Seijūrō stood on the quartzite rock, surrounded by hundreds of Pícaro who had all spread their wings at once.

Guerreros Alados. Their transparent wings beat at high speed, a dense, fine-grained hum rolling through the entire subterranean forest until the air itself trembled.

After their Resurrección, every Pícaro's Reiatsu had surged dramatically. Hundreds of Upper Menos-level pressures wove together into a suffocating net, compressing the space around him from every direction at once.

The stories about these little ones wrecking Hueco Mundo's ecosystem weren't idle talk. The sheer density of Reiatsu massed here right now was enough to suffocate any Shinigami below captain level on the spot.

For Seijūrō, this kind of pressure wasn't unfamiliar. Just noisier.

The first wave of Cero arrived.

Dozens of Pícaro in the front row opened their mouths in unison. Dark red Reiatsu condensed in their throats into fist-sized orbs, then fired all at once.

Ceros came from every direction along completely chaotic trajectories. Some flew straight. Some swept in at angles. Some collided mid-air and deflected off course. They wove into a ballistic web with no discernible pattern, sealing off every conventional evasion route.

No blind spots in the attack. So he'd make one.

Seijūrō raised a single hand. Bakudō #39, Enkōsen deployed before him, the oval shield blocking three frontal Ceros with precision. The radiance of the colliding Reiatsu burst apart, the shockwave shattering several nearby quartz branches.

He didn't wait behind the shield.

The instant Enkōsen caught the frontal blast, Reishi released from the soles of his feet. He Shunpo-shifted three paces left, slipping through a gap in the barrage under cover of the smoke.

Immediately after, Bakudō #62, Hyapporankan. Dozens of light rods shot from his fingertips, pinning into quartz tree trunks and rocky ground all around the Pícaro, throwing up crisscrossing Reishi barriers between him and the swarm.

Not to bind them. To split the battlefield. The hundreds-strong assault broke into several isolated zones, with only a handful in each zone able to reach him directly. The firepower density dropped sharply.

Then a dark red orb nearly twice the size of the others came crashing down from directly above.

The slightly larger Pícaro had condensed its Cero with both hands. Its wings were several sizes bigger than the rest, and its dive carried astonishing force.

Seijūrō didn't dodge. Bakudō #81, Dankū unfolded above his head.

This time the barrier was slightly concave, precisely catching the orb.

The orb struck the surface without exploding. It simply spun at high speed along the curved wall, throwing off rings of blinding sparks.

The Pícaro stared. Even the Ceros stopped coming as, one by one, they tilted their heads to watch the orb spinning inside the Dankū bowl.

The large-winged Pícaro's eyes went wide. Before it could flap its wings and pull away, its own Cero detonated right in its face.

The shockwave blew it backward. It tumbled through the air seven or eight times before plunging headfirst into a nearby sand dune, leaving two legs sticking out and kicking wildly.

Then several Pícaro in the front row looked up at once, expressions completely identical: hollow smiles, no pupils in their eye sockets, just empty darkness staring out.

Over a hundred Pícaro opened their mouths simultaneously. Cero orbs condensed in their throats.

Over a hundred Ceros fired at once.

Seijūrō took a deep breath. Bakudō #73, Tōzanshō deployed around him, the inverted pyramid absorbing all hundred-plus Ceros simultaneously.

The resulting shockwave expanded outward in visible rings, uprooting every quartz tree within dozens of paces and hurling them away.

Cracks raced across the cavern walls, chasing the grain of the quartzite all the way to the ceiling and tearing through it.

Then the sky came down.

White sand poured through the fissure like a waterfall, sweeping broken quartz trunks and shattered rock along with it, hitting the stone floor with heavy, muffled crashes.

The entire battlefield disappeared into billowing sand and dust. Visibility dropped to zero.

A blade flash cut through the haze.

The ring-shaped slash wave of Hadō #78, Zangerin erupted from the center of the cloud, sweeping away every Pícaro still blindly firing Ceros.

The force had been precisely calibrated. The wave knocked them clear without crushing them, and every one of them could still push themselves up off the ground after landing. No serious injuries.

After several exchanges, the Pícaro were battered and coated in grime. Their Resurrección states unraveled on their own, transparent wings folding back.

They shook the sand out of their hair and looked at each other.

