Chapter 124: Hueco Mundo
What exactly was Hueco Mundo?
Answer: the main story area for the next major update, containing notable side content such as the Espada and so on.
For a more serious answer, though:
A literal wasteland.
A barren plain filled his view.
Nothing. The sky and earth both hollow. Nothing extra to see, no presence of any other living thing in any direction.
The whole world seemed to be made up of exactly two colors. Grey and white.
Matsushita Yusuke crouched on the ground, looking out at this cold, empty world with his mouth slightly open, turning it over.
He felt a little rude saying it, but this place gave off the distinct feeling of a map that hadn't fully loaded.
Comparing to anything else:
It was like the Soul King had used up all the paint creating the World of the Living and Soul Society, and when Hueco Mundo came around just threw something together carelessly and called it done.
A little too half-hearted, wasn't it?!
"Matsushita-kun. How are you feeling?"
Tosen had settled in quickly. From their earlier conversation, Yusuke had learned that the blind man had already run several missions out here. Genuinely experienced.
"I'm fine..."
Yusuke managed to get to his feet and stretched briefly to shake off the discomfort from the transit.
The passage the Hogyoku had opened wasn't particularly stable.
But compared to traditional methods, considerably more convenient. In canon, the only person who could treat all three worlds as their personal backyard and move between them without any preparation was the exiled Urahara Kisuke.
For anyone else, crossing between worlds required an enormous amount of troublesome procedure.
All of that moved through Yusuke's head with zero expression on his face.
"Uh... let's talk about how we're operating. Blind bro, what do we do?"
"Don't you have a slightly more proper way to address someone?"
"...Blind kid?"
"Fine. Whatever you prefer."
Tosen recognized that reversing Matsushita Yusuke's habits through his own efforts alone was somewhat delusional.
"Our task is to find individuals with sufficient potential. That kind of individual doesn't typically travel in groups, so what we need to do is straightforward."
Tosen reached for his blade and said, without any change of tone:
"Kill everything as we go. Anything we can't beat is something worth talking to."
That's a beautifully simple system.
As crude as it sounded, it was actually the correct approach.
Given Hueco Mundo's particular nature, finding anything stronger than a vice-captain was needle-in-a-haystack territory. Genuine talent: a handful at most. In canon, Aizen had identified every one of them, and the method had to have been the same brute-force sweep, filtering one by one.
Matsushita Yusuke couldn't help sighing. He shook his head slightly.
The personnel shortage was showing in every single area.
When is Club Member 004 going to show up?!
Speaking of which: Yusuke's mind drifted to Gin Ichimaru.
As a genuine talent in canon, a long-term undercover operative, an exemplary inheritor of the fine tradition of stabbing people in the back: Gin's ability was beyond question.
As the man who caught a fleeting opening and nearly had Aizen carried out feet-first, he was clearly strong enough.
The problem was: how old was this kid right now?
Yusuke remembered Gin appearing in the Hollowfication incident arc. Tosen had been there too, with an extraordinarily unusual hairstyle at the time.
Gin had still been a child.
Running the timeline forward: he should be roughly the same right now.
Yusuke started counting on his fingers.
Since Aizen's already finished his Hogyoku research, that means Rangiku has already been taken from. Which means that kid has already set his sights on Aizen. So the current situation should be just about when the two of them are approaching their first direct confrontation?
And what advantage could he carve out of this moment?
He was running through it when something clicked and his mouth formed a small O.
Seize the historic opportunity. Become a firsthand witness to both the victim and the architect of the backstabbing.
"Let's move. Time to work."
Tosen's nudge brought Yusuke back to the present.
He responded cheerfully and fell into step.
"So specifically how does this go?"
"You take that direction, I take this one. Spread out, go as far as you can. Anything strong, bring it back or try to negotiate."
Yusuke scratched his head at this.
The plan had a certain beauty in how little thought had gone into it.
But honestly, no better alternatives were coming to mind.
He walked in the opposite direction from Tosen, and just like that, went over half an hour without seeing a single thing.
The barrenness and scale of Hueco Mundo exceeded every expectation.
Seeing it firsthand produced a very particular kind of headache.
At this point in the story, Hueco Mundo barely has any Vasto Lorde at all, does it?
Before the Hogyoku's influence, naturally occurring Vasto Lorde were an extremely rare group.
Barragan was among them.
If you ranked combat ability, this old giant's track record was disappointing to a nearly incomprehensible degree.
Consider: his contemporary, Yhwach, had already beaten young Yamamoto and stormed the Royal Palace.
Meanwhile Barragan had spent his time leisurely farming weak opponents, developing slowly without challenge, and in the end got taken down by Aizen the "newcomer" and couldn't even beat the Soifon-Omaeda two-person team.
It could be said that Barragan's historically spectacular defeat added a particularly vivid footnote to Hueco Mundo's already unimpressive record.
After that, nobody seriously believed in Hueco Mundo's combat strength again.
Thoughts running, Yusuke kept walking.
So does this place actually have anything living in it?
Right as he was thinking this, at no great distance, he finally caught sight of several shapes that were faintly moving.
Actually ran into something?
Mild surprise, quickly set aside.
No matter how barren a desert, it couldn't be completely empty at every point.
Life left its trace somewhere.
But.
"..."
Yusuke wasn't the only one moving. The other party had sensed him, and was now closing the distance in return.
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