Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 89 - Returning Home

Dozens of minutes earlier, Wayne had teleported Harribel directly to the World of the Living.

That's right, the World of the Living. He hadn't taken her straight back to camp. Instead, he'd brought her here first, to see it with her own eyes. The scenery would do something to her. Shift something.

"This is... the World of the Living?" She had never been here, but she'd heard of it. Blue sky. White clouds. Birdsong and the scent of flowers, things that belonged only to this world, things Hueco Mundo had never known.

"Mm." Wayne nodded.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"To let you see the human world." He teleported them again, this time into a city. His concealment field was already up. Beyond the initial spatial ripple, no Soul Reaper would find his trail.

"That ideal land without sacrifice you spoke of — perhaps only this place has it." He pointed down at the people below. "In the World of the Living, people don't slaughter and devour each other. Spiritual power doesn't exist in their world. What they wield are weapons of steel and gunpowder, and even those are out of reach for most civilians. What you see before you — this is it. The harmonious world you described, the one without conflict, without sacrifice."

"..."

Harribel said nothing. But she felt it. Among humans, there was none of the endless fighting, the devouring, the desperate clawing for survival that defined Hollow existence. There was only trade and conversation. Shared laughter. Families at ease. Friends at ease. Every small thing she was seeing, she had never had any of it. And she had wanted all of it for longer than she could remember.

"Tell me, Harribel. Is this the world you want?"

"I..." She hesitated. She didn't answer directly. "If our world were like this... maybe Hueco Mundo wouldn't be just two colors — eternal night and white sand. I don't know whether the World of the Living is truly what I'm after. But I like this. The way this city simply... coexists."

"A world like this — it's what all of us Hollow Beasts who think differently dream of." Wayne looked at the hope in her eyes, half-hidden behind her Hollow Mask, and his voice stayed quiet. "But beneath all this harmony, do you know how many lives paid for it?"

His hand settled on her shoulder. They vanished.

Tens of thousands of kilometers in an instant. A border region, somewhere in a nation in the World of the Living.

Just like in his previous life, Wayne hadn't confirmed whether multiple countries existed in this era, but borders existed. Places where two nations pressed up against each other. He hadn't needed long to find one. A sweep of his Reiatsu, and he locked onto the site of a small-scale war: several thousand combatants.

They hovered above the battlefield.

Gunfire and war cries filled the air below. Humans had no great power of their own, but technology had given them artillery and missiles. Tools to annihilate whoever came for them. A single missile's destructive yield was already comparable to a Gillian-class Cero, and beyond that, humanity still held its final weapon. Nuclear. If that kind of force could harm spiritual bodies, it would be enough to wipe out a Vasto Lorde-class Menos.

"Do you see it, Tia Harribel?" Wayne said. "Everything dazzling that you yearn for, it was paved by the bodies and blood of the soldiers on that field. How is that any different from us Hollow Beasts plundering and devouring one another?"

"This..." Harribel stared at the clouds of blood mist below, at the charred bodies. No words came. Moments ago there had been a city full of laughter and warmth. Now this. The contrast was total.

"These soldiers give their lives to defend their homeland. The city's peace exists because of their sacrifice. Without them, the city burns, and the people scatter with nowhere to go. So tell me, Harribel, that world without sacrifice you spoke of. How, exactly, do you make it happen?"

"..."

"Unify the world? Unify Hueco Mundo?" Wayne answered for her, a trace of dry amusement in his voice. "I believe you. As a Vasto Lorde, you'll have a force of your own someday, a large one. But how long until that day? How many lives does it cost to get there? And before it arrives, how do you protect every single one of your companions?"

"Companions?" Harribel's eyes widened. She'd caught the word. Not subordinates. Companions.

"...Let's go." Wayne turned away from the war below. It wasn't his to touch. With his current strength, a handful of Ceros would be enough to erase one side of it entirely. But two factions, two beliefs, two sets of people who thought they were right, who could pass a clean verdict on that?

The wheel of fate turns on its own. Justice lives in the hearts of those who witness it.

He stopped thinking about the battlefield. He took Harribel back to camp.

The repeated teleportation had cost him a fair amount of Reiatsu, though it helped that he was only carrying one person.

When they landed beside his throne, Jekain and Timd were inside the meeting room, running a conference with several peak Adjuchas subordinates. The sudden Reiatsu fluctuation brought every Hollow Beast to attention at once, and they fell back to the open ground below the throne.

"My King — you've returned." Jekain stepped forward.

"We welcome our King's return." The assembled Hollow Beasts knelt.

"Mm. Busy day, it seems." Wayne glanced around and pieced it together.

"My King, we're in talks with an Adjuchas community in the south about a merger. The conference was underway," Jekain explained.

"Let me interrupt for a moment. Gather the leadership, I want everyone to meet a new companion."

"Oh?" Jekain had already noticed the figure who'd come back with Wayne. He couldn't read her, though. He pushed his Reiatsu against hers and felt himself come up short. His King had come home with a Vasto Lorde-class Menos.

"Understood, my King. I'll assemble everyone still in camp at the base of the wall."

"Good." Wayne nodded, then took Harribel by the arm and teleported them to a high platform overlooking the fortress. "Take a look. This is my home."

From up here, Harribel could see all of it.

Home was one word for it. Fortress city was closer to the truth. Wayne hadn't had much time to follow his faction's growth, not during recent visits, not before them. Seeing it laid out in full now, he could tell it had become something else entirely.

The castle was embedded into the cliff itself, carved into the rock. City walls stretched along the cliff's edge, over a hundred kilometers of them, enclosing the entire territory. Inside those walls, Mude had raised a field of towers from the sand and stone, every Hollow Beast now had a room of their own.

