Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 107 - Beheading — Clash
Chapter One Hundred and Seven
"Huff... huff..."
Unleashing an Arcane-class attack had drained Saros badly. A strike capable of cleaving the earth and carving a rift valley, that was already his absolute limit.
"Huff... finally killed that bastard." Saros panted, sweeping his gaze across the battlefield. His entry-level Vasto Lorde subordinates were still fighting Baraggan and the other Hollows. He could afford to catch his breath, for now.
One of the enemy's top fighters was dead. His side had clawed back some advantage. Still, just what kind of training did it take to, at the entry level, overpower a mid-level Vasto Lorde like him?
The combat ability Wayne had displayed, capable of suppressing a Hollow Beast with higher Reiatsu than his own, stirred no small killing intent in Saros. This one couldn't be left alive. Leave him be and he'd become a disaster down the road.
Good thing he'd already cut him down. That last strike, even if it hadn't killed Wayne outright, would've left him half-crippled.
However.
"Magnificent slash." Wayne's voice rang out again, directly behind him.
"What?!" Saros spun around. Wayne was standing roughly five or six meters away, in a spot where Saros hadn't sensed his presence at all.
"As I thought." Wayne shook his head, reproaching himself for failing to react and counter in time. "Trying to suppress an enemy through combat technique alone, without using my abilities — it's still too difficult." In the end, he'd been forced to draw on the power of laws.
The moment Wayne had been cut down, he'd already activated his spatial and void abilities on himself. His body hit the ground and left behind an afterimage, while his real body vanished from before Saros's eyes inside a Concealment Field. Then, using the power of Spatial Law, he'd leaped clear of the attack range and materialized directly at Saros's back.
That earth-shattering slash had hit nothing but the ground. It had failed to inflict any real damage on Wayne.
He had his own presence of mind to thank for that, the instant he landed, he'd moved. If he hadn't, that slash might have wounded him even with Pseudo-Hollowfication active. It had been too fast to track with the naked eye. Wayne genuinely wasn't sure whether a clean hit would have bisected him on the spot.
"Against an enemy whose strength far outstrips mine, I still can't suppress them head-on." He reproached himself quietly. "But that slash gave me a lot to work with. Maybe someday I can build a technique like it." He raised his greatsword back into stance. Spatial fluctuations began to shimmer along the blade.
This time, he wasn't holding back. He'd gotten what he needed from the earlier exchange. What came next was the harvest.
Throughout the fight, Wayne had been faintly aware that the Ancient Hollow Beast was recovering. Its Reiatsu was climbing, bit by bit. Whether it was passively absorbing Reishi from Hueco Mundo, or actively growing stronger by devouring Hollow Beasts mid-battle, he didn't know.
While Wayne and Saros had been at each other's throats, Susbus, riding the temporary boost of a High-Class Vasto Lorde, had been locked in a grinding fight with the Ancient Hollow Beast. Wayne's subordinates were encircling it, containing it, ambushing it from the shadows, all trying to crack an opening, to give Susbus the split second she needed for a decisive blow. But against something that massive and ancient, most of them were little more than appetizers.
And no wonder. A single swipe of the Ancient Hollow Beast's paw could swat an Adjuchas dead. Holding it back meant a constant, unrelenting stream of energy, which meant Cero after Cero after Cero.
The problem was that the Ancient Hollow Beast was a relic of an older age, a war machine in the truest sense. To it, an Adjuchas-level Cero was about as threatening as a headbutt from a baby lamb. And the lamb itself? A light snack at best.
He couldn't let it keep recovering. The fight in front of him needed to end. Now.
Wayne leveled his greatsword at his left hip, a draw stance, though the weapon was a greatsword. The spatial fluctuations rippling along the blade's edge carried an unmistakable echo of Saros's own iai draw from moments before.
"Void Slash!"
He swept the blade in a flat arc. An invisible edge tore through the air, space collapsing in its wake, leaving a field of spatial fragments hanging where it passed. On the other side, at Saros's waist, those same fragments reappeared.
"What?!" A chill drove straight toward his abdomen. Saros tried to bring his blade up to block, but it was already too late. The speed matched his own Crimson Soul Slash, maybe edged it out by a fraction, and it raked a deep, bloody gash across his waist.
