Arrival

"Ugh... mm... what happened to me?" Wien slowly opened his eyes, waves of dizziness and weakness washing over him. Gusts of cold wind at his side made him shiver instinctively.

As his vision cleared, he saw a dim yellow sky before him. There was not a cloud in sight, only a chaotic haze that inspired fear.

"Where am I...?" Looking at his unfamiliar surroundings, Wien pondered for a moment, then began sorting through his memories to make sense of his situation.

"I should be dead. Could this be the world after death?" Wien got up and looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. As he remembered it, he should have been on a hospital bed, fighting his final battle against his illness, only to succumb and pass away.

"A chaotic world, a dim yellow sky, damp air thick with the smell of blood. An icy wind and a desolate desert, and this strange aura..."

Roar!!!

Before Wien could figure out his situation, a strange roar sounded nearby, instantly setting his nerves on edge. He turned his head and saw a creature larger than anything he knew. It was the size of a mammoth, standing on all fours, with a tail longer than its entire body.

A huge, grayish-white mask covered its face, which was hard to identify as either bovine or feline. The mask's eye sockets were black hollows, with only pinpricks of red light flickering within.

Most bizarrely, a huge hole pierced the creature's torso, leaving the entire area in front of it visible through the empty space.

The strange creature, however, seemed uninterested in Wien. It merely roared, pawed at the ground with its hooves, and ran off, leaving Wien utterly bewildered.

"Why does it look so familiar?" Wien drew a sharp breath. "It looks a bit like... a Hollow? A Hollow from the anime Bleach?" Something came back to him.

"Did I... transmigrate?" After a long while, Wien reached that conclusion.

Transmigration was not an unfamiliar term to a young man from the twenty-first century. What was unfamiliar was that something that should have belonged in movies, television, and literature had actually happened to him.

"Did I transmigrate, or does a world like the one in Bleach really exist after death? Is this Hueco Mundo?" As he thought about the anime, Wien gradually recalled the name of this dim realm.

Hueco Mundo.

"Why am I in Hueco Mundo? Could it be..." As he muttered to himself, Wien reached out and felt his body. Sure enough, a pitch-black, empty hole lay right in the center of his chest.

At that, Wien felt utterly helpless. He might really have transmigrated, and into a Hollow at that.

"Amazing. There really is a Hollow Hole." Feeling the hole in his chest, Wien could only believe it. Whether this was a real world that existed after death or he had transmigrated into the world of the anime Bleach, all Wien knew was that he was still alive.

"Oh well. At least I'm alive again, and I can still move. That's already good enough." Having accepted reality, Wien began taking stock of his situation. But he had no idea what he looked like now. It would be troublesome if he were an animal-shaped or mutated Hollow.

Wien stood up and began examining his body. As it happened, there was a small withered tree beside him. If the little tree was no different in size from an ordinary one, then Wien, whose body was level with its trunk, was probably not much different in size from his previous life—around 1.7 or 1.8 meters tall.

He looked down at himself. He still had an upright, humanoid build. Wien could not help breathing a sigh of relief. As long as he was still humanoid, he could control his body easily.

In modern times, it had long been commonplace for people to take fighting lessons, and some had even begun dabbling in cold weapons. This had also allowed Wien's brain to retain the most basic motor and reflex abilities.

As long as he remained humanoid, Wien could make use of his advantages.

He looked down at his lower body. His clothes and the like had long since vanished, leaving only a layer of white, horn-like skin covering him from the waist down.

Around his waist, the white horny layer formed something like a battle skirt. Over his upper body, it formed a layer of white, armor-like skin. He believed that as his physical abilities improved, this layer would eventually become the Hierro possessed only by higher-level Hollows.

Looking closely at his hands, Wien saw that his left hand still looked human, except that a thick layer of horn covered its joints and forearm like an armguard. A raised layer of bone also protected his shoulder.

His right hand, however, had transformed into a claw. His original five fingers had become five sharp bone blades, and a layer of hard armor extended from his forearm.

A small, pitch-black hole sat in the center of his chest. That was where his Hollow Hole was.

Looking at the hole in his chest, Wien thought for a moment. He remembered a scene from the anime: after a Hollow became a high-level Hollow, the position of its Hollow Hole would shift as its body changed. He did not know whether the same applied to him.

Having roughly examined his body, Wien was fairly satisfied with his humanoid Hollow form. Whatever else, he could still move normally, and that was good enough.

"Right, I remember that Hollows all wear masks. Why can't I feel one at all?" Wien suddenly grew alert. He remembered that the masks on Hollows' faces formed to make up for the emptiness in their hearts. The mask was also the core of a Hollow's spiritual power; once it was broken, the Hollow's spiritual power would disperse.

Of course, some Hollows with special abilities would grow stronger in spiritual power when their masks broke. Once their spiritual power stabilized, their abilities would gradually decline, and their masks would return to their original form, though this was limited to a few.

