“Hmm…”
Right now, I was standing in a grassy clearing a little way outside Riosa.
I’d asked some of the customers at the restaurant if they knew of somewhere open where people rarely came, and they’d told me about this place.
It was exactly what I’d asked for.
There wasn’t a soul around, the area was wide open, and it was still a reasonable distance from town.
And what was I doing in a place like this?
“Yes!
That’s looking good!”
Practising on my own.
I’d been working desperately on controlling my spiritual power.
And perhaps thanks to all that effort, I’d finally managed to produce a ball of spiritual power about the size of a small beanbag.
I couldn’t even do this much when I was training with Master Danzomaru, so that’s a huge step forward!
…Yes, I know.
If I don’t force myself to be encouraging about it, I’m liable to lose heart over just how hopeless I am…
“Well, there’s no point dwelling on it.”
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step!
Let’s use this success to spur ourselves on to even greater things!!
“Now then…
I think it’s about time I tried it…”
I was thinking of the various techniques you could unleash by manipulating spiritual pressure.
Soul Reapers had techniques that used spiritual pressure, too, called Kidō.
To put it very simply, they were rather like magic spells in a fantasy story.
But apparently you could learn Kidō at the Shin’ō Academy, and Master Danzomaru should be able to teach me as well.
So I could leave that for later.
What I wanted to try was something else.
Techniques used by…
*others*.
Now that I’d managed to take that first step, I’d finally worked up the courage to give it a go.
I steadied my breathing, calmed my excitement, and gathered my spiritual pressure in the palm of my hand.
I pictured the technique I wanted to use.
And then—
“Cero.”
A feeble flash of light, no brighter than a tiny light bulb, shot from my palm.
It was so faint and fleeting that it disappeared almost the instant I released it.
Even so, I was satisfied with the result.
A small smile crept onto my face.
“Next…”
I did much the same thing as before, only this time I tried to compress my spiritual pressure into a solid mass before firing it.
“Bala.”
What came out was a tiny lump, like a glass game counter or an airgun pellet.
And just like the Cero, it vanished almost immediately.
“But…
I did it…”
I couldn’t stop myself from grinning.
Cero was a technique that concentrated spiritual pressure and released it as a destructive flash of light.
Bala was a technique that solidified spiritual pressure and fired it.
Ordinarily, these were techniques used by Hollows and Arrancar—beings who were enemies of the Soul Reapers.
Under normal circumstances, you’d probably call this taboo.
What was someone aspiring to become a Soul Reaper doing using the enemy’s techniques?
But when you got right down to it, all they were doing was releasing spiritual pressure.
If that was the case, I wondered whether someone like me, who wasn’t a Hollow, might be able to do something similar.
So I decided to try.
I had no real knowledge or preparation to go on, so failure would have been perfectly understandable.
Yet, to my own considerable surprise, I’d succeeded.
Of course I was happy!
“Ah…
H-Huh…?”
Just as I was savouring my success, my vision suddenly swayed.
I knew this feeling.
In fact, I’d experienced it over and over again while practising spiritual-power control with Master Danzomaru.
“M-My spiritual power…
ugh…!”
It was like getting dizzy from running out of spiritual power.
I managed to steady my wobbling body and lower myself to the ground, bracing myself with my hands so I wouldn’t topple over.
All I could really do was sit there, rest, and wait for my spiritual power to recover.
“Those attacks were barely more than children’s pranks, and I’ve already emptied myself out…”
While I slowly recovered, I thought back over the Cero and Bala I’d just fired.
Both attacks had been so weak they probably couldn’t have killed a bug.
And yet they’d almost completely drained my spiritual power.
That made me suspect they were rather expensive techniques to use—even setting aside the fact that my own reserves were pitifully small.
After all, those techniques involved firing spiritual pressure directly.
Perhaps Hollows simply had more spiritual pressure within them than Soul Reapers did.
Maybe they overwhelmed others through the sheer brute force of that power.
If so, Cero might not be a suitable technique for someone like me—a Soul Reaper (not even a trainee yet (probably)).
Perhaps I ought to give up on it, but—
“Still, not needing an incantation is pretty appealing…”
That was why I couldn’t quite bring myself to abandon Cero.
The Kidō used by Soul Reapers required an incantation, rather like chanting a spell.
But if you stood around in the middle of a fight reciting some long-winded thing like “O ruler, something-or-other’s mask of whatsit, filling the earth with blah blah blah,” you’d be the first person the enemy went after.
Well, apparently you could use Kidō without the incantation, but doing that greatly reduced its power.
