The rain in District 79 never really cleaned anything.
It just turned the dirt into red mud and made the dead bodies smell worse.
Kazuma leaned back against the broken wood wall of an old shack.
Water dripped down his collar, but he didn’t care enough to move.
Moving took energy, and in Kusajishi, wasting energy meant starving a little faster.
He closed his eyes halfway, listening to the rain.
To anyone walking by, he was just another half-dead kid waiting for sickness or a stray blade to finish him off.
Which suited him just fine.
It had been seventeen days since he woke up here.
He had all his memories from his past life, a solid grasp of high school physics, and the grim realization that he had landed right in the middle of Soul Society.
Not the modern one from the anime, either.
From what he had picked up listening to the locals, Yamamoto was already the Captain-Commander, the noble families still ran everything, and Sōsuke Aizen wasn’t even born yet.
‘I have at least a century or two before the world goes to hell,’ Kazuma thought to himself.
‘Plenty of time to get strong.
But first, I need lunch.’
The sound of wet footsteps broke his train of thought.
Three guys were walking down the narrow road.
They had rough clothes, dirt on their faces, and that hungry, desperate look common to low-grade souls in the outer districts.
The guy in the middle held a rusted katana.
The two beside him carried thick wooden clubs with nails hammered into the ends.
“Hey, kid,” the leader said, stopping a few feet away.
“Nice dry spot you got there.
Take off your sandals and the coat, and crawl into the ditch.
Do that, and maybe I won’t slit your throat.”
Kazuma didn’t get up.
He let out a loud, lazy yawn and rubbed his eyes.
“Man…
it’s raining,” Kazuma said, his voice flat and tired.
“Walking over to that ditch sounds like a huge pain.”
The thug on the left frowned.
“Is this brat stupid?”
“Just another useless stray,” the leader spat.
“Break his legs and take the coat.”
The man on the right stepped forward fast, bringing his spiked club down toward Kazuma’s head with all his weight.
Most kids in this district would have screamed, ducked, or tried to run.
Kazuma just watched the weapon come down.
Inside his chest, he tapped into that cold, strange emptiness he had discovered a few days ago.
He didn’t yell a technique name.
He just willed the space around him to stop.
The club came crashing down—and then instantly hit a wall of thick, dead air about three inches above Kazuma’s shoulder.
There was no bright light.
No shockwave.
The club just lost every bit of its speed, hanging frozen in mid-air like it was stuck in thick glue.
“What the hell?” The thug strained, his arms shaking as he tried to force the club down.
It didn’t budge.
He tried to pull it back, but it wouldn’t move that way either.
“You’re using way too much energy,” Kazuma muttered.
“It’s not good for your heart.”
Kazuma reached out with two fingers and lightly tapped the head of the wooden club.
He didn’t push it.
He just let go of the force he had just taken from the swing.
*CRACK.*
The club blew apart into splinters.
The force ripped right back into the thug’s hands, snapping his arm bones like dry twigs.
Before the man could even scream, the blunt shockwave slammed straight into his chest.
His ribs caved in with a sickening crunch, throwing his body back into the mud.
He was dead before he hit the ground.
The alley went dead silent.
Only the sound of falling rain remained.
The other two thugs stared at the corpse, their faces completely white.
There was no huge blast of spiritual pressure, no golden aura.
Just a lazy kid tapping a stick and turning a grown man’s chest into mush.
“M-Monster…” the leader stammered, his sword shaking wildly.
“Are you a noble’s bastard?”
“No,” Kazuma sighed, slowly getting to his feet and brushing dirt off his knees.
“I’m just trying to stay dry.”
“Die!” the leader yelled, panicking.
He lunged forward, thrusting the rusted sword straight at Kazuma’s neck.
Kazuma didn’t bother dodging.
He took half a step forward.
As the blade got close, all its forward momentum died instantly, stopping an inch from his cheek.
Kazuma’s hand shot out, grabbing the leader by the throat.
The thug tried to thrash and pull away, but the harder he struggled, the colder he felt.
Kazuma’s fingers seemed to suck every bit of warmth and life straight out of him.
Within three seconds, the man’s skin turned pale blue, his eyes glazed over with white frost, and his heart simply gave up.
Kazuma let go.
The frozen body fell flat onto the rocks with a dull, heavy clatter.
The third thug dropped his club, fell on his hands and knees in the mud, and scrambled away as fast as he could, sobbing the entire time.
Kazuma didn’t bother chasing him.
Running around in the mud was a waste of time.
Instead, he bent down, picked up the dead leader’s rusted katana, and wiped the blade clean on the man’s shirt.
He gave it a small, quick swing to check the weight.
‘Not bad,’ Kazuma thought.
‘The kinetic drain works perfectly on regular souls.
No huge Reiatsu spikes either.
The Seireitei barrier guards won’t notice a thing.’
He slid the stolen sword into the cloth belt around his waist, turned around, and walked out into the rain.
Far in the distance, high above the dirty rooftops of the Rukongai, the massive white walls of the Seireitei stood tall against the gray sky.
‘First step, join the academy,’ Kazuma thought, tucking his cold hands into his loose sleeves.
‘Get a free room, eat three meals a day, and make sure nobody figures out what I can actually do.’
A small, quiet smirk crossed his face.
‘It’s gonna be a long, easy life.’