Crunch, crunch.
Across the silent desert, the harsh chewing sound echoed without pause. Before long, the Lizard Hollow more than two meters long had been completely devoured by Yekawa. Yet he felt no sense of fullness, as though he could consume another hundred Lizard Hollows and still strip them clean. After finishing the creature, he sensed his spiritual pressure rise by one-twentieth, and he noticed his body had grown slightly larger.
During the consumption, Yekawa discovered that the spiritual energy he absorbed from the Lizard Hollow's flesh made up less than forty percent of the overall gain, while more than sixty percent came from the broken fragments of its mask.
"The texture is unique, almost like a compressed biscuit."
Feeling the clear surge of spiritual pressure within him, Yekawa's large pale face displayed genuine satisfaction.
...
In the following days, Yekawa continued wandering through the desert, constantly searching for targets. After half a month of exploration, diving deeper into Hueco Mundo's white expanse, he finally encountered more Hollows. Yet every one of them resembled the Lizard Hollow he first fought—mindless, instinctive creatures that knew only brute violence. A Hollow with human thought like Yekawa was clearly an anomaly.
On this day, he buried his entire body beneath the sand, leaving only half of his head exposed as he stealthily moved. A piercing roar split the air, and a black-red beam of blazing heat—the unmistakable destructive glow of a Cero—shot across the dunes. It grazed past Yekawa's hidden body and tore directly into a forty-meter-long earthworm Hollow ahead of him. Under the impact, the worm shrieked, its massive body sliced cleanly in half. The aftershock struck the desert floor and sent dust exploding upward, rattling Yekawa where he trembled beneath the sand.
"That's… a Cero."
He had seen this technique countless times in the anime, but witnessing it with his own eyes in Hueco Mundo was an entirely different shock. He followed the direction of the blast and saw a towering black giant nearly a hundred meters tall. Deep white bone spikes circled its neck, and another spike rose from the white mask on its face. Its entire body radiated a crushing spiritual pressure.
"That's a Gillian."
"No… that's not a regular Gillian."
This half-month of wandering had already given Yekawa chances to see Gillians. Three days earlier he watched a group of them moving toward the depths near the Great Hollow Forest. But the Gillian before him was far larger than the ordinary ones he had seen, and its mask was built in a completely different style.
"An anomalous Gillian."
Yekawa gasped softly beneath the sand. He immediately understood what he was seeing: a Gillian with retained intelligence. He remembered clearly that Gillians formed when more than a hundred desperate Hollows devoured each other, fusing into a single monstrous entity. During this evolution, because most Hollows possessed almost no intellect, nearly all Gillians lost their individuality and became mindless giants. But exceptions existed—rare ones who kept their consciousness, devoured other Hollows deliberately, and continued to grow. Such Menos Grande were anomalous Gillians. And as long as they survived, they had a strong chance of evolving into the middle-tier Adjuchas or even the highest Vasto Lorde.
Yekawa's heart thumped heavily. His size was nowhere near the earthworm Hollow's, and to that anomalous Gillian, he would be a small morsel, barely worth a thought.
Then an unexpected shift occurred. The severed upper half of the earthworm Hollow, which had lain motionless after being struck, suddenly burrowed into the sand and fled desperately—straight toward Yekawa.
"Don't come here."
Watching the wounded Hollow rush at him, Yekawa felt pure dread. If it drew the attention of that anomalous Gillian toward him, he was finished.
The Gillian saw the fleeing earthworm and a faint mockery appeared in the subtle tilt of its mask. Its massive pupils held only disdain. In the next instant, it vanished with a sharp displacement sound.
A Sonido.
The anomalous Gillian reappeared in the worm's path, its colossal right hand covered in jagged bone spikes as it seized the writhing half-body. Yekawa stared in terror. Sonido was normally used only by Adjuchas or Arrancar, yet this Gillian had mastered it early.
"Am I going to die before I even start after finally transmigrating?"
A bitter thought rose in his chest. The Gillian lifted the worm Hollow effortlessly and tore it apart with its jaws, chewing as casually as if eating dried meat. In a few bites, the creature was completely devoured, and the Gillian turned to leave.
"That was close. I almost got exposed."
But just as Yekawa exhaled in relief, the Gillian, already far away, turned back. Its massive gaze scanned the sand where Yekawa hid, and a mocking expression flickered beneath the mask before it turned away and continued walking.
"He saw me. He saw me, but I'm so weak he couldn't be bothered to eat me."
A flush of humiliation burned in Yekawa, but mingled with it was relief. "Alright then. Fine. If that's how you want to treat me, I'll play along. When I become an Adjuchas or even a Vasto Lorde someday, you'll feel exactly what I feel right now."
He could only voice it quietly in his heart. He waited hours until he was sure the Gillian had gone, then slowly rose from the sand. A grin formed across his face as he looked at the remaining lower half of the earthworm Hollow's corpse. Although the upper portion with the mask and largest spiritual concentration had been eaten, the remaining lower half—discarded by the Gillian—was still an invaluable meal for Yekawa.
"Thanks for the gift, Gillian brother."
He had already decided that when the day came for him to settle things with that anomalous Gillian, he might at least show a bit of mercy.