A massive hand pressed down on the head of a spider Hollow, and with a crisp sound, its brutal skull was crushed.
Yamada Hanataro stood in the middle of the Hollow swarm, exuding a fierce killing intent like a human-shaped Menos Grande.
Unlike the last time he fought the wolf Hollows in Rukongai, this time, without his teammates holding him back, he fought without restraint.
The low-level Hollows were different from Hanataro in this state.
In just five minutes, the spider Hollows couldn't suppress their fear any longer and fled, abandoning their comrades.
Hanataro's Shihakushō was torn to shreds, but he remained uninjured.
"Captain, Kiyosuke-brother," Hanataro returned to the group after dealing with the Hollows, wearing what he thought was a friendly smile. "The Hollows have been dealt with."
Looking at his brother, now almost as tall as himself, Yamada Kiyosuke sighed deeply, feeling a knot in his stomach.
He forced himself to accept Hanataro's transformation but couldn't fully accept it.
The group continued walking deeper into the Forest of Menos, following the spiritual particle fusion range set by Shijō Sōya. The surroundings grew darker, with only faint glimmers of light from the quartz trees illuminating the underground space.
In the dim depths of the Forest of Menos, a red-haired figure darted swiftly between the quartz trees until they reached an Adjuchas gathering.
"Three Adjuchas, thirty-nine Gillians, countless other Hollows."
A calm voice sounded from beneath a white, antelope-like Hollow mask. "Today's task: eliminate them all."
There was no fear on the face beneath the mask—just a serene expression as if stating something as ordinary as the weather.
This was Sajin Asido, a Hollow hunter in the Forest of Menos, continuously fighting for the sake of the Shinigami creed.
He fought to protect human souls and to honor the promises made with his fallen comrades, keeping the battle going even to this day.
In many ways, Tokikaze was right.
Sajin Asido was similar to Shijō Sōya, though the latter's plans were far more extreme.
After observing the area, Asido dropped down from his high vantage point, making no spiritual pressure disturbance, not even causing a breeze.
Only an intense, bone-chilling killing intent.
Slash!
The flesh was torn apart as a gorilla-like Menos Grande clutched at its bleeding neck, its red lantern-like eyes filled with confusion.
It hadn't even seen the enemy!
As its consciousness faded, a blurry figure appeared in its dimming vision.
"Sajin… Asido…"
As a Shinigami who had hunted Menos Grande in the Forest of Menos for over a hundred years, his reputation was even more fearsome than the Hollow King of Las Noches.
The battle began instantly!
A sneak attack took down one of the Adjuchas. Like a volcano, the remaining two erupted with spiritual pressure, locking onto the red-haired figure.
A massive fist like a boulder swung at Asido's head in the next moment, stirring the air into a violent gust.
At the same time, Asido's spiritual pressure surged, and a blazing light erupted from his blade as a red energy slash, brimming with killing intent, shot toward the giant fist.
Slash!
As soon as the energy hit, the skin's metallic sheen shattered, and blood sprayed into the air.
The Adjuchas let out a shrill cry, but the pain only further enraged it.
Despite its fist being split open, the Adjuchas powered through, pushing the slash forward!
Boom!
A violent force exploded as the fist slammed into the ground, creating a massive crater.
However, Asido was not in the crater. When the Hollows realized it, a brilliant golden lightning bolt flashed in the dark underground.
"Hadō #63: Raikōhō!"
A massive lightning bolt struck down, swallowing the Hollows below with destructive power. Under the intense heat, the seemingly impenetrable steel skin of the Hollows melted away, reducing them to charred remains.
As a former vice-captain of the Eleventh Division, Sajin Asido was one of the rare all-rounders.
Without notable weaknesses, he had mastered all four basic Shinigami combat techniques—Zanjutsu, Hakuda, Hohō, and Kidō.
The lightning crackled, incinerating nearby lower-level Hollows as well.
Seeing this, the last remaining Adjuchas panicked and immediately commanded the Gillians under its control to attack.
Red Cero blasts gathered in the mouths of the Gillians.
For a moment, the air was filled with brutal spiritual pressure as massive amounts of spiritual particles converged into the Cero blasts.
"Too slow…" Asido muttered under his breath, vanishing from his position using Shunpo just as the Cero attacks were released.
Though the Gillians' Cero blasts were powerful, they required time to charge, and that time was more than enough for Asido to wipe out the Menos Grande.