"It broke, it broke!" "So much sand!" "Out, out, out!"

They erupted into chatter, spread their wings one after another, and flew up through the still-pouring fissure toward the surface. Within moments the entire battlefield was empty.

Seijūrō stood in the settling dust and looked down at the sand.

The grains were getting finer. Getting whiter.

Pure white sand.

In his perception, the Reiatsu imprint he'd left on Aizen's shoulder, faint and intermittent since the moment he'd entered Hueco Mundo, suddenly sharpened.

He leaped out through the breach and landed back on the surface.

The white desert stretched out beneath his feet. At the edge of his vision, towering curved pillars rose dimly from deep within the dunes, half-visible, half-swallowed by sand.

The outline of Hueco Mundo.

The white sand underfoot shuddered violently. It converged from every direction toward a single point, layering and stacking upward, condensing into a sand-and-stone colossus dozens of zhang tall.

Dark red light burned in its hollow eye sockets.

"You brats again! Get back inside this instant! Not one of you is getting away!"

Runuganga.

Enormous sand-and-stone arms swept through the air toward the Pícaro darting overhead. Every palm strike sent vast clouds of dust exploding outward. Its approach was blunt and relentless: lateral sweeps, overhead slams, clapping hands together, each strike aimed at batting those small, agile targets out of the sky and back to the ground.

The Pícaro were too quick for it. They wove between the giant's fingers, ducking and dodging as though playing a game of tag that had no referee.

Runuganga didn't notice Seijūrō.

Its sensory range seemed locked onto the Pícaro's high-frequency Reiatsu. An intruder deliberately suppressing his Reiatsu didn't register at all.

Seijūrō compressed his Reiatsu to the bare minimum and slipped toward Hueco Mundo under the cover of the storm.

He'd taken only a few steps when one of the Pícaro descended from the sky, folding its transparent wings.

Short, pale blonde hair caught the light against the white desert in a soft, muted glow. On either side of her face ran an extremely fine Hollow mask marking, extending from the corners of her eyes down to the edge of her jaw like tear tracks.

She wore the same white Arrancar uniform as the other Pícaro. But her posture was entirely different.

She stood quietly on the sand, back straight, staring directly at Seijūrō.

"You must be Seijūrō Kidōin."

Seijūrō turned. "Then you're the Octava Espada?"

She gave a soft laugh.

There was none of the other Pícaro's childishness in it, and none of an adult's practiced smoothness. Just pure, long-suppressed scholarly pleasure.

"No, you misunderstand. I am merely borrowing her eyes and vocal cords to speak with you. But yes, it is me. Szayelaporro Granz, Chief Scientist of Hueco Mundo, current Octava Espada. I am waiting for you inside Hueco Mundo at this very moment."

As she spoke, she raised her right hand, index and middle fingers together, and moved by habit to sweep her hair back from beside her ear, only for her fingers to pass straight through the short blonde hair and slide into empty air, catching nothing.

Her hand paused mid-air. Then it lowered without any change in expression, folding back in front of her.

"My apologies. I forgot this body isn't my own." Her tone stayed gentle and courteous, but Seijūrō caught the slight press of her lips as the hand came down.

"Szayelaporro. If you want to meet me, why not appear in person?"

"In person? Ah, that would be far too discourteous. Having the guest come to call is proper hospitality—and you are not Lord Aizen's guest. You are a guest I wish to see myself. From the moment you stepped into the Forest of Menos, I have been watching you. Your Kidō, your Shunpo, the way you handled the Pícaro—every detail. The children's sudden collective Resurrección just now was a small experiment of mine. I gave them a pre-implanted stimulus command to see how you would respond under siege by hundreds of Upper Menos."

"And you passed. Completely at ease despite an absolute numerical disadvantage, and you even reflected a Cero. You are the most singular Shinigami I have ever observed. So I wish to speak with you—not as Aizen's subordinate, but as a scholar extending a sincere invitation to a fellow practitioner."

Seijūrō said nothing for a few breaths.

Szayelaporro. Octava Espada. Chief Scientist of Hueco Mundo.

This could be a trap. It could also be the most direct route to intelligence on Aizen. And he was genuinely curious what a sitting Espada was actually worth.

"Lead the way."

She turned sideways and extended a hand toward Hueco Mundo. Seijūrō stepped forward.

