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Chapter - 21: Red and Blue
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I'm faster than I thought.I only realized it when I noticed how little time it had taken to reach the spot where I could sense multiple Hollow reiatsu.
I wasn't entirely sure how much the combination of my wings with Bringer Light affected things, but ever since I arrived in this dimension, I had been absorbing Reishi at a steady pace.
It seemed that the absorption capacity of my wings was much higher than I had initially thought, and of that I was now certain.
Hueco Mundo was saturated with Reishi. It was a reality that allowed even the weaker Hollows to survive by converting ambient energy into Reiryoku.
"There you are." I smiled upon arrival, letting the green light of Bringer Light keep me suspended in the air. I stopped with a slight sway, remaining mid-air right above my target.
Below me, they moved in circles. Gigantic creatures, made of ink and shadow. Their bodies looked like tents swaying from an invisible wind, colossal and black, and from those shadowy masses rose bone-white heads, hundreds of meters tall.
As disturbing as they were, their gazes were completely empty. They showed no trace of emotion or awareness. All identical. Same white masks, long pointed noses.
The Hollows of Hueco Mundo were different. Quieter, deadlier… and yet, in a way, more stable. They didn't need to devour souls to survive.
Not like the ones that infested the world of the living.
"There are fewer than I expected," I murmured, scanning the area carefully. "Not even a hundred."I watched them one by one, letting my spiritual perception dig deeper.
They weren't weak, actually. Except for that one more intense and stable reiatsu I sensed a little further ahead, inside a vast underground structure, these were the strongest Gillian I had ever faced.
But even so, they weren't a real challenge.
Not for me.
At best, they were two or three times stronger than the Hollow I had hunted in Karakura Town.Which didn't say much about their real threat to me.
That said...
My wings spread open behind me, vibrating slightly like membranes of pure energy. They didn't change form, but along their edges, their Reishi structure reorganized, concentrating toward the tips.
Beyond just two flight appendages, there were now two compact cannons embedded in the core of the wings themselves. The design was elegant, precise, not too bulky, but deadly.
The barrels of the cannons were perfectly integrated, coated in dense, compact Reishi, with glowing lines pulsing within them, ready to unleash power.
Every movement I made charged the flow of energy. Reiryoku flowed through the wings, concentrating in those strategic points, compressed and ready to explode.
Then—with a single thought.
Two blasts of pure energy tore through the air in an instant. The beams struck the Gillian without any warning, piercing sand and air with lethal precision.
The sky trembled slightly, and all that remained was the dull sound of the ground being torn apart by their impact. The sand rose in clouds as the silent waves of energy spread across Hueco Mundo.
The atmosphere trembled from the force I had just released. Columns of white sand rose into the air, like silent explosions marking the passage of energy.
I had held back—just for a moment.
I didn't want to eliminate them all immediately.
In a flash, I launched forward with Bringer Light, leaving behind only a trail of green light. My right arm—the demonic one—tensed on impact as my fist struck full force against the white mask of a Hollow.
The blow made the air vibrate and the Gillian shrieked, a cavernous and desperate cry, staggering backward—and with a sharp kick, I finished it quickly, not wanting to waste unnecessary time.
Its massive body collapsed to the ground like a toppled tower. The sand rose in violent waves as I landed on top of it, sliding along its back until I stopped at its feet.
I looked up, and the others didn't seem to have any intention of attacking me, even though I had just killed many of their own. They moved like automatons, bumping into each other without any clear purpose—then again, silence.
They were guided only by instinct. "Well, that makes things easier for me to try something I had in mind," I murmured to myself.
Up to that moment, I had given almost all my attention to my wings—to the way they absorbed the Reishi of Hueco Mundo so naturally.
But I was overlooking something. My Hollow arm was just as much a part of my Fullbring as the wings. It wasn't just a supplementary tool of little value.
And if the wings could feed off the spiritual energy of the environment… why couldn't the arm do the same?
The body of the Gillian beneath me began to crumble, disintegrating into glowing sand. I bent down, slowly extending the Hollow arm toward that dust of pure energy.
And I felt the flow.
Pure Reiryoku poured into the arm, absorbed like water in a desert. It was warm, powerful, it vibrated like electricity beneath the skin.
I didn't stop. I couldn't.
I smiled, letting that new power blend with my own. I could feel every aspect of my body leveling up: my reflexes, my endurance, my raw power. Everything
I felt reborn.
"With this new method, I should be getting closer to at least the level of a Captain, right?" I thought, clenching and unclenching my fist.
Yet something inside me told me I had already surpassed that level. "It would be much easier if I had better reference points," I thought. But for now, it didn't matter.
I wasn't done yet.