With the two Adjuchas out of the way, Asido unleashed his combat strength, tearing through the Hollows like a tiger in a flock of sheep. With each swing of his sword, another Hollow's head rolled to the ground.
In no time, the area was littered with corpses.
When Hollows die, they return to Hueco Mundo as spiritual particles. This process is slower the stronger the Hollow.
And for Menos Grande, who ranked at three-star spiritual pressure or higher, Hueco Mundo didn't decompose their souls but fell into Hell instead.
Sigh… Asido looked at the pile of bodies, his eyes cold and emotionless.
Over the past century, he had killed hundreds of Hollows, and his heart had grown as cold as his Zanpakutō.
When his comrades died in battle long ago, he had stopped feeling any emotion.
"You're quite ruthless, aren't you?"
Suddenly, a strange, layered voice echoed from the darkness. "You're just a mere Shinigami, yet you've survived in the land of the Hollows for so long."
As the voice trailed off, countless crimson eyes appeared in the darkness, the ground trembling as massive creatures approached.
Asido scanned his surroundings, his face stiffening under the mask.
He couldn't sense any approaching spiritual pressure, but the number of Menos Grande around him had already exceeded his limit.
More than ten Adjuchas, hundreds of Gillians, and countless Hollows.
They had somehow hidden their spiritual pressure, setting this trap just for him.
A death trap!
Realizing this, Asido felt an eerie calm wash over him. His right hand tightened around his sword hilt, veins bulging with the effort.
"So be it. Dying on the battlefield is the fate of every Eleventh Division member."
Facing death, he accepted it without fear.
But in the next moment, a terrifying spiritual pressure surged from the outskirts of the Hollow group, rolling in like a tidal wave and crashing down on the souls of every Hollow present.
"Excellent experimental material!"
A strange voice, not much different from the roars of the Hollows, echoed through the air.
Hearing this voice, Asido's brow furrowed deeply, unsure whether it was friend or foe.
"Don't look at me with that disgusting expression."
"This time, I'll leave them with their bodies intact!"
The voice was much more regular this time, and Asido's tension eased slightly.
What happened next, however, shattered his understanding of reality.
"The filthy waves, the maddened vessel."
"Boil! Numb! Flicker! Wake!"
The chanting of a Kidō spell filled the air, becoming the only sound under the overwhelming spiritual pressure.
The ground trembled as if it were about to split apart. Under the suffocating weight, the Hollows could muster no will to resist.
All that remained was an instinctive fear, spreading from their souls to their entire bodies.
"The steel princess crumbles, the clay idols fall apart."
"Gather! Resist! Let them know their powerlessness!"
A white figure stepped forward from the Hollow swarm, calmly finishing the Kidō chant without a hint of strain on his face.
"Hadō #90: Kurohitsugi!"
As the words left his lips, countless black shadows appeared beneath the Adjuchas, stacking like interlocking cubes until they swallowed the massive creatures.
Slash, slash, slash!
In the next instant, countless shadowy blades pierced through the Kurohitsugi, cutting off all signs of life from the Adjuchas within.
Asido stood frozen, his mind unable to process what he was witnessing.
The white captain's haori, the Shinigami spiritual pressure distinctly different from the Hollows, the impossibly strong Hadō #90…
A Shinigami captain had appeared in Hueco Mundo, in the very heart of the Forest of Menos!
"Shijō, deal with the Gillians and the lesser Hollows," Tokikaze said, refraining from taking further action as he admired his handiwork.
It was a pity that this was his first time using Kurohitsugi since mastering it.
As a Hadō #90 spell, Kurohitsugi's power was unquestionable, and Tokikaze's current spiritual pressure was unstoppable.
Not just the Adjuchas—if a Vasto Lorde had appeared, it would have also been torn apart.
As he spoke, another event left Asido speechless.
The ground suddenly surged like a wave, forming a massive, writhing whirlpool, like the gaping mouth of an abyss, swallowing the Gillians whole.
"...Become the waves that cover the sky—Hadō #57: Daichi Tenmai!"
In contrast to Tokikaze's grand and earth-shattering Kidō chant, Shijō Sōya's Kidō casting was much more calm and composed.
The soil churned, and the blackened ground solidified into a metallic surface, instantly crushing the bones of the Gillians that had been swallowed. Their enormous, elongated black bodies were reduced to a mass of blood-red pulp instantly.
Staring at the scene before him, which resembled a blood-soaked battlefield of carnage, Sajin Asido fell into a stunned, deathly silence...