. With me."

Wayne stepped out with a Sonído.

"Coming, my lord~!" Nel lit up, stamped her hooves against the ground, and shot out after him.

A short while later, they landed on a small rise a few kilometers from the stronghold.

"Nel, I wanted to—" Wayne started to turn.

He didn't finish the sentence. Nel had already closed the distance, pressing her head into his chest and rubbing with single-minded determination.

"My lord, why did it take you so long?" The complaint came out soft instead of sharp. Vulnerable, almost.

Wayne blinked. Then, slowly, it made sense. Last time he'd come back from Baraggan's territory and gone straight into seclusion. Back and forth, that was three or four years of disruption. And before Nel advanced, he'd said something to her, about family, about what she was to him.

Had she taken that to mean she was allowed to place him in that category too?

"Maybe it's just how my constitution works." He reached up and rubbed the top of her goat-like head, working at it until he felt the tension ease out of her.

"Same as when we were both advancing to Adjuchas, the time it took wasn't the same for either of us. Maybe your advancement will take a long time too. Maybe it'll be short. No one can say."

"I suppose..." Nel tapped a finger lightly against her mask. Then her ears perked up. "So, Lord Wayne, why did we come all the way out here?"

Wayne's eyes lit.

"To test my abilities. I want to see exactly what's changed."

➤ Next: Ability Scan II