Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 304 - Slash to Kill!
The Reiatsu around the battlefield began to climb. Wayne knew his position had been exposed. It didn't matter, even with Sonído, it would take those high-ranking Vasto Lordes considerable time to reach him, and that was more than enough to break the Seal in front of him.
His left hand cradled the Cero of Annihilation. His right hand swung hard at the Seal formation, and five blade arcs slashed out from his sharp claws, tearing straight through the binding runes at the center of the array.
The next second, dark-red Reiatsu erupted skyward. The Seal formation cracked apart piece by piece, and an enormous claw burst through the array's restraints and broke free from the earth. The grayish-green hand was covered in withered, rotting scales, gaunt, yet brimming with boundless power. The palm alone, when spread open, was already taller than Wayne. By rough estimate, this Ancient Hollow Beast was yet another mountain-sized creature.
The beast below cooperated readily enough. Before long, a second hand punched through the Seal as well. With both palms braced against the ground, it heaved itself upward with everything it had, and the earth trembled beneath it.
After a long moment, the ground shattered. A massive creature with a draconic skull-face and a lizard-like body crawled out from beneath the earth.
Yes — crawled.
Its wings had atrophied, useless for supporting a body nearly a hundred meters long in flight. The front limbs were lean yet packed with strength. The enormous dragon-head was concealed beneath a cranial Hollow Mask, and sharp, horn-like protrusions bristled from the back of the skull, making its head look like an inverted triangle. The long tail bore no spikes, but it was broad as a palm-leaf fan and capable of kicking up tremendous gusts of sand.
A crimson gleam flickered in those hollow eye sockets. The instant the Seal shattered, the Ancient Hollow Beast opened a maw wide enough to swallow a mountaintop and spat a dark-yellow Cero straight at Wayne.
The Cero was laced with the power of filth and destruction. It came rocketing directly toward him.
"Tsk. Barely out and already causing trouble." Wayne wasn't about to indulge it. He fired the Cero of Annihilation he had been charging straight at the massive creature.
BOOM!
The two Ceros collided head-on. Pale gold and dark yellow met in a dead-straight clash, forming a stark contrast, yet for a moment neither could overpower the other.
In a beam clash, the one on the left has always been said to lose. It seemed this Ancient Hollow Beast was a repeat of Dyna.
Wayne's Cero of Annihilation was already the highest-tier Cero in all of Hueco Mundo. Even facing an Ancient Hollow Beast, the dark-yellow beam buckled step by step under its pressure. With one final push from Wayne, the dark-yellow Cero was completely vaporized. The Cero of Annihilation, still carrying residual force, landed squarely on the Ancient Hollow Beast's skull.
SKREEEE!
A piercing, tearing roar rang out alongside the explosion. In the very first exchange, Wayne had already blasted a chunk clean off the corner of the Ancient Hollow Beast's Hollow Mask. The clear crack of bone carried into his ears. One blow in, and Wayne had already seized absolute advantage.
The shockwave faded. The Ancient Hollow Beast struggled laboriously back to its feet. Dark-red blood flowed freely down its head, trickling past the right eye socket, as though amplifying the crimson gleam dwelling there several times over.
"ROAR!" A furious bellow. All four limbs surged at once, launching the entire body airborne. Its tail, dozens of meters long, whipped toward Wayne with lightning speed. Wayne sidestepped it using his Spatial laws.
"The Seal and the power it bled from you have stripped away the speed and strength you should have. What do you have left to fight me with?" Wayne materialized the Sky-Rending Greatsword and brought it down on the tail. A single slash carved through it as though splitting it apart. The thick, heavy scales offered no protection whatsoever. Dark-red blood sprayed out along the length of the tail.
SKREEEE!
The Ancient Hollow Beast was beside itself with rage. Sealed underground for tens of thousands of years, its power had long been worn down to almost nothing. It had only just broken free, with no chance to replenish itself, and now it had run straight into a Hollow whose strength rivaled a King Hollow. How could it not be furious?
Dark-yellow markings ignited across its body. It was going to burn through its own life force to elevate its power.
Seeing this, Wayne moved to press the advantage with a surprise attack, but a dark-yellow lightning-bolt Cero cut him off. Alongside it came a spray of yellow-green Acid Mist. The instant the mist touched the sand, a sizzling, dissolving hiss rose from the ground. The corrosive power was plain to see.
The Ancient Hollow Beast kept spewing Acid Mist without pause, wrapping itself entirely in it, making it impossible for Wayne to close the distance. Wayne abandoned close-quarters combat and switched to Cero blasts, but to little effect. The yellow-green mist seemed capable of dissolving even Cero. Anything that struck through it lost roughly seventy percent of its power on impact.
"Not bad at all." Wayne's greatsword vanished. He raised both hands above his head, and eerie blue light ignited in his eyes. An enormous Spatial rift tore open directly above the Ancient Hollow Beast.
This was Wayne's Spatial rift, one that connected to the void of space.
