Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 306 - The Trap
Chapter 306, The Setup
"Why haven't you done anything to fix up the place where you sleep?" Following Isfilit into the ruins, Wayne frowned at the crumbling walls on all sides.
"I once used my power to conjure a vivid cluster of buildings. But time and war reduced it to this. Between fighting the Ancient Hollow Beasts and building up my forces, I had no strength left to repair it." Isfilit's light-body sighed, then continued. "But that doesn't matter. The buildings were only ever a symbol of faith when I was establishing my power. My true body is the core. She is deep within the complex right now, protected by a Barrier. Short of an enemy at the level of an Ancient Hollow Beast, no one can break through it."
"I see." Wayne nodded. "Then, is there anything I should know about advancing to King Hollow?"
"The bloodline of a King Hollow, the power of a Law, and enough Reiatsu to qualify for the advance. Possess all three and you will have your chance. But the Reiatsu required is far beyond what a handful of high-class Vasto Lordes can make up. We are already on an entirely different level."
"So that's why you need to set up a Ritual Spirit Array for me?"
"You are the Inheritor of Hermes Loki. You and I — holder of the Soul Law — already share a resonance. Helping you is only natural." Isfilit's voice came slowly. "There are still many Ancient Hollow Beasts sealed within Hueco Mundo. We will need more hands to deal with them." As she spoke, she had already led Wayne deep into the ruins. Here, a massive cocoon rested at the crown of a thick, spiraling great tree. Inside it, a creature lay curled, six translucent wings at its back, two antennae on its head, a dreamlike, sprite-like form. This had to be Isfilit's true body.
"My power is no longer enough to sustain the entire array, which is why I brought you here to my true body. This way my power can be used to its fullest, and I can help you as much as possible." As she spoke, Isfilit waved her hand and began inscribing ritual symbols. The complex patterns radiating golden light were complete before long, and at that same moment, Isfilit's Reishi light-body dimmed and faded.
"It seems my Reishi body has reached its limit. From here on, I can only guide you through my thoughts."
"Is that so?" Wayne glanced up at Isfilit's true body. "Then I'll leave it to you." He raised one hand, dropped the Ancient Hollow Beast's corpse into the center of the array, and stepped onto it himself.
Before long, the array began to spin. Wayne could feel the Reishi in the surrounding air converging toward it.
"This array can absorb Reishi?" Not just the Reishi in the atmosphere, even the Reishi within Wayne's own body and within the Ancient Hollow Beast was being drawn in.
"Yes. Once it has absorbed enough, it will refine the Reishi and feed it back to you. This may take a little time, please don't worry." Isfilit's voice echoed in Wayne's mind.
"I see." Wayne gave a slight nod and sat down in the center of the array. "Then I'll wait."
As the Reishi poured in, the array's glow brightened steadily. Wayne's Reiatsu, meanwhile, began to show a clear and steady decline.
"Isn't this array of yours absorbing a little too much Reishi?" Wayne furrowed his brow and looked toward the tree platform.
"It'll be ready soon." A trace of urgency had crept into Isfilit's voice. "Just a little longer."
"Hmph. That's not exactly convincing." Wayne let out a cold snort and moved to leap out of the array. This thing was plainly draining his Reiatsu, there was no sign it intended to feed anything back.
The moment he used Sonído to jump clear, an amber-red membrane of light shot up and sealed him inside.
"Negación? Isfilit, what is the meaning of this!" Wayne spun around and looked toward the cocoon on the tree platform.
"Now that you're in, don't think about leaving." Isfilit's voice had gone sharp.
"Just as I thought. You lured me here to absorb my power." Wayne's eyes narrowed. His Reiatsu surged.
"Give up struggling. The more Reiatsu you release, the faster the array will take it." Something strange crept into Isfilit's tone. "The Negación I built with the Soul Law, even your Spatial Law cannot let you jump out of it. This is an entanglement at the level of the soul. A wall of the heart."
