The sky shuddered, and space itself cracked.
A metallic howl pierced the air once more.
A deep, low sound, like the groan of a monstrous horn, it rolled out far beyond the villages where we were assigned to patrol.
Please, let it not be Gillian…
Oh, who am I kidding.
With just one bait from Ishida, Aizen had to send Menos Grande himself to “push Ichigo’s development.” But here, there are dozens of baits.
I might as well pray that no Adjuchas show up.
“A familiar howl,” I remarked, shifting my grip on the asauchi to a more comfortable position.
“Hollows.”
“And here I was hoping it was wolves.” Shunsui drew his Zanpakuto.
For the first time, his expression turned truly serious.
Jushiro raised his head, gripping the hilt of his Asauchi with both hands.
The way his face had gone noticeably pale made it clear that he hadn’t merely heard the sound.
He had practically felt it against his skin.
“Stay calm.
Don’t lose your heads,” Harumitsu tossed over his shoulder, drawing his sword with a smooth, practiced motion.
“We can definitely handle one or two of them.
At the very least, we’re waiting for a signal from Sensei.”
“I wouldn’t count on there being only two,” I muttered, pointedly gesturing toward the Reiatsu pulsing in the air.
The trees swayed in the rising wind, and a thick, damp fog rolled across the ground, trailing a faint yet sinister wake of negative spiritual energy.
The air smelled of dampness and unease.
It was likely the work of a Hollow with a mutated ability.
Strange traits often cropped up in lower-level Hollows, unique techniques that would likely be lost during evolution unless they proved useful.
The first rustling sound drifted up from the grass.
Then a second, and a third.
My Presence Detection effortlessly ignored both the fog and the chaotic swirl of Reiatsu around us, picking up dozens, if not hundreds, of moving points heading our way.
Small and hungry, yet incredibly weak.
Huddling together in a chaotic pack, driven by the scent.
“They’re closing in,” Jushiro breathed.
“From every direction.”
“We’re being surrounded,” I muttered.
“We’re at the epicenter of a massive spiritual energy spill, glowing like bonfires in a graveyard.”
“Damned souls…
just how many of them are there?” Shunsui snapped his fingers, conjuring a pale Kido glow in an attempt to disperse the fog.
At that moment, a Shakkaho fireball tore through the sky.
A second followed, then a third.
We received your signal, Sensei.
The game of survival, or rather, the attempt to reach you, had begun.
“Damn it!
It’s worse than I thought!” Harumitsu barked.
“Form a circle!
Back to back!
Prepare for an attack!”
A roar was the response.
The first one sent a chain wave after itself, and the air was filled with a hideous chorus of screams.
Hoarse and bestial, almost insane.
Then they burst forth from the haze.
The first, an elongated, lopsided creature with a beak for a face and apelike paws, lunged at us, and Harumitsu sliced it in two with a single blow.
Its mask cracked, and its body dissolved into light.
My first opponent lunged from the right.
A shaggy, hyena-like creature with an elongated, jagged skull-mask.
I met it with Kido.
“Byakurai!” I exhaled, driving a bolt of lightning into its maw.
The mask flared and cracked.
The beast collapsed, choking on its own howl.
Good, one shot was enough.
There was no time to celebrate, though.
The next wave was already closing in.
I fired rapidly, like a turret.
One lightning bolt per mask.
One corpse for every single breath, yet I strove with all my might to pick up the pace.
But their numbers only kept growing.
“Don’t let your guard down!” Harumitsu barked, battling two opponents at once.
His sword moved with sharp precision, as if he had spent years honing those very same motions.
It was clear this was far from the first time he had faced a genuine threat.
Still, it would have been an exaggeration to say he was truly prepared for a situation like this.
I heeded my Senpai’s advice and stopped playing around.
It was time to grip my sword with both hands and flood it with my Reiatsu to the brim.
It was a shame the Getsuga hadn’t worked out for me, but the Burst was good enough.
That explosive power, which tore Hollows to shreds on a direct hit and sent their dissolving remains flying, gave me the room I needed to maneuver.
I didn’t feel in danger at all.
The low-level Hollows were laughably weak compared to my current level.
They possessed physical strength, certainly, but not enough to break through my guard.
Even the swiftest among them couldn’t keep up with a Shunpo of a novice like me.
Their stray blows simply shattered harmlessly against my Spiritual Shroud.
