Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 91 - Skip-Tier Evolution

"Bawabawa!" Once she confirmed Wayne was completely unharmed, Bawabawa crawled one full circle around his severed arm, then opened wide and chomped down.

CRACK!

A sharp snap rang out. Bawabawa's teeth shattered to pieces.

O(>_<)O

"Bawa..." Bawabawa hopped around in pain, tears streaming out from beneath her Hollow Mask.

"Oh? Even a severed arm is too hard for a Lower Hollow to bite through?" Wayne sighed. He drew on his Spatial Ability, combined it with his Reiatsu, and sliced the arm into tiny fragments, then fed them to Bawabawa piece by piece.

"Bawa..." o(T_T)o

Bawabawa was moved to tears. Surely this was the most glorious moment of her entire insect life. Now that everything had been broken into small pieces, she could swallow it all whole. Before long, she had eaten every last fragment. Taking in the full Reiryoku of a mid-tier Gillian in one go, her belly swelled up round, and her body began visibly growing.

One meter. Two meters. Five meters. Ten meters!

Bawabawa's frame kept expanding on that Gillian-class Reiryoku, finally stabilizing at around sixteen meters in length. She had long since dwarfed the Nel who had been cradling her just moments before.

"Haha, Bawabawa, you've grown!" Nel wasn't the least bit put out by the sudden size increase. If anything, she found this enormous creature just as delightful as before.

"Bawa — hic..." Bawabawa flopped onto the ground and rolled back and forth. The Reiryoku from a single severed arm was clearly going to take some time to digest.

"Try compressing the Reiryoku inside your body, Bawabawa. Keep going like this and you'll burst." Wayne was in no particular hurry. Baraggan still had some time before he'd arrive, and watching a Hollow Beast he'd raised with his own hands grow up like this, in its own way, it wasn't bad at all.

"Bawa. Bawa." The enormous loach nodded, then curled into a coil, her body radiating a faint blue glow. The Reiryoku began to cycle. Bawabawa's body gradually shrank back to her original size. She was still somewhat larger than before, having consumed the full Reiryoku of an entire Gillian, that much was unavoidable. And it wasn't only her size that had changed. Where her teeth had been small, immature stubs, she now sported a far sharper set of mandibles. She looked considerably more fearsome, though she was still happily circling Nel as if nothing had changed.

"Not bad. Even after compressing your Reiryoku, you can return to roughly your previous size." Wayne gave Bawabawa an approving nod.

"Bawa! Bawabawa!" The little loach lifted her head toward him, tilting it upward in a way that seemed almost like showing off. Then her body gave a wriggle, the pale blue Reiryoku surged again, and Bawabawa expanded once more, swelling back up to her ten-plus-meter form.

"Your body scales up and down at will. Is that your ability?" Wayne had worked out what she was demonstrating.

"Bawabawa!" The little loach nodded vigorously, like a pestle pounding a mortar. Then she curled around and nuzzled up against Wayne's side.

"You want me to ride you?" Wayne paused, mildly surprised.

"Bawa!" Bawabawa nodded again, just as emphatically. Wayne smiled, took Nel's hand, and jumped up onto the top of her now-giant head.

"Tia, come up."

"Hm?" Harribel didn't react at first, caught off guard by the sudden change in how Wayne addressed her. Then she recalled how he addressed Nel, he seemed to prefer shorter forms when speaking. She let it go.

"Yes, my lord." Harribel leaped up onto Bawabawa's head as well. She found a spot at some distance from Wayne and Nel and settled there, while the two of them had already made their way to the very front of Bawabawa's head and were gazing out into the distance.

"Bawabawa! Forward!" Nel raised her arm and pointed ahead.

"Bawa!" The great loach let out a long bellow and began swaying her enormous body, advancing in the direction Nel had pointed.

For all her massive bulk, Bawabawa moved with a rolling, lumbering gait, yet her head stayed remarkably steady. And because of her sheer size, her speed was nothing to scoff at. She was still a long way behind the Sonído of someone at Wayne's level, but her crawling pace was already on par with a sports car. Perfectly fine for a casual ride.

"Left, left!"

"Bawa!"

"Right! Right!"

"Bawawawa!"

"Hahaha, Bawabawa, faster!"

