The power of the Soul King is not something just anyone can research to the bottom, and Fullbringers only came under the Soul Society’s gaze at all because of Ginjō Kūgo.
At that time, Aizen had already made a certain amount of progress with the Hōgyoku, and his goal had never been more than one thing.
To break the boundary between Hollow and Shinigami.
The essence of Aizen’s own power was that of a Shinigami, which was precisely why he wanted that boundary gone.
Once he determined that Fullbring was merely a rather unusual set of abilities, he stopped looking into it.
Had he known the core of a Fullbringer’s power was a fragment of the Soul King, he would almost certainly have fixed on Fullbringers and never let go.
Mayuri, similarly, found the power could not be replicated, and abandoned the research.
From beginning to end, only one family ever knew that Fullbring originated from fragments of the Soul King.
The Tsunayashiro family.
A thoroughly unpleasant presence in the Shinigami world.
The person Tōsen Kaname loved was killed by them.
The Ginjō Kūgo affair was instigated by them.
And they were still causing trouble as late as the Thousand-Year Blood War.
“Captain, what should we do next?”
Aizen’s side of things drew little notice.
At the Institute, Akon was waiting on his captain’s next order.
“Send the reishi capture sensor over and find out where this Fullbringer is. And remember to tell our people in the human world to wait until the fighting is over before they go in.”
Mayuri had no interest in Fullbringers themselves, since nothing could be researched out of them.
What interested him was the Quincy.
And on top of that, he was curious about the other party’s purpose.
Every previous time, the Shinigami stationed in Karakura Town had interrupted proceedings.
This time he would not interrupt at all, so that he could see whether the person made any other moves.
His people could not locate the target directly.
But by using the reishi capture sensor to investigate the site, they could capture the target’s spiritual fluctuations even several hours after the person had left.
Mayuri intended to find the Fullbringer first, and then use the Fullbringer to trace the Quincy.
The last Quincy had given him a great deal of inspiration.
Akon nodded and had the reishi capture sensor sent to the human world at once.
What Mayuri did not know was that all of this amounted to wasted effort.
The reason was that Lucas had recently discovered that fighting with pure physical combat pushed his Body Manipulation progress along slightly faster.
Once he noticed that, he withdrew his Fullbring entirely and fought the Hollows on physical strength alone.
An approach like that was genuinely one of a kind in this world, because so-called physical strength here is in reality the strength of spiritual energy.
Even Zaraki Kenpachi looks physically overwhelming, but in truth that is his enormous spiritual energy poured into his body.
The equivalent of wearing super-strong armor made of spiritual pressure.
In the manga, Fullbringers like Chad also had powerful bodies for exactly the same reason.
But the current Lucas was different.
His physical strength was completely independent of any of that.
Using spiritual energy to reinforce it would still make his strength greater, his defense harder and his speed faster.
And yet even without using a drop of spiritual energy, Lucas was now terrifyingly strong.
Anyone else fighting with their body inevitably releases spiritual pressure, because the root of their physical strength is their spiritual pressure.
Lucas did not have to.
He fought with his body and released nothing.
And as long as he released nothing, not even a reishi capture sensor could track him.
As for something forcing him to release spiritual pressure and use his Fullbring, that would require running into a Menos Grande, and the odds of that right now were essentially zero.
The Gillian in the manga only appeared in Karakura Town because Aizen arranged it.
At this moment Lucas had no idea Mayuri had marked him.
But he was not stupid either, and he had already decided to stop hunting Hollows.
He had used the Hollow bait four times in a short window to draw them in and fight.
He did not believe for a second that the Soul Society had failed to react to it.
Besides, after that many battles, his Brazo Izquierda del Diablo would be able to fully awaken before the plot began.
So naturally he had no desire to keep taking the risk.
Lucas stopped fighting Hollows, and Mayuri’s people were left with nothing.
They had everything prepared, and then the target simply went silent.
As long as the man did not actively release spiritual pressure, they had no way to find him.
The start of the school term drew close.
And after a stretch of natural growth, on this particular day, the Brazo Izquierda del Diablo was finally about to awaken.
To make sure the awakening did not cause too much of a commotion, Lucas even reinforced the Reishi Array that Uryū had set up.
That was right.
His Reishi Manipulation had now completely surpassed Uryū’s, and Uryū had taught him the array himself.
In Uryū’s eyes he was the last Quincy.
He could not pass on the fundamental abilities of a Quincy to anyone, but other things he could.
So he taught Lucas the Reishi Array without hesitation.
Lucas learned it the moment it was shown to him.
The essence of the Reishi Array was nothing more than Reishi Manipulation, and that happened to be a Quincy strong point.
He picked it up instantly, and then went on to improve it.
The whole process took almost no time at all, and Uryū was left completely dumbfounded watching it.
He was used to the man being a prodigy by now.
Lucas still managed to overturn his understanding of the world on a regular basis.
The awakening of the Brazo Izquierda del Diablo happened at night.
At that hour Lucas was alone at the training ground, because Uryū was not the beast that he was.
Uryū worked hard at his training under Lucas’s influence, certainly, but he could not manage to be that tireless.
He had plenty of other things to occupy him as well, such as embroidery, sewing, and the full range of needlework.
It was precisely because of this that Uryū had no idea the man was capable of awakening a second arm.
He did not even know the right arm had changed.
Lucas never used his Fullbring while training, and Uryū had not taken part in any of the fights.
Uryū understood clearly that Lucas’s strength surpassed his own.
Strength like that made small-fry Hollows effortless, so after the first outing, he simply stopped tagging along.