46 – See You
"As much as I would love to spend more time with you four and look forward to doing so in the future. I do have my own goals to pursue, so I'm forced to decline." he says with slight disappointment.
'As great as protection is, they're practically pacifist in that they don't devour Hollow to grow their strength which is completely opposite to my path to power which I just can't afford. I would be shooting myself in the foot if I spent a lot of time with them. Not to mention that Aizen could show up to recruit them anytime now and I don't want to meet him yet.' he thought sighing inwardly.
He would need to continue devouring Hollow to maintain his insane growth speed or he would just slow down in growth to at or who knows maybe even below regular Hollow. This might be acceptable to Adjuchas or Vasto Lorde who felt like they had reached their limits after centuries of growth. They were eventually forced to go along with Aizen due to him and the Hōgyoku being their only possibility for further growth, but he wasn't even close to that.Rêạd new chapters on no/v/e/lbin(.)com
His power was still increasing at an insane pace managing to go from a basic Hollow to Adjuchas with 10 years of effort and due to the system this growth without barriers should continue for the foreseeable future. He might have to think about future progress by the time he became an Arrancar since he had no clue what came after if anything since it wasn't in canon. However this was still two whole evolutions away. He could just think about that once he got there.
"This doesn't mean I wouldn't be up for meeting in the future and working together if our goals align." he said thoughtfully.
Harribel nodded and seemed to be happy or at least satisfied with this for the most part. It was really hard to tell when the only thing you can see is the persons eyes and they are a pretty cold and unemotional person to start with.
He got back to the Forest of Menos in only a fraction of time that it cost the four of them to travel to the cave before and he was sure even if somehow a Hollow could see/sense through his camouflage somehow it would be hard for anything below a Vasto Lorde to keep up with him speed-wise. As for the Vasto Lorde there were literally only 3 known Hollow at that level currently at least until Aizen started creating Arrancar using the Hōgyoku which he knew should start happening very soon.
'System, please tell me how long has it been since I came to Hueco Mundo.' he asked.
[Answer: 17 days 17 hours 42 minutes 35 seconds]
'Ok based on what I can remember Aizen should either currently be or just about to betray Soul Society. Then there is about a month where he is building his strength and experimenting with creating the Arrancar before they attack Karakura Town and around 3 months before Orihime gets kidnapped and the rest of Ichigo's gang go after her.' he went over the timeline as far as he remembered.
It was probably going to become increasingly less accurate now that Masaki should have met back up with her family and he had interacted with Harribel and her future Fracción, but it was better than nothing and the larger differences only just happened meaning the ripples shouldn't have travelled too far just yet.
'I went from Gillian to Adjuchas in less than three weeks and could have even made it in under two if I didn't delay it to level some more and max the stat multiplication of evolving. Hopefully I can manage a similar feat in transforming to a Vasto Lorde before shit starts to go down." he thought.
'If I could build some alliances in that time it would be even better, but the only possible ones I can think of are the Harribel's group, the Nelliel group and maybe Coyote Stark. The last option I could probably cross off, he is easy going for a Hollow. However despite his loneliness he seems a hard person to build a relationship with if he is as shown. I should try to continue building rapport with Harribel's group and see if I can meet Nelliel's group though I haven't a clue where and when to meet her at least before she meets Ichigo.' he considered his options.