Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 303 - Blocking the Enemy, Flanking the Rear
A short while later, Wayne transported himself alone to a cliff outside Spirit-Sleep Canyon, where he opened a spatial rift and released his Hollow forces.
This time, he did not use his usual approach of sending his high-end combatants into the rift while he broke into the battlefield for a surprise strike. Instead, he had Baraggan, Starrk, and the other high-ranking fighters step forward to stand alongside him.
Facing two unknown enemy forces simultaneously, both comparable to his own strength, charging in recklessly could easily leave him caught between them. His offensive could just as easily be torn apart in an instant by either a Law technique or the power of an Ancient Hollow. That would cost far more than it gained. Even cloaking himself in the Illusion Law carried a risk of being discovered. It was not a gamble Wayne was willing to take.
Before long, his forces were fully assembled. Wayne himself, peak Vasto Lorde, near-King-class Hollow Arrancar. Starrk, Baraggan, Nel, and Szayelaporro: four high-tier Vasto Lorde Arrancar. Timd, Mude, and several others: seven or eight mid-tier Vasto Lorde Arrancar. Over a dozen low-tier Vasto Lorde Arrancar. Dozens of peak-stage Adjuchas-class Hollow beasts and some Arrancar. Fifty mid- to high-tier Adjuchas-class Hollow beasts. Together they formed a vast, imposing elite force.
Across all of Hueco Mundo, this unit could flatten almost any territory. Against two factions backed by an Ancient Hollow or King Hollow, taking them down would still come at some cost, but it could be done.
"My King, I have sensed them." A mid-tier Vasto Lorde-class perception-type Arrancar stepped to Wayne's side and bowed respectfully. "Spanning a thousand li across this valley, there are two powerful factions. Each has established a stronghold on opposite sides — east and west. Both sides have two high-tier Vasto Lorde presiding over them. I also sensed those two terrifying presences. The pressure they exert is truly comparable to yours — far beyond the scope of high-tier Vasto Lorde. But..."
"But?"
"It's strange. They seem to be in a state of slumber. No signs of activity."
"Hmm." Wayne gave a faint nod. "Can you sense the Reiatsu fluctuations within their bodies? Are they violent and restless?"
"This..." The perception-type Arrancar probed again. A moment passed. "My King — the Hollow beasts on both sides are moving toward us. It appears our probing was detected. Both sides number roughly seventy or eighty each. The energy on the left is calm and steady. The energy on the right is wild and violent."
"As expected." Certainty settled in Wayne's mind. "A descendant of a King Hollow, and an Inheritor of an Ancient Hollow's legacy."
From the report an Adjuchas-class Hollow had brought him last time, Wayne had already suspected that two sealed locations this close together, both situated within a valley, were the remnant battlefield of a clash between a King Hollow and an Ancient Hollow.
His theory: this massive canyon had been carved out by that ancient battle. Because the two were evenly matched, the King Hollow could only seal the Ancient Hollow away, but the sealing exacted a price. Irreversible wounds. Power drained to nothing. Left with no choice, the King Hollow entered slumber nearby to recover while simultaneously maintaining the integrity of the sealing formation.
As the years accumulated, the Ancient Hollow's seal began to loosen. Wild, violent Reiatsu seeped out and drew nearby Hollow beasts to the site. Perhaps after absorbing that corrupted Reiatsu their minds had been twisted, the Hollow beasts drawn there began disturbing the King Hollow's resting grounds. The King Hollow, in turn, likely used a similar method: gathering its own Inheritors to resist the Ancient Hollow's faction.
And so both sides had rallied around the power of their sealed masters, growing stronger and waging endless war against each other. The steady energy on the left was the King Hollow's. The violent energy on the right was without question the Ancient Hollow's.
"Are there signs of battle between the two sides?" Wayne asked.
"There are traces of fighting throughout the valley's center and surroundings. But after they detected our presence, both sides unified and began moving toward us. They should not take long to arrive."
"Of course." The perception-type Hollow's report confirmed it. "Two sides deadlocked at a stalemate, whichever one can swallow us up wins the whole thing. Good. Then we'll devour both."
Before long, both armies surged toward them, trailing waves of crushing Reiatsu. Wayne's subordinates responded, releasing their own Reiatsu one after another. In an instant, the entire battlefield shuddered. Within a hundred li, weaker Hollow beasts, including some Adjuchas-class, were blasted apart by the collision of three peaks of power, reduced to drifting clouds of blood mist.