Timd's design, clearly. The architectural logic came straight from the World of the Living. The buildings wouldn't hold against a Cero from a peak Adjuchas, but as shelter they were sufficient. Guards walked the walls in unbroken shifts. Reishi signal towers stood at the cliff's heights. Anyone who wanted to hit this camp without warning would need to be Vasto Lorde-class or above, anything less, and the Hollows would have time to respond before the damage mounted.

Timd had also laid stone-paved streets throughout the city. Functionally, they didn't add much, most of the Hollow Beasts here could use Sonído. But white sand everywhere versus clean stone underfoot, the stone won.

The Hollow Beasts were already converging on the open ground below. No active war meant most of Wayne's force was present. The faces from the Forest of Menos were familiar. There were plenty he didn't recognize at all, Reiatsu signatures he'd never encountered. New blood, filtered through battle after battle by Jekain and the others.

"We welcome our King's return!"

They knelt in unison. The full formal greeting.

"My comrades-in-arms." Wayne raised one hand, and pale-gold Reiatsu drifted downward like falling light, settling over the crowd, lifting every kneeling figure gently to their feet. At his level, it cost him nothing. "You've all been fighting for this faction, day after day. I mean it, thank you."

"I'd like to introduce someone." His voice carried across the ground. "A new companion I found on the road. Tia Harribel. Vasto Lorde-class, same as me."

The crowd rippled.

Murmurs broke out across the assembled Hollow Beasts. It hadn't been long since Wayne reached Vasto Lorde. And already he'd come back with a second one?

"Going forward, Harribel fights with us, as a member whose purpose is to protect this faction. She won't be on the front lines. She's our last defense. Our trump card. I'm asking everyone to treat her well."

"Yes, my King." The honorific rose from the crowd without hesitation. "We pay our respects to Lady Harribel." Respect for power ran deep, and they gave it without reluctance.

"This..."

Harribel stood there, taking it in. As an early-stage Vasto Lorde, she could hold her own against several Adjuchas at once. But this many, peak Adjuchas among them, if they swarmed her, sheer numbers would grind her down eventually. And yet because Wayne stood here, not one of them showed a flicker of doubt. He said new companion, and they accepted her without a single question asked. That blind, absolute trust hit her harder than anything else she'd seen today. It rewrote something in her understanding of who Wayne was.

"I don't have time to walk you through everything," Wayne said, turning to her. "You'll find your footing on your own. The task I have for you is simple: you don't hunt with us. But when my people run into something they can't handle, you step in. That's all I ask. Everything else, you can let alone."

"Yes... my... my..."

"Wayne is fine." He didn't make anything of it. He waved it off, gripped her shoulder, and teleported her back to her base.

After dropping her off, he took Nel out to inscribe a multi-person teleportation formation, then returned to his own base and turned his attention to getting Harribel properly settled in.

"My King, the city layout and district breakdown are all here. Please review."

Timd was waiting for him the moment he settled into the meeting room, planning board in hand.

This was the full map of the fortress city. During Wayne's long stretch of absence, the push toward his advancement and the joint campaigns with Baraggan, Timd had never found the right moment to present it. Now that Wayne finally had time to sit, Timd had asked permission and brought it out.

"My King, we've incorporated the mountain behind the cliff, the space beneath it, the open ground in front, and a large section of underground space beyond that into the city's full territory. The cliff interior houses the conference hall and your throne room. We've also carved out several smaller spaces, for additional meetings, a medical room, and so on. The underground section remains your secluded cultivation space.

The city outside is built for daily life, everyone has a place to live. The intent is to establish order. It may limit how freely the Hollow Beasts move around, but having their own space to rest means they can actually put their guard down. It settles them."

Wayne nodded. Less a shelter, more a leash, a gentle one. Structure that quietly prevented friction from becoming fights.

"Well done. We're starting to look like a real city."

"My King, I only did what I should." Timd bowed his head. Over a thousand years he had lived, and most of it had been nothing. Then Wayne arrived. Timd had found something worth living for, and the work he did here gave him a reason to exist that he'd never had before. Everything was moving in a direction he had never dared imagine.

"My King, regarding the Vasto Lorde." Jekain stepped in. "Is she a companion the King met and brought back, or...?" He was really asking whether Tia Harribel held the same standing as Nel.

"Picked her up along the way." Wayne gave a short laugh. "She and her subordinates won't slot in easily, though. Soft pressure and hard pressure both. Pull some of the female non-combat Hollow Beasts from the faction, mark off a protected zone for them. The rest of Harribel's people can integrate into the regular teams."

"Yes, my King." Jekain inclined his head. "That reminds me, as our numbers have grown, we've organized the Hollow Beasts into distinct teams. I haven't briefed you on that yet."

"That's fine. Keep doing what you're doing. Just make sure the technology division is properly covered, during this phase of growth, they're exposed and they need protection."

"Yes, my King."

"One more thing. Carve out a dedicated zone for Harribel, enough space that she can move freely and manage her own people. Put some of the females near them and let familiarity do the work. I'm taking Harribel into central Hueco Mundo first, for some field experience. Her three unruly subordinates, I'll bring them back tomorrow. After that, integration is your problem."

"Yes, my King. Leave it to us." Jekain understood the calculus clearly. Wayne's attention wasn't on those three. It was on Harribel, the Vasto Lorde herself.

And that made sense. From the faction's founding to this day, Wayne had been their only Vasto Lorde-class Menos. One. A single point of failure at the peak. If they could add even one more Vasto-level presence, even an early-stage Vasto Lorde, the shape of everything changed. A roof over the faction that nothing below could break.

➤ Next: Bawabawa