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“What?
Devour you?” Wayne couldn’t believe his ears.
This was the first time he’d ever heard such a request.
“Why?
Don’t you want to gamble on surviving the evolution?” “My King, I know my own constitution better than anyone.” Inola’s voice was flat with resignation.
“I don’t have immense Reiatsu, and my body can’t hold more Reiryoku than it already does.
If it weren’t for the nature of my ability, I would have become someone’s meal long ago.
Even if I’m fortunate enough to evolve into a Gillian, if I retain my consciousness, I’d still have a chance.
But if I lose it — and the odds are against me — I’ll eventually end up as a fragment of some other Gillian’s Reiryoku.
Rather than that, let me become part of yours.
Let me keep following you into battle.” “…What are you talking about.” Wayne’s tone was flat, but not without an edge.
“A fine bird chooses its tree.
A worthy retainer chooses its lord.
My King, to become part of your Reiryoku — that is the highest honor I can imagine.
Please grant me this.” Inola’s voice was absolute.
“I…” Wayne was thrown off for a moment.
“…Fine.
Prepare for the evolution first.” He didn’t give her a real answer.
He just turned and ran into the forest.
Inola rose slowly.
She stood there, watching the direction he had disappeared, for a long time.
Then she turned and walked toward the pit where the others had evolved before her.
Two days later, Wayne arrived at the pit’s edge carrying several Elite Hollow corpses.
He tossed them in, along with the Hollow Mask of an advanced Hollow.
Even these had only been found after he’d searched more than half the forest.
It was a clear measure of how thoroughly Wayne and the others had stripped this place.
For the forest to recover anything close to its former life, three to five years was the bare minimum.
“Inola, is this enough?” Wayne called down into the pit.
“More than enough, My King.
Please step back — farther.” Inola came forward and tore the Hollow Mask from one of the Elite Hollows, stuffing it into her mouth.
She began adjusting her Reiatsu to its peak, readying herself for what was coming.
Wayne retreated to a dead tree behind the pit and watched.
After a long while, the wail came, the Gillian’s unmistakable cry.
UWOOOOAAAHHH!
The howl tore through the forest.
Wayne didn’t move his eyes from the pit’s opening, not even as the Reiatsu-saturated roar washed over him.
Then Inola’s new, enormous form rose from the pit.
Her back was to him.
“Did it work?” Wayne murmured.
But the fully-evolved Inola didn’t turn around.
She just stood there, silent.
“Inola!” He shouted toward the pit.
No response.
Unease crept in.
He was already thinking about jumping down from the dead tree to check when Inola finally moved.
She turned slowly.
That enormous face swung toward him, and when Wayne saw the Hollow Mask, his heart dropped.
He’d seen that mask too many times.
The pointed nose.
That ugly, clown-like shape.
She had lost her consciousness in the evolution.
“Skreeonk!” A furious shriek tore from her throat.
Mindless now, Inola opened her massive jaws.
Dark-red light began pooling at her mouth, a Gillian’s signature technique.
A Cero.
And the only living thing in front of her was Wayne.
He moved the instant he felt the threat.
His body was already retreating at full speed, Shadow Step carrying him clear of the dead tree in a single flash.
The moment he was gone, the dark-red beam hit.
The muffled crack of compressed air, and the dead tree was ash.
“Damn it.” Wayne was already a hundred meters back.
He stared at the towering shape in the distance.
Leave, or do what Inola asked, kill her.
Devour her.
A second Cero was already forming at Inola’s mouth.
Same target.
Wayne turned to go, ready to leave her, leave the forest, leave all of it behind.
“A fine bird chooses its tree.
A worthy retainer chooses its lord.
My King, to become part of your Reiryoku, that is the highest honor I can imagine.
I hope you will grant me this.” Her words came back to him just as he was about to move.
He didn’t know why, but they hit harder now than they had before her evolution.
He hesitated.
The Cero came.
He sidestepped it without thinking, and stepped forward instead, closing the distance until he stood directly in front of her.
He faced the mindless Gillian.
A doll wearing Inola’s body.
His right claw stirred.
The brief silence broke.
Two Ceros wasted, the Gillian switched tactics.
One massive hand swung down at him like a falling wall.
Splat.
Skreeonk!
Wayne wasn’t sent flying.
The hand was.
It spun away through the air trailing streaks of crimson, the Gillian’s agonized shriek chasing after it.
This time, Wayne hadn’t dodged.
He’d met the incoming strike with a clean, vicious slash.
The Gillian’s blood soaked him red in an instant.
He didn’t give her time to recover.
Shadow Step fired in rapid bursts beneath his feet.
He threaded through her guard in a stream of afterimages and cut the tendons at both her ankles.
The massive body pitched forward.
Wayne was already moving on the counter.
Shadow Step snapped him to her neck.
