A few days flashed by.
As time passed, Uryū slowed his own training pace.
Initially he had planned to keep in step with Lucas’s rhythm.
But he soon discovered the man trained like a lunatic, sometimes not even sleeping.
Once the first wave of excitement wore off, Uryū still worked hard under his influence, but he gave up on matching that pace.
He simply could not keep up.
Now the two of them had left their training spot, because the next step was live combat.
“This thing is called a Hollow bait. Once crushed, it dissipates into the air, and for a while afterward it keeps drawing Hollows in from Hueco Mundo and other places.”
Uryū took out a small white disc, no bigger than a fingernail.
Lucas recognized the item.
It was exactly what Uryū had used in the manga when he went to make trouble for Ichigo.
“I have a question. What’s its duration, and how many Hollows will it attract?”
He asked because in the manga, the effect of the bait Uryū used far exceeded its intended one, mainly because Aizen was stirring things up behind the scenes.
He needed to know what the real effect was.
“The duration is about one day. As for how many it can attract, there isn’t a fixed amount. On the low end, a dozen or so. On the high end, over twenty.”
“You don’t need to worry. The ones the bait attracts are only normal Hollows. At our current strength, dealing with them is very easy. And this place is some distance from Karakura Town, so there’s no need to worry about hurting anyone.”
“Right, there’s one more thing you need to pay attention to. You’re strong, but this is your first battle, and you’re facing monsters like Hollows. You must not be timid. Once you are, your strength might be compromised.”
Uryū gave the warning with a serious expression.
This too was experience he had summarized from his own past.
It is inevitable for an ordinary person to feel some fear when facing a giant beast far larger than themselves, and bizarre-looking at that.
That kind of timidity could very well become a fatal weakness.
Which was exactly why he wanted to bring Lucas out for a live combat session.
With him here watching, there was no need to worry about the man running into danger.
But what if Lucas met a Hollow on his own and something went wrong because of a moment’s hesitation?
He had finally met someone similar to himself, and they had become friends.
“I understand. Then let’s begin.”
Lucas nodded.
Uryū had chosen this location mainly to avoid involving ordinary people.
In the manga, setting the bait off inside the city was likely a momentary surge of anger.
Furthermore, the bait’s effect was actually controllable.
At Uryū’s strength, he could snipe the Hollows the moment they appeared.
A dozen or twenty normal ones were nothing but a breeze for him.
As Lucas finished speaking, Uryū crushed the bait in his hand.
Lucas felt a peculiar ripple spread out into the air.
Not long after, the surrounding space rippled, and a creature three meters tall stepped out of the void.
It resembled a large, bipedal lizard, with a bone mask, a hole in its chest, and grayish-white skin.
“It’s here. I’ll leave the rest to you. If you can’t handle it, only then will I step in.”
Hearing that, Lucas did not waste any words.
He locked onto the lizard-like Hollow and felt the completely unmasked spiritual pressure pouring off it.
Clearly, this type did not possess high intelligence.
It acted on instinct, like a wild beast.
Judging by its spiritual pressure, it was far below him, though three meters of height was indeed quite imposing.
Lucas had prepared himself mentally from the start, and even so, the visual impact of a behemoth like that appearing in front of him was strong.
Of course, he was not timid.
Perhaps it was those years of fighting assorted punks, but he had long been accustomed to combat.
Now it was nothing more than swapping a punk for the monster in front of him.
And knowing his strength far exceeded his opponent’s, what he felt was more excitement than fear.
Gathering spiritual power beneath his feet, his movement speed rose somewhat.
This was an acceleration method he had worked out himself, by combining the principles of Shunpo.
It could only be considered a prototype.
Nobody had taught him, and he had no idea how to properly learn techniques like Shunpo, Sonido, or Hirenkyaku.
And for now, Shunpo was the only one he could research, because it had the lowest threshold.
Sonido and Hirenkyaku both carried racial characteristics.
Kurotsuchi Mayuri was formidable enough, was he not?
Starting from Ishida Sōken, he had been studying the abilities of the Quincy, and it was not until the Soul King Palace era that he developed equipment capable of using Hirenkyaku.
That was right.
Even after figuring out the principles behind it, Mayuri still had to rely on equipment to use Hirenkyaku, rather than performing it himself.
The Quincy were all about bloodline.
Without Yhwach’s bloodline, those techniques were simply impossible to learn.
Of course, for Lucas, with his limiter unlocked, anything was possible.
But the time had been too short.
Even if he could learn such techniques, it would still take time.
So Shunpo was all he could research for now.
Hirenkyaku and Sonido would have to wait.
Discovering that Lucas was charging toward it, the lizard Hollow let out a massive roar, and then its huge body charged back.
Its mouth hung wide open as it came.
Judging by the posture, it intended to swallow him in one bite.
Facing the charge, Lucas did not slow in the slightest.
Beyond its size, the Hollow in front of him could not compare to him in any other respect.
The gap was like an adult facing a kindergartner.
His right arm was suddenly wrapped in a layer of red-black armor.
The moment he closed, his body shifted to the left, instantly slipping the Hollow’s attack.
He pressed himself right in front of it and threw his right fist upward in a violent punch, spiritual power gushing out from his elbow.
“Boom!”
With a loud bang, and under that acceleration, the punch easily shattered the Hollow’s head, and the mask broke apart along with it.
Lucas had not forgotten that a Hollow’s weakness was its mask.
Hitting anywhere else made a one-hit kill difficult.