An invisible pressure quietly spread through the training ground.
It was not killing intent, nor even fighting spirit.
It was the composure of someone in absolute control—as if Yanagawa were not facing a duel, but conducting a delicate experiment that required precision.
“Heh… that’s the look!” Renji grinned wildly.
He remembered it well.
Back in the Shin’ō Academy’s combat classes, whenever Yanagawa entered this state, it meant even the most unassuming Kidō spells would erupt in the most unexpected, troublesome combinations.
“Don’t disappoint me, Yanagawa!”
Before his voice had even faded, Renji vanished from where he stood.
It was not Shunpo.
It was a raw, explosive charge, pushing his physical power to the limit.
The sand beneath his feet burst into a shallow crater.
Almost simultaneously, Zabimaru left its sheath.
Though not fully released, the blade instantly extended and split apart, becoming jagged segments connected by chains of Reishi.
With a shriek that tore through the air, it lunged toward Yanagawa from several vicious angles like a giant serpent ready to devour its prey.
“Snake Fang Bite!”
A classic Renji opening—fast, direct, and wide-reaching, meant to overwhelm the opponent with brute force and force an opening.
Yet against an attack that would have left an ordinary seated officer scrambling, Yanagawa merely shifted.
It was not an afterimage from Shunpo.
Rather, it seemed like precise anticipation of airflow and spiritual pressure fluctuations, used to their fullest.
His steps were small, yet at the very last instant, they carried him just clear of the first two blade segments.
At the same time, his raised right hand opened, light gathering at his fingertips.
“Hadō #31: Shakkahō.”
A chant?
No.
There was none—not even a full, forceful declaration.
Only a few low, swift syllables.
A blazing crimson fireball condensed instantly before his palm.
It was not large, but it was extremely compressed, its light contained within.
Then, as if launched by an invisible hand, it struck the connecting point on the side of one of Zabimaru’s middle blade segments with perfect accuracy.
Boom!
It was not a massive explosion.
It was a highly concentrated burst of flame and Reishi disruption.
The blade segment was knocked off course, disrupting the movement of the following segments as well.
The previously tight encirclement instantly developed a flaw.
Yanagawa used the recoil and his exquisite footwork to slip out of Zabimaru’s range like a fish through water.
“Oh?” At the edge of the field, Ikkaku Madarame rubbed his bald head, the teasing expression on his face fading slightly.
“An incantationless Number Thirty-One Hadō?
Controlled that precisely?
And he only hit the joint?”
“Hmph.
Cheap trick,” Yumichika Ayasegawa said with his arms crossed.
Despite his dismissive tone, his eyes had grown more serious.
To deflect Renji’s fierce opening so effortlessly with a low-level Hadō—such control over Kidō and battle instinct could no longer be underestimated.
Renji missed his first strike, but he was not discouraged.
Instead, he became even more excited.
“Not bad!
Again!”
With a flick of his wrist, Zabimaru’s blade arced strangely through the air, turning back like a living creature and coiling toward Yanagawa again.
At the same time, Renji himself strode forward, his left hand clenched into a fist.
Powerful spiritual pressure wrapped around it as he threw a straight punch toward Yanagawa’s face, carrying a vicious gust.
Zanpakutō and Hakuda combined.
No tricks.
Only pure power and speed.
Yanagawa’s gaze sharpened slightly.
Renji’s strength and speed had indeed improved greatly since their academy days.
He did not choose to meet the blow head-on.
His footwork shifted again, his figure drifting like willow fluff in the wind as he avoided the heavy fist by the smallest possible margin.
At the same time, his left hand moved swiftly at his side.
Light flashed.
It was not aimed at Renji.
Instead, it appeared directly in his path of pursuit—a circular defensive shield materializing in an instant.
Renji’s momentum was too fierce.
He nearly slammed into it head-on.
With a low roar, he refused to dodge.
His fist, wrapped in spiritual pressure, smashed into the shield.
Bang!
The shield shook violently.
Cracks spread across it, but it did not immediately shatter.
It successfully stopped Renji for a single instant.
And in that instant, Yanagawa raised his right hand again.
This time, his five fingers opened toward Renji, and fragments of a chant poured from his mouth even faster than before.
Reishi gathered and compressed wildly before his palm, forming a small, dazzling formation of overlapping rings.
“Hadō #58: Tenran.”
A highly compressed spear of violent wind shot forward.
It was not designed for wide-area destruction.
Instead, it condensed into a sharp spiral cone, moving at tremendous speed straight toward the opening Renji had exposed while attacking the Bakudō.
“What?!”
Renji’s pupils contracted.
He had not expected Yanagawa’s Kidō chaining to be this fast—or for its power to far exceed the Shakkahō from moments before.
He hurriedly recalled Zabimaru.
Several blade segments snapped back to guard him, weaving into a net of steel before his body.
Boom!
The spiraling wind cone slammed into the blade net, releasing violent wind pressure and a harsh cutting sound as dust exploded upward.
Renji was forced several steps backward, the blade net trembling.
He barely blocked the strike, but his sword hand went numb from the impact.
As the dust began to clear, Yanagawa still stood where he had been.