"You don't seem worried at all that this might be a trap," she said.

"I simply have a method that guarantees I leave in one piece." He glanced at her. "The question is you, Szayelaporro. Aren't you afraid I might bring your corpse back to Soul Society?"

The corners of her mouth curved into a carefully restrained arc.

"Afraid? No. That would only make this academic exchange considerably more interesting." A pause. "Well then. Let us see how it unfolds."

➤ Next: Szayelaporro Granz — Words Unspoken

Chapter 65 - Szayelaporro Granz — Words Unspoken

The entrance to the underground palace was hidden beneath an unassuming layer of quartz rock on one flank of Las Noches.

Without the Pícaro leading the way, Seijūrō would never have found it, a complete, intact facility buried under ruins that wind and sand had swallowed for countless years.

Stone steps descended into the dark. Quartz shards embedded in the walls on either side cast light that was colder and whiter than anything in the Forest of Menos, each shard clearly shaped by hand.

"Welcome."

The Pícaro guiding him stopped at the entrance, turned around, and gave Seijūrō a small smile.

Then she twitched.

Like something had reached inside her and pulled out every thread of consciousness at once. Her pupils went blank, and an instant later, cleared.

Not the clarity of an adult. The bewilderment of a child.

"Huh? Why am I here?"

She tilted her head at him. Her short, light-blonde hair swayed with the motion, and the two tear-streak markings on her cheeks caught the cold quartz light, glinting faint silver.

This was the real Pícaro, not Szayelaporro. The scientist had released his hold the moment he finished speaking.

A hand reached out from inside the entrance.

The arm was grotesquely long, out of all proportion, and when those five fingers spread wide they could have closed around the entire Pícaro without effort.

The Hollow's face was half-covered by a mask. Black curly hair like a clown's sprouted from both sides of his head. A hollow mask remnant obscured his right eye and nose, and mismatched teeth jutted from the mask's edge in jagged rows.

His left eye was yellow. His eyebrows were deep pink. He wore a white uniform.

He tucked the still-dazed Pícaro into his mouth, closed his jaw, and chewed.

Purple blood traced down the corner of his mouth and dripped onto the white sand below, each drop hissing faintly on contact.

Seijūrō stood where he was and watched that short blonde hair sway one last time before it disappeared between Medazeppi's lips.

He knew Hollows eating each other was instinct. An eternal, immutable law of survival in Hueco Mundo.

The Pícaros themselves had said it, companions disappearing didn't matter. It just meant one fewer person to play with.

Still. A childlike thing, used as a disposable tool and discarded. Cold, clinical, efficient.

Her task was done. Her value used up.

He felt a flicker of irritation.

Seijūrō pulled his gaze away, stepped forward, and walked past the long-armed giant.

The interior of the underground palace was nothing like the stark cold white of Las Noches above. Dark-toned hangings covered the stone walls on both sides of the corridor. Deep carpeting covered the stone floor underfoot. The air carried a faint scent of spice mixed with something sharper, chemical reagents.

Medazeppi moved alongside him, fingers trailing the floor with a faint scraping sound at every step.

The corridor ended at a semicircular archway. Beyond it opened a spacious reception room.

A large, dark sofa dominated the center. Its leather surface gleamed dimly in the quartz light.

A tall woman stood beside it. Posture straight and still, hands folded in front of her, blue-gray eyes placid and unchanged.

Almost no Hollow characteristics at all, only the half-mask fragment marked what she was.

And the man sitting on the sofa was, without question, Szayelaporro Granz.

Short pink hair combed neatly to one side, covering half his brow. Golden eyes, with distinct lower lashes. His tailored white uniform had several buttons open at the collar, revealing a strip of smooth skin below his collarbone.

He looked entirely at ease. One leg crossed over the other, an arm draped over the back of the sofa, fingers tapping the leather in an idle, unhurried rhythm.

"Ah. Welcome to my humble abode — Mr. Seijūrō Kidōin. I am Szayelaporro Granz, Chief Scientist of Las Noches and current 8th Espada. For Lord Aizen's own teacher to grace this modest laboratory with a personal visit — truly, you do us far too much honor."

He stood. Left hand behind his back, right hand laid over his chest, he offered a slight bow.