The Concealment Ability had stripped the technique of its visible gleam and Reiatsu signature. The Spatial Ability had let the blade-edge shatter the void itself, skipping the distance entirely and reappearing right at the enemy's body.
In terms of speed, it already measured up to Saros's Crimson Soul Slash. In terms of raw destructive power, nowhere close.
The cut was deep. Internal organs, damaged. But Saros was still in one piece, not cleaved in two. By a wide margin, the technique still fell short of Saros's Arcane technique.
"Still need to figure out how to amplify the power. Saros's method takes too long to charge — doesn't fit how I fight." Wayne studied the wound, muttering to himself. "I'll work on it later. For now..."
He was already moving. A flash of Sonído carried him to Saros's side, and his greatsword swung straight for the same wound.
Saros was hurt, but he could still parry, raising his blade, giving ground, refusing to let Wayne string together too many clean hits. He needed time. Time for High-Speed Regeneration to patch him back together.
Wayne wasn't going to give him that. He had Ultra-Rapid Regeneration of his own. The whole point was making sure Saros never got a moment's rest. Every swing landed harder than anything from their earlier exchange. The advantage of superior Reiatsu quality was on full display.
But this wasn't just a sword fight anymore. Wayne was weaving his abilities and laws into every exchange.
Ceros that bent and curved. Balas that harassed from angles with no visible source. Slashes that left no trace until they'd already landed. And Wayne's own body flickering out of existence without warning, only to reappear mid-strike from a completely different direction.
Saros was losing ground. Whenever he tried to mount a real counterattack, Wayne simply vanished, and the moment passed. The Ceros and Balas kept hammering that wounded waist, keeping the injury from knitting, bleeding Saros's focus one hit at a time.
Bit by bit, the fatigue started showing. His guard slowed. The bursts of defiance came less frequently, and every one of them fizzled out the same way, Wayne disappeared, and there was nothing left to resist.
Saros's fundamental weakness was clear enough: a sword-type Hollow had no real ranged options beyond the energy he could project from a swing. Keep the distance, and his ability to threaten you dropped sharply. Wayne had been exploiting that from the start, spatial leaps every time Saros cocked back for an attack, exiting the kill zone, reappearing from a new angle. Rinse and repeat. It was enough to drive anyone insane.
The frustration finally cracked Saros's composure. He started throwing Ceros, raw and unguided, hoping one would connect.
He'd chosen the wrong target for that. Wayne's entire ambition was built around mastering the Cero of Annihilation. His Cero skill was already well above average. Every one of Saros's shots missed clean. And every miss cost him Reiatsu he couldn't afford, while his wounds kept stacking up and his breathing grew ragged.
"Bastard — just die!" The frustration burst. Saros fired a Sonído and closed the distance in an instant, but he didn't draw his blade. Instead, he drove straight into Wayne's sword, catching the Sky-Rending Greatsword with his shoulder, pinning the blade. His hand shot out and locked around Wayne's left wrist, killing the angle. And in the same motion, his longsword drove straight at Wayne's center.
A trade. An injury-for-a-kill trade. Saros was past caring. He just wanted out of this humiliating fight.
Thwump.
The sound of steel punching through flesh never came. It was the feeling of stabbing empty air. Saros looked down. His longsword was buried to the crossguard, sunk into a space shimmering with faint, strange light. The other end of the blade was simply gone.
"I was waiting for you to stop thinking." Wayne's eyes beneath his Hollow Mask went quiet and narrow. His unrestrained right claw lit up with a blinding gleam.
Space-Rending Slash.
His oldest technique. His most primal. He had poured the better part of his Reiatsu into that right claw.
SPLURT!
The claw swept across Saros's neck. A head went airborne.
In the end, Wayne finished a master swordsman with the simplest move he had, one claw strike, clean decapitation. Blood fountained from the stump. Saros died at Wayne's hands in the most wretched, humiliating way possible. An entry-level Vasto Lorde versus a mid-level Vasto Lorde.
This battle: concluded.
Wayne quickly stowed Saros's corpse and turned toward Baraggan. Seeing that Wayne had finished his opponent, Baraggan gave a short nod and released his Decay Power, herding the three Vasto-level Menos Grande still wrapped in Death Sigh into a tighter cluster.