A Shattering Slash that had been building from the moment he’d committed, silver Reiatsu blazing along the edge, came down in full.
The Gillian’s enormous head launched skyward.
Blood erupted from the stump of her neck in a torrent.
Thud.
The head landed in front of him.
The red light behind the clown mask’s eyes flickered, dimmed, and went out.
Wayne looked at Inola, what had been Inola, without any expression on his face.
A long moment passed.
Then he raised his right claw over the giant body and slashed down hard, pulling free a chunk of flesh.
He grabbed it and put it in his mouth.
Chewed.
The moment it went down, the flesh dissolved into a dense surge of Reishi and flowed into him.
He picked up the pace.
One slash, one grab, chew, move on.
Like a starving ghost that had clawed its way back from the other side, he consumed the Gillian piece by piece until nothing remained in front of him but the head.
Everything else was gone.
The severed hand.
The black cloak woven from Reishi.
He had swallowed all of it.
Every part of Inola was inside him now.
He looked at the last of her.
His right claw opened, and he cut, two strokes, one horizontal, one vertical.
The five bone blades split the massive head and its Hollow Mask into dozens of bloody chunks.
At least Hollows were made of nothing but flesh and Reishi-formed skin.
If it had been any more visceral than that, even Wayne might have hesitated.
He didn’t hesitate.
He grabbed the pieces and ate them, one by one, until there was nothing left.
The bloody scene ended only when the last of Inola was gone.
This was only the second time since he’d arrived in Hueco Mundo, after that very first kill, that Wayne had devoured a Hollow completely.
Start to finish.
But it wasn’t like that first time.
There was no nausea.
No resistance.
He had consumed Inola the way a Hollow was supposed to: with no emotion at all.
When it was done, he circulated his Reiryoku and began compressing and refining the dense Reishi he’d taken in.
Only when the last of Inola’s Reiryoku had been fully absorbed did something in his posture ease, just slightly.
He let out a long breath and looked up at the dull, ochre sky.
Something settled in his chest.
Quiet.
Absolute.
“Watch me, Inola.” He pressed one hand gently over his own chest.
“I’ll break through the Gillian ceiling.
Adjuchas.
Vasto Lorde.
Whatever comes after that.
I’ll make your sacrifice worth something.” — A few days later, Wayne left the forest he had lived in for years and set out westward, deeper into the Inner Circle.
West, specifically, because of something he’d learned during one of those long conversations with Inola and Fiselina in the days before Fiselina’s evolution, intelligence he’d filed away and never forgotten.
In the Outer Circle of Hueco Mundo, there were 3 Forests of Menos: north, center, and south.
The forest Wayne’s group had called home sat to the west of the central one.
For a Gillian, the summons could come from any of the three.
There was even a story, old, but passed around, about a conscious Gillian near the edge of the southern Forest of Menos who had received a summons from the northern one.
It had crossed nearly half of Hueco Mundo’s landmass to answer it.
That journey had taken the Gillian through countless small strongholds.
Devouring elite and advanced Hollow Beasts the whole way, it had evolved into an Adjuchas before it ever reached the Forest of Menos.
Once it arrived, it hunted the local Gillians relentlessly and became the undisputed ruler of the northern Forest of Menos.
That was several hundred years ago.
Whether that Adjuchas still lived was knowledge well beyond Inola and Fiselina’s level.
After hearing it, Wayne had immediately suggested they all three head west together and put as much distance between themselves and the Forest of Menos as possible.
More distance meant more time, and more Hollows to devour on the way, which meant a higher chance of surviving the Gillian stage.
Inola and Fiselina had turned the idea down, gently but firmly.
Their logic was sound: pushing further west might improve the odds during the Gillian stage, but the danger during the advanced Hollow stage would increase many times over.
Three people moving through unfamiliar, contested territory wasn’t the same as one.
Wayne alone was manageable.
He was fast, flexible.
Even if he couldn’t win a fight, breaking out and running was always on the table.
But moving with Inola and Fiselina in tow was a different calculation.
If the three of them got pinned down in hostile territory, their combat strength would become a liability, they would drag him down, even if they didn’t mean to.
Wayne hadn’t thought it would matter that much.
But the two of them refused to let him take that risk on their behalf, and that was the end of it.
So after consuming Inola, Wayne set out alone.
Due west, without stopping.
Every stronghold he passed through failed to slow him down.
It made sense.
Outside of flying-type Hollows, almost nothing on the ground could keep up with Shadow Step, except other Hollow Beasts with acceleration-type abilities of their own.
At this stage, Wayne’s footwork was the fastest thing moving through Hueco Mundo short of Sonído.
And if he made it to Adjuchas, when he made it, pairing Shadow Step’s straight-line drive with Sonído would push his combat ability to another level entirely.
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