Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 106 - Swordsmanship

Chapter One Hundred and Six

BOOM!

The colossal black Cero tore straight forward, its beam alone over ten meters across, its destructive force beyond question. Susbus and Saros had no room to dodge. Their only option was to throw up their strongest defenses and brace. The Adjuchas-class Hollows standing in the same line as Susbus weren't so lucky. That single blast vaporized over a dozen of them outright.

The black Cero didn't lose an ounce of power. It kept screaming toward the horizon until it slammed into a distant mountain range and detonated, leveling a peak hundreds of meters high into flat ground.

"Holy shit — I think I just let something insane loose." Wayne braced one arm against the oncoming shockwave while shielding Nel behind him. A Reiatsu blast wave of this caliber hitting her directly would not be pleasant.

"The Reiatsu itself is nothing extraordinary, but that oppressive force is unmistakably what an Ancient Hollow can unleash." Baraggan stood beside Wayne, utterly unperturbed. Pressure of this magnitude didn't cost him a thing.

"Interesting. I'm starting to want to devour this creature. Might restore some of my power as a King Hollow."

"Ha! Great Emperor, I've got my eye on this big guy too. Care to split him?"

"You little brat — every time something good appears, you're the first one charging in." Baraggan waved a hand, unconcerned by Wayne's eagerness to claim the spoils. As a fellow wielder of a Law, he understood the hunger for an Ancient Hollow's Reiatsu all too well. "We take him down together. Half the Hollow Mask is yours."

"Naturally. A body that size — I've got no interest in gnawing through it piece by piece." Wayne had zero intention of working his way through a hundred-meter carcass. Half the mask was plenty. What happened to the rest of the body was Baraggan's problem to figure out.

"That said, Great Emperor, let's enjoy the show first. Susbus and Saros aren't dead yet, and I've already called Szayelaporro in to help. With this Ancient Hollow in the mix, it's shaping up to be a proper feast. We might as well eat our fill."

"You little brat. Barely an early-stage Vasto Lorde and already tangling with Ancient Hollows. Back in my day, I wouldn't have dared even imagine such a thing."

"Your Majesty started as a King Hollow — of course you'd never understand the struggles of small fry like me. The drought kills the thirsty and the flood drowns the rest. If I had King Hollow power, I'd have been strutting sideways through Hueco Mundo ages ago." Wayne swung the greatsword in his grip and began constructing spatial crystals nearby. Baraggan, with practiced ease, extended his Death Sigh toward Wayne's position so Wayne could encase it within the crystals for later use. Truth be told, ever since Wayne had started combining his Spatial Law with Baraggan's Time Law, he had grown increasingly lazy about it. But so long as enemies died fast, that was all that mattered.

SKREEEEE!

That grating, monstrous shriek rang out again. The storm kicked up by the black Cero gradually died down. From a distance, both Susbus and Saros had hit the ground. Susbus was drenched in blood, one of her fox ears scorched clean off. She clutched one hand over her other arm, twisted into a mangled, unnatural shape, and gasped for breath in heaving gulps.

On the other side, Saros lay half-collapsed. One of his legs was gone entirely. The long blade in his hand had been reduced to half its length. His Reiatsu flickered unsteadily. Still, he was alive.

"Who the hell is it! Which bastard is out here sabotaging me!" Susbus shot a glare into the distance, locking her gaze onto Wayne's newly arrived group. The King Hollow Cero flash from behind the mountain had carried a Reiatsu signature disturbingly similar to the one Wayne was giving off right now.

"Was it you!" Susbus thrust a finger at Wayne. "Did you let it out!"

"Yes." Wayne admitted it flat out. "If we hadn't, how were we supposed to enjoy such a spectacular show?"

"Do you have any idea what you've done!" Susbus roared.

"Sure do. Released an Ancient Hollow." Wayne spread his hands. "Now that it's out, we don't even need to lift a finger. We just wait for it to kill you."

"You bastard!" Susbus was beside herself with rage. She was caught on two fronts now, on one side, an Ancient Hollow hell-bent on ending her; on the other, enemies watching with hungry eyes, ready to pounce. The situation already looked like a dead end.

"Ace Wayne!" Not far from Susbus, Saros forced himself upright. The stump of his severed leg was slowly regenerating.

High-Speed Regeneration. Not as fast as Wayne's Ultra-Rapid Regeneration, but still a respectable recovery ability, even if it was costing him a significant chunk of Reiatsu.

"Ace Wayne! Is this how you treat an ally!"

