Over the next two days, Ace Wayne carefully surveyed the outer perimeter of the forest and gained a rough sense of what lay beyond its borders.
The forest’s territory wasn’t large — a radius of roughly a few kilometers at most.
In the underground layer of Hueco Mundo, patches of terrain like this were as common as weeds, and vast numbers of lower-ranked Hollows made their dens within them.
That the survey took two full days had nothing to do with how fast Wayne moved.
It was because within several hundred meters of the tree line, he had barely spotted a single Hollow he considered weak.
Every one he encountered was large enough to put him in serious danger.
Even so, those Hollows had already pushed into the forest’s interior and hadn’t detected him.
During those same two days, he watched roughly a dozen strangely-shaped Hollows file into the forest one by one.
Some hadn’t even reached the trees before they started fighting each other.
Wayne hadn’t dared try picking off stragglers.
His top priority right now was to gauge his own strength, not scavenge for easy kills.
Judging by what he’d seen, he suspected he’d been overly optimistic about himself.
He had arrived in this world with no golden finger, no system, no cheat code, nothing but a raw, instinctive drive to survive.
That fact alone led him to suspect he was very likely among the weakest Hollows currently in Hueco Mundo.
After one more day of circling, he finally spotted his target in a stretch of ruins.
A lizard-shaped Hollow, perched on a dead tree.
Wayne held his patience and lay in wait nearby for a long while.
Through careful observation, he concluded it was nothing more than a common feral beast, not a trace of intelligence, running purely on animal instinct.
The thing was close to a meter long.
That size is what made him decide to move.
After confirming no other Hollows were in the area, he began closing in from behind, slow and low.
“If it’s just something like this…
should be fine, right?” One step.
Two steps.
He kept his body low and crept forward.
When he was only a few paces away, the lizard Hollow suddenly turned its head.
A faint pulse of Reiatsu surged toward him.
The sudden burst made Wayne’s body lock up for just an instant, and then he lunged.
From that single exchange, he immediately judged that this lizard’s spiritual power was weaker than his own.
He didn’t hesitate.
A quick half-step closed the distance to the lizard Hollow’s side.
He raised his left hand and drove his fist down.
Then the lizard Hollow opened its mouth.
A stream of black liquid mixed with faint Reiatsu came shooting straight at him.
Wayne wasn’t rattled.
Not in a humanoid body.
He pushed off the ground, twisted left, and sidestepped the stream.
In the same motion he pivoted on his left foot, spun a full rotation, and raked the bladed claws of his right hand down across the lizard Hollow in a savage slash.
THUD!
The lizard Hollow and the dead tree beneath it split into five pieces simultaneously.
The section still attached to the head toppled to the ground and writhed, crimson liquid spattering across the sand.
About thirty seconds later, every piece went still.
“Hah…” Wayne let out a long breath.
“Didn’t think even the lowest-ranked Hollows would know how to use attack techniques.” He looked back at the black liquid that had grazed past him.
It had landed on the silver-white sand and was hissing, eating into it with a corrosive sizzle.
He dipped a claw into it, just to test.
Where claw met liquid, white smoke immediately curled upward.
Wayne scraped his claw across the sand to wipe it clean, shook out his hand, and walked over to the corpse to examine it.
“According to the anime, when a Hollow is killed by a Soul Reaper’s Zanpakuto, the body instantly breaks down into Reishi and vanishes.
But looking at this now, it seems that when a Hollow is killed by one of its own kind, the body doesn’t disappear right away.
Could it be a property unique to the Zanpakuto?” Still turning it over, he reached down and picked up the portion of the corpse still connected to the Hollow Mask.
He swallowed hard.
Stared at it with a furrowed brow.
He didn’t move to eat it.
Over the days of scouting, Wayne hadn’t eaten a single thing.
As a Hollow, they all required enormous amounts of energy to sustain the spiritual power burning inside them.
That energy could be drawn from human souls, or obtained by devouring living beings that possessed spiritual power, Soul Reapers, for instance.
Or their own kind.
Even so, after days without taking in anything, standing here with half a lizard carcass still dripping unidentified red liquid, he just couldn’t bring himself to put it in his mouth.
The seconds ticked by.
Wayne stood there gripping the half-carcass, zoning out.
The other four sections on the ground had already begun dissolving into Reishi, fading piece by piece into the air.
Only the portion still connected to the Hollow Mask remained.
“Fine.
If I can’t keep it down, I’ll just throw it back up.” He clicked his tongue.
Opened his mouth.
Bit down.
Hisss…
Unexpectedly, he didn’t have to tear through anything.
The chunk came away clean, almost no effort at all.
Maybe it was because a Hollow’s protective Reiatsu dispersed once it died.
Or maybe enough time had passed that the body’s spiritual energy had already begun converting back into Reishi.
Either way, the bite was effortless.
The meat didn’t need chewing.
The moment it entered his mouth it dissolved into liquid energy and flowed inward, a warm current spreading slowly to every corner of his body.
Almost no flavor.
Just warmth.
Then he thought about what he was actually eating, and the texture in his mouth sent a wave of revulsion through him anyway.
But for the sake of getting stronger, he had no choice.
He forced it down, pushing through the nausea.
At least Bear Grylls had set a precedent, tastes like chicken, goes down crispy.
He stopped thinking and started eating.
Tore through the flesh quickly, feeling considerably warmer by the end.
Finally, only the lizard’s head and its Hollow Mask remained.
The moment Wayne pulled the mask free, the head rapidly dissolved into Reishi and vanished.
All that was left was a pale, hollow white mask.
And only then did he remember, a Hollow’s spiritual power was largely concentrated in the mask.
Even if you devoured the entire body, the residual power there might not amount to a fifth of what the mask held.
The mindless Hollows, operating on pure instinct — waste nothing, take everything — would devour their enemies whole.
Wayne, for all his intelligence, didn’t overthink it.
He opened his mouth and bit down.
The mask dissolved the instant it touched his tongue.
A dense, rich surge of Reishi poured into him.
The warmth of it, deep and flooding and completely unlike anything the flesh had given him, nearly made him cry out.
Right then, Wayne made a firm decision.
Unless circumstances left him absolutely no choice, he was never taking another bite of a Hollow’s flesh again.
➤ Next: Tier Suppression