In the Forest of Menos, Resen grinned and nodded as he watched Seth's Reiatsu steadily increase. At this rate, Seth evolving into an Adjuchas-class Menos would happen within a day or two.
Just as Resen was feeling immensely proud of himself, a voice suddenly rang out in his mind. "Some trash is heading this way. Hurry up and clean it out!"
"Yes, Big Sis!" Resen subconsciously stood at attention and shouted. It was only after the words left his mouth that he realized his mistake. He slowly turned his head, and sure enough, he was met with Roca's unfriendly glare.
*'If you make another racket and disturb Lord Kōe, see how I'll whip you!'* Resen didn't need Roca to say it out loud; he knew exactly what that look meant.
A few days ago, he had been careless and let a Hollow slip past. If Roca hadn't intervened, the creature would have definitely charged right up to Lord Kōe. Although it wouldn't have posed any threat to him, it certainly would have interrupted his training.
Afterward, Resen experienced a period of memory loss. By the time he regained his senses, he found his body buried in the dirt, with only half of his head exposed above the ground.
"Just now, you thought you were a tree. If there's a next time, you might just think your own hands are delicious."
The smiling face Roca wore when she said those words left a profound impression on Resen's mind. Lord Kōe was still the supreme master, but from that moment on, Roca became his undisputed Big Sis!
*'Besides, given how much Lord Kōe cares about her, she'd be my Big Sis anyway...'*
Muttering in his heart, Resen headed in the direction Roca had indicated to 'sweep the trash.' Calling them trash wasn't entirely fair, considering they were fundamentally of the same species as him.
The Forest of Menos had no shortage of red-eyed, rabid-dog-like Hollows. Moving without pause, Resen looked at the dense, dark mass ahead. Just as he expected, their eyes were gleaming with a ravenous light; they were likely driven mad by starvation.
He had to admit, the Forest of Menos was a great place to build self-confidence. Take right now, for example. All Resen had to do was activate his stagnation ability, and this mob would freeze in all sorts of poses, leaving them entirely at his mercy. It gave him the feeling of being an absolute ruler.
"None slipped through the net. The hedgehog-head has finally learned his lesson." Still staying by Kōe's side, Roca saw through the threads she had laid out in the forest that Resen was executing her orders perfectly, so she paid it no more mind.
He had handled things quite beautifully this time, but the black smoke spewing from the Hollow he just killed was truly disgusting. She would definitely make Resen clean it all up before he was allowed back!
It would be terrible if the stench reached Lord Ao.
However, if Resen were beside Roca right now—no, he didn't even need to be beside her; as long as he could move, even if it were just his mouth—he would have told her that he wasn't the one who killed the Hollow spewing black smoke. That bastard had exploded on its own!
But right now, he was already trussed up tight. The Hollows around him were continuing to detonate one by one, and the black smoke was spreading wildly in all directions.
These weren't ordinary Hollows! They clearly hadn't been affected by his stagnation, yet they had pretended to be frozen, waiting until he got close before suddenly launching an attack.
Paired with the sudden burst of black smoke, a white, skeleton-like construct suddenly surged out from inside another Hollow, binding itself to him. It sealed his mouth shut and forced him to march step by step toward an unknown destination.
The black smoke was to deceive Roca's eyes, and the skeleton was to capture him. Was he their target? Well, it was certainly possible, but Resen was far more inclined to believe that the true target of all this was Lord Kōe.
Resen desperately tried to control his body to do something. His mind was perfectly clear, yet he couldn't command his limbs at all, as if this body no longer belonged to him.
"The experimental subject has been successfully captured and is being transported to us, Lord Szayelaporro."
"I am well aware! Be careful, all of you. Your filthy hands are not worthy of leaving even the slightest scratch on him, understood?!"
"Understood, my lord."
"Then step down!" Szayelaporro waved his hand dismissively. From beginning to end, his gaze never left the image of Kōe on the screen.
The Forest of Menos, or rather, the lower levels of Hueco Mundo. This place was truly a distant memory for Szayelaporro, so distant that it evoked not a single shred of familiarity.
If it weren't for the Shinigami on the screen, Szayelaporro swore he would never have set foot in this place again. Aside from providing the lowliest Hollows with a slaughterground to tear each other apart and a stage where the victor became king, the lower levels of Hueco Mundo had absolutely no reason to exist. There was certainly nothing here that could pique his interest.
Although he had come fueled by rage, Szayelaporro did not confront Kōe directly.
A Shinigami capable of breaching his laboratory in such a short time and dismantling the traps he had left behind with such ruthless efficiency was not some simpleton who could be swatted away with the flick of a finger.
Furthermore, it seemed that Baraggan had also been played for a fool around the same time.
Were there two audacious fools? Or perhaps even more than two? These were variables that Szayelaporro, having just arrived, was still unclear about.
What he wanted was to capture those foolish, greedy intruders alive, turning them into a perfectly pristine rug. Merely killing them or driving them off would be letting them off far too easily. Thus, Szayelaporro began collecting data on Kōe.
Although Kōe had indeed left no obvious traces in the laboratory, Szayelaporro was still able to deduce some useful information from peripheral details.
First was the completely different methods used to handle the main door and the internal traps. The precision and first-try success proved that the intruder possessed an incredibly powerful perception of Reiryoku. Szayelaporro categorized this type of entity as a sensory type.
The main door had required brute force to breach. In Hueco Mundo, anyone capable of achieving that level of destruction would have to be at least a powerful Adjuchas. Yet, even when using brute force, the intruder's control had been highly refined, indicating that this was nowhere near his limit. His Reiatsu level was absolutely not low.
The dismantling of the internal traps had been straightforward and decisive, proving that the intruder was extremely confident in his Reiryoku control. Of course, this confidence was clearly not unfounded arrogance.
Finally, there was the fact that the intruder had taken his experimental subjects but completely ignored the research data in the lab. Szayelaporro understood that this Shinigami was not a man of science like himself.
To put it bluntly, he was just a brute who only knew how to swing a sword. He might have had half a brain, but he was still a fool—not just because he dared to anger the noble Szayelaporro, but because he was inherently stupid.
However, looking at the situation now, that last point could be temporarily crossed out.
A cute little creature capable of stagnating objects—such an interesting specimen was more than enough to fill his last empty room. But what was even more fascinating was the Shinigami himself.
"Using himself as an experimental subject? What a truly insane fellow. I like it." Szayelaporro's fingers danced in the air, continuously tracing Kōe's silhouette on the screen. "You are now worthy of becoming a talking mural on my bedroom wall. But if you prove to be even a little more interesting..."
Szayelaporro muttered to himself inside the hollowed-out tree, while the pack of Hollows he had modified inched closer and closer to Kōe and Roca.
"Then my laboratory will have three new experimental subjects."
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