And how were the others faring?
Shunsui spun through the chaos as if dancing with his blade.
His movements were fluid, light, and unconstrained, yet every turn was lethally precise.
A single step, and an opponent took a blow to the neck.
A half-turn, and the blade sliced through the next foe’s chest.
Such was the fighting style of the Kyoraku clan.
“And to think I just wanted to lie by the river…” he grumbled, parrying yet another attack.
“But no.
A stroll through Hell, right on schedule.”
Jushiro held the flank with confident precision, moving almost in a trance.
His breathing remained steady as he deflected blows using accuracy rather than brute force.
Yet, I could sense that every exhalation was becoming an increasing struggle.
His illness was already clawing at him from within.
A moment’s distraction nearly cost me.
I narrowly avoided a nasty scratch laced with toxic Reiatsu from a creature that vaguely resembled a humanoid praying mantis.
The bastard was strong and cunning.
I wouldn’t have even realized it was closing in on me if not for my Instinct, which made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
I twisted out of reach of its blade-like claws and punched straight through its mask.
Skill Up!
Instinct: D → C
It felt as though the final face of a Rubik’s Cube had finally clicked into place in my mind.
Perhaps I had overestimated those who combine logic with instinct.
After all, is this level of capability accessible even at C-rank?
In moments like these, you marvel at how you failed to grasp the obvious before.
But I can be forgiven for that.
I haven’t encountered such opponents before, I’ve only seen them in anime.
Besides, had I encountered one sooner, I’d almost certainly be dead.
To be honest, the credit for this upgrade goes neither to me nor to the mantis, but to Golden.
If she hadn’t spent every night genuinely trying to grind me into mincemeat, I never would have advanced to the next rank.
I couldn’t actually die from my own sword within that inner world, but I certainly felt the pain.
And far more intensely than in real life.
I plunged into the swarm of Hollows with renewed enthusiasm.
Economical movements, precise strikes.
Masks were being torn to shreds.
But it was time to stop playing around.
I needed an area-of-effect attack.
Fortunately, I had one.
Sort of.
“Time to get serious.” I had to play one of my trump cards, one I hadn’t really tried very hard to hide anyway.
I chanted the incantation.
Spheres of lightning began to form around my left wrist, looking like a string of large prayer beads.
Sempurai.
I had once unfairly dismissed this spell as less effective than its “little brother”.
But it turned out to have an effect that wasn’t immediately obvious.
The lag during its execution wasn’t a bug.
It was a feature.
It was a way to build up a charge.
And, with the right skill, more than just one.
Initially, I could gather five orbs.
But after recently raising my Reiatsu Control rank during Shunpo training, I could manage ten.
“Hey, guys!
Fall back!” I shouted.
“Hadō #10: Sempurai!”
A massive crackle erupted!
Ten bolts of lightning.
Ten resounding peals of thunder.
The swarm of Hollows, jostling and crowding together in disarray, made for a perfect target.
The bolts punched straight through their masks, piercing two or even three at a time, as if threading chunks of meat onto a spit made of lightning.
Yet I didn’t stop.
I didn’t even need to chant the spell again, I simply gathered the charges once more.
And again.
And again.
I lost count, but I kept going until silence finally fell.
The fog dissipated upon the death of the flying jellyfish-like creature I had taken out first.
…In reality, there weren’t all that many of them?
Did the fog really distort my perception?
“Phew…” I exhaled and shook my hand, trying to steady my trembling fingers.
“Is that it?”
“Not for long, probably” Kyoraku said, shaking his head.
“I really ought to drop by the training grounds to see you and Hachigen sometime.
Maybe I could pick up a few tricks like that myself.”
“Enough talk!” barked Harumitsu, worn out from worrying about our safety.
“We’re breaking through to Goro-sensei.
Only his barrier will give us any measure of security.”
We moved out, fast and in a coordinated manner.
We used short Shunpo dashes, limited only by the fact that Jushiro hadn’t mastered the technique yet, I had to carry him slung over my shoulder.
The air was heavy with dense spiritual energy.
It hung there like fog, coating everything in an oppressive, sticky viscosity.
The Hollows charged at us mindlessly.
We kept firing everything we had at them, though it slowly drained our spiritual reserves.
Fortunately, we had energy to spare.
They’d picked the wrong people to fight, bastards.