The gesture was flawless, the kind of opening courtesy you'd see at a noble's tea party. But the light in those golden eyes was nothing like a noble's. It was observation. Appraisal. An academic hunger suppressed for far, far too long.

He straightened and gestured toward the tall woman at his side.

"This is Roka Paramia, my Fracción. A medical Arrancar, assigned to assist with my research. The one who greeted you at the entrance was Medazeppi — also my Fracción. He isn't much for conversation, but he handles experimental waste quite efficiently."

Seijūrō's gaze paused on Roka.

She gave a slight bow. Her blue-gray eyes met his briefly, then moved away.

No greeting. No shift in expression.

Nothing like Medazeppi's crude brutality. She felt more like a carefully designed work.

Szayelaporro caught the look. The curve at the corner of his mouth deepened just slightly.

He tapped his chin with one finger, his tone light and offhand, like recommending a decent tea.

"You're interested in her? If you like, she can be yours as a welcoming gift. I still have several spares of this particular physical structure in my collection."

"No need."

Seijūrō looked away.

He turned something over in his mind, and didn't like where it landed. Mad scientist. Artificial female Hollow. This was practically a copy of Mayuri Kurotsuchi.

If the Espada mapped onto the Gotei 13, then Aizen, Gin, and Tōsen together with the ten Espada made exactly thirteen. Was there an Espada that corresponded to Genryūsai Yamamoto? There had been a mention of Zommari being a fast-moving black man, was he meant to mirror Yoruichi Shihōin? Did Grimmjow correspond to Kenpachi?

"Please, sit."

Szayelaporro settled back into the sofa and gestured toward the single-seat sofa across from him.

Seijūrō sat. A low quartz coffee table separated them. A delicate tea set rested on it, steam still curling from the spout.

"So — why bring me here?" Seijūrō spoke first.

"How do they say it in the World of the Living? Ah~ investment."

Szayelaporro leaned back, his golden eyes catching a faint gleam from the quartz light, his tone holding that same measured composure.

"In you, I found what Aizen once gave me — possibility. He was the perfect research subject. Ambitious, creative, possessed of the will to push past every limit. But now he's consumed by the Hōgyoku, and he's run into a wall. What is the Hōgyoku? A wish-fulfillment device. Handing everything over to a machine that automatically grants wishes, what kind of science is that? A truly perfect lifeform cannot be born from making a wish. So I need a new subject to invest in."

"Then why not just work with Aizen to capture me and study me directly? I'd make decent experimental material too."

Szayelaporro gave a soft laugh and wagged his index finger in the air.

He reached into his sleeve and drew out a small velvet pouch, tipping its contents onto the coffee table.

Eight glass marbles rolled free, clicking against the quartz surface with clear, bright sounds.

Each one held a faint inner glow, Reishi, sealed inside. The colors varied: pale blue, light gold, near-transparent white.

"These are a portion of the Soul King fragments scattered throughout the World of the Living. When I was pursuing my research into the perfect lifeform, I spent considerable time collecting them there. I eventually determined they couldn't serve that purpose, they are far too fragmented. Each one holds only a small sliver of memory or emotion, and not a single one carries a complete will. The only use they have is as experimental records, kept here in storage."

He pushed one of the pale blue marbles toward Seijūrō.

Seijūrō picked it up and fed a thin thread of Reiatsu through his fingertips.

The Reishi light inside flared, and memory rushed in like a tide.

Trondheim, Norway.

His name was Erik. Twenty-six years old. A welder at a shipyard.

Every evening after work, he'd stop at a harbor-side tavern with his colleagues for a drink. On weekends, he hiked in the forest.

His hands were rough. Grease lived permanently in the creases of his knuckles, no matter how hard he scrubbed. When he laughed, his eyes crinkled at the corners first.

He was saving money to marry his girlfriend.

Then one day, on his way home from work, a pink-haired man took him away.

The memory ended there. Clean cut, like a film reel sheared in two.

Seijūrō set the marble down and picked up another.

This one was a Korean woman named Eun-hee. She lived to eighty.

In her youth she farmed in the countryside. In middle age she ran a small grocery in the city. In her old age she sat in front of the shop every day and let the sun warm her, an old blanket across her knees, calling out to neighbors as they passed.

She was taken during an afternoon nap. The last image in her memory was the persimmon tree in her courtyard, bare of blossoms.

