Rumble!
As though to confirm her words, a dull explosion burst out of a two-story wooden warehouse roughly a hundred meters off their front right.
The flimsy walls and the sagging roof could hold the structure up no longer, and it caved inward with a run of crashing sounds.
Splinters and dust shot into the sky, rolling into clouds of smoke under the thin moonlight.
A shadow massive enough to be terrifying slowly straightened up behind that veil of dust.
The Hollow stood over five meters tall, heavily built, its skin dark green.
Its limbs were disproportionately thick and ended in sharp claws that glinted coldly.
Its face was covered by a hideous, pure white bone mask, the lower edge of it split to bare jagged fangs.
Most arresting of all were the pair of crimson eyes, full of madness, staring out through the mask’s sockets.
“It’s a Large Hollow. Prepare for combat!”
Staring at the great hole in its chest, everyone drew the Asauchi at their waists at once and stood ready.
The next moment, though, a surging, chaotic spiritual pressure flooded the area like a physical tide, thick with a sickening malice.
Under the weight of it, several of the third-years went as pale as paper, their breathing turning difficult.
Their legs shook beyond their control, and they could barely keep hold of their Asauchi.
“No, that’s impossible…”
Harada Heita’s voice trembled, full of disbelieving terror.
“Spiritual pressure at this level, that size, those traits… this isn’t an ordinary Large Hollow anymore. This is a Menos Grande on the verge of becoming a Gillian!”
His voice had already broken toward a sob.
“How could we possibly run into a monster like that…”
“It’s over… we’re dead…”
The third-years were nearly swallowed by fear, their nerve about to give out entirely.
One of them slumped to the ground, eyes vacant.
Even the usually composed Nanao felt as though an icy hand had closed around her heart, and her fingertips went cold in an instant.
The relevant figures ran through her mind.
She knew exactly what a monster approaching the level of a Menos Grande meant.
A gap in spiritual pressure that vast was not a chasm courage and teamwork could bridge.
“Silas, what do we do…”
Nanao turned her head in a panic, and there was no surprise or fear on Silas’s face.
Not so much as a trace of tension.
The cold moonlight traced a profile that was exceptionally calm.
“Really. Whatever you fear most is exactly what you get.”
Silas murmured it to himself, his right hand already resting easily on the hilt of the sword at his waist.
He was weighing whether to act.
All the hiding and all the pretense up to now had served one purpose, to keep the attention of dangerous people off him.
Keeping his head down was no guarantee that Aizen wouldn’t make another move on him.
He might as well let it out.
Before he met Kaien, his strength had been that of a top student in the Elite Class at best, nothing especially remarkable.
Thanks to Kaien, though, it had climbed a great deal over this stretch.
What if he adjusted the persona slightly?
From an unremarkable fifth-year suspected of hiding something, to a low-key talent concealing his real power.
That way Aizen ought to leave off testing him for a while.
An ordinary student who no longer hides, and who merely possesses a certain amount of strength, would most likely look dull in Aizen’s eyes.
Having thought it through, Silas felt the way ahead clear.
There were still more than ten years before Aizen’s work on the Hōgyoku reached completion and he moved against the captains.
That ought to be time enough to improve.
Silas looked at the fear in Nanao’s eyes, then at the Hollow in the distance.
His decision was already made.
The spiritual power carried by Shin’ō Academy students was a great delicacy to a Hollow.
The massive Hollow had spotted them, and the appetite in its eyes was no longer hidden at all.
Its crimson eyes locked onto the group on the roof, a garbled, greedy roar tore out of its mouth, and its thick hind legs slammed into the ground.
Boom!
A shallow crater blew open where it had been standing, and that huge body launched forward at a speed its size had no right to, like a cannonball wrapped in a foul wind.
Its claws ripped through the air with a piercing shriek, as though about to shred the roof and everyone standing on it.
Fine beads of cold sweat stood out on Nanao’s forehead.
The icy touch of death felt as if it were already against her skin, and she couldn’t so much as think.
Then a warm, familiar hand pressed gently down on her small, cold head.
“Don’t be afraid.”
The next second, Silas’s figure vanished from the spot.
The Large Hollow, mid-lunge with all that menace and destructive weight behind it, abruptly froze in the air.
Its forward momentum stopped dead, and its crimson eyeballs rolled upward in disbelief.
A cold, gleaming blade tip had punched through the top of its head with pinpoint precision.
Silas’s figure had appeared behind the Hollow at some unmarked moment.
If not for the blade jutting from its brain, it would have looked as though he had merely strolled past it.
The Menos Grande let out a low growl from its throat, and the crimson light in the sockets of its bone mask faded fast.
Its huge body began to convulse, cracks running like spiderwebs across its knotted skin as its spiritual pressure started to disperse.
With a slight flick of the wrist, Silas drew the blade smoothly back out.
The Menos Grande’s movement stopped entirely.
Its massive body lost all strength and, still holding the shape of its lunge, crashed down heavily in front of Nanao and the others.
Once it hit the ground, the body broke apart quickly into spirit particles, leaving only a white mask covered in cracks and dimming by the moment.
From the moment the Menos Grande lunged to the moment Silas struck with his sword, the whole thing had taken an instant.
The surroundings were dead silent.
Nobody had seen clearly what had happened.
The three third-years slumped on the ground still had the terror written on their faces, and it gave way to a deeper confusion.
Eh?
They stared blankly at the space where the Menos Grande had been, then turned their eyes stiffly to the white-haired senior who had already sheathed his sword, their minds completely empty.
It was as though everything that had just happened had been something they imagined.
Their emotions had ridden a violent roller coaster and were only now easing back toward level.
What welled up next was a feeling too complicated to name.
“Did you all watch that practical demonstration?”
Silas’s voice broke the silence, his tone as steady as ever.
“When you kill a Hollow, especially this humanoid kind with the large mask, remember. Try not to cut at the mask from the front.”
At that, the group looked instinctively at his tall silhouette under the moonlight.
“Because there’s a strong chance that through the broken mask you’ll see the twisted, pained face that once belonged to a human being.”
“And if the shock of that moment buys even a second of hesitation or pity, that second of delay can cost you your life.”
He walked over to the dazed Harada Heita and patted his shoulder.
“Alright, Harada, come back to us. The crisis is over. Follow procedure. Count heads and check for injuries.”
He turned to Nanao, equally stunned.
“Nanao, use the denreishinki to contact Hasegawa and report the situation.”
Harada Heita jolted back to himself and looked at Silas as though at some prehistoric monster, stammering.
“Si… Silas… you just…”
“Oh, I got lucky.”
Silas waved it off, his tone offhand.
“That one only looked intimidating. He was fairly easy to kill.”
Leaving the bewildered Harada behind, Silas didn’t explain any further.
At that moment his attention had been caught by a dark red fragment.
Is this…
something that Hollow left behind?
Silas touched the fragment without drawing any notice.
[Obtained Hollow Spiritual Pressure Fragment, Hollowfication EXP +450]
[Hollowfication: Lv1 (EXP: 460/1000)]
Silas’s brow twitched, so faintly it went unseen.