"Lord Szayelaporro, wait!"
In the moonlit desert, dozens of massive shadows flickered continuously. A cacophony of voices rang out from among them, all sharing the same general message: pleading for someone named Szayelaporro to stop.
The Szayelaporro they were calling out to stood nearly ten meters tall. A large, circular Hollow hole just below his abdomen looked exceptionally striking against his pure white body.
Even while moving at breakneck speed, his long, skirt-like lower half left no trace on the loose sand. Whether these were Szayelaporro's actual legs or the unique hardened skin of a Menos remained unknown.
He acted as if the voices behind him didn't exist. Indeed, on either side of his white mask—which bore a striking resemblance to a human woman's face—there were no organs resembling ears.
However, with every shout, the dense cluster of tentacles on Szayelaporro's back twitched a little faster, exuding an inexplicable sense of irritation.
"This operation was personally ordered by Lord Baraggan! You are openly defying His Majesty's command, do you understand, Lord Granz?!"
Unable to make him stop no matter how much they yelled, an Adjuchas with a triangular mask in the rear had no choice but to invoke Baraggan's name. It was a threat, but also a fact. The specifics didn't really matter; what mattered was that the Szayelaporro up ahead finally seemed to understand his words and ground to a halt.
The triangle-headed Hollow looked delighted. He had just caught up to Szayelaporro's back. "Lord Szayelaporro..." Before he could finish his sentence, the expression on his face froze.
Five rapier-like fingers pierced right through his triangular mask. Before he could utter another word, a massive tentacle wrapped around him, followed immediately by more tentacles coiling upward, completely submerging him into Szayelaporro's body.
The other Adjuchas froze in their tracks. They weren't sure if the faint sound of flowing liquid in the air was the sound of their own saliva being swallowed, or...
"You are far too noisy." An androgynous voice emerged from Szayelaporro's mouth. The tentacles that had been curled into a ball on his back now unfurled. Although his tongue slid across his lips in a look of apparent enjoyment, his tone made it abundantly clear that he was not in a good mood.
"Did you all have something else to say? Let's hear it." Szayelaporro said, his fingers casually tracing the air toward each of the Adjuchas opposite him.
Speak? The last guy who spoke was already gone, his bones likely melted into a puddle by now! Having witnessed this firsthand, how could the Adjuchas dare to utter another word? They shook their heads in unison, adopting a posture of absolute submission to his every whim.
"Then you will stay completely quiet from here on out. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind stringing you lowly creatures up and flaying you alive!" Szayelaporro snapped. The tentacles on his back slammed viciously into the ground, and before the yellow sand could even billow into the air, he vanished from his spot.
Having temporarily dealt with the nuisance and resumed his journey, Szayelaporro seemed even more agitated. The tentacles on his back thrashed erratically, occasionally smashing hard into the ground as if doing so would increase his speed, even though he knew full well it was useless.
"The second door has been breached. Are Baraggan and the others deaf?!" Even though he was thousands of miles away, Szayelaporro could clearly sense that his laboratory was being broken into, layer by layer. This was the exact reason why he had suddenly abandoned his current operation and rushed back without a word.
'Whoever you are, once I catch you, I will make you wish for death, I guarantee it!'
'The third door! Good heavens, can no one stop him?! My laboratory, my little darlings! No!!!'
Through Szayelaporro's perception, his laboratory was being breached at an astonishing rate. The most crucial part was that the countermeasures he had set up seemed completely useless. This drove him to the brink of madness. The tentacles on his back frantically altered the fragile terrain of Hueco Mundo; the cannon-like booms were the sound of his fury, and even more so, the sound of his breaking heart.
All of this fell into the eyes of a petite Adjuchas trailing behind him. She stood on a tall, thin dead branch, smacking her lips in a display of helplessness as she gazed out at the dust-filled desert.
'It seems the four of us will have one less problem to deal with. Wait, no, why should those two annoying jerks get off easy? Can't they suffer a bit more disaster and misfortune?!'
With that thought, the petite Adjuchas hopped down from the dead branch. Regardless, the infamous Szayelaporro had left. It looked like someone had thoroughly enraged him. She just didn't know who the brave soul was, but she hoped he could escape safely.
That brave soul was, naturally, Kōe, who had already broken into the laboratory. However, at this moment, he didn't need anyone worrying about whether he could escape; what he really wanted was an instruction manual.
Right now, he was facing a massive dilemma. It wasn't the little traps Szayelaporro had left in the lab, nor was it the fourth door he had just breached. Whether they were Reiryoku-based defense mechanisms or clever interlocking puzzles, they were all a joke in front of him.
The current problem was that he had absolutely no idea which of the specimens in the laboratory was Roca—or rather, he needed to confirm if Roca was even in here at all.
From the moment he entered the main gates, Szayelaporro's prized possessions were laid bare before Kōe. The space between the first and second doors was filled entirely with suspended Hollow corpses. Rather than experimental subjects, Kōe felt they looked more like little trinkets Szayelaporro had strung up to decorate his lab.
Starting from the second door, the specimens here were submerged in various colored liquids, finally receiving the treatment proper experimental subjects deserved. Naturally, they also had names—hardcore designations like 'Subject 001'.
Although a name was just a designation, when it was literally just a designation, it became an absolute headache. Especially for someone like Kōe who was here to find a specific person, it was practically an insurmountable puzzle of the century.
'I desperately need a guide or a written manual. Can't these scientists have slightly worse memories? Isn't it exhausting memorizing all this?' Well, perhaps to them, there was no real difference between a code name and a real name. Everything that came here was an experimental subject; no one got to be special.
Stepping into the fourth room, Kōe found that, just like the previous rooms, the subjects here were lifeless specimens. He could only rely on his half-baked medical knowledge to make simple judgments about which ones along the way were absolutely not Roca.
After all, according to Resen's memories, Roca had only recently been captured as a test subject. The ones that had clearly been dead for years were probably not her.
But based on Kōe's rough count along the way, there were still no fewer than fifty specimens that could potentially be Roca. If, after all his meticulous planning and exhaustive efforts, the Roca he was looking for had already been reduced to a corpse, that would be a sick joke.
"If I don't find Roca, I'm definitely blowing up your lab! And I'll string you up and beat you until you call me Lord!" Kōe muttered, pushing open the fifth door in front of him. "I guarantee it, Szayelaporro!"
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