"Who said you were my ally? Use our strength to get what you want, then dispose of us once the job's done — I've seen that trick plenty of times." Wayne swept his greatsword through a casual flourish. "Alliances are temporary. Right now, it's our turn to hit back."

At Wayne's command, the Adjuchas who had just been fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with Saros's forces instantly turned on them, slamming Saros's subordinates to the ground and cutting them down.

In a single instant, dozens of Adjuchas were ambushed. The rest scrambled to break away from the fighting and pushed desperately toward Saros's position.

"Hahahaha! Saros, is this the ally you found?" Susbus laughed at him, mocking his stupidity for inviting wolves through the door. "Hahahaha! Looks like you're dying here today too!"

"Now is not the time for that kind of talk." As one of the Three Great Lords, Saros was not about to let an outsider like Wayne run rampant unchecked.

"Cooperate — cooperate now, and we still have a sliver of a chance." Pushed to the very edge, Saros proposed a temporary alliance with Susbus. At this point, the two of them were grasshoppers tied to the same rope.

"Fine. But afterward, I want two of those three Vasto Lorde-class ones!" Susbus's eyes went hard. Blood-red Reiatsu laced with spiritual pressure began spreading outward from her body. She flashed with a Sonído and appeared beside a Vasto Lorde-class subordinate who had also sustained heavy injuries, and on the spot, she tore the subordinate's Hollow Mask off and crammed it into her own mouth. Immediately, her Reiatsu began to skyrocket, smashing through the mid-tier Vasto Lorde bottleneck in an instant and stepping straight into the high-tier level. With her Reiatsu elevated, she charged directly toward the Ancient Hollow at the mountain peak.

"Oh? She actually possesses a technique like that." The ghostly flames in Baraggan's eye sockets flickered. "Boosted her own Reiatsu tier in an instant just by devouring, how intriguing." He watched with genuine curiosity.

"That ability..." Wayne's eyes narrowed beneath his Hollow Mask. It seemed to belong to some category of devouring-type ability. He wondered whether Nel would gain an enhanced absorption ability if she ate Susbus. While the thought ran through his mind, Wayne added Susbus's name to his personal prey list. As for whether he could actually take her down, that was something Wayne never once worried about.

On the other side, Saros pulled away from the front line where the Ancient Hollow was pressing in and led his remaining Adjuchas in a counterattack against Wayne and Baraggan. After several dozen seconds of recovery, Saros had largely regained his ability to fight. His Reiatsu had taken some losses, but he still held a slight numerical advantage in Vasto Lorde-class Hollows over Baraggan's side, enough to claw back the disadvantage.

"Great Emperor, I'll leave those Vasto Lordes to you. I'm going to go have a little fun with that one."

"You sure you can handle him? He's a seasoned mid-tier Vasto Lorde." Baraggan raised the question, then thought back to how this brat had dared to pick a fight with him even as an Adjuchas. His concern was probably unnecessary.

"It's fine. I actually need a good fight with him, pick up some knowledge in the swordsmanship department." With those words, Wayne swung his Sky-Rending Greatsword diagonally and charged forward with a Sonído, raising the greatsword and slashing out a blade arc aimed straight at Saros.

"This kid." Baraggan's skull head swayed slightly, then he spoke. "Wayne's two girls, each of you pick one opponent. I'll handle the other three."

"Understood, Great Emperor."

"Mm."

Nel and Harribel charged toward their respective opponents at the same time. Harribel was there to build a combat record; Nel was there to train herself.

After all, throughout all of Hueco Mundo, encountering over thirty Vasto Lordes in a single battle was an exceptionally rare sight. Perhaps only this central region could produce such a thing, in other territories, no single tribe gathered seven or eight Vasto Lordes like this. Having three to five was already considered a lot.

As for the remaining three, Baraggan enclosed them directly within his Death Citadel, trapping them inside. He had no intention of launching an attack just yet.

It should be noted that Wayne had already planted spatial crystals and Death Sigh within the bodies of all these Vasto Lorde-class Hollows. Whenever Wayne wished, he could trigger the spatial crystals to release, allowing the Death Sigh to corrode those Vasto Lordes from within. Baraggan could do the same, he only needed to activate his Death Sigh to eat through Wayne's spatial crystals, and he could then launch his own attack on the Vasto Lordes.

However, using the Death Sigh to kill had one drawback: a Hollow corroded by it left nothing behind whatsoever. In other words, the moment either Wayne or Baraggan decided to kill with the Death Sigh, it would likely mean losing that Vasto Lorde-class resource entirely.

