(T/N: 3rd and final chapter of today!! But There is a Bonus Chapter For all of your support to my other stories!! Thank you!!)
"Even if it costs me my life, I'll carve out a path for you all to escape!"
Ashido's declaration stirred the emotions of the two Shinigami beside him.
"What kind of joke is that? There's no way we'd abandon our Captain and run!"
"If the Captain's not leaving, then neither are we!"
Even Muguruma Kensei and the others were fired up.
"We're already capable of handling Gillian—we can stay and help!"
"Yeah, we can't just sit back and watch people die..."
"Abandoning comrades goes against the Kuchiki family code."
At that moment, a shrill alarm blared from the expeditionary camp.
The emergency alert had been triggered—something that only sounded when a major threat was imminent.
The camp's spiritual shield activated instantly, a blue hemispherical barrier enveloping the entire site.
Everyone rushed out of the warehouse and quickly sensed waves of Reiatsu coming from outside the camp.
"This is bad... the Hollows are launching an assault!" Ashido's expression changed dramatically.
Shinigami from the tents gathered at once, even those afflicted by Hollow Poison, dragging their weakened bodies to the assembly point.
"Captain, the spiritual pressure detector is picking up a massive number of signals outside the camp. Over a hundred Gillian-class Menos alone! And countless lesser Hollows!"
The report from the detector plunged the camp into despair. Everyone knew that over 90% of their forces were infected with Hollow Poison and had no way to deal with such overwhelming numbers.
"Captain, take the uninfected and break out!"
"Yeah! We'll stay behind and cover your retreat!"
Those too sick to flee were determined to buy their comrades a chance to survive.
"Anyone who wants to escape, prepare yourselves. I'll create an opening. You break through it. Those who stay—let's fight to the end!" Ashido turned to the supply transport team. "Saitō-san, Katori-sensei, take the students and retreat with the others."
But just as Ashido finished speaking, something unexpected occurred.
The camp's spiritual shield flickered several times—then vanished.
Without it, the entire camp was laid bare before the incoming Hollow horde.
"What happened?! Why did the barrier get shut off?!"
Panic gripped the Shinigami.
Without the barrier, all it would take was a volley of Cero blasts to utterly destroy the camp.
At the center of the camp, where the shield's core was located, stood a wavy blonde-haired female Shinigami. Her Zanpakutō was stabbed directly into the barrier core.
It had been destroyed—by her.
"Fukushima Kyōko, what are you doing?! Why did you destroy the barrier core?!"
Ashido's eyes narrowed. He used Shunpo to instantly close the distance and slashed at her without hesitation.
But Fukushima Kyōko reacted with abnormal agility, bending her upper body backward and dodging cleanly.
She flipped backwards, hands pushing off the ground, creating distance.
"Trying to run?" she said with a voice that had become layered—two overlapping tones. "None of you are leaving!"
Ashido's expression darkened.
"You're still alive—and you've possessed someone else!"
Fukushima Kyōko had been taken over by a parasitic Hollow!
Ashido couldn't believe it. He had personally killed that Hollow—yet here it was, alive and worse, sabotaging them from within.
"Hahaha! What you destroyed was just a fragment I split off. The moment I entered your camp, I relocated my core and hid it away!"
Fukushima Kyōko's mouth stretched unnaturally wide, distorting her once-beautiful face.
Her tight, elastic skin began wrinkling—not from age, but because her flesh had detached beneath it.
A mass of white matter bulged from her mouth, expanding outward.
Floating in the air, the amorphous white substance looked bizarrely like a slime.
Once the white mass left her body, the rest of her frame collapsed like an empty sack—just a layer of skin and her Shihakushō remained.
She wasn't alone. Several other Shinigami opened their mouths, each disgorging the same white material. Their bodies too collapsed, leaving behind nothing but husks.
All of these white masses converged into one, merging into a larger entity.
The telltale mask on the growing blob confirmed it—a Hollow.
An Adjuchas.
Nanatsuki was certain: this was an Adjuchas-class Menos.
Its Reiatsu surpassed that of any Gillian.
"I went through all this effort to bury you here. None of you are getting out!" The slime-Hollow now spoke with only a low, grating male voice—Fukushima Kyōko's was gone.
Outside the camp, hulking black shadows loomed.
A sea of Gillian-class Menos—towering like mountains.
"Stay together! Don't split up! That's not the only Adjuchas out there!" Nanatsuki warned the students.
He could sense more Adjuchas beyond the camp perimeter—ones that were leading the Hollow horde from outside.
"Captain Ashido, looks like we won't be escaping unless we deal with these things first." Nanatsuki Shunpo'd to Ashido's side, drew his Zanpakutō, and flipped it.
"Bankai—Shosō Eijin!"
His Zanpakutō melted into an inky shadow and seeped into the ground.
The black shadow spread at an eye-blurring speed across the terrain.
