“Get him — Shinsō!”
Clang!
The wakizashi in Lorde’s hand blazed with sudden light.
A flash of cold steel tore across the street at a speed no human eye could follow.
Boom—
Wherever the blade passed, concrete split open and storefronts crumbled on both sides.
Six Hollows, lined up in a row, never had a chance to react before the blast cut them clean in half.
Pfft!
Blood fountained into the air and rained back down, soaking the street red.
“Oh dear,” Lorde said, sheathing his sword and surveying the wreckage.
“That was a bit much.”
Jack swallowed hard, fear creeping up his spine.
Everything that had happened tonight had shattered the worldview he’d spent more than twenty years building.
So gods really did exist in this world.
By the time he came to his senses, the stranger had vanished as silently as he’d appeared.
“It’s over,” Jack muttered, sinking limply to the pavement, staring blankly down the empty street.
Meanwhile, in Queens, Lorde reappeared in front of a nondescript little grocery store.
He pushed open the shabby wooden door and stepped inside.
The place was small and rarely saw customers, but its out-of-the-way location made it the closest thing he had to a home in this unfamiliar world.
Behind the counter, laid out on a bench, was a body that looked exactly like him — his gigai.
As a Soul Reaper, Lorde was normally invisible to ordinary humans and unable to interact with the living world directly.
The gigai let him take on a human shell and move through society — an essential tool, especially in a universe with no Soul Society and no Research and Development Bureau to fall back on.
“Whew…”
He slipped into the gigai and stretched out on the bench with a sigh of relief.
A year into his new life as a Soul Reaper in the Marvel universe, and he still hadn’t shaken the habit of missing a physical body.
In spirit form, he couldn’t so much as taste food.
The gigai itself wasn’t something he’d made himself — it had come from his cheat power, the Soul King Cultivation System.
In his previous life, this had been nothing more than a mobile gacha game based on Bleach.
Somehow, after he was pulled into this world, the game had followed him and turned into an actual system.
Its function was simple enough, consisting of three parts: Gacha, Shop, and Missions.
Gacha worked exactly like any pay-to-win mobile game, except here the currency was souls.
Guiding a wandering spirit to the afterlife or cutting down a Hollow, as he had done tonight, earned him souls, which were then sorted into low, medium, and high grades based on quality.
The Shop refreshed once a month, letting him spend those souls on rare gear, zanpakutō, or even characters straight out of the original story.
Missions appeared periodically, and he could accept or decline them depending on the difficulty and his own circumstances.
Completing one earned a substantial reward.
His own zanpakutō, Shinsō, had come from clearing the “Soul Reaper Awakening” mission on the day he first arrived, a year ago.
In short, the system didn’t hand out anything for free.
If he wanted to grow stronger, he needed souls, and it made no distinction between good and evil, only quality.
Souls were simply currency.
Lorde rubbed his temples.
“I’ve finally saved up a thousand low-grade souls.
Let’s try a ten-pull and see what happens.”
It was the wealth he’d painstakingly accumulated over an entire month of hunting Hollows and guiding lost spirits.
“1,000 low-grade souls detected.
Open the Gacha shop?”
“Yes.”
The familiar interface opened, and Kisuke Urahara stepped out with his usual sly grin.
Of course it was Urahara — he ran the low-grade pool in the game.
Lorde had long suspected the developers had some personal bias; otherwise, why choose a middle-aged man for the role instead of one of the game’s many attractive female characters?
Complaints aside, he was still eager for this pull.
A thousand souls hadn’t been easy to save.
“I’m counting on you,” he murmured, pressing his palms together and closing his eyes.
“Give me something good.”
Clang!
A flash of gold light accompanied the appearance of ten translucent cards before his eyes.
White — Low-Grade Spiritual Power Orb ×5
Blue — Hakuda Experience Manual ×1
Blue — Swordsmanship Experience Manual ×1
Purple — Shunpo Skill Book: Utsusemi
Purple — Swordsmanship Skill Book: Sword Pressure
White — Women’s Soul Reaper
Association, Issue 125 (Summer Swimsuit Special)
Purple — Hakuda Skill Book: Ikkotsu
Gold — Hōgyoku (Fragment 5/10,000)
Gold — Kisuke Urahara’s Training Ground (choose a location to open a hidden space with a healing hot spring)
Gold — Zanpakutō: Senbonzakura (Shikai)
Three golds, three purples.
Lorde’s breath caught, and he could hardly believe what he’d pulled.
Senbonzakura needed no introduction — Byakuya Kuchiki’s zanpakutō, legendary for both its power and elegance.
Even more exciting than the sword, though, was Urahara’s Training Ground.
In the original story, this was the same hidden space Urahara and Yoruichi had built for Ichigo to train in within the Soul Society — vast, difficult to find, and equipped with a healing hot spring.
Exactly what Lorde needed most.
As for the Hōgyoku fragment, he barely gave it a second thought.
It was rare, but assembling all ten thousand pieces would take far too long to be worthwhile.
The other items were solid too.
The three skill books would help round out the techniques he was still lacking.
The only disappointment was the Spiritual Power Orbs; at his current level, the boost they provided was negligible.
And the swimsuit magazine?
A little embarrassing to admit, but he had to say — a full collection of photos featuring every female Soul Reaper in the Association was nothing to complain about.
All in all, the ten-pull was a huge success.
“System, pull up my status,” Lorde said.
Host: Lorde Karl
Lineage: Soul Reaper
Spiritual Pressure — LV.6: Fifth Seat
Lieutenant (5000/50000)
Shikai: Shinsō, Senbonzakura
Bankai: Not yet unlocked
Swordsmanship — LV4 (1000/5000): Sword Pressure
Hakuda — LV4 (1000/5000): Ikkotsu
Shunpo — LV4 (1000/5000): Utsusemi
Kidō — LV4 (1000/5000): Proficient in Kidō below Level 40; Binding Spell No.
61: Six-Rod Light Prison
Hollowfication: Not yet unlocked
Fullbring: Not yet unlocked
Schrift: Not yet unlocked
Souls Held: 0
Inventory: gigai, substitute Soul Reaper badge, Flesh-Replenishing Draught, Hell Butterfly, Memory Replacement Device, Hōgyoku (Fragment 5/10,000), Women’s Soul Reaper Association Magazine ×1, Kisuke Urahara’s Training Ground