Unless they were quick enough to sever the Vasto Lorde's head before the corrosion finished it off. But even then, they would lose the Reiatsu stored within the body. At the Vasto Lorde level, the Reiatsu contained in a body far exceeded even a peak Adjuchas.

Waste was shameful, but Wayne was willful.

With opponents assigned, Wayne began exchanging blows with Saros. No Spatial Law. No concealment ability to strike from the shadows. Wayne fought Saros straight up, technique for technique, using only his own skills and swordsmanship. Although the ability Saros channeled through his long blade notched Wayne's Sky-Rending Greatsword several times, that did nothing to stop the clash of steel between them.

Whenever Wayne judged that the Sky-Rending Greatsword was about to give out, he would hurl it aside and immediately summon a fresh one.

A weapon conjured from Reiatsu naturally couldn't compare to a companion weapon born of one's own spirit. But this had opened a new avenue of thought for Wayne, was it possible that he, too, could one day nurture a companion blade of his very own? Something like a Soul Reaper's Zanpakuto? Though that was a matter for the future. Perhaps someday Wayne would master the Arrancar technique and seal his own Reiatsu directly into a sword.

For the moment, what Wayne needed to do was use his existing innate abilities and techniques to go blow for blow with Saros: first, to study this blade master's attack techniques; and second, to hope that in doing so he might grasp some ultimate principle uniquely his own.

And so the battlefield split into three sections: Wayne versus Saros, Susbus against the Ancient Hollow, and Baraggan toying with five Vasto Lorde-class Hollows while Nel and Harribel got their practice in.

All three fronts fell into a stalemate, neither side able to break the balance in short order.

Unless... Szayelaporro launched a sneak attack.

Of course, Wayne was certain Szayelaporro wouldn't make his move yet. The interests hadn't been maximized, and Wayne had no need for him to come out now and disrupt the equilibrium.

In fact, if Wayne wanted to, he could release Baraggan's full combat power in an instant. He simply needed this kind of fight, that was all.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Metal on metal rang out again and again. Wayne grew fiercer with every exchange. His dense, condensed Reiatsu, tempered through his own exertions, had been driven into an elevated, surging state, with each swing of the greatsword, Wayne felt his Reiatsu flow a little more smoothly than before.

This was the consequence of Wayne having neglected his own techniques ever since his last advancement. After all, once he had the Spatial Law and Baraggan, Wayne had almost stopped relying on his innate skills altogether. It had produced a subtle disconnection between his Reiatsu and his technique. But as the intensity of Wayne's fighting built to a peak, that familiar feeling began to return.

Straight thrust. Cleave. Upward sweep. Reverse hang. Circular wrap. Focused strike. Diagonal intercept. Explosive release.

Void-Rending Slash. Dimensional Slash. Shadow Waltz.

From foundational swordsmanship to skill execution, Wayne grew more fluid with every movement. And Saros, who had held the upper hand at the start, was gradually being pushed into a disadvantage.

In the beginning, Saros had still been able to land wounds on Wayne's body. But with Wayne's Ultra-Rapid Regeneration, those wounds were erased almost immediately, driving Saros to no end of frustration.

"This kid, he only gets stronger as the fight goes on. I can't hold back anymore. I have to finish him in one strike!" Fierce light gleamed in the eyes behind Saros's Hollow Mask. In the instant his blade crossed with Wayne's greatsword, Saros suddenly unleashed his full Reiatsu in a single burst. Caught off guard, Wayne was immediately overwhelmed and sent plunging toward the ground. Then came a Cero to keep him pinned. Using the Cero as cover, Saros held his long blade upright and let his Reiatsu slowly wind itself around it. The blade's edge grew sharper with every passing moment.

In just a few short seconds, Saros had completed his charge. The tip of the long blade pointed down at Wayne on the ground, and Saros plunged toward him with the speed of a thunderbolt.

"Crimson Soul Slash!"

FWOOOSH... BOOM!

An invisible blade arc was released in an instant, followed by the thunderous crash of that arc slamming into the earth.

In a single strike, the white-sand ground and the surrounding mountain range were cleaved clean in two, forming a rift dozens of meters long and bottomless in depth.

And Wayne, in that moment, had been carved by that sudden, full-force slash all the way down into the valley floor, whereabouts unknown, and whether alive or dead equally uncertain.

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P.S.: Done, done! Dear Vasto Lordes, once you've finished reading you can go enjoy the holiday, even if it's not an official one. But... everyone have a wonderful time!

➤ Next: Beheading — Clash