“They aren’t retreating,” Shunsui remarked quietly, peering at the horizon.
“We’ve just cut down like a good fifty of them, yet these creatures keep coming, wave after wave.”
“I told you, we’re the ones drawing them in,” I said, reminding him of our predicament.
“There’s too much spiritual energy concentrated in one place.
And we’re standing right in the middle of it, like beacons.
Every creature that was hiding, God knows where, is hunting us now.”
“They’re simply hungry,” Jushiro added.
“Like rabid beasts.
They don’t even realize who they’re fighting.”
We crested the hill, and the landscape revealed before us offered not a shred of hope.
The valley below was teeming with dark shadows—Hollows.
They weren’t clearly visible, yet I could sense them.
Jagged, erratic pulses in the air, like heat shimmering off scorching stone.
They shifted and flowed from place to place, colliding with one another in a ghastly cacophony of Reiatsu.
And amidst that chaotic din…
a crackling sound.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Harumitsu hissed through clenched teeth.
“Hurry!”
I flinched.
It was too late to run.
A tearing sound, like thick fabric being ripped apart.
Or…
space itself?
“Did you hear that?” Shunsui asked quietly, his sword still drawn.
Behind his narrowed eyes and faint, ironic smile, he was masking a sharp sense of unease.
“Too muffled to be Shakkahō,” I replied.
“It sounded like…
a footstep?
If so, something huge is approaching.”
“Damn it…” Harumitsu didn’t finish the sentence.
He raised a hand.
“Don’t move.”
We froze.
It was as if the world itself held its breath for a second.
Even the Hollows at the edge of our senses perceived the shift, something was approaching.
And then, it arrived.
A crack.
The fabric of the sky tore open, as if a chunk had been ripped right out of it.
A hand emerged from the fissure.
White, clawed, and really massive.
Its movements were slow, yet they exuded such an air of inexorability that the immediate urge was to flee.
It was forcing its way into reality like an uninvited guest.
It was too large to fit through the narrow opening, so it ruthlessly smashed through, treating the sky’s barrier like a mere nuisance.
And finally, it squeezed its way in.
A Menos Grande.
It was massive, easily six stories tall.
It wore a standard white mask featuring hollow eye sockets with red pinpricks of light deep within, and a long nose.
Spikes ringed the base of its head, forming a sort of collar.
A flowing, cloak-like black shroud enveloped its shapeless, snow-white body.
It stood there, slowly turning its head.
Gillian was simply…
watching.
It wasn’t even picking a target, it was just there.
And its very existence exerted a crushing pressure.
“…Damn it,” Harumitsu rasped.
“One…
just one, but it’s more than enough for all of us.”
The problem of the lesser Hollows resolved itself.
Curiously, most of them retreated immediately.
Some darted back toward the rift of Garganta, while others simply scattered to the sides.
Their primal instincts told them they didn’t belong here.
My mind automatically registered a few details as I tried to cling to what little composure I had left.
First, its mask was unremarkable.
That meant it hadn’t developed a distinct personality.
It was just another mindless Menos.
Good.
That…
made the task much easier.
Second, the rift it had used to cross over was called a Kumon.
It was a rare and unstable type of tear between worlds.
Only the largest Hollows, or the most desperate, could utilize it.
And yet, here it was.
It washed over us.
No, not a Cero or even a howl.
Reiatsu.
Heavy and dense, like a wet blanket.
It pressed against my chest and squeezed my temples.
I gritted my teeth and unleashed my own spiritual power.
The others followed suit, and the pressure eased.
Much easier.
The Menos was undeniably powerful, and the nature of its energy was oppressive, but compared to the “welcome” the examiners had arranged for me, it kinda paled in comparison.
In her inexperience, Rukia had vastly inflated expectations regarding Menos Grande, skewing our perception for the first half of the anime.
Officers ranked fifth through tenth could handle them well enough.
Perhaps not in a single blow, but they could do it.
For a lieutenant with a Shikai, or a captain, they were nothing more than a snack.
I couldn’t say for sure if I was worthy of the fifth rank.
But I was definitely hovering somewhere between that and a common soldier.
“What’s the plan, Boss?” I asked Harumitsu.
There was a joking note in my voice, though the situation was anything but funny.
He swallowed hard.
“We…
could try to escape,” he managed to say.
“Or hold out until reinforcements arrive.”
