"I'm alive..."
"A Shinigami's ability is so useful..."
"Thank you, Lord Katori!"
Under Sora's treatment, the injuries of the animal Hollow trio quickly healed.
The reverence in their eyes deepened.
The Vasto Lorde that even Harribel couldn't defeat was killed with a single kick by this Shinigami!
They couldn't help but feel envious. To think Harribel's professor was such a powerful fighter!
After healing Harribel and the trio, the group prepared to leave.
Nelliel and Harribel needed to find a place with a high concentration of spiritual particles that was relatively peaceful to train.
"The Red Shark King's territory is a good place. That area is a high-reishi land," Nelliel took out the map Yoruichi had given her, searching for a suitable location.
The map also recorded the general spiritual particle concentrations, with some areas of relatively high or low concentration marked.
"The Red Shark King was a Vasto Lorde, so he had the strength to occupy a good piece of land," Sora glanced at the map. The reishi concentration in the Red Shark King's territory was very close to that of Las Noches; there was no place with a higher concentration nearby. It was a very suitable place for Nelliel and Harribel to train.
"It's unclaimed land now, perfect for you."
"Let's go there!"
The group set off for the Red Shark King's territory.
The landscape of Hueco Mundo was mainly desert and gobi, but it wasn't limited to just that.
The Red Shark King's territory was a barren mountain.
They looked up at the peak, where a faint white smoke was rising, making it look like an active volcano.
"Is that a volcano? The reishi concentration over there is so high!"
Nelliel said, puzzled.
"The Forest of Menos is below us. Where would a volcano come from?"
Sora chuckled lightly.
"I'm going to the top to see."
Nelliel was curious and flew to the crater's edge to check.
"It's not lava inside, it's not a volcano!"
Nelliel shouted loudly.
The others followed her up.
Sora looked inside and saw a lake in the crater.
The lake was emitting steam. The faint white smoke they had seen from outside was coming from it.
The spiritual particle concentration in this area was very high, and many small animal-like Hollows lived here.
When the Red Shark King was here, these small Hollows were his food reserves, so he hadn't destroyed the local ecosystem.
"The environment here is great!" Nelliel's eyes lit up, very satisfied with the place. "Little Harri, let's stay here!"
"It is indeed a good place..." Harribel also liked it here. She had wandered Hueco Mundo for a long time and had been to many places, but none could compare to this.
"Why is the water here steaming?"
Sora felt something was strange and reached out to feel the water temperature.
The water was quite warm, about sixty or seventy degrees Celsius.
"It's so comfortable! Is this a hot spring?"
Nelliel also put her hand in. With a Hollow's spiritual body, this temperature did not feel very hot to her.
"Water doesn't get hot for no reason."
A hint of inquiry appeared in Sora's eyes.
He extended his spiritual sense downwards, carefully perceiving the situation beneath the water.
"I don't sense anything..." Sora only sensed some small animal-like Hollows in the surface layer.
Further down, his perception became inaccurate. The high concentration of spiritual particles in the lake caused significant interference.
"I'm going down to take a look."
Sora's interest was piqued. He planned to go down and investigate the reason for the high water temperature.
"I'll go too!" Seeing her professor go in, Nelliel quickly followed.
Seeing this, Harribel and the others also jumped into the water.
After entering the water, a faint sense of pleasure rose in Harribel's heart.
Her Hollow form was that of a humanoid shark. The water environment made her feel a sense of familiarity. Unfortunately, such environments were rare and hard to come by in Hueco Mundo.
Sora's descent disturbed a school of fish-like Hollows.
These were all non-sentient, animal-like Hollows, their intelligence no different from fish in the human world. Seeing a strange spiritual being approach, they were startled and scattered.
They were one of the lowest life forms on the food chain in Hueco Mundo.
Their food was the mud and sand in the water, or some even smaller Hollows.
A piece of algae floated in front of Nelliel. She reached out and pinched it. Small tentacles suddenly extended from under the algae, shooting out a jet of water and quickly moving away from her.
This algae-like thing was also a Hollow.
It was not small, about one or two meters wide. It was a predator in this lake, and the schools of fish Hollows were its food.
But the spiritual pressure of Nelliel and the others was too terrifying. It didn't dare to move and just played dead, pretending to be algae.
After continuing to descend for a while, Sora saw a faint red glow below.
"What's that glowing thing?"
Sora wondered. The red light was in large patches, looking like some strange cluster of Hollows.
He continued to descend. The further down he went, the higher the temperature, but for them, the difference between soaking in boiling water and a hot spring was not that great.
"Is this... lava?" Sora raised an eyebrow.
Lava was flowing at the bottom of the lake. The red glow he had seen was from this lava.
The high temperature of the water was likely due to its influence.
"Why is there lava in this water..." Sora was puzzled.
The others also swam down and were surprised to see lava at the bottom.
Beneath the desert layer of Hueco Mundo was the Forest of Menos, and the forest itself extended downwards in layers. The deeper one went, the lower they were.
The depth of this lake in the barren mountain had not even reached the level of the Forest of Menos. The appearance of magma was clearly not a natural phenomenon of Hueco Mundo.
Just as Sora was about to follow the flow of the lava, he sensed a spiritual pressure fluctuation from beneath it.
This fluctuation was becoming more and more obvious, as if something was waking up.
At the same time, the direction of the lava flow changed.
The lava was now flowing to both sides.
Then, the lava split open, and a deep trench appeared in the middle. The lava did not flow into the trench, but continued to flow to the sides.
The change continued, and the width of the trench expanded rapidly.
The lakebed seemed to be experiencing an earthquake.
The creatures in the lake were also frightened and all swam upwards.
On the surface, some fish Hollows leaped out of the water, got stranded on the sandy shore, and then burrowed into the sand.
A moment later, Sora saw what was revealed in the deep trench.
"Is that... an eye?!"
The crack that had opened up on the lakebed was actually an eye that was opening!
The lava did not flow into the eye; it seemed as if the lava was a layer of "skin".
"The spiritual pressure fluctuation is strange... quite different from a Hollow or a Shinigami... it's a bit like a Quincy's spiritual pressure?"
Sora raised his guard to the maximum, ready to enter a battle state at any moment.
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