"Never mind whether you even have a heart, are you seriously playing A.T. Field with me right now?" Wayne ignored her and drove a full-force sword slash into the Negación. It didn't budge.
"Hahahahaha! Idiot! I already told you, give up." Isfilit burst into wild laughter. A stream of brilliant light flowed from the array into the cocoon on the tree platform. "I haven't quite reached King Hollow level yet, but once I've absorbed your Reiatsu, I should be able to awaken from my slumber. Oh, how I've missed the outside world."
"So your old acquaintance with Hermes Loki, was that all a lie?" Wayne didn't panic. He fixed his gaze calmly on the Barrier and asked.
"Old acquaintance? We certainly go way back. As old enemies!" Isfilit's voice filled with raw hatred. "That bastard, he knew full well I had barely anything left after sealing that Ancient Hollow Beast, and he still came and drained my remaining power. Then he used his Law to shackle me in these chains. He robbed me of over a thousand years of freedom! You tell me how I could not hate him!"
"So this slumber Barrier of yours, it's actually a seal Hermes placed on you?" Wayne frowned. "You're both King Hollows. Why would he do that? Wouldn't it just weaken his own side?"
"Hmph. He was too weak to handle the Ancient Hollow Beast he was up against, so he came and took mine. If not for him, would I have sat rotting in this desolate wasteland for over a thousand years?! A weak and despicable wretch! The moment you became his Inheritor and accepted that power, I put you on my kill list! Right now, every Ancient Hollow Beast in Hueco Mundo is sealed or sleeping. It's the perfect time for me to revive and reclaim my strength. So don't hate me, if you want to hate someone, hate that cowardly rat Hermes!"
The cocoon blazed brighter. The array was running at full speed, tearing through Wayne's power and the corpse's at a ferocious rate. Wayne was already down on one knee inside the formation.
"I can't understand how King Hollows could end up devouring each other's power like this. I had assumed the Nine Great King Hollows all got along."
"Each of the nine held their own domain, ruling their own territories across different regions of Hueco Mundo. If not for the Ancient Hollow Beasts, the nine would rarely have had reason to interact at all. Our power all originates from the Dominator of Hueco Mundo, and we resonate with one another, but we are still Hollows at heart."
"I see. The mountains may shift, but a person's nature never does." Wayne let out a bitter smile.
"All right, enough talk. You can die in peace. I should even thank you, you killed that Ancient Hollow Beast for me, dealt with a future threat, and delivered a very generous gift on top of it."
"Aren't you afraid the forces behind me will level this entire area?" Wayne kept the smile at the corner of his mouth. His Reiatsu was drained, but he had no intention of showing weakness to Isfilit.
"Hahahahaha! What a joke!" Isfilit broke into loud laughter. That once-gentle voice had long since twisted into something sharp and manic.
"Once I've absorbed you and this corpse, my power won't return to its peak, but I'll have a solid King Hollow baseline. Crushing a swarm of ants would be laughably easy. Let them all come! They will all become my food! What's more, they've already called a ceasefire, they'll step right into the traps I've laid, one by one. Add in my own subjects, and do you really think I can't swallow them whole? And besides you, there are quite a few Law-power Inheritors on that battlefield. If I could gather all those Laws into my own hands, I might just become the next Dominator of Hueco Mundo. Hahahahahaha!"
Something is off. Wayne narrowed his eyes on the glowing cocoon. Where had the composure that befitted a King Hollow gone? Something about the Isfilit before him was wrong, her emotions, her Reiatsu, all of it. But there was no more time to think. In just these few short moments, nearly all of his Reiatsu had been drained away. Keeping his body upright had become a tremendous effort.
"Hahaha, pitiful ant, enjoy your death!" Isfilit paid no attention to anything Wayne was saying. Her sharp voice rang out again. The cocoon on the tree platform began to crack inch by inch. The Barrier tore through his remaining Reiatsu in an instant, and Wayne pitched forward and collapsed inside the formation.
Then the cocoon exploded.
That sprite-like body broke free.
