Rukia Kuchiki didn’t pay any attention to the two-living people in the room, Ren Kurogami and Ichigo Kurosaki.
In her understanding, it was fundamentally impossible for living humans to perceive her existence.
“Hey, who are you and what do you want?” Ichigo questioned her.
But Rukia acted as if she hadn’t heard him at all, or more precisely, as if her perception had automatically filtered out his presence.
She turned her gaze to the little girl’s ghost floating beside Ren, reached her right hand to the Zanpakutō at her waist, and said expressionlessly, “Don’t…” THUD!
Before Rukia could finish, Ichigo kicked her from behind, sending her flying.
Then came his angry shout: “Don’t ignore me on purpose, you idiot!” “You’re breaking into my house this brazenly?
I’ll teach you a lesson!” Rukia lay on the floor, bewildered.
She looked at Ichigo and asked instinctively, “You can see me!?” Ichigo had no idea what she meant, because Rukia was fundamentally different from every spirit he had ever encountered.
This difference was not something he could immediately process.
Ren couldn’t help but laugh out loud.
The moment felt like a scene he had once watched in an anime, but now he was inside it.
That strange overlap of familiarity and reality created a sudden mental jolt, making it genuinely hilarious to the point that he couldn’t suppress his amusement.
He walked over to Ichigo and gently patted his shoulder.
“Still don’t get it?
That onion head means she’s not alive.” Ichigo froze.
That possibility hadn’t even crossed his mind.
Rukia looked nothing like the ghosts he’d encountered before.
She seemed no different from a living person.
Before Ichigo could react, Rukia’s emotions began to escalate in real time.
First confusion, then disbelief, then humiliation, and finally pure rage, all stacking on top of each other within moments.
She turned to Ren and asked, “You can see me too?” Then, as if something in her understanding of reality had collapsed, she jumped up like she had been electrocuted and pointed at Ren angrily.
“You rude bastard!
How dare you call me an onion head!” Ren ignored her completely and smiled at Ichigo.
“You’ve got trouble to deal with tonight, so I won’t intrude.
I’ll come back in a couple of days.” As he spoke, he glanced at Rukia.
It was obvious that the “trouble” he referred to was her.
Ichigo didn’t think much of it.
“Alright.” Rukia caught the implication in Ren’s glance.
In that instant, her perception of the situation twisted sharply.
It was not just anger, but a breakdown of her understanding of how spirits and humans were supposed to interact, as if the rules themselves had briefly shifted.
Her face flushed deep red with rage and humiliation, almost as if her body was overheating from the intensity of her emotions.
Before she could say anything, Ren lightly leaped onto the windowsill where Rukia had entered and gave Ichigo a small wave goodbye.
Rukia panicked.
She wasn’t about to let this rude man leave so easily.
She pointed at Ren, her Reiryoku surging.
This was not simple anger anymore, but an instinctive rejection of something that should not exist within her understanding of reality.
She chanted: “Bakudo #1: Sai!” The moment the spell activated, something went wrong immediately.
Ren only felt a faint binding sensation, like thin and fragile strands of hair trying to pull his arms behind his back and restrain him.
But before the effect could fully take shape, it was abruptly erased, as if the result itself had been invalidated by a higher resistance within the system’s mechanics.
The result never stabilized.
To Rukia’s disbelief, the man who should have been restrained by her Bakudo simply jumped out the window as if nothing had happened, as if the spell had never existed in the first place.
Shock and disbelief filled her face.
Her pupils even trembled slightly.
This was the first time she had ever encountered a human who could completely negate her Bakudo and render it ineffective at the moment of activation.
Staring at her own hand, she murmured, “Did my Bakudo fail?” Ichigo still wasn’t used to Ren leaving through the window, but he could accept it.
After all, when they first met, Ren had jumped down from a street lamp.
His room was only on the second floor, but Ren jumping from a street lamp and landing unharmed was far more difficult to accept.
Now, only he and Rukia remained in the room.
The little girl’s ghost and the middle-aged office worker’s ghost had already sensed danger and instinctively concealed their spiritual presence, retreating into hiding.
Just as Ichigo was about to teach this “burglar” a lesson, Rukia pointed at him and chanted: “Bakudo #1: Sai!” The next moment, an invisible force forcibly pulled Ichigo’s arms behind his back.
The pain from his twisted joints made him crash to the floor.
“Ow ow ow!!” Ichigo’s reaction proved that her Bakudo had not failed.
But this only made Rukia even more shocked, confused, and humiliated.
Her emotions escalated in sharp stages within seconds, making her mind spiral as the earlier encounter with Ren kept resurfacing.
She murmured, “Just who is that guy?” On the roof of a house not far from the Kurosaki residence, Ren had not left.
He was waiting nearby.
Tonight was the night Ichigo would become a Shinigami.
Ren was worried that his presence might cause a deviation in the Story, so he left early to let events proceed smoothly.
He knew that only after Ichigo became a Shinigami would the later storyline unfold, allowing him to access better experience sources.
So Ichigo had to become a Shinigami.
However, the Hollow that would attack the Kurosaki house tonight, Ren did not intend to let it go.
He also wanted to treat it as a controlled experiment, to measure how much experience killing an ordinary Hollow would give him.
Sitting on the edge of the roof, listening to Ichigo’s screams, Ren wore a look of keen scientific interest.
He naturally knew what was happening.
The reason he could ignore Rukia’s Bakudo was mainly due to his unlocked passive skill: Magic Resistance (E).
In the Type-Moon world, Magic Resistance is the ability to resist Magecraft.
Now, Magic Resistance not only resists Magecraft, but also grants resistance to Reiatsu.
This was because Ren had discovered that the Plot Token and Myriad Points from the Myriad Worlds Paradise could be used to strengthen his own passives.
He had effectively exploited a loophole in the system’s mechanics that should not normally be possible, one that bypassed intended balance rules.
Since he had loaded Gilgamesh’s character template, Gilgamesh’s passives had become his own.
Naturally, by consuming 1 E-rank Plot Token and 1000 Myriad Points, Ren had strengthened his Magic Resistance, adding resistance to Reiatsu.
Although the rank was still only E, it was sufficient for the current stage.
Time passed, and before he knew it, night had deepened.
Ren was not bored while waiting, because he was browsing the Regional Chat Channel.
Although it was late at night, plenty of night owl reincarnators were still active.
Some had uploaded photos or videos of what they had seen, giving Ren the feeling of browsing Douyin, mixed with a subtle sense of déjà vu.
He did not check his private messages.
His inbox had already exploded after his earlier post, so he disabled private messages entirely.
What Ren did not notice was that in a second-floor bedroom of a nearby house, a night owl JK girl happened to spot him while closing her window.
She paused slightly, sensing something unusual, as if she had glimpsed something beyond the normal world.
After confirming it was real, she became extremely excited.
She quickly opened the Regional Chat Channel, took a photo of what she saw, and posted it with a caption: “Everyone, quick, look at this.
Did I just run into a legendary pro?”