Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 296 - Third-Stage Resurrección, Cero Destructo

BOOM!

Pale-gold Reiatsu erupted skyward. Wayne stood at the heart of the pillar as his body transformed again. The lightning-bolt markings on his jaw extended downward, splitting into eight silver lines at his neck that crawled across his shoulders and chest before converging at the Hollow Hole in the center of his torso. His hair shifted from pale gold to phantom silver. His pupils changed from faint violet to gold, his irises narrowing into vertical slits. A pair of bone protrusions roughly five centimeters long, shaped like dragon horns, jutted from his forehead without warning. The muscles across his entire body swelled. Reiatsu crackled around him like living lightning. His power level surpassed that of a peak Vasto Lorde in an instant, a force that could nearly stand shoulder to shoulder with Aizen.

The Third-Stage Resurrección. Wayne's own unique method of advancement.

After absorbing and internalizing what Ulquiorra had given him about the Second-Stage Resurrección, Wayne had come to understand the principle behind it. The so-called Second Stage wasn't some mysterious leap, it was simply adding the power of a Law onto one's existing foundation, drawing out deeper potential, manifesting one's most fundamental strength and nature.

Ulquiorra possessed the Elemental Law of Lightning. That was why his Resurrección let him push his Thunder Spear further. Wayne, in his Second Stage, had fused the Law of Space. His battle against Aizen had all but drained him to nothing, if not for Timd's help moments ago, he might have died here. But recovering to Vasto Lorde level had also healed a portion of his injuries, and that was what had given him the nerve to gamble everything.

As it turned out, he'd been right.

After fusing the Law of Illusion, his Resurrección transformed again. His injuries healed completely. His Reiatsu surged upward by several levels.

"Remarkable..." Aizen's voice carried genuine weight. "Truly remarkable." If Wayne's Second Stage had felt like witnessing the birth of a work of art, then what stood before him now was something else entirely, a priceless rarity. There were only nine Laws in existence. One in ten thousand ever obtained even one. To possess two, and to wield both, outside of the ruler of Hueco Mundo itself, Wayne might be the only Hollow who had ever done it.

The Third Stage had rekindled Aizen's interest. But interest was interest. The enmity between them would be settled today.

"Very well, Wayne." Aizen's tone remained measured, almost gracious. "Allow me to use this new power of yours as the occasion to show you what kind of world lies beyond the boundary between Soul Reaper and Hollow. You are still a Hollow beast. Tell me — how could something like you compare to me, who has already crossed into another plane entirely?"

"Is that so?"

Wayne was still bathing in the power, it was unlike anything he had ever felt. He could sense it clearly: right now, he had fully met the standard of a king among Hollows. The third-stage burst would carry consequences. The aftereffects after this fight would be considerable. He knew that. But he didn't care.

"Then let me find out whether I, carrying the power of both Soul Reaper and Hollow, can completely crush the one who supposedly transcended them."

He dismissed the illusory Sky-Rending Greatsword, reached up, and drew the Zanpakutō at his hip. The only one he had left.

"Ban — kai!"

Another layer of light ignited inside the pale-gold pillar, faint gold blazing within pale gold. The two columns overlapped. Wayne's Reiatsu climbed to a height it had never touched before, Soul Reaper power stacking onto everything else. If Aizen's Reiatsu had shaken the surrounding area, then what Wayne was projecting now made all of Karakura Town shudder. Countless buildings collapsed at once. Trees, cars, everything within several kilometers was ripped from the ground and sent flying. Wayne stood bare-chested for only a moment before the bone armor of his Bankai settled over him again. The Zanpakutō in his hand became the Sky-Rending Greatsword, not the illusion from before. A physical blade. And its power wasn't even close to what the illusion had been.

He swept it diagonally. The ground and distant rubble hurled into the sky.

His power had reached its absolute peak.

"Fight!"

Battle-hunger surged through him. Wayne moved first, no spatial Law, no teleport, just raw force punching through the air. The sound barrier shattered the instant he launched. He carved an afterimage through the sky like a bolt of phantom-silver lightning and came crashing down on Aizen.

CLANG!

The white-rimmed eyes of Aizen's final form went wide. Something close to alarm.

The gap in raw power had been laid bare in a single strike.