Escape?
Seriously?
We’ve got Jushiro, who can barely stay on his feet.
And the three of us also glow spiritually, like a Christmas tree at New Year.
That’s not going to work.
“I don’t want to be a pessimist, but I think it’s worth saying that it was a pleasure knowing you all,” Kyoraku chuckled with a grim smile.
“Shunsui, you aren’t a crow, are you?
So stop croaking like one,” I snapped back.
At first, he didn’t understand the saying from my homeland.
However, he quickly grasped that I was telling him not to jinx us in a situation like this.
In the distance, at the very edge of my detection rangeб strange fluctuations in Reiatsu began to occur.
I glanced back and saw a massive yellow dome rising above the ground.
“Damn it!” Harumitsu wheezed helplessly.
“It’s a closed-type barrier.
It won’t let anyone else through.”
At that moment, the first Cero screamed overhead.
A beam thick and red as blood.
It struck the barrier and…
splashed helplessly against it.
The shield held.
The Gillian let out a loud howl that pierced our skulls.
We instinctively ducked, clutching our injured ears.
Stunned, we nearly missed the next crackling sound.
“Another one!” Jushiro shouted.
“No, two of them!”
Two more Menos were emerging from the Kumon rifts.
The shattered sky had completely lost all definition.
That was why they chose it as their target.
They began taking turns bombarding the yellow dome, fortunately, to no avail.
The Gillian that had previously let out a howl with its snout raised skyward lowered it, emitting a sound somewhere between a groan and a growl, and took a step forward.
The ground shuddered ever so slightly.
“Is…
is it looking at us?” Jushiro whispered, his voice tight.
“What do you think?” I replied with a nervous chuckle.
“It seems our new friend isn’t exactly known for consistency.
And guess who the tastiest snack around here is, now that it’s been denied a seat at the main banquet?”
“We are,” Shunsui sighed resignedly.
“Hey, Senpai, are you any good at Bakudo?
A Rikujōkōrō would come in handy right about now.
We could sneak up on him from behind,” I said, turning back to him.
“I’m terrible at Bakudo…” he said, slowly backing away.
“And why did the three of us, so talented and handsome, end up with a dud like you on our team?” I snorted nervously.
“I suppose Sajō Sabaku is out of the question, too?
Binding his head would’ve been nice…
Honestly, if we take those beams out of the equation, we could actually win this.”
Another step.
He was closing in on us, shaking the treetops.
“Shit, he’s getting closer!” I pointed my hand toward the enemy’s mask.
“Ressen.”
Unlike the non-mastered version of a flashbang, this was a direct beam of light.
Measuring its lumen count would have been a monumental task, but here’s a hint.
For an ordinary soul, it would have seared the eyes right back to the brain.
Gillian screamed in agony and staggered, shaking his head like a sick dog.
“Let’s run right between his feet!” I proposed.
“He’s unlikely to fire directly beneath himself.
And if we’re lucky, he won’t trample us, either.”
The hundred meters separating us felt like nothing.
Those white legs, shaped like strange, pointed boots, became our target.
The Menos wavered, having lost sight of us, and howled again.
The sound was carried by the trees and the echo, washing over the valley in a second sonic wave.
“It’s no use!
Only superficial wounds!” Harumitsu’s shout reached me.
He was straining to hack through the Menos’s leg, but his blade kept getting bogged down in hide as dense as bone.
“Strike anyway!” I yelled without looking back.
“Anything!
Any Kido!”
Jushiro was already chanting a spell.
“Hado #17: Koju!” his voice rang out, taut with strain.
Elusive birds of fire, hot and light as sparks, darted toward the mask.
They failed to pierce it, but forced the Menos to stagger back as it belatedly raised a hand in defense.
The giant howled in rage.
This was our chance.
“Hado #45: Enjin!” One of the our sixth-year student’s fire spells ignited both his and Kyoraku’s swords.
With an incredible Shunpo leap, Shunsui climbed the monster’s leg, hammering at it like a blacksmith at an anvil.
His blazing sword burned right through the white flesh as if it were styrofoam.
He didn’t stop, even when the Menos began to stomp clumsily, filling the air with its cries of pain.
Kyoraku seemed to be actually enjoying this adrenaline-fueled frenzy.
“I’m holding on!” he shouted.
“But probably not for long!”
“Great!
