Karin felt the power of all those she consumed course within her. She didn't know if she was hallucinating but she almost felt… Full. She caught sight of something that momentarily suspended her bloodthirsty mission. There, a few hundred meters away, was a Gillian that looked...odd. Whereas other Gillians bore featureless white masks, this one's was scrawled with what seemed like crayon doodles—a pathetic-looking sun here, a crooked smiley face there.
Are you kidding me? she thought, bursting into incredulous laughter that echoed through the barren landscape. "Who has the time to do kids arts and crafts in Hueco Mundo?"
Her levity was short-lived, however, as a sudden shift in energy levels caught her attention. The doodle-faced Gillian seemed to be emanating an abnormal level of spiritual pressure. With a snort of disbelief, she sped toward it using her makeshift Sonido, her dragon mask's blue flames burning brighter in anticipation.
As she approached, Doodle-Face lunged at her, surprising her with its agility. "Okay, Picasso, let's dance," she muttered, sidestepping the attack with her large form, not an easy feat for a Gillian.
Just as she was about to clamp her jaws down on the mask of this artistic aberration, the Gillian let out a heart-wrenching wail that paused Karin mid-chomp. The sound was an eerie harmony of countless lost souls—the kind of noise that could tear through the fabric of one's sanity, however these souls felt different… Almost like there were souls of hollows and souls of something else, she hesitated.
But as she hesitated, struggling with the inexplicable emotions the Gillian's wail had stirred within her, the creature seized the opportunity. With a swiftness that belied its massive form, it lunged forward, its talons aimed directly at Karin's mask.
Snapping back to her senses just in time, Karin dodged, the razor-sharp claws narrowly missing her. She could feel the whoosh of air as they passed, and the realization dawned on her that her momentary lapse could have cost her life.
"Gonna have to do better than that," she spat, the blue flames of her dragon mask blazing back to life, but her voice lacked its earlier confidence. For beneath the adrenaline and the bravado, a tiny seed of doubt had been planted.
As she circled the doodle-faced Gillian, her mind raced. Just what the hell is this thing? It feels like something more than a normal Gillian. It's like the souls within it are screaming, being tortured.
The Gillian seemed to sense her hesitation and let out another sorrowful wail, this one tinged with a mocking undertone, as if it were daring her to make the next move.
Karin clenched her fists, the blue flames around her mask flaring wildly. "Enough of this," she growled, charging at the Gillian with renewed ferocity. She couldn't afford to be swayed by the creature's enigmatic nature; her mission, her very survival, depended on her ability to end this battle decisively.
But as she rushed forward, her eyes locked onto beneath the Gillian's doodle-scarred mask one final time, and she couldn't shake the nagging thought that she was about to destroy something irreplaceable.
For a fleeting second, her resolve wavered, and in the ruthless world of Hueco Mundo, a second's hesitation could be a lifetime's regret. The Gillian, as if sensing her inner turmoil, roared and met her charge head-on. And in that instant, both combatants were consumed by a conflagration of spiritual energy, flames and shadows and lamenting souls colliding in a cataclysmic dance.
Yet, even as Karin struck with all her might, a haunting question echoed in the recesses of her mind, a question she feared she might never answer: "What were you trying to say, through your masks, through your cries? What terrible pain are you enduring?"
The impact resonated through Hueco Mundo, a shattering of flame and soul. Ignoring the twinge of existential dread that plucked at her heartstrings, she shook her massive head and clamped down, shattering the doodled mask into fragments. As she consumed the unfortunate Gillian, a surge of power began flowing through her, stronger than any she'd felt before. "Maybe doodling feeds the soul after all," she quipped to herself sadly, feeling an inexplicable sense of fulfillment and dread.
Karin stood amidst the settling dust, the remnants of her adversary dissolving into the dark landscape of Hueco Mundo like ephemeral mist. A strange stillness washed over her, and for a moment, the desolate world seemed to hold its breath in anticipation. Then, a sensation rippled through her—powerful, unsettling, and deeply alien.
"Wow that feels amazing!" she thought, her eyes widening as a torrent of spiritual energy surged into her. The sensation was overwhelming, not just in its intensity but in its complexity—a dissonant symphony of emotions and experiences that she could scarcely comprehend.
Wait, this isn't just hollow souls, she realized with a jolt, her eyes widening even further. Mixed in with the searing malice and emptiness typical of hollows were echoes of something else, something disciplined and structured yet tinged with its own brand of sorrow. "These are...Soul Reaper souls?"
A cacophony of screams erupted in her head, each one a piercing cry that seemed to claw at the very fabric of her soul. Hollows howled in primal anguish while Soul Reapers chanted sorrowful dirges, and the sounds clashed and intermingled in an agonizing dance. Her vision blurred as her senses were consumed by the storm.
For the love of...what was that? The question ricocheted through her mind, competing with the screams for dominance. Her muscles tightened, her teeth clenched, as she wrestled to assimilate the jarring energies now coursing through her.
Just as abruptly as it had started, the uproar ceased. The screams faded away, leaving in their wake a silence so profound it felt like a void.
Tears streamed from Karin's eyes before she even realized it, warm droplets that contrasted sharply against the icy chill of Hueco Mundo's air. Am I crying...? The question trailed off in her mind as the emotional weight of what she'd done—what she'd absorbed—crashed down upon her.
I've ended them. All of those souls... they're a part of me now, are you sure I'm not a monster…? Her thoughts whirled in a tumult of confusion and regret, as she pictured the inverse version of her in her mind. colliding with her earlier sense of mission and survival.