"What tremendous force." Aizen's internal composure cracked, just slightly. He had broken through the boundary between Soul Reaper and Hollow beast. His power had reached what he believed to be the absolute pinnacle of his understanding. So what was this? A single slash had driven him back, step after step, neither of them stopping until they'd skidded over a hundred meters.

"Getsuga Tenshō."

Wayne spoke the name of a technique no one expected him to know. Along the blade of his Sky-Rending Greatsword, a red-and-black Reiatsu crescent formed and scraped right past Aizen's face before crashing down.

"What?!"

The explosion erupted skyward. Black-red Reiatsu raged in every direction. Wayne hadn't moved. Aizen had been blasted dozens of meters away. Blood seeped steadily from along the grotesquely distorted surface of his body. A vast wound ran from his right shoulder all the way down into his chest. The interior wasn't blood, it was a web of dark-violet Reishi. Only what welled outward became crimson.

"Impossible, that technique, that Reiatsu!" Aizen stared at Wayne. His voice came out layered and distorted, like a Hollow had taken hold of his tongue. "That isn't Ichigo Kurosaki's... no. You used illusion."

"Quick on the uptake." Wayne was already moving. "Doesn't matter."

He'd simulated the Getsuga Tenshō and fused it with his own technique, a point-blank Reiatsu detonation right in Aizen's face, and it had drawn first blood. He wasn't giving Aizen room to breathe. Sonído, close in, sword sweeping down.

To prevent the same trick twice, Aizen shifted from defense to offense the moment he blocked, a manifested Reiatsu beam, sharp as a blade, slashing back in Wayne's direction. But what he saw was the beam vanishing the instant it touched Wayne. Its trailing end snapped off and flew away. In the same half-second window while Aizen processed that, Wayne's greatsword had already carved across Aizen's midsection.

"What?!" He'd known Wayne was wielding the power of illusion. But this was outright domineering, his own attack had simply ceased to exist.

"Ever heard of Kamui?" The Third-Stage Wayne had pushed the Law of Illusion to its limit. He combined Space with Illusion and in that moment completed the Kamui effect in full, not for any grand reason, but solely to break Aizen's focus for a fraction of a second. Even a tenth of a second of distraction was enough.

He didn't waste further words. One slash after another, each strike carrying overwhelming weight. Aizen's butterfly-like wings kept reaching forward from behind him, trying to interrupt the rhythm, with little success. Wayne had already severed more than a few feathers.

"Damn it — a mere Hollow beast!"

The back of Aizen's body swelled. His wings exploded outward. Six leathery dragon wings replaced the feathered ones, and at each wing joint grew a ghastly skull-like head filled with terrible energy. All six opened their mouths at once. Six black-violet Cero blasts fired simultaneously, aimed straight at Wayne's face.

BOOM!

All six passed through Wayne's body and shot into the sky. Several seconds later, something that looked like a nuclear detonation bloomed in the far distance. The brilliance flooded the battlefield with blinding white.

"How is it possible that none of them hit!"

Shock was written across Aizen's darkly inhuman face. The Hōgyoku's influence was showing, he was coming apart at the edges, losing the cool control that had defined him. He clenched his right hand, grasping at something that wasn't there. He was reaching for Kyōka Suigetsu. But with its fusion into the Hōgyoku, it was already gone, shattered. Using it to control Wayne was no longer an option.

"When attacking, his form is physical, but when not attacking, he's illusion." Aizen retreated, thinking even as he moved. "The switch happens in the instant of contact. And yet the Reiatsu blade I swung was cut apart..."

Reason was creeping back. He was analyzing, working toward a counter.

Wayne didn't give him the time. The Sky-Rending Greatsword pressed against Aizen's chest again. Aizen had no choice but to use his wings as a shield. And unlike the feathered wings that had been hacked to pieces, the dragon wings were in another tier entirely, far superior in resilience, far stronger. The occasional black-violet Cero bursting from the skulls gave Wayne genuine trouble.

Psh!

Wayne teleported above Aizen and brought the blade down. Phantom-silver light flashed. One dragon wing was severed clean. The skull at its joint split in two. Blood spilled freely, and the Hōgyoku moved immediately to repair the damage.

Wayne pulled the Sky-Rending Greatsword back.

Slashing wasn't enough. He needed to deal Aizen damage heavy enough that the Hōgyoku couldn't keep pace.

He switched to bare-fisted combat. Closed the distance further.

