Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 98 - The Fog of Illusion

BOOM!

Steel met claw with a shriek of impact. Sparks scattered into the dark. Wayne's Sky-Rending Greatsword locked against the Hollow beast's talons, and in the same breath, his eyes flared wide. A pale-gold Cero screamed across the distance, forcing back the Vasto Lorde still hounding Baraggan. One strike bought the opening he needed. He landed beside Baraggan just as the old king finished re-stabilizing his Reiatsu and shoved back the sole Vasto-level who'd dared face him head-on. Baraggan was ready for the next wave.

"Who the hell thinks they can ruin my hunt?" The leader among the three Vasto-levels spoke first. All three were Vasto Lorde-class Menos Grande, humanoid by nature. This one was built like a boulder, but his head was comically small. A walking deformity. It didn't change the fact that he was Vasto-level.

"Your daddy, that's who — actually, forget it. I'm not claiming something that ugly." Wayne took one look and his filter failed entirely.

"Your Majesty. What's the situation?" He tracked the enemy positions as he spoke, adjusting his Reiatsu.

"Some minor faction from the Central Region." Baraggan's voice was cold iron. "The scent of this king's subordinates drew this rabble in. They mistook my territory for a feeding ground. No warning. No challenge. Just a coward's ambush."

"Central Region forces?" Wayne frowned. "I thought there were fewer than a hundred Vasto-levels left in all of Hueco Mundo. We haven't even reached the interior and we've already run into three. And these are a minor faction? How many does a major one field?"

"How should this old man know?" Baraggan's fury was palpable. His standing as king of Hueco Mundo, challenged by three low-tier Vasto Lordes and a pack of high-class Adjuchas. "But not one of them leaves. I smell a Law on the one to the right. It's my Law of Time."

"No shit. That convenient?" Wayne blinked. What a find, and they'd barely crossed into the Central Region. Letting that one go was not an option.

"Faint. But he's touched a fragment of it. That beast's ability is Regression — it forcibly reverses the aging I inflict. Though from the look of it, the ability only works on himself. He can't project it outward. Otherwise he alone could tie me down."

"Can Your Majesty handle him solo, then?"

"Against an inferior copy of my own power?" The ghost-flame in Baraggan's sockets gleamed with hunger. "I may not walk away with Regression itself, but gathering fragments of my own Law is prize enough. Boy — can you occupy the other two?"

"Easily. Tia's almost here. Three against three." Wayne's voice carried no doubt. "I don't see us losing."

He was already moving. A Void Flash launched him forward. He drove Baraggan's marked target back with a Cero, then locked onto the leader. One against two, with Spatial talent in his arsenal, Wayne liked his odds.

BOOM!

The Sky-Rending Greatsword crashed into a forearm thick as a tree trunk. The stocky, small-headed leader was a defensive-type Vasto Lorde. Perfect for grinding down. Behind Wayne, the second Vasto-level, lean and wiry, manifested a one-handed blade and slashed at his exposed back.

Hum!

An invisible Concealed Cero caught the lanky one mid-lunge and blasted him backward. Not lethal, but it left a mark.

"Lord Wayne!" Nel's voice rose from below, asking whether she should join the upper fight.

"Clear out the Adjuchas!" Wayne shouted, his blade crashing against the tank again.

"Yes!" She never questioned his orders. Without a glance at the battle overhead, she plunged into the Adjuchas ranks. At peak Adjuchas strength, this was where she thrived.

"Bastard — where the hell did you come from!" The thick-necked leader gritted out between blows. His pack should have devoured this nest of Adjuchas without issue. He'd never expected a mid-tier Vasto Lorde at its center. A tough bone to crack, but with three Vasto-levels on his side, stalling was doable. One could break through, slaughter the Adjuchas below, and even if the main fight turned sour, escape was still guaranteed.

Wayne's appearance shattered that calculus. One Vasto Lorde they could stall. Two was already pushing it. What the leader hadn't counted on was Wayne's sheer combat power, holding both of them alone, and that Cero of his, appearing and vanishing without warning. Hard to dodge. Devastating on impact. And hadn't his first Cero been pale-gold? Why was it invisible now? Was that his ability?

"Came to the Central Region to ruin your day." Behind his Hollow Mask, Wayne's eyes narrowed with open mockery. His right claw raked across the leader's arm, and a blade of pale-gold Reiatsu silently tore open.

Space-Rending Slash!

The light blade bit deep. Blood sprayed. For a tank-type Vasto Lorde it was nothing crippling, but slowing his offense was enough.

Wayne used the recoil to fall back, then snapped into a Void Flash and materialized behind the wiry Vasto-level, already mid-strike.

CLANG!

Longsword met one-handed blade. The lanky Hollow had braced for a simple ambush, but the force behind the blow sent him rocketing backward hundreds of meters. That push wasn't raw strength. It was another one of Wayne's techniques.

Shadow Waltz!

CLANG! Clang-clang-clang-clang!

The parries came rapid-fire, then the rhythm broke. Blocking gave way to the wet sound of steel sinking into flesh. Wound after wound carved bloody lines across the slender Vasto-level's body.

"Kamula!" The lanky Hollow screamed for the leader. He was breaking.

