Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 311 - Kiluge Opie

A canyon somewhere in the eastern reaches of Hueco Mundo.

Whoosh!

A faint blue spatial rift suddenly tore open, and Wayne leaped out from within. Beside him was Nel, along with Timd's clone, who sat perched on Wayne's shoulder.

"Timd, do you have a precise location?" Wayne asked quietly, scanning his surroundings and sensing the Reiatsu in the area.

"East, roughly seventy to eighty kilometers out." Timd closed his eyes, briefly reaching out with his senses toward the clone he had stationed at Ichigo Kurosaki's side, then raised his hand and pointed out the exact direction.

Without another word, Wayne slipped his arm around Nel's slender waist and leaped again using the laws of space.

After two or three position corrections, Wayne sensed Ichigo Kurosaki's Reiatsu, but he was in no hurry to show himself. Instead, he and Nel both donned their Reiatsu Concealing Cloaks, temporarily masking their Reiatsu using the laws of illusion, and landed quietly behind Ichigo Kurosaki.

He needed to observe Ichigo Kurosaki's combat strength first. He was also waiting for the right moment.

According to Timd's report, Ichigo Kurosaki had come to Hueco Mundo with Kisuke Urahara's assistance. And the reason Ichigo had been lured to Hueco Mundo this time was that the Wandenreich had exploited the imbalance caused by their previous war against Soul Society to destabilize Hueco Mundo, using that as bait to draw Ichigo in for an investigation. They had even set out multiple decoys.

Kisuke Urahara had naturally sensed something was off, which was why he had invited Ichigo Kurosaki's group to come along and investigate. And that was precisely what walked them into the Wandenreich's trap.

Soon enough, Ichigo Kurosaki's group encountered the enemy waiting for them in Hueco Mundo, a Quincy by the name of Kiluge Opie. At that moment, this Quincy was in the middle of a prisoner transfer, moving a group of Arrancar. These Arrancar were remnants of Aizen's old forces, stragglers and prisoners who had been hunted out of Hueco Mundo by Wayne's faction. After Harribel had been assigned to the east, Wayne had released these prisoners all at once and placed them under Harribel's rule, tasking her with subduing the remaining forces in the eastern region. They were, in other words, Wayne's bait. A large number of those decoys had already been killed beneath the Quincy's blue Reiatsu flames, and those who remained numbered fewer than twenty.

As for Wayne's existence, the Wandenreich would naturally be aware of it, yet Wayne also trusted that his spatial abilities could wall off any of the Wandenreich's surveillance. The world he had built by invoking the power of spatial laws was much like the Wandenreich's own headquarters, hidden between the folds of shadow: neither side could perceive the other, unless a fixed spatial coordinate was involved. As for the true strength of Wayne's forces, he believed the Wandenreich had no accurate intelligence on it, at least around the time when everyone had withdrawn to Tsukishiro to wait while Wayne advanced, that information would not have leaked out.

Standing amid the ruins, Ichigo and his group looked toward the cluster of Quincy not far away. Kiluge was in the middle of addressing a row of shackled Arrancar, though he cut his speech short and casually skewered several of them with his spear. By all appearances, these Arrancar were nothing more than playthings and insects to him.

"How cruel." Nel's brow was furrowed as she watched from the air. Even knowing these were decoys, seeing that many Hollow creatures slaughtered en masse reminded her of the scene years ago when Aizen's forces had massacred the town where Wayne's subordinates lived.

"Different sides, different races. Killing and being killed are perfectly natural." Wayne reached out and drew Nel close. "The saying 'those not of our kind will always harbor different intentions' is not without reason. They are a different race from ours, so of course they will show no mercy. But..."

His words trailed off there, and Wayne's eyes went cold. "He is killing in the wrong way."

While the two of them spoke, two of the captive Arrancar suddenly erupted into action. Using the spear Kiluge had thrust at them, they snapped the iron chains binding their wrists, and both drew their Zanpakutō, readying themselves for battle.

"I am Aizen-sama's attendant, Loly Aivirrne!" One of the women swept aside the hood covering her face, and two female Arrancar revealed their features.

"And I am Menoly Mallia!"

"Oh?" Seeing the two step forward, Wayne recalled these two attendants of Aizen's. Back when he had been at Aizen's side, it was plain that the two of them had been quite afraid of him. When he had turned on Aizen and began purging his old subordinates, he had also scooped up these two Arrancar in the process. With so many matters on his hands at the time, Wayne had ultimately handed the prisoners over to Jekain to deal with, and both women had ultimately been exiled to the east as well, placed under Harribel's command to help Wayne build his foothold in the eastern region. "What are these two idiots jumping out for at a time like this? Can't they sense the enemy's Reiatsu at all?"