At close range, Aizen's dragon wings should have given him the advantage, but under the combined state of Wayne's Illusion and Spatial powers, the stabbing drives of the wings and the Cero from the skulls couldn't accomplish much. Wayne dodged what he could and dissolved the rest with illusory power. The wall-to-wall barrage of Cero kept disrupting his rhythm, kept breaking his momentum, but that was all it could do.

Every exchange, Aizen defended without giving ground. The only constant was that every single defense still left him bleeding. Wayne's unarmed striking power wasn't particularly deep on its own, but with Law power fused into every blow, the variety of his attacks became something else entirely.

He drove Reiatsu and the power of Law directly into his strikes and into Aizen's body, then let the Law of Illusion work from the inside, destroying Aizen from within. Forcing the Hōgyoku to spend more and more just to keep him together.

A blade cut. A fist destroyed.

Finally, after dozens of exchanges, Aizen's power had been ground down by a considerable margin. And for that, Wayne owed a debt to Ichimaru and Nel, the damage they'd dealt in the earlier stages, the Hōgyoku energy they'd drained, had made this opening possible. Without that, a freshly awakened Aizen at full strength would have been another matter entirely. Wayne had pushed himself to his absolute limit with the Third-Stage Resurrección and Bankai combined. If that still hadn't been enough to suppress Aizen, his only options would have been to grab everyone and run, or to wait for Ichigo.

But Aizen had only just fused with the Hōgyoku. He hadn't mastered its full power yet. And fighting with wings instead of a Zanpakutō, even at a higher Reiatsu tier, changing your fighting method affected how well you could channel that power, how quickly your body could respond. The finer details of nerve and reflex didn't simply carry over.

It was the same principle as Kaname Tōsen. After his Hollowfication, he'd opened his eyes, and in doing so, let his vision dominate his perception, the very sense he'd spent a lifetime transcending. That opening was what had let Hisagi catch him off guard and land the killing blow.

"Impossible! How can you possess power this strong!" One dragon wing gone, Aizen's disbelief had curdled into something rawer. He had broken through the boundary between Soul Reaper and Hollow beast. He had transcended. So why was he losing to a Hollow?

"Ever heard of the Hollow Kings?" Wayne spoke as he drove his fist into the center of Aizen's chest. "The highest fighting force Hueco Mundo had ever known." Another punch. "Right now, I'm stronger than all of them."

Carrying two Laws. A singular existence in all of Hueco Mundo. His Third-Stage Resurrección self had no equal beneath the level of a ruler, and on top of that, Bankai. These powers layered together weren't a simple matter of addition. They were something else.

"Why... why!" Aizen's screaming roar tore out of him. His skin had split open, the interior entirely black, he looked like something that had stopped being a person. All six skulls attacked Wayne without stopping. Wayne wove through the assault, dodging while pushing his illusory power simultaneously, working to avoid every strike.

"Why do you have this kind of power! And yet you still — AARRGH!"

Without warning, blood began seeping from Aizen's white pupils. Violent pain. His hand flew to his forehead involuntarily. His power surged upward again, but this time, he wasn't driving it. It was driving him.

"The Hōgyoku has decided you can't beat me," Wayne said. "So it's started adjusting the amplification on its own. Aizen, your body has already been remade into something neither human nor Hollow. As things stand now, I've won."

"Impossible! I have the Hōgyoku — how could I possibly lose! The Hōgyoku can grant me power enough to destroy everything, so how could it possibly—"

Fwip.

Wayne stepped forward in the same motion and laid his left hand flat against Aizen's chest.

Aizen's deathly pale eyes snapped wide.

A small sphere of light materialized along Wayne's fingertips, quietly, almost gently, radiating a deep, mysterious blue-violet glow. Right in front of Aizen's body.

"Cero of Annihilation."

Wayne's vertical pupils blew wide open. The sphere at his fingertips released a blast of searing light. It punched clean through the chest Aizen had only just finished mending. Through the body he had spent everything to perfect. The Hōgyoku was blasted free with the force of it. Aizen's chest and midsection were torn open simultaneously, a single massive cavity where flesh and power used to be. And the Hōgyoku, the stone that had sustained him, that he had built everything upon, in that one instant, Wayne's Cero of Annihilation sent it flying into the unknown.

➤ Next: The War Ends