~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday!
Thanks!
“Lord Wayne, the forest ahead has a radius of roughly seven thousand meters.
What do you think?” About two months had passed.
Wayne and Nel stood on a hillside overlooking the treeline below.
Over those two months, Wayne had led Nel steadily westward.
Along the way they had encountered no shortage of territories, but none had satisfied him.
The gatherings were either too small, or packed with too many high-ranking Hollows, making them far more trouble than they were worth.
It wasn’t that Wayne feared them.
The problem was Nel.
She had only just advanced to High Hollow, and if they charged into a forest swarming with High Hollows, he’d have no way to watch over her.
That was why he’d passed on several hunting grounds that were otherwise rich with prey.
The forest in front of them wasn’t especially large, but it was exactly the right size for the two of them.
Not long ago, a Menos Grande that had ascended to Gillian had wandered out of it, which meant a tremendous battle had surely torn through the interior before that happened.
Right now, the forest should be depleted and vulnerable.
Wayne and Nel could move in while the window was open.
That Menos Grande had also become food for both of them, of course.
Its enormous carcass had given Nel everything she needed to step smoothly into the ranks of the High Hollows.
“This is the place.” Wayne probed the Reiatsu inside the forest and found nothing powerful enough to warrant his attention.
Decision made.
He’d set up here.
He’d been traveling west for quite some time now.
It was past time he found a forest to complete his own advancement.
“Let’s go.
We’re taking this forest.” Wayne gave Nel a light pat on the back and signaled her to follow.
He wasn’t riding her.
Whenever a fight was coming, Wayne always walked side by side with Nel, partly so he could tell her what he’d be doing during the battle, and partly because he needed to pass knowledge along to her.
Combat, tactics, strategy, even basic survival.
All of it.
After two months of working together, Nel, who had only recently been born into Hueco Mundo, had gradually grown comfortable with the nature of fighting.
But her distaste for killing hadn’t changed much.
When it was time to hunt, she would accept his orders and go forward.
Outside of instant kills and necessary slayings, though, Nel would always wear the enemy down to a certain point and then step back, letting Wayne deliver the finishing blow.
Faced with that habit, Wayne felt utterly powerless.
Nel’s Absorption ability let her pull in far more Reishi from Hueco Mundo’s sands than a normal Hollow could manage.
The amount she extracted from the environment at any given moment wasn’t huge, but it never stopped.
Not for a single second.
That was probably why, when Wayne had first encountered Grimmjow and then Nel shortly after, Nel had actually been the weaker of the two.
It was likely through that unique ability of hers that she had continuously accumulated Reiatsu over time and eventually become a Vasto Lorde-class Menos Grande.
Of course, hunting and feeding were still essential.
Relying purely on gathering Reishi from the atmosphere would be nowhere near enough for Nel to grow.
At the forest’s edge, the two of them looked up at the towering trees, dozens of meters tall, and couldn’t help but smile.
This was a good place to make a home.
And in a dense forest like this, Wayne could make full use of his trap-laying advantage.
The only problem was that with just the two of them, setting traps would take a considerable amount of time.
Thinking it over, though, he decided it wasn’t really necessary anymore.
Below Gillian level, Wayne was effectively unbeatable.
Even if dozens of High Hollows surrounded him, if he couldn’t beat them, he could run.
And the Reiatsu from dozens of High Hollows was something Wayne could sense from far away, so how would he ever end up surrounded in the first place?
“Lord Wayne, are we just walking straight in?” Nel asked as they moved toward the interior.
“Yeah, just walk right in.” Wayne’s tone was easy.
“If we run into other Hollows, kill them.” “Understood.” Nel fell quiet and followed him toward the depths of the forest.
“HISSSS!” They’d barely gone any distance when a Humanoid Hollow stepped into their path.
It was roaring, snarling, making a show of dominance.
Wayne gave it one glance and looked away, because the moment it had appeared, Nel was already raising her Reiatsu and charging straight at it.
“Super Acceleration!” One of the Reiryoku techniques she’d gained when she advanced to High Hollow.
Her body became a streak of green light, and in the blink of an eye she was directly in front of the Hollow.
She drove her Antelope Horns into it and sent it smashing through the air.
The dull crack of shattering bone broke the silence.
One hit.
Nel had already won.
She stepped up to the Humanoid Hollow, pelvis completely shattered, and without a moment’s hesitation tore its Hollow Mask apart with her teeth.
Then she turned and walked back to Wayne, holding the mask out to him.
“A fine strike.” Wayne took it and turned it over in his hand.
“After sensing the enemy’s Reiatsu, you assessed what damage a single hit could do, then launched a surprise attack.
You used your initial speed to make them think they had your measure — and then you activated Super Acceleration to shatter that assumption.
Completely off guard.
Fatal blow.
Nel, that was clean.” He reached out and patted her on the head.
“…” Nel never responded to his praise with words.
But the way her fluffy tail was wagging behind her said everything.
Without lingering, she turned and walked back to the Humanoid Hollow.
This was something she did without fail after every battle, using her Absorption ability to draw in every last trace of Reishi the body was releasing.
Wayne, meanwhile, was snapping pieces off the freshly obtained Hollow Mask and tossing them into his mouth one by one like snacks.