"Hahahaha! A thousand years! I've finally escaped this wretched cage!" The freshly emerged Isfilit's pitch-black eyes blazed with wild excitement. She seemed reborn. Her Reiatsu poured outward without restraint, as though flaunting her freedom from the seal and proclaiming her imminent return to rule over Hueco Mundo.
"Seibel, how goes the Soul-Absorbing Barrier setup outside!" Several minutes later, Isfilit calmed down. She cast a contemptuous glance at Wayne collapsed inside the Barrier, then called out toward the exterior of the ruins.
As her Reiatsu flowed, her voice shed its ethereal quality and became deep and resonant. But no answer came.
"Seibel?" Uncertainty crept in. That ever-loyal subordinate could not possibly ignore her call. And then, from the direction of the path they had come, a rich, magnetic voice drifted toward her.
"So the reason you had him relaying your voice from outside was to set up a trap Barrier all along."
A tall, slender figure stepped into view. Pale gold long hair. His bare torso covered in Illusory Silver and Deep Orchid Spirit Markings. Long, dragon-like horns rising from his head.
Wayne, in his Tercera Etapa. In his hand he held the severed head of a Hollow Beast wearing a mask like a knight's helm, and that head belonged to Seibel, Isfilit's most loyal subordinate.
"You?! How is this possible?!" Isfilit stared at Wayne by the entrance, then snapped her gaze to the Barrier. The Wayne inside was still face-down on the ground. So how was he standing at the door?
"You can pull off Lure the Tiger Out of the Mountain on me, but I can't do the same to you?" Wayne's lips curved into a faint smile. "I told you from the start: I came here to hunt. I don't care what history you have with Hermes. You and every last one of your subordinates are my prey."
"How on earth did you even—"
"You have your tricks, and I have mine." Wayne lightly snapped his fingers. A shimmer of Illusory Silver dissolved from the Wayne inside the Barrier and resolved into a long blade, his Zanpakutō.
"To fool you, I handed over the power of my Bankai as bait and threw in half the Ancient Hollow Beast's corpse on top of it. The investment paid off. If you had stayed hidden in that cocoon the whole time, I genuinely wouldn't have known how to get you out."
"Damn you — when exactly did you—" Isfilit's eyes dropped to the Zanpakutō lying on the ground. Her body gave an involuntary shudder.
"When exactly? Around the time you told me you'd help me reach King Hollow level." Wayne said it plainly.
As it turned out, from the very first moment he had made contact with Isfilit, Wayne had already sensed something wrong. Among the ancient Nine Great King Hollows, even those who held no regard for one another would never part on terms so bitter, let alone actually seal each other. Only one explanation fit. The Arumaan Isfilit standing before him had been contaminated by an Ancient Hollow Beast's Reiatsu.
The Soul Law, a power that could directly control another's mind, manipulating something akin to Spiritual Power. If Isfilit had once used the Soul Law to perform a hostile soul-takeover on an Ancient Hollow Beast and absorbed its Reiatsu, then it was entirely possible that her own soul had in turn been contaminated by the Ancient Hollow Beast's spirit.
Back at the valley, the Ancient Hollow Beast's power had been rife with filth, corruption, and malice. If Isfilit had forcibly seized a portion of that power through the Soul Law, and in doing so been tainted by it, altered at the core of her nature, then everything followed. Hermes Loki would have noticed something wrong with her, moved to seal her, and drained her power. It all made sense.
Of course, this was all Wayne's personal theory. He had drawn his conclusions from Isfilit's erratic behavior just now, nothing more.
Then again, perhaps this master of the Soul Law had simply always been driven by the hunger for greater power, forcibly seizing the Ancient Hollow Beast's soul, even attempting to seize other King Hollows' souls, and that had been what sparked the battle between them. That, too, was possible.
But none of it mattered to Wayne anymore. Let the grudges of the ancient age stay buried in the ancient age.
He had come here for power.
And whether it was the Seibel in his hand or the Isfilit before his eyes, both were his prey.
➤ Next: The Belonging of Souls