Stella stared at the distant Gillians.
Her stomach twisted. The hunger was still there, in fact, it had somehow become worse.
Stella lowered her body and her Eight-pointed legs spread across the ground.
The unfamiliar limbs should have been difficult to control yet moving them felt completely instinctual.
She focused on the closest Gillian.
Stone trees flashed past faster than her eyes could properly follow. Stella barely had time to think before the Gillian appeared directly in front of her.
Her massive claws closed around its mask, shattered it and she began eating away at its body.
The familiar rush of spiritual power entered her body, followed by another collection of weak souls.
Her will descended upon them and crushed their identities before they could resist.
Stella swallowed the final piece and waited.
The hunger remained, hoewever it was less overwhelming than before.
"So becoming an Adjuchas doesn't fix that."
Another Gillian attempted to hide between two stone pillars.
Stella turned toward it.
The creature immediately began trembling.
Purple liquid gathered around the tips of Stella's claws.
Her Soul Venom had changed during her evolution. Before, she had needed to bite her prey or mix the poison into a Cero. Now the venom travelled through narrow channels within her claws and legs completely becoming her own ability and freeing up her ability slot.
She lightly scratched the Gillian's arm.
Purple veins crawled across its black body. Its legs stopped moving, its arms became limp and the enormous Hollow crashed to the ground.
The Gillian released a weak groan.
"That was fast."
Stella leaned closer.
She ripped its mask apart and began eating.
Her new body was superior in almost every way. She was faster, smaller, stronger and far more precise. Her Hierro had also become denser during the transformation.
Even her senses had improved.
She could feel spiritual pressures moving throughout the forest. Most belonged to ordinary Hollows and Gillians, but there were several stronger presences watching from a distance.
However, none of them dared approach.
Stella raised one claw and examined its reflection.
Despite becoming more humanoid, she still resembled a giant armored spider Arachne. White hair covered part of her back, while the long abdomen behind her made turning through narrow spaces somewhat annoying.
"At least I have hair again."
She caught a strand between her claws.
"White isn't bad. Very anime protagonist."
At the same time, within the laboratories of the Twelfth Division, a machine began displaying odd signals.
After about a minute later Mayuri Kurotsuchi looked up from the body he was dissecting.
Several screens displayed lines of spiritual data gathered from the beacon he had planted upon the unusual Gillian.
For weeks, the readings had steadily increased.
The tracking beacon had detected a sudden and violent increase in spiritual pressure. For several moments, the readings climbed far beyond the level of an ordinary Adjuchas, approaching class 3 spiritual pressure before disappearing entirely.
Mayuri abandoned the corpse on his table and rushed toward the monitors.
The Hollow had transformed into an Adjuchas far sooner than his estimates predicted and such a powerful one at that.
A wide smile stretched across his painted face.
If the creature had truly undergone an evolution, then relying upon instruments alone would be insufficient. He needed to examine the results personally.
Making sure that damned Urahara wasn't around Mayuri fiddled with a certain gadget and opened an artificial garganta.
Mayuri stepped through carrying specialized equipment.
Broken stone pillars surrounded a large crater, while deep cuts covered the walls and ground. Several Gillian masks lay scattered among the rubble, their remaining spiritual energy already beginning to disperse.
But there was no sign of the unusual Gillian
Mayuri's expression darkened.
He crouched beside one of the deeper marks in the ground. Two fingers brushed against the stone before he brought the sample closer to his face and licked it.
He walked toward a damaged stone pillar and examined several narrow puncture marks carved into its surface.
Multiple limbs, at least 4, maybe 8 in total ? Sharp appendages.
He put his hand on his chin in thought "Judging from the previous encounter and these trails, this hollow appears to be based on the physiology of a spider."
He continued following the signal emitted by the tracking device before finding the implant laying on the sandy ground before him.
Tracking her without the beacon would be troublesome. Hueco Mundo was vast, and an intelligent Adjuchas could travel a considerable distance before leaving another detectable trail.
His mouth twisted in annoyance.
"How tedious."
Mayuri took one final look at the destruction left behind by Stella's evolution.
Although he had failed to capture the creature, the expedition had not been entirely wasted.
The remaining particles had already proven that her growth was abnormal.
And now that she had reached the Adjuchas stage, her development would only become more fascinating.
"I suppose I will simply have to find her again later."