In moments, the yellow-green Acid Mist was sucked into the rift, swept up by the vacuum along with the surrounding sand. The Ancient Hollow Beast itself was unaffected by that suction force, but the Acid Mist had no such resistance.
In just a brief moment, every trace of it was gone. The Ancient Hollow Beast's true form stood exposed within.
In that same brief moment, however, the wounds on the Ancient Hollow Beast had already healed back to nothing. The yellow markings burning across its body told Wayne the creature had fully restored its peak combat power. How long it could sustain that was another question entirely.
"Looks like I'll need to go all out." Watching the Ancient Hollow Beast's momentum climb steadily, Wayne furrowed his brow. Then he drew the other Zanpakutō at his waist.
"Bankai!"
At his Tercera Etapa, Wayne called upon the power of the Soul Reaper once more. The body covered in eerie blue and phantom-silver markings was clad in a light coat of armor. Pale-gold hair flowed freely, half-concealing the long horn growing from his brow. His violet eyes had already begun to flicker with a faint pale-gold light.
Power released, Wayne's combat strength had reached a level that could stand equal to the Ancient Hollow Beast as it stood now. Sustaining the fight should be no problem.
ROAR!
The Ancient Hollow Beast bellowed and charged. The great battle erupted again, blazing pale gold and massive dark yellow collided head-on, and the enormous shockwave, wrapped in the sound of explosions, rang out across the sky. More than half the canyon crumbled from the force of two Hollow Beasts fighting.
The dust cleared. Wayne and the Ancient Hollow Beast were locked in a contest of raw strength in midair, the beast's front claws pressed with everything it had against Wayne's greatsword. Two streaks of Reiatsu in different colors sparked and sprayed continuously at the point of contact.
"So this is the peak." Wayne's eyes flickered with Reiryoku as a Black Cero charged with the power of annihilation gathered before him. He fired it directly at the Ancient Hollow Beast's face. The beast chose to tank it with its Reiatsu, this destruction-laced Black Cero was no stranger to it, and blocking one attack was entirely within its ability.
What it didn't anticipate was that after the Black Cero dissipated, a streak of phantom-silver light quietly struck it on the head.
In an instant, the Ancient Hollow Beast's power diminished without limit. It lasted less than two seconds, but in those two seconds, Wayne's greatsword had already knocked aside its claws and swung down toward that fang-filled maw.
"Void Slash!"
The Void Slash, imbued with the power of his Spatial laws, drove into the Ancient Hollow Beast's mouth at the very moment it shook off the weakness from Wayne's Illusion Law. The blood-soaked maw, large enough to swallow Wayne whole, was torn apart by the strike. The entire lower jaw was cleaved off. Crimson blood mixed with dark-yellow Reiatsu particles sprayed from the wound.
ARGH! ARGH! ARGH! ARGH!
A screech of agony. The Ancient Hollow Beast retreated rapidly, withdrawing while regenerating. By the time it had put distance between itself and Wayne, the lower jaw had already miraculously recovered.
"As expected of an Ancient Hollow Beast — the regeneration is truly formidable." Wayne raised his right hand and sent out a rapid barrage of Bala, disrupting the beast's rhythm. Each round shone in two colors, phantom-silver and eerie blue. They burst from Spatial rifts opened on all sides and converged on the Ancient Hollow Beast from every direction.
ROAR! Dark-yellow Reiatsu surged around the beast's entire body, blocking every last Bala. At the same time, it charged a black Cero in its mouth and fired it straight at Wayne.
At this range, the odds of that landing on Wayne were far, far too low.
He dodged with ease and swung his sword, sending out a blade arc as a harassing strike. What he needed now was disruption and attrition. He was betting that the Ancient Hollow Beast couldn't hold its peak state for long, and a war of attrition favored him.
Sure enough. After only a few Cero exchanges, the Ancient Hollow Beast realized Wayne had no intention of trading blows directly. Wayne was too fast, its Ceros couldn't connect. The dull yellow across the beast's body began to spread and deepen. Its pupils suddenly flickered with dark-yellow radiance, and it burst clean out of Wayne's Bala barrage, charging at him at a speed that broke the sound barrier.
ROAR!
A single bellow, and a dark-yellow swamp-like domain erupted abruptly beneath Wayne's feet, swallowing him up to both knees.
In that instant, corrosion, immobilization, disorientation, vertigo, multiple debilitating effects assailed him all at once. Before he could channel Reiatsu to shake them off, the Ancient Hollow Beast crashed into him and batted him away with one claw. A single hit sent Wayne flying hundreds of meters. He skimmed along the ground, still sliding backward, until he cleared the zone of negative effects and drove the Sky-Rending Greatsword into the earth to grind to a stop.
From that one strike alone, the armor over his chest had been torn to shreds. A wound ran clean through his torso, gruesome and ghastly. Dark-yellow Reiatsu could be seen corroding his internal organs beneath.