"Who goes there!" Seeing that neither side had gained the upper hand in the initial Reiatsu clash, the King Hollow faction's high-tier leader was first to speak. A spirited female humanoid Hollow beast. Long orange hair falling over her shoulders. One hand gripping a long spear; where her other arm should have been was a vertically extending spiked shield instead. Her Hollow Mask was shaped like a prismatic knight's helmet.
"Kill! Kill! Eat them all!" From the right, the Ancient Hollow faction's high-tier Vasto Lorde answered. Unlike the humanoid forms on the left, most of the right faction were beast-shaped, the high-tier Vasto Lorde before them was a fang-dragon Hollow beast, three to four meters tall even standing on all fours. Thick, dense scale armor covered its body. Tail included, it stretched over ten meters in length. All four limbs were lined with razor-sharp talons, and its tail bristled with rows of jagged reverse spines. Pure savage violence made flesh.
"This old man is the master of Las Noches." Baraggan stepped to the front. "I have come to conquer Hueco Mundo. You insignificant wretches had better get over here and kneel before this old man!"
"Insolence!" The left-side Hollow beast let out a sharp cry. She planted the butt of her spear hard into the ground, and an invisible shockwave rippled outward, carrying a force no eye could track. Every Hollow it touched staggered, momentarily dazed, and even Wayne, Baraggan, and the others felt a fraction-of-a-second jolt of vertigo.
"That was... a soul shockwave?" Wayne identified it immediately. "She commands the Soul Law?"
He was standing behind the four high-tier Vasto Lorde, his own Reiatsu concealed, transmitting his voice directly into their ears wrapped in Reiatsu alone.
He was keeping himself hidden deliberately. Wayne intended to hold himself back as a trump card against any higher-level threats, no one could guarantee the other side had no hidden cards. That was why it had been Baraggan stepping forward, not him.
"The Soul Law, is it?" Baraggan shook his head. As an Arrancar, Baraggan was a powerfully built old man, aged in appearance, yet the Reiatsu gleaming in his eyes would leave most others far in the dust.
"Come to think of it, the Soul Law and the Illusion Law share a resonance," Starrk added. "Didn't you sense anything, Wayne?"
"Very faint. Without her using the soul shockwave, I would have had a hard time detecting the Soul Law's fluctuation at all. It seems she didn't inherit much of the Law from the previous King Hollow." Wayne thought for a moment. "Take her down first. I'll hold in reserve in case the previous King Hollow breaks the seal for a surprise attack. Your Majesty, do you have any information on the previous holder of the Soul Law?"
"Hmm... this old man does not recall." Baraggan shook his head. "But this old man vaguely remembers that the previous King Hollow who held the Soul Law and Hermes Loki — holder of the Illusion Law — had a falling-out over the campaign to seal an Ancient Hollow, and after that the former's whereabouts became unknown."
"Two King Hollows with Law resonance actually fell out with each other?" Wayne was slightly taken aback. By all logic, resonant Laws should draw two holders closer, he hadn't expected these two King Hollows to have had such volatile tempers, simply breaking apart like that.
ROAR!
While they were still talking, a high-tier lord from the Ancient Hollow's faction had already begun to roar. Baraggan's words had done their work. Compared to the King Hollow faction's composed leader, the reaction on the Ancient Hollow's side was far more raw. They could not wait to tear Wayne's Vasto Lorde fighters apart and devour them whole.
"No matter. Let's fight. Starrk, Lilynette, Nel, handle the Ancient Hollow faction's big dog. Your Majesty, Szayelaporro, engage the King Hollow faction's leader. Everyone else, find your own opponents. I'm going behind their lines to scout. Anything urgent, have Timd relay it to me."
"Understood. Leave this side to this old man." Baraggan's great axe materialized in his hand. He drifted toward the King Hollow faction.
"Please be careful, Wayne." Nel summoned her spear and charged toward the Ancient Hollow side. Szayelaporro and Starrk followed in quick succession. All four entered Resurrección simultaneously. Four columns of Reiatsu in different hues erupted skyward, crushing down the Reiatsu of every surrounding Hollow beast, and providing perfect cover to mask the spatial fluctuations Wayne was about to make.
Wayne seized the opening. He activated the Spatial Law and the Illusion Law together and silently vanished from the battlefield, flashing deep into the canyon.