\o/ Awooo~~

Watching Nel and Bawabawa have the time of their lives, Wayne sat to one side and smiled quietly. This was exactly the kind of scene he had always wanted to see. Nel's smile. Her Hollow Mask still covered her face, but Wayne was certain that behind it, right at this very moment, something bright was lighting her up.

He needed to get Bawabawa to evolve into an Adjuchas as quickly as possible. Otherwise, once they reached the battlefield and clashed with Vasto Lorde-class Hollows, the overflowing Reiatsu alone could shatter Bawabawa where she stood. He couldn't very well keep having someone release Negación around her forever.

With that goal settled, Wayne resolved not to let a single useful food source pass him by for the rest of this journey. The fastest way to push Bawabawa into Adjuchas-class was to feed her high-tier Adjuchas-class Hollows. It was a bit like forcing a seedling to grow before its time, but for a Hollow Beast, it was the fastest way forward.

Of course, as a Hollow Beast with no capacity for language, Wayne held no grand expectations for Bawabawa's potential. Getting her to Adjuchas-class would be enough. The only question was how she'd manage to push through the Gillian stage. Wayne was not about to let a pet's advancement delay his plans with Baraggan.

Ideally, he'd send Bawabawa back to his territory to be raised there in safety. But looking at how Nel clearly hadn't had her fill of fun yet, he set that idea aside for the time being.

"Nel, have Bawabawa head toward Baraggan's direction."

"Yes, my lord." Nel nodded, then lightly tapped her feet on Bawabawa's head and pointed east. "Bawabawa, go that way."

"Bawawawa!" The great loach received her orders and immediately turned, heading east.

There was still roughly one day left until the date Wayne and Baraggan had agreed on. At the current pace, Wayne would encounter Baraggan within half a day at most. For that half day, he'd already made his preparations. He activated his Nihility Domain, concealing his own Reiatsu along with Nel's and Harribel's, and let Bawabawa proceed across the ground projecting nothing but a Lower Hollow-level signature. Simple enough, when you're fishing, you need the right bait. The moment he released his own Reiatsu, no Adjuchas-class Hollow in the area would dare come anywhere near.

And sure enough, some did set their sights on Bawabawa. After consuming Wayne's arm, she had already vaulted into the upper ranks of Lower Hollow, edging close to Peak High-Class Hollow. But in the Inner Circle, she was still a small and insignificant existence. None of that mattered, sitting on her back were two Vasto Lorde-class powerhouses, and that gave the little loach not a shred of fear. She bellowed her Bawas all the way forward without a care.

As for the Adjuchas-class Hollows that came charging in, nearly all of them were detected by Wayne the moment they crossed within a certain range, at which point he ordered Harribel forward to cut them down.

Part of it was observing Harribel's ability to carry out his commands. Part of it was watching whether she'd show any psychological resistance to orders that involved killing.

The reality turned out better than he'd expected. Harribel hesitated slightly at first, but she didn't refuse. After all, protecting her companions was the rule Wayne had set for her from the very beginning. It was a little bit of a trick on his part, but Harribel carried out his orders all the same.

The first target was a mid-tier Adjuchas-class that looked like a centipede, except with far longer appendages. For reasons unknown, it had taken an interest in Bawabawa. It lunged from a hillside to the flank while Bawabawa wasn't paying attention, and the moment Harribel burst out of the Nihility Domain, the thing nearly fainted on the spot. Who could have anticipated that a Vasto Lorde-class Hollow would erupt from right beside a Lower Hollow?

Faced with Harribel's Reiatsu, the centipede Hollow Beast had no chance to resist. One stroke of her blade took its head clean off. The Adjuchas-class Hollow Mask dropped straight into Bawabawa's waiting mouth.

A mid-tier Adjuchas-class Hollow Mask held far more Reiryoku than Bawabawa's current evolutionary ceiling could handle. After she swallowed just half of it, a beam of white light enveloped her entirely.

"Bawa, Bawa!" The little loach seemed to understand she was about to advance. Unease came through clearly in every sound she made.

"It's all right, Bawabawa. We'll protect you while this happens. Just focus on advancing." Nel sat atop her head and gently stroked her.

"Bawa! Bawa!" The little loach didn't seem to agree at all. She kept shaking her head frantically. Then, to Nel's bewilderment, Bawabawa began enlarging her own body, and with complete resolve, swallowed the other half of the Hollow Mask. Forcing herself to endure a body nearly bursting with Reiatsu, she expanded to close to twenty meters in length and swallowed the Adjuchas-class Hollow's entire body in one bite.