His mind was already elsewhere.
Going by what Inola had said before, the Reiryoku he’d accumulated over all this time should be approaching saturation.
Even if he compressed it with everything he had, there was at most about one-fifth of his capacity left to fill.
Once that was gone, advancement would come right on schedule.
So when it did, what happened to Nel?
Once Wayne advanced to Gillian, even if he managed to retain his consciousness, he would inevitably be pulled by the call of the Forest of Menos and be forced to leave.
Nel would be on her own.
Even with her Vasto Lorde potential, Hueco Mundo was far too vast.
In the endless night of the inner realm, finding her again would be nearly impossible.
Unless Aizen came to Hueco Mundo and gathered the top-tier Menos Grande himself.
But by then, everything would already be too late.
Maybe I should have Nel advance first.
She has Vasto Lorde potential, when she hits Gillian, she should be able to hold onto her consciousness.
Wayne watched Nel finish her meal not far away, stretching out her body in the dim light.
“Lord Wayne, shall we keep moving?” She had felt him watching and came forward to ask.
“Yeah, let’s go.” Wayne reached out and stroked her Antelope Horns.
“Nel, for the next stretch of time, I need you to grow fast.
So from here on out — when we encounter enemies, I’m ordering you to stop holding back.” “Hm?” She was a little puzzled, but she asked anyway, because unnecessary killing was something Nel genuinely didn’t like.
“Lord Wayne — are we in a hurry?” “Yeah, more or less.” Wayne nodded.
“Gillian is an extremely dangerous stage.
I’m already very close to advancing.
If the gap between when we each advance isn’t too wide, then maybe after we both become Gillians, we can still look out for each other.” “Look out for each other?” Nel turned those words over in her mind.
They didn’t belong in a Hollow’s mouth.
Devouring each other, that would have been the more fitting phrase for their kind.
But for some reason, hearing it from Wayne gave her a different feeling entirely.
“Understood, Lord Wayne.” The forest’s actual strength was close to what Wayne had expected.
The Gillian’s birth had stripped it of its peak-level presence, and what remained were only a handful of high-ranking High Hollows.
No threat to Wayne whatsoever.
They were destined to be nothing more than side dishes.
A few of them approached and offered to cooperate.
Wayne turned them all down.
He hadn’t heard of a single one of their names.
Inconsequential characters, every one of them, nothing to hold his attention.
After refusing, he didn’t cut them down; he gave them the chance to leave.
The rest of the Hollows, most of them, became training dummies for Nel’s combat practice.
Only the slightly stronger ones warranted Wayne stepping in personally.
And so the days passed.
Their standing inside the forest climbed higher and higher.
“Nel, how was the harvest today?” At the end of one day’s hunting, Wayne was lounging on a stone he’d carved himself, shaped something like a reclining chair, tucked into a sheltered spot out of the wind, lazily watching Nel return.
“Three High Hollows, sixteen Elite Hollows.
And some lower-ranked Hollow Beasts.” Nel shook herself off and settled down at his side.
“But I already ate all of it.
Nothing left for Lord Wayne.” A smile in her voice.
After this much time together, Nel had come to enjoy hunting alongside Wayne far more than she had ever enjoyed it with Kardes.
With Kardes, she’d had to keep her nerves strung tight at all times, enemies in front, and always the need to watch her back.
With Wayne, that worry simply didn’t exist.
She knew the gap in Reiatsu between them was immense.
So vast that if Wayne ever decided to move against her, she wouldn’t even have the chance to run.
At first that had terrified her, and she had tried to escape.
But somewhere along the way, Nel had watched Wayne cut down a Gillian in seven or eight exchanges.
After that, she’d changed her mind.
A Wayne with that level of strength had no reason to bother killing her.
What he wanted by keeping her close, Nel figured, was her healing and Absorption abilities.
Whether there were other reasons, she had no way of knowing.
But at the very least, the ease she felt with Wayne right now, that was something she had never felt before.
“Hey…
that’s pretty cold.” Wayne spread his hands, unbothered.
This kind of exchange had long since become their usual banter.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll eat you?” The double meaning slipped out before he’d thought about it, old habits from a life spent as a human.
But the moment the words left his mouth, Wayne let out an awkward, pained smile.
He was a Hollow right now.
Given the body he was in, he truly could only eat Nel.
Not “eat” Nel.
There was a difference.
But Nel didn’t seem to catch it.
She took his words at pure face value, and without a trace of fear, she pushed her head toward him and nuzzled against his hand.
As if to say: go on then.
Eat me if you’re going to.
“You little brat!” Wayne lightly bopped her on the head, then ran his hand over the Antelope Horns at the top of it.
These quiet, easy moments made him feel like he’d found something human again.
“Get some rest.
I’ll go find something to eat.
Tomorrow you need to bring in even more prey — make sure you digest what you’ve already got.” “Yes, Lord Wayne.” Nel nodded.
But immediately after, she voiced the question she’d been sitting on.
“Lord Wayne — why do we have to be in such a hurry to advance?” ➤ Next: Encountering the Enemy [FULL STORY ACCESS] Unlock (100+ Chapters) ahead of the public release!