Watching the two make their move, Wayne's expression grew grave. Sure enough, the moment Wayne finished speaking, the Quincy Kiluge had already slashed Mallia with a single cut and sent Aivirrne flying with a casual punch. The whole thing took less than three seconds from start to finish.

"Lord Wayne, shouldn't we do something?" Nel looked up at Wayne, watching the fight unfold below.

"It's not time yet." Wayne shook his head. "Wait a little longer. Besides, I just felt the Reiatsu of Harribel's three little ones — they're on their way here."

"Huh? Harribel was captured, but they managed to escape?"

"Maybe Harribel sent them away to complete some task, and that's how they missed it." Wayne sensed the three's Reiatsu, then shook his head. "A whole year and their strength hasn't grown at all. I can only hope they've at least grown a little wiser."

"Take these two away. Kill everyone else." Kiluge turned and walked back toward the distance, instructing his soldiers to take the two female Arrancar who had dared to fight back.

Though he enjoyed slaughtering Arrancar, the order his Emperor had given him, to seek out Arrancar as vanguard soldiers, was still an order Kiluge intended to follow. And these two gutsy fools fit the criteria well enough.

However, just as Kiluge was about to rally his troops and leave, three shattering sounds rang through the air in quick succession, and his soldiers standing behind him were cut down one after another.

Kiluge turned to look. He saw three female Arrancar who had carved through his soldiers with swift, thunderous force, and simultaneously hurled a bladed weapon flying toward him.

Clang!

Kiluge caught the flying blade bare-handed, his expression cold. "Who are you."

"Ha?" A brash, arrogant female voice rang out, and the three female Arrancar revealed themselves, none other than Harribel's three subordinates.

"The ones talking trash about Lady Harribel don't even know who we are? Underlings really are frogs at the bottom of a well." The conceited tone could only be Apache.

"It seems like while we were away, you took Harribel-sama with you, didn't you?" Sun-Sun followed up, her tone laced with danger.

"All you did was beat someone who called themselves Aizen's follower. Don't go getting too full of yourself!" Mila Rose was brimming with contempt.

Just as Wayne had analyzed, all three had not been present when Harribel was defeated. Had they been, the Wandenreich would now have three additional vanguard soldiers.

"Oh?" Kiluge's tone turned unsettling. "You all bear the same mark as that Harribel — the character for 'sin' carved right on you. Are you also someone else's prisoners?"

"What?!" The words struck Apache like a direct blow. That engraved mark was the greatest humiliation of their lives. "You bastard, you have a death wish!"

"I had too high expectations for them." Watching Apache fly into a rage from a single taunt, Wayne shook his head in disappointment from a distance. He had originally assumed that Harribel, who had fully submitted, would be able to keep this brainless fool in check. As it turned out, Wayne had been naive.

A year had passed, and the three had grown no stronger in Reiatsu. Their heads hadn't grown either.

In short order, all three threw themselves at Kiluge, but for all the ferocity of their combined assault, Kiluge dodged every strike with ease. Even in that situation, the three idiots kept attacking relentlessly, not even thinking to gauge the difference in power between them.

"I'll make you an offer." Kiluge sidestepped Sun-Sun's strike and spoke with a look of complete ease.

"All three of you should just surrender. That way you can serve our Emperor together with your beloved Lady Harribel. What a wonderful thing that would be!"

"Stop looking down on us, you four-eyed monkey!" Apache let out a furious shout and hurled another blade, only for Kiluge to knock it aside with a swipe of his sword.

"Oh? Negotiations have broken down, have they." Seeing Apache's response, Kiluge dispensed with further words and drew out his Quincy insignia, manifesting it into his Heilig Bogen, a Heilig Pfeil in the form of a medieval one-handed sword. The instant his Reiatsu surged, the three were frozen on the spot. The intensity of his offensive left the three of them no time to release their Zanpakutō before they were all knocked to the ground.

"Lord Wayne?" Nel watched the three struggling to hold on below and looked toward Wayne again.

"It's fine. Those three fools are exactly the kind of excellent vanguard soldiers Kiluge needs — he won't kill them so easily. And even if they do die, it doesn't matter. They no longer have any value. In every sense of the word." Wayne stopped watching the battlefield and instead turned his senses toward Ichigo Kurosaki, who was already rushing toward the three.

Ichigo's speed was fast, but the three were defeated even faster. In under three minutes from start to finish, all three lay fallen beneath Kiluge's blade. By the time Ichigo arrived, Kiluge had just put away his Heilig Pfeil and brought the fight to a close.

"A Soul Reaper traveling with a Hollow?" Kiluge turned his head and caught sight of Ichigo Kurosaki along with Timd's clone perched on Ichigo's shoulder. "Interesting. But I do know you — Ichigo Kurosaki, designated by our Emperor as one of the Special War Powers. You are also our highest-priority target for elimination!"