She looked down at her giant hands, half-expecting them to have changed, to show some visible sign of the incomprehensible energies now integrated into her being. But they appeared the same—flesh and bone, wrapped in her battle-worn skin.
It was her that had changed, in ways she couldn't yet understand. She felt like a crucible that had just forged something both monstrous and miraculous. Yet as she stood there, alone amidst the unfathomable darkness, one haunting thought clung to her: Who am I now, in this moment, after eating and absorbing all of those souls? Can I even separate their pain from my own?
And so she stood, in a realm of eternal night, grappling with questions that had no easy answers. Her tears dried upon her mask, leaving salty trails that seemed to mock her, as if to say: "You're still here, you've survived, but at what cost?"
Slowly, as if carrying the weight of countless souls on her shoulders, Karin began to move. With each step, the darkness seemed a little less absolute, the silence a little less oppressive.
Then Karin stopped, her body pulsed with power, sensation surged through Karin like a wave, overwhelming her senses and saturating her being with a new kind of force—an electric vibration that seemed to pulsate from the very marrow of her bones. The sensation was at once painful and exhilarating, like the rapture of a divine revelation scored through with the agony of corporeal transformation. Her mind, awash in a dizzying swirl of images and emotions, struggled to comprehend what was unfolding.
For a breathless moment, time seemed suspended. Her towering Gillian form began to shudder, each spasm punctuated by an increasingly intense crescendo of pain. A seismic tension rippled through her, each wave a symphony of cracking bones and stretching sinews, as though the universe itself were being torn asunder and remade within her very flesh.
Suddenly, her body contracted violently, folding inward as if collapsing under the gravitational pull of her power. And then, with an almost cataclysmic explosion of energy, her form erupted outward in a spectacle of metamorphosis.
As quickly as the torrent had come, it subsided, replaced by a new equilibrium—a settling, a clicking-into-place of disparate elements forging a new, fearsome unity. Karin could feel her body stabilizing, locking into its new configuration with a sense of finality that left her breathless. She was now an Adjuchas, and the mere hollow she had been seemed like a wisp of a dream, a fleeting shadow in the blazing light of her new reality. Finally, Eyes flickering open, she beheld herself—a monstrous yet awe-inspiring humanoid dragon.
Her once lanky frame was now encased in a thick, black, dragon-like hide, each scale glistening like a shard of obsidian under an unseen moon. Each hollow bone black, instead of white. Her tail, no longer a simple serpentine appendage of her first form, had metamorphosed into a lethal weapon, each scale a small razor-sharp feather, poised and deadly.
Gone was the mask she once held, replaced by a full helm melding with her body resembling a dragon's head, with some parts of her front face white, and others black. The jagged, skyward black horns conveyed an air of regal menace, while the hollow void in her chest pulsed like a dark star, a chilling focal point amidst her tall imposing form of three heads taller than the average human height.
Her arms and legs, now formidable pillars of muscle and scale, felt as if they could crush mountains. Her fingers, ending in jet-black claws, twitched with an anticipation of violence yet to come. Her back held a pair of s black skeletal wings with no flesh in between. The skeletal structure of her wings emanated an ethereal blue flame, filling the cavernous space around her with an otherworldly luminescence.
Intricate, glowing blue markings adorned her body and seemed to pulse in time with her heartbeat—each surge lighting her up like constellations in a night sky, each retreat leaving her dark as the void.
A feeling of indomitable strength surged through her, a clarion call to her newfound powers and potential. She felt invincible yet weighed down by the solemnity of her transformation. It was as if she had walked through fire and emerged not merely unscathed, but reborn—hardened, yet also more deeply vulnerable. A dichotomy of feelings, a paradox of states: monstrous yet divine, terrifying yet awe-inspiring.
Karin roared, her voice a potent blend of ferocity and triumph, echoing into the depths of Hueco Mundo. It was a primal sound, an assertion of existence that reverberated through the dimensions, proclaiming not just her survival but her irrevocable change. As the sound faded into the dark, Karin spread her spectral wings wide, ready to meet whatever came next. She was reborn, not just in form but in purpose. And for the first time since her hollow existence, she felt truly alive, hunger sated. "Hell yeah" she whispered out, embers of blue flame shuttered from dragon's jaw.
Author's Note: The way hollow evolution works in this story is more so my beliefs in the way the anime portrays the hollow entity's and the symbolism behind them.
Regular hollow to Gillian: A cumulative amalgamation of several hollows that create a Gillian full of all those souls that it took to create the singular Gillian.
Regular Gillian to Adjuchas: First, the Gillian is like a sleep walking giant, acting on instinct to consume - type of being. They are asleep, and the souls within them are all fighting for domination over one another, and the soul that claims that victory is used as a catalyst for the consciousness of the being, and absorbs all of the other souls to become a new stronger soul. Once regaining consciousness the Gillian must consume other hollows to gain the power to reach Adjuchas level.
Karin's Case: Karin's soul is so powerful that she only needs the hollow soul within her, and her growing hollow powers to grow the more she consumes other hollows. Becoming a Gillian - she experienced a similar process to other Gillian's because in order to become an Adjuchas, a Gillian must hold one, powerful soul.
However, Adjuchas to Vasto Lorde will work differently, you'll find that out later on in the story.
Side note: Thank you all who are following along and keeping up with the story - enjoying it, as I release them, don't be afraid to comment and share your thoughts, I'm always reading them! Till next time.