Kamula used the brief window to trigger his ability and restore his injuries in a flash. Then a Sonído brought him behind Wayne. He clasped both hands into a hammer fist, raised it high, and brought it down.

BOOM!

Wayne twisted mid-motion, new strength not yet gathered, and took the blow head-on. The impact drove him into the sand like a meteor. A massive crater exploded outward, swallowing the battlefield in dust.

He wasn't badly hurt. His body vanished into the churning cloud and, using the cover, he flickered through the dust with Spatial movement, reaping Adjuchas one after another.

Neither Vasto Lorde dared charge into the dust cloud. They needed the time to recover anyway.

In those few short breaths, Wayne slaughtered seven or eight Adjuchas. When the dust settled, he stood holding a fragment of Hollow Mask, raising it slowly to his mouth. His eyes stayed fixed on the two Vasto-levels above. The look said everything.

Surprised? Your old man's making a side profit.

"You're dead!"

Rage ignited. Two massive Ceros, one red, one green, screamed down at him.

"That's exactly what I was waiting for." Wayne grinned.

He stepped into a Void Flash and reappeared behind both of them. The Sky-Rending Greatsword, saturated with Reiatsu, carved toward their backs.

"What?!" Neither Vasto Lorde could process it. Even Sonído shouldn't have placed him behind them with zero reaction window, and at this range.

Sonído was fast. Spatial ability was faster. And Wayne had barely shown it to them from the start.

A killing blow like this, you saved it for the right moment.

Shunk!

Two massive wounds split open across their backs. Sword gleam laced with spatial force rampaged through their bodies.

Wayne drew on that faint spatial residue, split his Spatial ability into two currents, and forced them to collide. Twin micro-storms of spatial rupture detonated inside the two Vasto-levels. Both Hollow beasts coughed blood.

"Bastard!" The lanky one twisted and spat a glob of jet-black liquid. It splashed in front of Wayne, and before he could evade, it spread. A vast dark curtain swallowed him whole.

Wayne moved to escape, and the world warped.

The endless sand sea vanished. In its place: a city of towers. Blue sky. Crowded streets. The noise of human life.

"Spatial characteristic?" His pupils contracted. Transported to another world? The World of the Living? Only the Living World had cities like this. He raised his Reiatsu to its absolute limit, braced for attack.

"No... not spatial displacement." He tested the environment, swung a sword arc and watched it fly unimpeded into the distance. He fired a Cero at the city below. It passed straight through skyscrapers and vanished.

"Not solid. An illusion?" His eyes narrowed. The dark curtain had deceived his vision, but his other senses remained untouched. If a Hollow with hypnosis on par with Aizen's Kyōka Suigetsu had appeared, he'd be lucky to walk away with just a layer of skin stripped off.

But compared to Kyōka Suigetsu, this dark curtain's illusions seemed tied to the Hollow beast itself. Wayne had been human in his previous life, so he saw a human city. The curtain reflected memories, injecting Reiatsu into the brain by mapping through the eyes. Wayne counted himself lucky. The ability only reflected, it didn't detonate. An internal explosion inside his skull, he imagined, would be thoroughly unpleasant.

Not a Spatial ability. That meant he had a way out. He just needed to leave the mapping zone.

He reached out and traced a circle in the air. A spatial rift yawned open. A moment later, a small loach-like creature wriggled through.

"Bawa-bawa?" The little loach looked at Wayne, then at the pitch-black void around them, with no idea why it had been summoned.

"Bawabawa. Can you see a city right now?"

"Bawa?" It looked around at the blackness and shook its head.

"Good. I need to borrow your power."

"Bawa?" Confusion. I'm just a pet. What power?

"Negación. You know it, right?"

"Bawa-bawa!" A nod.

"Use Negación on me. Now."

"Bawa?" The little loach scratched its head with its tail, uncertain what Wayne meant, but it obeyed its great master all the same.

"BAWA!"

A pillar of orange-gold light erupted from the ground, enveloping Wayne and punching straight through the black curtain.

Negación, two distinct spatial layers, inner and outer. If the illusion worked through visual reflection, Wayne could walk free. If it had been mapped directly into his eyes, he'd have had to wait for an attack and counter blind. But his reasoning held. The dark curtain was spatially isolated, its effect severed. Wayne snapped back to the vast desert. Below him, the two Vasto-levels were desperately trying to recover.

"Impossible!" The lanky Hollow's masked face contorted in disbelief. His pride, the Illusory Mist, shattered just like that.

"Good ability. Shame." Wayne sent Bawabawa hopping back into the spatial rift. "I've got far worse abilities to face in the future. Yours doesn't make the cut."

He dove. A pale-gold Cero condensed in his palm, and as it formed, drops of vivid red blood seeped from his hand and bled into the light.

The Cero blazed. The space around it cracked and fractured.

Wayne swept his right claw forward. A Dimension Slash split open before the two Vasto Lordes, but they'd been expecting it. Both fell back instinctively, breaking apart to avoid being caught together.

"That's exactly what I wanted."

The instant they separated, Wayne Sonído'd straight for the lanky one. The power-type leader Kamula could wait. This one, the one with illusions, the one who'd made him feel controlled, that feeling Wayne would never suffer again. He had to die first.

➤ Next: Spoils of War