In moments, the entire camp—the Shinigami, the Adjuchas, and the Hollows outside—were all engulfed in the Shadow Space.
"You have Bankai?!" Ashido was stunned. It felt like he'd suddenly time-traveled 200 years into the future.
To him, Katori Nanatsuki was a skilled teacher—nothing more. Far from a top-tier combatant.
But now, Nanatsuki had shattered all of his assumptions.
He was captain-level.
Ashido's heart eased. With a captain-level fighter on their side, the Hollow plan might not succeed after all.
The release was like a shot of adrenaline to everyone.
"That's insane Reiatsu—it's captain-level!"
"He has Bankai! We might make it out!"
"The transport team sent a captain? The Soul King must've heard our prayers!"
"You moron. That's not a captain—that's a teacher from the Shin'o Academy!"
"I've only been in Hueco Mundo for a couple years, but has the Academy changed this much? Their students get taught by captains now?! I'm so jealous..."
Saitō Akane stared in disbelief at the pitch-black space.
Now she understood how Nanatsuki had effortlessly killed a Gillian.
Because he was a captain-level Shinigami.
Even the Hollows were thrown into disarray. They hadn't accounted for this.
They thought the expedition was helpless prey—now the tables had turned.
Suddenly—
A thunderous roar echoed from outside the camp.
An Adjuchas-class Menos was bellowing—the signal to attack.
The surrounding Gillian-class Hollows opened their enormous mouths. Dozens of massive red lights began forming—Cero attacks.
"Numbers mean nothing here. In my Shadow Space... all shadows belong to me." Nanatsuki raised his right hand and closed it into a fist.
The space surged like a tsunami.
From the black ground, hundreds of enormous shadows surged upward—each one belonging to a Gillian.
The shadows wrapped around their owners' heads and necks, wrenching their masks toward the sky.
A moment later, hundreds of Cero blasts fired upward simultaneously.
In the sky, the beams merged into a single, devastating explosion.
BOOM!!!
The resulting shockwave obliterated countless stone columns. Even the desert layer above the Forest of Menos was affected.
Elsewhere in the Hueco Mundo desert—
Three Hollows were discussing their next move.
"We've plateaued. No more growth if we stay here," said a tall, thin Hollow. His mask resembled a termite's skull, with flat horns on his brow and chin.
"Yeah, we need to head to the Forest of Menos. More chances to evolve down there!" said the one with the oversized head.
"But..." said the antelope-like Hollow. "I heard that once you evolve into a Gillian, there's a high chance of losing your identity. And evolving into an Adjuchas is really hard."
Despite her skeletal antelope mask and hybrid human body, her voice was unexpectedly sweet and clear.
Just then, the ground shook violently. Sand dunes rolled like ocean waves.
They were flung upward like paper boats in a storm.
BOOM!!!
A pillar of red light erupted from underground, blasting away a huge swath of dunes and piercing the sky.
Moments later, the light faded—but the lingering Reiatsu was suffocating.
The three Hollows crawled out of the sand, coughing.
"What the hell was that?!" spat Big-Head.
"That was a Cero! Fired from within the Forest!" said Skinny.
Antelope walked forward several steps and spotted a massive black crater—a scar left by the blast.
The pit was pitch-black inside.
She shivered. She could feel a terrifying presence within the darkness.
"This doesn't feel like a Hollow's Reiatsu. Could it be... a Shinigami?" she asked.
"Maybe we... shouldn't go to the Forest after all," Skinny stammered.
"Yeah! That place is insane!" Big-Head cried.
"We'll be dead in minutes down there," said Skinny. "Staying in the desert suddenly sounds great."
"Let's get out of here. This whole area feels dangerous." Antelope turned away. That explosion?
She was sure it was caused by a fight between true monsters.
The three Hollows fled.
Inside the crater—
Nanatsuki lowered his gaze from the sky and swallowed a Reiatsu-Converging Pill.
Controlling the shadows of hundreds of Gillian-class Menos consumed immense Reiatsu. Thankfully, he had plenty to spare.
Outside the camp, the number of Hollows had halved.
He'd deliberately redirected their Cero upward—to avoid collateral damage.
Had those Cero blasts gone off overhead, he could've dodged using shadows, but the others wouldn't have survived.
"That many Menos firing Cero at once... that's rare," Ashido muttered, still shaken.
Without the barrier, he would've been helpless. If Nanatsuki hadn't been here, hardly anyone would be left.
"The Adjuchas outside was blown apart by the Cero. The rest are yours to clean up. This slime one's mine," Nanatsuki said.
The slime-like Adjuchas had just broken free from the shadows.
Nanatsuki had caught it too when twisting the Cero's direction, but its Reiatsu was strong—it wouldn't stay bound for long.
"Be careful. Even the pieces it split off were at seated officer strength. The core body is likely even stronger," Ashido nodded and led the others out to clear the remaining Hollows. Muguruma Kensei and the rest followed.