Wayne dropped into the battle circle, activated Spatial Law, and crushed the spatial crystals inside their bodies. The internal organs of all three were suddenly exposed to Death Sigh's corrosion. The agony threw their Reiatsu into chaos. Wayne used the opening to take their heads, one by one.
The most efficient approach was to strip their Hollow Masks before the Time Law finished decaying them entirely. It burned the Reiatsu stored in their bodies, but it was the fastest method available. Time was not something Wayne had a lot of right now.
Three entry-level Vasto Lordes down. He didn't stop. He charged toward Nel and Harribel's position and used the same method to finish off two Vasto Lordes that had been locked in grinding fights of their own. One slipped through, Nel took a hard hit just as Wayne was moving in for the kill, the brief disruption breaking his window, and that resource was lost.
Still. Four Vasto Lorde-level resources was already plenty.
"Nel, Tia — go harvest the Adjuchas below." Wayne issued the order and turned toward Susbus's position at a run. Baraggan was already ahead of him, moving hard for the mountaintop.
The real fight was only just getting started.
SKREEEOOONG!
At the summit, the Ancient Hollow Beast stood on empty air, locked in a messy brawl with Susbus and her remaining subordinates. The Adjuchas-level ambushes it shrugged off without a care. The Vasto Lorde attackers were a different story, those hits actually stung. Even so, the body of an Ancient Hollow Beast was in a different league: hide thick, flesh dense. It hadn't taken anything critical. Meanwhile, its enormous tail had painted most of those entry-level Vasto Lordes from head to toe in welts and bruises.
"Damn it — is this where it ends?" Susbus stole a glance behind her during a gap in the fighting. Wayne had cut Saros down. Her one temporary ally was gone. At this rate, she'd be next, and soon.
"Last chance, everyone!" She shouted to her remaining subordinates before Wayne could arrive. "Hurt it badly enough for me to force a mental lock. We have to put the enemy down first, everything else comes after!"
"Yes, my lord!" The handful of surviving Vasto Lordes heard the order. They understood what it meant. If they didn't go all-in right now, there wouldn't be anything left for any of them.
They charged. Every last one of them, no hesitation, throwing every ounce of Reiatsu they had at the Ancient Hollow Beast's head.
BOOM!
The most heavily wounded Vasto Lorde threw himself directly into the Ancient Hollow Beast's open jaws. The moment it bit down and tore him apart, he triggered his final technique.
Self-Detonation.
The blast shattered teeth in every direction. Blood poured freely from the Ancient Hollow Beast's mouth. Heavy damage, unmistakably so. But it was an Ancient Hollow Beast. Recovery came with the territory. Even as the blood ran, shattered stumps were already pushing out fresh fangs.
In that narrow window before the regeneration could close the gap, the remaining Vasto Lordes unloaded everything they had left directly into the Ancient Hollow Beast's face.
For one moment, the creature couldn't do anything but absorb it. No dodging, no deflecting, just impact after impact.
"Now!" Susbus launched into a Sonído and landed on top of its head. "Delusion of Falsehood!"
Her eyes went pink. Reiatsu threaded through with spiritual power, laced with something dark and bewitching, poured directly into the Ancient Hollow Beast's mind.
ROOOOAARRR!
It thrashed its head violently, trying to reach up with its claws. But its forelimbs were pinned down by the surviving Vasto Lordes, held fast. Its tail lashed toward Susbus, and her Spiritual Whip drove it back, over and over, denying every angle.
SKREEEOOONG!
Finally, the Ancient Hollow Beast let out one long, agonized shriek. Then it went limp against the void. Silent.
"What's happening?" Wayne arrived and took in the scene, his eyes narrowing behind his Hollow Mask.
"Careful. Something's wrong." Baraggan pulled up short as well, drawing the Death Axe, and held his ground.
ROOOAAARRR!
The Ancient Hollow Beast answered the question itself. It climbed back to its feet. But this time, it made no move to throw Susbus from its head. Because at this moment, its eyes were completely, entirely pink.
The Ancient Hollow Beast was under control.
Its new enemy, Baraggan and Wayne.
➤ Next: The Battle Concludes