Within three years of joining the Fifth Division, Sōsuke Aizen became its Fifth Seat.
To the rest of the Seireitei, he was the model Shinigami: polite, soft-spoken, unfailingly diligent, and always willing to help an unseated officer with difficult Kidō homework.
Captain Shinji Hirako kept a suspicious, narrow-eyed watch on him, sensing something deeply off behind the boy’s pleasant smile, but could never find a single flaw in his spotless record.
Only Kazuma knew the truth.
Because for three straight years, every time the Tenth Division was assigned a border patrol, strange things began to happen along the perimeter.
It started with small anomalies: sensory beacons mysteriously falling out of calibration, patrol routes subtly altered by clerical errors from the Fifth Division’s administrative office, and rogue Hollows appearing in sectors where Kazuma liked to nap.
It was an invisible siege of curiosity.
Aizen wasn’t trying to assassinate him; the young prodigy was trying to strip away Kazuma’s mask.
On a crisp autumn afternoon, Kazuma was sitting on the wooden veranda of his private estate within the Tenth Division barracks.
A low table held a pot of roasted barley tea and a plate of warm rice crackers.
His Third Seat hurried across the gravel courtyard, clutching an urgent mission scroll stamped with the red seal of the First Division.
“Captain Kazuma!
An emergency dispatch from Central 46!”
Kazuma didn’t open his eyes from under the brim of his straw hat.
He took a slow sip of tea, letting out a satisfied breath.
“Tell Central 46 that the Tenth Division is currently conducting a mandatory spiritual resonance assessment of our futons.”
“It’s a joint containment mission, sir!” the Third Seat insisted, sweating nervously.
“A bizarre Menos mutation has trapped a Fifth Division research squad in the deep ravines of the 78th District.
Captain Hirako is away on a noble escort mission, and Fifth Seat Aizen is requesting immediate high-tier support from our division!”
Kazuma’s teacup paused halfway to the saucer.
‘A Fifth Division research squad trapped in District 78,’ Kazuma thought, his mind working through the setup in a microsecond.
‘Aizen is running early Hollowfication trials in the outer slums, and he’s using his own squad as live bait to lure me into a sector with zero civilian witnesses.’
If Kazuma sent his subordinates, they would be slaughtered by whatever experimental monstrosity Aizen had engineered.
If Kazuma went himself and did nothing, the incident would escalate to a Captain-Commander inquiry.
And if Kazuma fought seriously, Aizen would be sitting in the shadows with Kyōka Suigetsu, recording every variable of his Zanpakutō.
“Fine,” Kazuma sighed, setting his cup down with a soft clatter.
“Prepare my travel cloak.
I’ll go inspect this ‘bizarre mutation’ myself.
You stay here and make sure nobody touches my rice crackers.”
“Yes, Captain!
Good luck!”
Twenty minutes later, Kazuma stepped through the rusted boundary gate leading into the foggy gorges of District 78.
The forest here was desolate, filled with dead, leafless trees and a choking, sulfurous spiritual pressure.
In the center of a wide limestone crater, three Fifth Division unseated officers lay unconscious in the dirt, their spiritual pathways bleeding Reishi at an alarming rate.
Standing over them was a grotesque monstrosity: an Adjuchas-class Hollow with eight spindly legs, a carapace covered in jagged bone spikes, and two gaping mouths that exhaled a dark, corrosive miasma. Follow the newest chapters on NovelPing.
Its spiritual pressure wasn’t wild—it was unnaturally dense, compressed by artificial spiritual grafting.
Sitting casually on a high rock ledge overlooking the crater was Fifth Seat Aizen.
Aizen’s Shihakushō was completely clean.
He held his Zanpakutō loosely in one hand, his spectacles catching the pale gray light filtering through the fog.
“Ah, Captain Kazuma,” Aizen called down softly, his voice echoing smoothly off the limestone walls.
“How fortunate that you answered our distress beacon in person.
My squad members were unfortunately overwhelmed before we could establish a containment field.”
Kazuma strolled into the crater with his hands tucked into his white haori, his straw sandals crunching softly on the loose gravel.
