"Shin, come find me!"
A little girl's voice called out from beneath the dunes.
Clearly, this was a game of hide-and-seek under the night sky.
After waiting for a long while with no response, a small mound of sand shuffled closer to Shin's feet. The anxious little voice came again: "Shin, Shin, hurry up and come find me!"
Up until then, the game had been going smoothly, and the girl had been delighted.
But suddenly, the boy called Shin stopped moving, halting all at once.
He stared blankly into the distance. Out there in the moonlit desert, a lone figure was slowly approaching.
After a moment, Shin lowered his gaze again.
He crouched down and gently patted the sandy mound by his feet, his voice soft and coaxing: "Be good, Nel. Someone's coming to find me. You all should leave first. Remember to meet at the usual place, okay~"
As soon as the words fell, the mound's surface shifted, and a round little head poked out.
Teal-colored hair puffed wildly around her face, a small skull-shaped mask sat atop her head, and beneath her clear lake-like eyes stretched a crimson streak running across both cheeks.
Her body was still buried in the mound, but she strained her neck to peer into the distance, pouting angrily. "Who's the fool interrupting us? Just wait, Nel will bite him good!"
Shin chuckled, tapping the mask on her head. "It's one of Las Noches' attendants~"
At that, Nel's eyes widened, and she quickly ducked back into the sand like a startled little groundhog, burying herself completely. "Wh-wh-why is it another attendant? Why do they always come looking for you…?"
The mound wasn't big, like an overturned clay pot.
Through the trickle of sand running down its sides, Shin could easily tell she was trembling inside.
He smiled gently and slipped a finger through the mound's opening, hooking her arm to reassure her. "Don't worry, Nel. Nothing's going to happen. This isn't the first time they've come for me—it'll be over soon~"
Saying that, he pulled out a bone mask from his robes and fitted it over his face, perfectly covering his human features.
He glanced once more at the sandy mound by his feet, then walked off toward the distant figure…
The mask fit him perfectly, clipping snugly over his forehead and ears so it wouldn't slip off.
But the truth was, this mask wasn't originally his. He had picked it up somewhere out in the endless desert.
His real mask was nothing more than a thin strip of bone fragments at the back of his head, usually hidden by his hair, making it hard for others to notice.
And the reason he bothered hiding his features at all came down to one fact—
Shin was a transmigrator. He had crossed into the world of Bleach, arriving in Hueco Mundo, only to become a genuine Arrancar. The bizarre experience had left him utterly bewildered.
In the early days, he was completely alone.
Surrounded by endless Hollows—being born, dying, devouring each other—life in Hueco Mundo was terrifying.
Hollow instinct screamed at him: this place was full of danger, where only the strong survived. If he wanted to live, he had to stay vigilant against constant threats from others of his kind.
Most days, all he could do was run and hide, or occasionally capture lesser Hollows to pass the time.
During those dull days, he had no real sense of being an Arrancar at all.
It wasn't until he stumbled upon Nel and her companions in the desert that everything changed. From then on, endless games of hide-and-seek became his daily routine.
Until one day, while Nel was napping, her retainer Pesche casually asked Shin, "Hey, little brother Shin, what's your number?"
"My… number?" Shin blinked, puzzled.
He'd been here for a while, but had never thought about anything like that.
"Don't play dumb. Your number—the one Lord Aizen gave us Arrancar."
As he spoke, Pesche flipped open his robe, revealing deep purple skin marked by bold digits: 41.
The words left Shin stunned.
"We Arrancar… Lord Aizen… numbers…" Shin repeated the phrases in a daze, reaching up to touch his own face.
Aside from his vivid features, there was no trace of a true mask fragment.
And from the classification of Hollows, that was indeed a hallmark of being an Arrancar.
After all, a Gillian typically became an Arrancar through the Hōgyoku, evolving toward Shinigami form. At that moment, Aizen himself would assign a number, formally inducting them into his army.
But Shin didn't remember ever going near the Hōgyoku.
And no matter how he searched, his body bore no number.
Yes, there were self-created Arrancar like Starrk, who reached that level by sheer power alone. But Shin certainly didn't think himself nearly that strong.
Seeing Shin's uncertain expression, Pesche teased, "Eh? You really don't have one? Don't tell me you're a failed experiment… Well, don't take it too hard~"
A failed Arrancar experiment was either unable to use powers properly or incapable of growing stronger—trash left to rot outside, and of course, unnumbered.
But Shin couldn't be sure if he had truly been classified as such garbage…
It was at that moment Nel's other retainer, the round-faced Dondochakka, finished digging in the sand and handed Shin a few masks.
"Don't complain. Just pick one that fits. Big Hollows love preying on weaklings like you—modified but powerless."
And so Shin ended up with the mask he now wore.
Snapping out of his memory, he crossed several dunes quickly and closed in on the figure.
"Lord Iilforte, you were looking for me," Shin said politely.
"Smart of you to come. Saves me the trouble." The man's tone was flat, his face expressionless. "Lord Grimmjow ordered you to clean up some corpses."
He turned and led the way.
Iilforte—Arrancar No. 15—was one of the Fracción serving the Sexta Espada, Grimmjow.
Golden hair, bronze-toned skin, a mask fragment crowning his head.
Unlike Nel's group, he carried the cold indifference typical of Hollows, smothering the air in oppressive silence.
But Shin had worked with him many times before, and had grown somewhat used to it.
Circling around Las Noches, they reached a sunken basin.
The ground was littered with corpses.
The Espada, Grimmjow among them, often led hunts against the Menos.
Part of it was for devouring and strengthening themselves. Part of it was simply the thrill of battle. And the rest was for wiping out rivals and searching for new material to turn into Arrancar.
Every time such a large-scale hunt occurred, the land became a graveyard.
If it happened too close to Las Noches, the sight of bodies piled everywhere was an eyesore, demanding a swift cleanup.
"These corpses are your task. Get to it."
Having issued the order, Iilforte turned and left.
Once he was gone, Shin stood alone.
Through his mask, the stench of blood hit full force, mingled with faint groans of fading agony.
No matter where Hollows went after death—Hueco Mundo, Hell, or Soul Society—they first dissolved into spirit particles.
How fast they broke down varied by individual.
Some disintegrated instantly. Others lingered, slowly unraveling.
But Shin had a cheat, a golden finger, his so-called "Attribute Editor," a system bound to him.
On the surface, the system's function was simply to accelerate decomposition.
But in truth, it could extract hidden attributes from a Hollow's corpse and store them away, promoting faster breakdown in the process.
Now he approached the carcass of a massive Hollow, elephant-sized. He laid his hand on its surface. With a faint glow at his fingertips, the system activated, swiftly reading its attributes and parsing them.
[Ding! Congratulations, host. N-Rank attribute "Sand-Burrow" acquired. Sand-Burrow +500]
The familiar system voice echoed in Shin's mind.
"N-Rank" meant "Normal"—the most common and mundane type of attribute.
Because his system's storage was limited, Shin usually avoided collecting N-Rank skills.
So he lifted his hand from the corpse and flicked his finger lightly, discarding the attribute outright.
[Ding! You have discarded the attribute "Sand-Burrow." 500 Spirit Power gained.]
That was one of the system's rules: when an attribute was abandoned, its value would be converted into raw spiritual energy for Shin himself.
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150 P.S = 1 Extra Chapter