"Not bad at all." Wayne coughed up a mouthful of blood. He immediately channeled Reiatsu to purge the dark-yellow energy and the toxins from his body, then activated his Ultra-Rapid Regeneration to close the wound. "Now we're talking — otherwise I'd be way too bored."
Injuries healed, Wayne's Reiatsu surged and coiled around his entire body to prevent that swamp-like domain from catching him again. He held the greatsword horizontally, swung out a blade arc as a feint, and then vanished from where he stood, reappearing directly above the Ancient Hollow Beast's skull. He fired a point-blank Cero against its head. The beast howled in pain. In desperation it swung its tail hard at Wayne, but Wayne met it with a punch. The instant they connected, the scales on the tail burst apart with an explosive crack, Wayne had put his full strength into it. The recoil sent him flying again. Size and raw strength were disadvantages no amount of Reiatsu could fully compensate for. That said, blocking the blow meant the recoil alone didn't particularly hurt him.
SKREEEE! SKREEEE!
Ugly, distorted cries poured from the Ancient Hollow Beast's mouth. The heavy blow to its skull had driven its rage so far it nearly overwhelmed its reason. On the Hollow Mask over its head, the fractures that had only just sealed cracked open again, and this time the repair was far slower than its previous Ultra-Rapid Regeneration. Even the spot seared by the Cero was healing at only a sluggish crawl. The price of sustaining peak power was evidently becoming too steep.
It crawled back out of the sand. Wayne looked at it — injuries not yet fully recovered — and gave it a slow, contemptuous wave of his hand.
The Ancient Hollow Beast was nearly driven to madness at the sight. It charged up an enormous Cero and unleashed it at Wayne, then broke into a four-limbed sprint straight at him.
Wayne sidestepped the Cero with ease. He poured Reiatsu into the Sky-Rending Greatsword, set Spatial power aside entirely, and walked toward the Ancient Hollow Beast one step at a time.
A steady walk turned into a brisk stride. A brisk stride into a jog. A jog into a full sprint. Wayne shot forward like a bolt of lightning, the Sky-Rending Greatsword blazing in his hand. The instant the two Hollow Beasts made contact, pale-gold radiance overwhelmed the dark yellow in an instant. Wayne brought the sword down squarely on the massive lunging skull, and two surges of Reiatsu exploded simultaneously, scattering sand and rock in every direction. The deadlock didn't last long. The Ancient Hollow Beast's strength gave out, and Wayne pressed it steadily, inexorably back.
"That's about enough." Seeing its momentum falter, Wayne erupted with another burst of power and drove it back. He flickered to its side and slashed out a Shattering Slash mixed with the power of his Illusion Law, tearing free a large chunk of flesh and blood.
Before the Ancient Hollow Beast could react, Wayne flickered again. He appeared on its spine. A Shadow Step slash cut down, the knockback force bending the spine clean downward, slamming the massive body into the ground.
"Void Slash!" Wayne turned and flashed past, a massive blade arc swept across the Ancient Hollow Beast's hind leg tendons and severed them in a single cut. Before it could regenerate, he had already landed back on the nape of its neck. Reiatsu detonated under his feet, pinning the beast hard against the earth.
"Zero Storm!" A glint of phantom-silver flashed through Wayne's eyes. A Reiatsu Storm engulfed the Ancient Hollow Beast. Slash after slash began to materialize across its body. Dark-red blood welled and flowed in all directions, soaking instantly into the earth and staining the White Sands red across a wide swath.
The Ancient Hollow Beast still held on to its regeneration, but the pace of recovery was falling further and further behind Wayne's relentless slashing. Its momentum and Reiatsu level began to slide. The wounds across its body multiplied.
At last, the Ancient Hollow Beast was ground down to its very limit. The dark-yellow Reiatsu markings burning across its body collapsed, faded, and retreated back inside. Its Reiatsu plummeted. It was utterly subdued, pinned against that stretch of earth by Wayne.
"Uwuu..."
Half a sob, half a whimper. At this moment, the Ancient Hollow Beast let out a sound of fear. Its trembling body shifted into a prostrate posture.
It was begging for mercy.
"Begging for mercy?" Wayne's Zero Storm continued to rage. He had no intention of giving this great beast any opportunity to resist.
"If I had already reached the Vasto Lorde realm, I might have considered keeping you as a mount. But unfortunately..." Wayne poured a massive surge of Reiatsu into the greatsword. The blade arc extended from the tip and in an instant expanded into a light-blade over ten meters long.
"Unfortunately, I already have Nel."
HUM!
The light-blade swept down, cleaving toward the Ancient Hollow Beast's neck. The enormous head soared into the sky, and the blood itself was seared and sealed at the stump by the blazing heat of the blade.
The arc swept through. The head fell to the ground. The Reiatsu that had just moments ago surged skyward scattered instantly and was gone.
The Ancient Hollow Beast, was in this moment utterly slain by Wayne.
➤ Next: Arumaan Ithifillit