“You look remarkably relaxed for someone whose squad is bleeding out, Aizen-kun,” Kazuma said, his voice flat and bored.
“I have complete faith in the Fourth Division’s medical capabilities, provided we resolve the threat quickly,” Aizen replied with a polite smile, leaning forward slightly on his ledge.
“This specimen is quite remarkable.
It possesses a localized kinetic field that reflects standard Zanjutsu strikes and disperses Kidō below the 70s.
I was curious how a veteran Captain of your caliber would handle such…
irregular terrain.”
‘He designed it specifically to counter standard force,’ Kazuma noted instantly.
‘He wants to see if my power relies on brute physical impact or something else.’
The eight-legged Hollow locked its multiple crimson eyes onto Kazuma.
With a deafening shriek that cracked the limestone bedrock, the beast launched itself at blur speed.
Its eight bone scythes came down in a coordinated scissor strike, fast enough to decapitate an entire squad in a single pass.
Up on the ledge, Aizen’s dark eyes narrowed behind his glasses, focusing on Kazuma’s fingers, his breathing, and the spiritual frequency around his body.
Kazuma didn’t draw his sword.
He didn’t even take his hands out of his sleeves.
He simply took half a step forward and sighed.
*Jakumetsu: Absolute Inertia.*
The eight falling scythes stopped dead three millimeters from Kazuma’s face.
There was no sound.
No shockwave.
No flash of spiritual light.
The beast’s massive kinetic energy didn’t bounce back or deflect; it was completely swallowed into absolute nothingness.
The monster’s muscles bulged, its veins throbbing with enough force to shatter an iron gate, but its limbs remained frozen in the air as if encased in invisible, diamond-hard resin.
Kazuma looked up at the Hollow’s upside-down mask with a tired expression.
“You know,” Kazuma said mildly, “running around on eight legs is terrible for your posture.”
Kazuma raised his right foot and gave the beast’s knee a gentle, lazy tap with the tip of his straw sandal.
The kinetic energy Kazuma had stored inside his soul wasn’t released outward as an explosion.
Instead, he injected a single microscopic vector of inverted force directly into the Hollow’s central nerve cluster.
The creature’s entire skeletal structure folded inward like an origami crane stepped on by an elephant.
*CRUNCH.*
Its bone armor shattered from internal structural collapse.
The eight legs snapped at every joint simultaneously, and the heavy torso collapsed into a neat, motionless pile of white bone fragments in the dirt.
The creature didn’t even have time to dissolve.
It was dead before the dust settled.
Kazuma wiped a speck of dust off his shoulder, then looked up at the high rock ledge where Aizen was sitting.
Aizen’s smile had vanished.
For the first time since they had met at the academy, the young officer’s eyes were completely wide, staring down at the crushed pile of bone with intense, calculating shock.
There had been no spiritual flare.
No Kidō incantation.
No physical swing of a blade.
A creature engineered to absorb kinetic impacts had simply folded under the touch of a straw sandal.
Kazuma looked up, his face breaking into a wide, harmless, sleepy grin.
“Terrible craftsmanship on these outer Hollows,” Kazuma called out cheerfully.
“The bones are so brittle from calcium deficiency.
One little trip and the whole thing falls apart like cheap pottery.”
Aizen slowly regained his composure.
He stood up on the ledge, adjusting his glasses, his polite facade snapping back into place like a smooth mask.
“A truly tragic structural defect,” Aizen murmured, his voice softer than usual.
“I am deeply grateful for your assistance, Captain Kazuma.
It seems I still have much to learn about the…
fragile nature of these beasts.”
“Take your men and go home, Fifth Seat,” Kazuma waved his hand, already turning his back and walking toward the exit.
“And tell Captain Hirako that if another one of your field trips interrupts my tea time, I’m billing your division for the overtime.”
As Kazuma strolled out of the canyon with his hands in his pockets, he could feel Aizen’s gaze burning into his back until he cleared the fog line.
Underneath his haori, Kazuma’s lips curled into a cold, dangerous smirk.
‘Keep digging, kid,’ Kazuma thought, looking up at the gray sky.
‘The deeper you look, the less you’re going to understand.’
The game had officially begun.