"Who the hell are you!"

Observing Ichigo closely, Wayne now noticed that the quality of Ichigo Kurosaki's Reiatsu had shifted somewhat. Even his Shihakushō and Zanpakutō had changed in form. It seemed that during this past year, Ichigo Kurosaki must have crossed paths with the Fullbring users and, through the awakening of Fullbring, had gained a new power. The question was whether this new power could help Ichigo Kurosaki gain control over his Hollow powers.

Previously, Wayne had absorbed the greater part of the Hollow power from within Ichigo Kurosaki's body. But power that had been etched into the soul could not be fully extracted, and on top of that, Ichigo Kurosaki had never used the ultimate technique of Zangetsu, the final Getsuga Tenshō, so that Hollow power should still remain within Wayne.

If Ichigo had no intention of using it, or simply could not control it properly, Wayne would not mind finding an opportunity to take another helping.

"Oh? You dare come forward without even knowing our specific intelligence?" Kiluge let out a cold laugh, then once again drew his blade and turned to face Ichigo. "Then let my sword give you a proper answer!" Done with his habit of talking, Kiluge issued the order to attack without delay. Several Quincy soldiers leaped at once, launching streaks of blazing blue light arrows toward Ichigo Kurosaki.

The battle ignited.

"Lord Wayne, more people are coming." Nel had sensed several more Reiatsu signatures approaching from not far behind Ichigo Kurosaki, and spoke up to alert him.

"That should be Ichigo Kurosaki's group — Chad, Inoue, and Kisuke Urahara." Wayne closed his eyes and sensed for a moment. "No rush. Let them fight. Use it as a benchmark to gauge how strong the Quincy actually are."

"Understood." Seeing that Wayne had no intention of intervening, Nel asked nothing more. The Quincy below were not particularly troublesome to Nel. If she wanted to, releasing her Zanpakutō and defeating him would be a matter of just a few exchanges. What Nel didn't know, however, was that Wayne was still waiting, waiting for the right moment.

The battle below raged on. Kiluge's attacks clearly could not deal any real damage to Ichigo. As for the strength of his subordinates, there was nothing to speak of.

"Is that all the power you've got? It feels a fair bit stronger than Ishida's arrows, but it's still nothing worth looking at." Ichigo cleaved apart an incoming light arrow with his blade and then regarded Kiluge with contemptuous mockery.

"I never expected it, for my attacks to be so crude in your eyes. You truly are worthy of being named a Special War Power." Kiluge showed no anger at Ichigo's words.

"It seems necessary to let you see my true power. As it happens, the order from His Majesty has also arrived, so this petty skirmishing is no longer meaningful. Now, let me show you what is called the Quincy's ultimate form." Kiluge was sharp and decisive in battle. Having determined that his ordinary Heilig Pfeil could not harm Ichigo Kurosaki, he immediately changed his approach. He removed his glove, exposing the Stigma beneath.

In the next instant, the insignia on the back of his hand blazed with an overwhelming surge of spiritual radiance. A column of Reiatsu as tall as a tower erupted skyward, blooming at its peak into a cross-shaped corona of light.

It was the Quincy's Letzt Stil, no, the Quincy cross of holy scripture.

Then the pillar of Reiatsu shattered apart into fragments, revealing Kiluge in an entirely new form from within.

Kiluge now had wings of Reishi growing from his back. Beneath his feet were peculiar high heels shaped from Reishi, and above his head floated a blue disc that resembled an angelic halo.

"Let me tell you — the true name of this form is... the Quincy: Vollständig!"

Boom!

Kiluge swung out a sweeping arc of blue Reiatsu, and Ichigo instantly leaped back to dodge. Kiluge immediately spread his Reishi wings and pressed the attack toward Ichigo. The blade of light in his hand clashed against Zangetsu, and Ichigo felt the pressure multiply in an instant. With Vollständig active, Kiluge's slashing force and the oppressive weight of his Reiatsu had both risen substantially.

"Without activating Bankai, Ichigo Kurosaki's power is not stronger than an Arrancar of the Quincy's Vollständig level. Relative to us Hollows, he's roughly at the level of a high-tier Adjuchas-class Arrancar. An Arrancar who has entered Vollständig, meanwhile, would be at roughly the level of a beginning-tier Vasto Lorde-class Arrancar." Watching the fight from outside the battlefield, Nel offered a simple analysis of the power levels below.

"That's true enough, but the Quincy have one ability that is extremely troublesome to us." Wayne's brow furrowed slightly.

"Hmm? What is it?" Nel asked in return.

"An ability that you could benchmark against your own power to devour the laws." Wayne narrowed his eyes. By now, Kiluge had already begun using that power.

"Its name is... Sklaverei."

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➤ Next: The Time Is Ripe