His breathing was steady, as though that swift, razor-sharp two-hit Kidō combination had been nothing more than a casual gesture.
He had not even drawn the Zanpakutō at his waist.
“Hey, hey… you’ve gotta be kidding,” one Eleventh Division member muttered, eyes wide.
“He pushed Eighth Seat Renji back using only Kidō?”
“Was that really Tenran?
The speed and piercing force felt… off,” another seated officer with some knowledge of Kidō murmured.
Renji shook out his wrist.
The battle hunger in his eyes burned even brighter now, though there was a new seriousness in it.
He admitted it.
He had underestimated his old classmate.
Ten years in the Kido Corps had not dulled Yanagawa’s edge.
Instead, it had refined his Kidō technique and control to a terrifying degree.
And…
The power of those spells seemed stronger than the standard versions.
“You really are something, Yanagawa!” Renji laughed as his spiritual pressure surged again.
Zabimaru hummed, and the light along each blade segment grew sharper.
“But the warm-up’s over!
Let’s see if you can handle this—”
“Roar, Zabimaru!”
At last—
Shikai.
The enormous serpent-like bone blade manifested with overwhelming ferocity.
Renji’s entire presence rose again, as if he and his Zanpakutō had fused into one true rampaging serpent.
Facing Renji in full Shikai, Yanagawa’s expression barely changed.
He simply inhaled lightly.
The flow of Reishi around him shifted in an extremely subtle way.
A vast amount of Reishi gathered madly, forming a violently spinning vortex before him and radiating an energy fluctuation that made the heart tremble.
“That Reishi gathering pattern… and those fluctuations…”
Even Ikkaku, standing at the edge of the field, dropped his casual attitude. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
His expression turned serious.
Renji sensed the danger within that vortex of Reishi and did not dare hold back.
With a roar, he pushed his spiritual pressure to its limit.
The huge Zabimaru descended toward Yanagawa with the force to split stone and cleave mountains.
“Hadō #63: Raikōhō!”
BOOOOM—!!!
It was not the ordinary massive beam of Raikōhō.
What erupted from the Reishi vortex was a far more condensed torrent of lightning, interwoven with blazing white thunder and deep violet arcs.
Its heat and destructive power seemed compressed to the extreme, firing in a strange spiral pattern as it met the descending serpent-bone blade head-on.
A deafening explosion rang through the entire training ground.
Blinding lightning and wild sword pressure collided, tore at each other, and unleashed a violent shockwave.
Sand and stone were swept from the ground, forcing the watching Eleventh Division members to raise their spiritual pressure in defense.
Many of their expressions changed.
Slowly, the light and dust faded.
At the center of the field, Renji was down on one knee, supporting himself with Zabimaru and breathing heavily.
The sleeves of his Shihakushō were scorched.
The webbing between his thumb and index finger had split, blood seeping from the wound.
His face was filled with shock and disbelief.
Not far ahead of him, Yanagawa stood quietly.
Aside from a little dust on the hem of his robes, he was untouched.
Tiny remnants of electric Reishi still crackled in the air before him.
The training ground fell into dead silence.
Every Eleventh Division member—including Ikkaku and Yumichika—stared at the figure in the center as if looking at a monster.
Using only Kidō…
He had met Renji’s full Shikai head-on—and even gained the upper hand?
Renji might currently only be the Eighth Seat, but that was merely because he had not been in the Eleventh Division for long.
No one present believed they could reliably defeat him.
If Yanagawa could defeat Renji so easily, didn’t that mean he was at least at vice-captain level?
“That… was really Hadō Number Sixty-Three, Raikōhō?” one squad member asked, swallowing dryly.
“Modified…?
He modified a Hadō?!” another cried out.
Yanagawa steadied his breathing and looked at Renji as he struggled to stand.
“Do you want to continue, Renji?”
Renji stared hard at him.
Then he looked at his scorched sleeve and his split hand.
After a long moment, he suddenly burst into hoarse, exhilarated laughter.
“Hahahahaha!
Damn!
Damn, Yanagawa!
I never thought you were hiding something like that!”
“A modified Hadō… and it can reach that kind of power?
I lose!”
His admission was clean and straightforward.
The Eleventh Division respected strength.
A win was a win.
A loss was a loss.
But the curiosity and scrutiny in Renji’s eyes nearly overflowed.
“What the hell have you been researching in the Kido Corps all these years?
What was that just now?”
Yanagawa did not answer directly.
He merely dispersed the last faint glow of Reishi from his fingertips, walked over to Renji, and handed him a small roll of bandage radiating cool spiritual energy—standard Kido Corps supplies used to treat spiritual burns.
“Just a minor personal adjustment,” Yanagawa said lightly.
“I optimized the Reishi-gathering structure and the energy-output pattern.”
His tone was casual, as if that strike—one that had overturned everyone’s understanding of Kidō—truly had been nothing more than a tiny adjustment.
But now, no one dared look at this Shinigami from the Kido Corps as a mere “desk worker” or weakling anymore.
For the first time, the Eleventh Division training ground fell into a strange silence mixed with shock and curiosity—all because of an outsider who had displayed overwhelming strength using Kidō alone.
This spar with an old friend had been more like a small test.
And the result… seemed rather satisfactory.
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