As he thought, Wien reached up to feel his face. Because the mask had already become part of his body, it did not feel particularly out of place. He also quickly felt out its shape, though rather than a mask, it would be more accurate to say Wien was wearing a helmet.

The white helmet covered the upper half of his face and the entire back of his head. Light, pale-golden hair hung down from the mask at the back.

Directly in front of Wien's eyes was a thicker, inverted triangular layer of bone. Above it were horn-like bony structures.

Amazingly, the mask did not obstruct his vision at all, which surprised Wien somewhat.

After examining the state of his body, Wien began testing his strength. In a world like Hueco Mundo, where the strong preyed on the weak, strength was everything. With enough of it, he could do as he pleased in Hueco Mundo; otherwise, he could only become a meal in a higher-level Hollow's belly, or part of the desert.

Clenching his left hand into a fist, Wien punched the withered tree beside him. With just one blow, the little tree fell. Without pausing, he raised his right claw and slashed at the broken tree. His claws easily divided the trunk into five smooth sections.

"Hm? Looks pretty good." The corners of Wien's mouth lifted. "I just don't know how strong my spiritual power is or what my abilities are like yet, but I should be able to figure it out slowly, right?" Wien talked to himself.

"Then I'll start by carefully looking for some weaker-looking Hollows nearby to fight." With that thought, Wien prepared to move.

But before he could take a single step, an invisible pressure suddenly surged toward him from all directions, nearly forcing him to his knees.

"Ugh! This pressure... is this spiritual pressure?" Wien struggled to raise his head toward the source. About a thousand meters away, a huge shark was leaping out of the desert with all its might, letting out a soul-shaking roar.

In an instant, the sound waves from the roar shattered the withered trees around it. Even Wien, a thousand meters away, was sent flying by the impact of the sound waves and could not get back up for a long time.

Several minutes passed before he managed to struggle to his feet. But when he looked toward where the shark had been, there was no trace of any creature there. Everything had returned to its usual calm.

Get out of here! That was Wien's immediate reaction. Whatever the reason, the shark-shaped Hollow had just proclaimed itself king of this desert.

If he stayed, Wien had no idea when that terrifying roar might tear him to pieces.

Perhaps the shark had not attacked him because it had disdained killing an insignificant insect like him?

Without lingering, Wien immediately ran in the opposite direction from where the shark had appeared, not daring to stop for even a second.

After becoming a Hollow, Wien's stamina seemed to have improved considerably. He did not know how long he had run before he finally stopped and sat down beside a rock, panting heavily.

"I should be far away from that area by now," Wien muttered to himself between heavy breaths. After a long while, his breathing steadied, and he broke out in a cold sweat. The scene just now left him shaken even afterward.

Wien could not help laughing at himself. He had thought breaking a small tree with one punch was impressive, but only when he faced that huge shark-shaped Hollow did he understand how weak he was.

"No, I have to find out exactly how strong I am now first!"

If that shark had been an Adjuchas-class Menos Grande, then Wien's current strength could only be considered upper-tier among ordinary lower-level Hollows. But if it had merely been an ordinary large beast Hollow, then without a doubt, Wien was definitely one of the weakest creatures in Hueco Mundo.

Having made up his mind, Wien began to move stealthily through the endless sea of sand.

Walking aimlessly was often the most dangerous course, because he had no idea which high-level Hollow's territory he might step into the next second. But Wien believed that if he stayed in one place, he would never grow in his entire life. Rather than sit and wait for death, he would take the initiative, moving slowly and avoiding danger by relying on his sense of it.

Drawing on his memories of the anime Bleach, Wien roughly divided Hueco Mundo's territory in his mind as he walked. All of Hueco Mundo was divided into inner and outer regions. The inner region was where the supreme kings lived, while the outer region was where weaker Hollows roamed.

The outer region was also divided into the surface, the sand layer, and the underground. The surface was the range where Menos Grande operated, while the underground was probably where Wien was now. Within the underground layer, the most prominent area was none other than the Forest of Menos. Given Wien's current strength, going there now would be a sure way to seek death.

But in the vast expanse of Hueco Mundo, besides the several Forests of Menos, there were many areas such as small valleys and groves of dead trees. They were undoubtedly occupied by high-level ordinary Hollows that had not yet advanced to Gillian.

What Wien needed to do at this stage was get as close as possible to a small area like that and find a target he could use to test his strength.

There were no instruments for measuring time in Hueco Mundo, and even the air and light seemed chaotic, offering no reference at all. Wien could only estimate roughly how far he had traveled based on his fatigue and the time he spent resting.

About three days later, Wien climbed a low sand dune. On the other side, he could vaguely make out what looked like a forest.

Of course, although it was called a forest, its trees were nothing but black and white deadwood. The other so-called resting places for Hollows were merely areas made up of stone cliffs and rock faults, where survival was relatively easier.

For Wien, however, the small grove before him was already enough. His purpose on this trip was not to venture deep into this barren land, but to follow the forest's outskirts in search of the weakest enemy.