I looked up at the remaining group of Gillian, huddled together like massive, confused shadows. My smile grew wider, knowing this was too good an opportunity to let slip away.
I took a step forward, ready to dart toward them with the Bringer Light, but something shifted inside me, an impulse. I stopped. I raised my arm, palm facing the group.
A hum began to vibrate in my ears, and instinctively, a crimson sphere took shape at my fingertip, surrounded by a glowing red halo. An enormous energy beam thundered through the air, burning forward with a vibrating hiss.
More than ten Gillian collapsed to the ground, their chests pierced with smoking holes. "…A Cero?" My smile exploded, wide, euphoric, impossible to contain.
I had actually done it.
I had fired a Cero. And it felt so natural, so much like it was mine.
But there was no time to celebrate. The other beasts clearly reacted to seeing how much their group had diminished; they were no longer standing still.
Guttural screams erupted from their throats, and each of them charged up their own Cero, pale red lights forming in their jaws as a warning.
A combined attack.
A collective instinct to take down a threat.
And yet, I didn't stop smiling.
I raised my palm once more. "Alright," I said. "Let's play." The red light flared again, brighter than before, and once more, my Cero erupted, just as they unleashed theirs.
A rain of ten converging Cero, all fused into a single crimson wave, roared toward me.
But it was pointless.
My spiritual energy was superior. The two beams collided, the air vibrating and whistling with the energy at play. But my Cero overwhelmed them, surpassed them.
And shattered them.
In just a few seconds, it was all over.
The explosion engulfed them. Their massive bodies were torn apart, crashing to the ground one by one like sand dolls.
All dead.
All, except me.
I watched the smoking remains of the Gillian scattered across the sand, the spectral light of Hueco Mundo reflecting in the columns of Reiryoku floating from their broken bodies.
My breath was calm, controlled. Yet I could feel my heart pounding in my chest. Not from exhaustion… but from exhilaration. I took a step forward, and the particles of spiritual energy lifted into the air, light, almost docile, as if they already knew who they belonged to.
I raised my Hollow arm. The bone-white skin was veined with light, and as I focused, I felt a tingling run through it.
It wasn't just absorbing. It was reacting. Changing.
The Reiryoku came in like a flood. Every particle seemed to seek my arm, merge with it, rewrite it in a way I couldn't quite explain.
I watched as it changed.
The blue began to darken, first into a deep gray, then into a metallic black that seemed to pulse like living metal. A near-liquid reflection ran along the lines of the arm, like a natural Hollow armor, sharp and defined.
I raised it in front of me. My fingers curled slowly, and the fist closed. I felt the power. More defined, as if every fiber was now optimized for fighting, absorbing, and destroying.
"Interesting," I whispered, as the Reiryoku from the other Gillian still floated toward me, drawn to the mere presence of that arm—no longer needing to even touch them.
"A part of me…" I said, clenching my fist, "…is starting to understand why the Hollows choose to devour each other."
I didn't stay long.
I had absorbed enough for now, and though the euphoria urged me to keep going, I knew it was better not to get too arrogant, considering I wasn't even supposed to be here in the first place.
Hueco Mundo was vast, and as I'd learned quickly, there wasn't a real center, only edges. And I had no intention of crossing paths with people like Ulquiorra, Nnoitra, or worse still…
Aizen himself.
No.
I needed to stay on the fringes. Keep moving. And so, I flew low, skimming the white dunes. The gray, static sky was always the same, timeless, directionless.
But here and there, rocky formations split the ground into canyons and caves. Places where the power was more subtle, less "dominated." Perfect for me to experiment and avoid last-minute battles with any Arrancar.
It was there I heard the voices.
They weren't far.
They were rough, harsh, full of mockery.
I approached on foot, my steps light on the silent ground, until I peeked around a jutting rock. The sight before me was truly pathetic on so many levels that I couldn't find the right words to comment.
A group of at least four Adjuchas, with clearly animalistic forms, was laughing raucously. The most imposing one, a creature resembling a monkey with oxidized fur and huge shoulders, was pressing a foot hard against the back of an injured Hollow.
Next to her, another Hollow was desperately trying to help, but with little success. It didn't take much to guess that the two downed Hollows were deeply connected: they were twins.
They shared the same avian form—slender bodies, iridescent feathers, one in blue and the other in red—and similar masks, shaped like long, curved beaks.
Honestly, they gave me a sense of familiarity, but with their current form, I couldn't quite figure out who they were. But it was likely they were some minor characters, not very important.
One of them, the red one, was lying on the ground, trembling. The other, the blue one, had placed himself across, trying to shield him with her torn wings, desperate like someone who didn't want to lose a family member.
"Aw, look how cute," the monkey sneered, pressing harder. A muffled groan came from the red Hollow.