Eighty years, compressed into a single marble. It took him only a few seconds to receive it all.

The feeling was strange, like having lived through several different lives at once, and the one thing all those lives had in common was that none of them knew they were carrying pieces of the Soul King.

They had simply lived. Simply died. And then, at some point, Szayelaporro had found them.

In that same moment, Seijūrō understood something that had never made sense to him.

When he had followed Kaien to the World of the Living, there had been past-life memories that didn't fit, that didn't belong to him, that he couldn't account for.

Because they weren't his.

They were the Norwegian welder's. The elderly Korean woman's. Six other strangers he'd never known.

Like him, they were all fragments of the Soul King's mind, scattered across the world, each one living out a life entirely their own.

He lowered his head and set the two marbles gently back on the table. "Then what do you want from me?"

"That depends on you. From the wound on Lord Aizen's shoulder that won't heal, to the ease with which you handled over a hundred Pícaros, I am certain you have the potential to defeat him. So I intend to invest in you. I want you to defeat Aizen and deliver him to me for research. His body, his Reiatsu structure, his existence itself, that is the most ideal experimental material I could have at this stage."

Szayelaporro gathered the marbles back into the pouch one by one, unhurried.

"If even you managed to detect me, how could Aizen possibly miss it?"

"No, no, no, I genuinely did not detect you at all. You exposed yourself. In front of the Pícaros. In your classroom, you asked about the 8th Espada. That number triggered a contingency I had already put in place, the Resurrección command for all Pícaros activated simultaneously. The Reiatsu surge from over a hundred Pícaros releasing their Resurrección at once naturally reached me, so I borrowed the eyes of one of them and spoke with you remotely. It was that simple."

"The combat strength of over a hundred Pícaros doesn't lose to the Espada. I mean that literally, not a matter of ranking or numbers. They weren't exiled because they were weak. Quite the opposite: they were too strong and couldn't be precisely controlled. Lord Aizen needs obedient tools, not wild beasts. When hundreds of them release Resurrección at the same time, no Espada can hold them back head-on. Of course, if you had fought them that day with intent to kill, the outcome might have been different. But you didn't. You held back. That is another reason I chose to invest in you, a powerful person who shows mercy toward created beings makes a far better ally than a pure destroyer."

Seijūrō was quiet for a moment.

He'd felt it himself.

The Pícaros hadn't been fighting him. They'd been playing.

Setting tactics aside and measuring Reiatsu alone, a hundred Pícaros' combined Reiatsu had already exceeded Byakuya's Senbonzakura Kageyoshi. Higher even than Shūkei: Hakuteiken.

And there had originally been close to 700 of them.

"So I am quite confident Aizen hasn't noticed your arrival. I will provide you with full technical support, the structural blueprints of Las Noches, detailed dossiers on every Espada, and whatever cover and disguise you need for your next move. In return, I ask that the Shinigami leave my research undisturbed afterward. I have no hostility toward Soul Society. I simply want to study the perfect lifeform."

"Someone like you is only the Eighth?" Seijūrō held his gaze.

Szayelaporro blinked.

Then he smiled.

He raised his hand, index and middle fingers drifting to his ear out of habit, lifting a lock of his short pink hair, letting it slide smoothly between his fingers. From collarbone to tips, in one long, fluid stroke. The same gesture he'd made when borrowing the Pícaro's body, but now it landed with an ease that looked like it had been practiced ten thousand times.

"How rude of me. But you're right, the 8th Espada is not a particularly dignified rank. Allow me to clarify one thing: the Espada's ranking runs from zero to nine."

"That makes you second to last."

"I returned to the Espada. I was once the 0th Espada."

The look in Szayelaporro's eyes was the calm and candor of a scientist reviewing the data from a failed experiment.

"I once divided my body, which caused my power to regress, and I was removed from the Espada. After I developed the ability 'Gabriel,' I returned as the 8th. In a sense, you can read my rank as an experimental log, the 0th Espada was the failure of phase one. The 8th Espada is the corrected version. As for strength, the number has never been what I'm after. What I'm after is data. Perfect, irrefutable data that would make every one of my peers fall silent."

He leaned back into the sofa, crossed his legs, and looked at Seijūrō through the gaps in his pink bangs, golden eyes steady.

"And right now, you are my newest experimental variable."

➤ Next: Rebirth