We need to bring it down to the ground somehow,” I said, taking on the role of informal leader.
Jushiro chanted the full incantation for Hadō #17 again.
Fiery birds soared into the air, slamming into the Menos’s mask and exploding.
Another Cero, one that could have left nothing but scraps of us behind, was disrupted.
“Keep it up!” I shouted, attempting to replicate Shunsui’s maneuver.
I reached my target in a few leaps across the solidified air, but then I changed my plan.
My Asauchi was trembling in my hand from the surge of energy.
I continued to ascend, intending to dive-bomb its foot like a hawk…
“Burst!”
I didn’t strictly need to say it aloud, but the moment called for it.
A sharp pulse surged through the blade, like the strike of a hammer.
A wave of energy tore loose and slammed into the spot where a normal person’s ankle would be.
The Menos’s flesh, if one could even call it that, swelled grotesquely and exploded.
It burst open like overripe fruit.
The Gillian howled and…
began to fall.
“He’s going down!” I shouted mid-air, ignoring the notification about a skill level-up.
“Fall back!”
The others scattered in every direction.
First Shunpo, then somersaults, then just rolling however they could.
The giant crashed to the ground with a dull thud that shook the entire field.
Mud sprayed up, dusting me, and the surrounding trees shuddered.
A second later, silence fell.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t escaped the blast radius of my own attack, but the explosion had conveniently thrown me clear to safety.
I propped myself up on my elbows, wiped the blood from my lip, and trudged toward the fallen Menos’s head.
It was still breathing.
Its body twitched, and one arm tried to drag its massive bulk along.
But without that second leg, the sight was pathetic.
“Is everyone alive?!” Harumitsu shouted barely ten seconds later.
“Yes!” we echoed back.
Even Jushiro, his voice cracking, replied that he was alive.
Then the Gillian started charging up a Cero again.
Does that beast have no cooldown period or something?
But Jushiro, what a guy, had given me a brilliant idea earlier.
It’s a shame I hadn’t thought of it myself.
“Hadō #17: Kōju!” Like all the other Kidō spells I’d studied, I had mastered this one completely.
Ten kamikaze fire-birds, packed to the brim with Reiatsu, streaked toward the Hollow’s mask with a single goal.
To fly right into that charging Cero and detonate in the most magnificent fireworks display I’d ever seen.
Along with the head of the black-and-white Pinocchio.
BOOM!
The Menos’s body twitched one last time, then went limp.
Deprived of purification by a Zanpakuto, it would lie there until someone took care of it.
So…
was it over?
Was it really?
“Victory!” I threw my arms up toward the sky and collapsed onto my back, utterly spent.
“Sounds like a toast,” Shunsui said, hobbling toward me while clutching his leg.
He must have twisted it during the fall.
“Sorry, I can’t heal you.
My energy is completely drained,” I replied, trying to sit up.
“No matter,” he said, pulling me up by the arm.
“Look.”
I turned my head.
The barrier was gone.
It would have been a deeply alarming sight, were it not for the two towering Menos corpses, sliced clean in half.
Neatly.
Precisely and flawlessly.
I stared in shock at the surreal spectacle.
They had been cut right across the level of their hollow holes.
They remained frozen in mid-air, slowly dissolving into flakes of energy.
Harumitsu, being the least injured among us, dragged the coughing Jushiro over.
Fortunately, Jushiro was merely exhausted.
Though seemingly more so than usual, judging by the smear of blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Kaoru,” Haru said hoarsely.
“You’re a truly crazy bastard.
But…
you pulled it off.”
“Hey now, I was born in wedlock,” I snorted.
“And don’t even bother thanking me, Senpai.”
Aside from the satisfaction of the impending victory, my greedy soul was tormented by the lost profit.
Never mind the lesser Hollows, I could have just left them to dissolve.
But a whole Gillian!
Cobalt, don’t be mad, but you’re going to have to go hungry a little longer.
I wonder how Hachigen and Chikane are doing?
I hope they’re alive.
Plot armor ought to save them.
It’s not their time to die yet.
Several figures were approaching us via Shunpo.
The leader was recognizable from a mile away by his orange scarf.
Look who it is—Chika Shihouin.
He was probably sent here to investigate.
Ugh, I hope they don’t interrogate us.
And if they do, I hope they go easy on us, heh.
I’m ready to cooperate with the investigation.
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