If you skipped the incantation, you might fail to finish off your opponent and get hit by a counterattack.
But if you took the time to chant, you might get attacked halfway through and go down without being able to do a thing.
When I thought about it like that, it seemed a shame to throw away the option of firing a destructive beam of light in an instant.
“…Well, the first thing I need is practice.
If I get good enough, maybe I’ll be able to fire stronger attacks with less effort.
And if it burns through spiritual power all at once, it might be useful for training my reserves, too.”
Even if it never became my main weapon, it might still be another option I could use.
Besides, it wasn’t as though I had to reach a decision right here and now.
I could take the long view.
“I think that should do it.”
After resting for a while, I checked that my spiritual power had recovered and decided to try one more technique.
In case I ran out again, I stayed sitting down this time.
I focused on the spiritual power throughout my body, slowly, ever so slowly, imagining it spreading to every last corner of me—
“Ow!!”
—only for a sharp, stabbing pain in my fingertip to break my concentration.
“Owww…”
When I looked, blood was running from the tip of my finger.
The wound hadn’t been caused by something on the outside, but from *within*.
It was as though a vessel had cracked under too much pressure.
“This is going to take some serious concentration and control…”
The technique I’d been trying next was called Blut.
It was used by the Quincy, another group who fought Hollows, separate from the Soul Reapers.
If I remembered correctly, it worked by sending spiritual power through the blood vessels to increase offensive or defensive strength.
Of course, my knowledge was second-hand.
I’d only glanced at something about it online, so I might have the finer details wrong.
But the basic idea should be right…
probably.
And if it worked, I could improve both my attack and defence.
How could I *not* give it a try?
If I could somehow pull it off, it was bound to make me stronger!
With that thought, I endured the pain and started concentrating again.
Blood vessels were important; they carried nutrients and all sorts of other things throughout the body.
If I could send spiritual power through them as well, surely there’d be less waste!
And when spiritual power increased, it strengthened the physical body of a spirit, too.
In other words, the more spiritual power a Soul Reaper had, the stronger they became.
So if I could distribute that power efficiently throughout my entire body, it ought to work even better!
I should be able to become stronger than I otherwise would!
“…No.
I can’t do this.
Not the normal way…”
I’d concentrated as hard as I could, but it was clear this wasn’t a technique I could master in a day or two.
It wasn’t entirely impossible.
I felt as though I might be able to manage something similar.
The problem was controlling my spiritual power.
Get the control wrong, and too much pressure built up, injuring me just like before.
But if I was afraid of that and only sent a weak trickle through, it wouldn’t strengthen me at all.
Apparently, I needed to adjust the amount just right, so my body could use the spiritual power without wasting any.
“Hmm…
Hm?”
As I puzzled over the problem and adjusted the spiritual power flowing through my blood vessels, a strange sensation came over me.
It wasn’t that Blut had activated and made me stronger.
But I had an instinctive feeling that this sensation could be incredibly useful.
“O-One more time…”
To make sure I hadn’t imagined it, I tried again.
Let’s see…
I’d been compressing my spiritual power a little more forcefully, like this—
“…Ugh…
Yes!
That’s it.
That’s the feeling!
I wasn’t imagining it!”
Experiencing the same sensation again, I couldn’t help crying out with delight.
What I was feeling wasn’t an enhancement.
Quite the opposite.
It was an enormous strain.
“This…
might actually work…!!”
You could improve your heart and lungs by spending time somewhere with thin air, or build more muscle than usual by training under stronger gravity.
In much the same way, I could train by putting a load on my body through my blood vessels.
And since doing so also consumed spiritual power, it ought to increase the amount of power I had inside me as well.
“But it still comes down to controlling my spiritual pressure.
And controlling it very precisely, at that.”
Just maintaining it placed an enormous strain on me, and if I messed up, the power could surge out of control and injure me.
To avoid that sort of accident, there was only one thing for it: practice, practice, practice!
Now, what was it again…?
Was imagining a circle supposed to help?
People say it’s good to be able to draw a nice, neat circle, even when you’re learning art, don’t they?
I pictured myself drawing a perfect circle—
“Ow!!”
Another failure.
Looks like I’ve got a long way to go.
Author’s Note
● Techniques of Other Races
When you get right down to it, they’re all basically children of the Soul King anyway.
So it wouldn’t be strange if Soul Reapers, Hollows, and Quincy had at least some degree of compatibility.
That’s the outrageous logic I’m going with.
(Though they’re only imitations in the end.)