"What is this little one trying to do?" Wayne watched with genuine confusion. She had already hit the absolute limit of what she could take in, so why was she still eating? He didn't stop her, though. Because somewhere in the back of his mind, there was indeed one particular kind of special evolution.

Leap Evolution.

Leap Evolution was not something every Hollow Beast could manage. Only truly exceptional ones were capable of it. And the Bawabawa before him — a special Hollow Beast who had awakened her Sentience yet still couldn't speak — perhaps she was exactly that kind of exception.

"Bawa, Bawa!" Now more than twenty meters long, Bawabawa shook her great head at Wayne and Nel, then opened her mouth wide, seemingly asking for more.

"Well, look at you. Still not satisfied?" Wayne laughed and shook his head. "Wait here." He stood and vanished in an instant. Less than half a minute later, he reappeared with Nel as his spatial anchor. He was holding two Hollow Masks. Judging by their Reiatsu signatures, both appeared to be Adjuchas-class.

"My lord, did you go back to the prison?" Nel looked thoughtful. She recognized one of the masks, it had belonged to a Hollow Beast once held in the dungeon of their own faction.

During the year Wayne had spent advancing, Nel and Jekain had led their faction's Hollow Beasts in overrunning many smaller strongholds. To gather more intelligence, the number of captives held in their faction's prison had grown steadily over time.

Deep beneath Wayne's base, there was even a dedicated facility for detaining Hollow Beasts. Each captive was watched over by two of their own faction's guards. To prevent the prisoners from revolting or self-destructing, the guards would periodically sever portions of their bodies to keep their strength in check, while maintaining Negación around them at all times. On top of that, Timd had engineered stone-wall cells specifically designed for these criminals. To escape from Wayne's prison, a Hollow Beast needed at minimum the strength of a peak Adjuchas-class, and every peak Adjuchas-class threat had already been eliminated by Nel and the others as a first priority. The ones held here were, by and large, low-tier or mid-tier Adjuchas-class Hollow Beasts.

Wayne had simply used his Spatial Ability to return to the base, casually killed two Adjuchas-class prisoners in their cells, and come straight back with them for Bawabawa.

"Ah. I feel a little bad for Jekain after all the effort he spent capturing them — but killing two on the spot is the fastest way to get food out here. Finding two suitable prey in this vast sandy expanse would be no easy task." He tossed both Hollow Masks to Bawabawa. She wagged her tail with excitement and swallowed them whole.

Two Adjuchas-class Hollow Masks down, Bawabawa threw back her head and let out a long howl, her body swelling to nearly forty meters. But thanks to her Multiplication ability, she didn't burst from the strain.

"So she really does have a special constitution. Just like me back in the day — when my Reiatsu climbed too high, my body began to expand. Bawabawa's ability is to grow her body larger. And it seems what grows larger isn't just her frame, but her capacity to hold Reiryoku as well."

Wayne watched Bawabawa howling at the sky, and a look of genuine interest crossed his face.

The pale blue Reiatsu wrapped itself around her once more. A burst of intense radiance, and then her body began to shrink. Down to the size she had been when she first met Wayne. Then smaller still, to something barely larger than a newborn. Finally, she condensed into a small cocoon of pale blue light.

"She really skipped a tier." Wayne couldn't hide his excitement. This was the first time he had witnessed a Leap Evolution since coming to Hueco Mundo. He had seen Hollow Beasts retreat into a light cocoon to hibernate and evolve directly from Gillian to Adjuchas before, but among all Hollow Beasts capable of skipping a tier entirely, you might go through tens of millions without finding even one. Yet Bawabawa — a pet, had pulled it off.

Perhaps it was precisely because she had lost the capacity for speech that she possessed this exceptional path of evolution.

It was well known that Wayne himself, back at the Gillian stage, had consumed no small number of Adjuchas-class Hollows before advancing. Bawabawa had eaten only three and was already a light cocoon, which meant her overall capacity for enduring Reiatsu was not particularly high. When she emerged, her Reiatsu would likely settle somewhere around low-tier Adjuchas-class, and that would already be quite good. Still, as a pet, Wayne held no grand ambitions for her. As long as she wouldn't be killed outright by the ambient Reiatsu of a Vasto Lorde-class someday, that would be more than enough.

➤ Next: The Vasto Lorde Cero II