Before long, he had already penetrated far into its interior. Cloaked in the Illusion Law, nothing here could detect him, nothing short of the high-tier Vasto Lorde still fighting on the main battlefield.
Reaching the valley's center, Wayne considered his options and decided to check the Ancient Hollow's sealing formation first. Whatever grudges had existed between the previous King Hollows, eliminating the Ancient Hollow was the right priority. Rather than spending effort on the King Hollow faction, he would wipe out the Ancient Hollow's side first.
He encountered nothing on the way. It was as if every Hollow beast had emptied out completely, all of them gone to the battlefield where Baraggan and the others were fighting. Only when Wayne arrived before the sealing formation did he find anyone at all: a single mid-tier Vasto Lorde, two low-tier Vasto Lorde, and a handful of Adjuchas-class Hollow beasts standing guard. The mid-tier Vasto Lorde was seated not far from the formation, slowly drawing a dark-red Reiatsu into its mouth, feeding on the Ancient Hollow's power through the seal.
"Last time I saw something like this was right after I'd just reached the low-tier Vasto Lorde rank, when I was targeting that foul fox Susbus." Wayne's thoughts drifted. He remembered releasing an Ancient Hollow that time, and how, not long after, Aizen had cut him down. He hoped this one wouldn't bring any special trouble. Then again, thinking it over: how many beings across all three worlds could actually kill him in a single stroke right now? Three at most?
"The guards aren't spread out enough to be a problem. Take out the mid-tier Vasto Lorde instantly, and the rest won't matter." Mind made up, Wayne began charging a Cero beneath the Illusion Law's cover.
Using Law power against the Ancient Hollow's subordinates might not yield clean results, so he charged a King Hollow Cero directly, fused with the Black Cero. One hit, and the mid-tier Vasto Lorde would be dead or crippled.
Roughly half a minute later, the charge was complete. Wayne teleported directly behind the mid-tier Vasto Lorde. The spatial fluctuation snapped every guard's attention toward that point, but by the time their eyes found the source, Wayne had already moved.
Cloaked in the Illusion Law's concealment, a dragon-like Cero blazed with searing radiance in his palm. It launched at near point-blank range against the back of the mid-tier Vasto Lorde's skull.
In a single instant, the mid-tier Vasto Lorde's head and chest ceased to exist. Not a sound.
"ROAR! Who's there!"
The surrounding Hollow beasts snapped to attention. Then they saw the half-destroyed corpse, and the trembling started.
Their strongest had been killed in an instant. If the Ancient Hollow's violent aura hadn't already been warping their minds, they would have scattered and run without a second thought.
"Surprise inspection." With the most troublesome guard gone, Wayne was a wolf among sheep. In under half a minute, a single Zero Storm swept through what remained. They couldn't withstand even one exchange, not one of them managed to get off a distress signal.
He cleared the guards and dumped their bodies into his Innate Space. The Reiatsu in these corpses had been tainted by the Ancient Hollow. Only high-tier Adjuchas and above could safely consume them, anything lower risked having their minds corrupted. He could have Nel purify them later with her Devouring Law, or simply feed them all to her directly.
With everything tidied up, Wayne stood directly above the sealing formation. He looked down at the crimson array below and smiled faintly. He raised his hand and began condensing another Cero, but unlike the King Hollow Cero from moments ago, this time he entered his third-stage Resurrección directly. The Cero of Annihilation took shape slowly.
Whatever power the Ancient Hollow sealed beneath this formation truly possessed, Wayne would open with a generous gift.
The Cero of Annihilation continued forming. The Reiatsu he was releasing began spreading outward in all directions.
"Something's wrong! There's a fluctuation in our territory!" Back on the battlefield where Nel and the others were fighting, a vice-commander from the Ancient Hollow's faction detected the Reiatsu disturbance within his own territory. He immediately pushed his Reiatsu to full force, broke free of Nel's entanglement, and charged toward home.
"You think you're leaving?" Nel's voice cut sharp. She raised her hand and launched the Lanzador Verde, the spear of light streaking straight for the back of the vice-commander's head. The vice-commander sensed the threat and twisted to dodge, but Nel was already there, super-acceleration and Sonído combined, closing the distance in an eyeblink. "Want to leave? Did you ask me first?"
"ROAR!" The vice-commander let out a furious bellow. There was no breaking free. He had no choice but to raise his razor-sharp claws again and crash back into Nel.
➤ Next: Slash to Kill!