"You want to protect him, huh? There's only one fate awaiting you. Stop resisting and become part of a bigger Adjuchas like me." One of the others, who appeared to be some kind of skeletal spider, laughed while charging a red energy shot between its fangs.
They were going to finish them off. For sport. For boredom.
In this world, there were hollows whose insatiable hunger couldn't be satisfied by mere Reishi or human souls. This macabre act of predation had driven their evolution.
The Gillian and Adjuchas existed in a perpetual state of predation, each driven by the desire for evolution. This relentless cycle of devouring and being devoured was the unspoken law that governed Hueco Mundo, where the weak were inevitably consumed by the strong.
The weak become part of the strong.
But that image—the way the blue twin had shielded the red twin until death—reminded me of something truly painful that I never wanted to feel again in my life.
That's why I burst out from behind the rock with an explosion of green light under my feet. None of them noticed me, not at first. Not until I landed with enough force to make the sand tremble beneath their paws.
"...What the—?!" The spider looked up too late.
I struck it with a sharp punch to the face, my Hollow arm still smoking with residual Reiryoku. I shattered its mask in half before its body flew away like an empty sack.
"Who the hell are you?!" roared the monkey, pulling its foot off the injured twin. I didn't answer right away. I turned to the two Hollows. The blue one stared at me, incredulous.
The red one, beneath her, trembled.
"Can you move?" I asked, not taking my eyes off the monkey. The blue one nodded, hesitantly, and dragged the other one away, taking advantage of the space I'd just created.
"Who the hell do you think you are?" growled another Adjuchas, a slithering being resembling a centipede, its jaws wide and dripping.
"It doesn't matter." I stared at him, wings spread, the two small cannons on my sides still warm. "You're about to die and be devoured."
The centipede charged. It was fast.
But I was faster.
I appeared in front of it with another Bringer Light and raised my right hand. A low, vibrating sound began to grow. Brilliant red formed in my palm. "Wait, what is th—"
"Cero." The beam erupted and consumed it completely, erasing it in an instant. Its scream was brief, muffled by the energy itself.
"You... bastard!" The monkey charged at me with its hands wrapped in Reiryoku, trying to hit me with brute force. I blocked the strike with my forearm and stared into its eyes.
"You liked crushing those weaker than you, huh?" I snarled, before driving my knee straight into its stomach.
I felt its ribs crack under the impact. The bastard lifted off the ground like an empty sack, and before it could fall, I grabbed it by the face with my right hand.
I stared into its eyes, my fingers sinking into the edges of its mask. I could easily crush it. "This…" I whispered, tightening my grip, "This is the end for pieces of shit like you."
Then I slammed it into the ground with all my strength. The white surface exploded in a spiderweb of cracks, sand and dust flying up like shockwaves.
Not that it was necessary.
Its mask shattered like glass. Its body dissolved soon after, vanishing into the sand without a sound. I stood there for a moment, watching the last sparks fade into the air, as my arm eagerly absorbed every fragment, as if it were thirsty.
Then I turned.
The two small Hollows were still there—avian-shaped, their feathers disheveled and iridescent, but their eyes alive.
The blue twin had stepped in front of the red one, trembling but determined, her wings spread like a shield.
When she saw me, she swallowed hard, but didn't move. Her eyes locked onto mine—full of confusion, fear… and something else. Hope?
"…Why?" she finally asked. Her voice trembled, but there was a sincere, almost desperate note in it. "Why did you save us? No one does that here. Ever."
I lowered my gaze to my arm. The veins still glowed, pulsing rhythmically as if they were breathing. The Reiryoku I had absorbed was still flowing inside me, but it was beginning to harmonize.
I didn't answer right away. Part of me wanted to tell the truth—that maybe I helped them because I saw myself in them. Two small Hollows brought to their knees just because they were weaker.
But the words didn't come.
"I didn't do it for you," I lied, my voice flat. "But if you really want to repay what happened… Then just survive. And get stronger."
The blue twin flinched.
The red one, still lying on the ground, looked at her with weak but awake eyes, and I could clearly sense her gratitude.
I turned.
I spread my wings and took off, leaving the scene behind without another word. Then I raised my Hollow arm and ran my fingers through the empty space before me.
Reality twisted. It tore. A new garganta opened, a pitch-black abyss yawning before me like an invitation.
I didn't waste any time.
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Marvel: I'm Spider-Man in this Damn Reincarnation: 1 advanced chapters
Hybrid Man (Ichigo Si/WC Fic) 1 advanced chapters
Son of Li Qiye?: 2 advanced chapters
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Chapter- 16: Shocker - Chapter- 17 (Incoming)
Chapter- 22: Interlude - My Greatest Creation
Chapter - 8: New Hunt - Chapter - 9: Past unknown
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