Meanwhile, in the Soul Society...
While the succubus was feeling genuine guilt for the first time in her life, things in the Soul Society were faring much worse.
The atmosphere was oppressive—like someone in your immediate family had just died levels of bad.
The delegation had returned, and everyone had their own grim thoughts on what they had just witnessed. For one, Nocturna Vastoria's technology gaped the Soul Society by at least five hundred years. Hell, their infrastructure was even more advanced than the Human World's current tech.
Bullet trains existed there. Granted, the delegation hadn't ridden in them, but they knew they existed—and those trains practically traveled at fucking light speed. Yes, the speed of light. When a kingdom grew that massive, that kind of speed was required just to get around. Gabriel was even pondering how to speed them up further; after all, in the land of the dead, conventional physics didn't pose much of a restriction.
Mayuri and Kisuke were provided with all the gathered data, and they were thoroughly analyzing it. They were having an absolute field day—at least in the beginning.
Mayuri stood in his laboratory, several holographic monitors floating around him as he dissected the footage. His fingers moved rapidly across the control panel, switching between recordings, slowing down individual frames, and zooming in on specific details.
"Interesting..." He leaned forward. "Very interesting."
On one screen, Grimmjow's body was displayed during his brawl against Hrólf. On another, a recording of Byakuya's match against Lucius was paused at the exact microsecond his Zanpakutō shattered.
They were examining every single detail meticulously.
The mad scientist's eyes narrowed. "Look at this."
Kisuke's attention was piqued instantly. A nearby monitor displayed a full 3D reconstruction of the spiritual fluctuations surrounding Grimmjow's body.
"His regeneration isn't simply biological," Mayuri explained. "The process is directly intertwined with his core spiritual structure. Every time his body takes severe damage, the newly regenerated tissue undergoes immediate modifications based on the specific nature of the injury."
He zoomed in further on the telemetry. "Increased electrical resistance... enhanced tissue elasticity... precise shifts in spiritual particle distribution..."
Kisuke could see it now. The data allowed them to observe how each time Grimmjow regenerated, his body returned structurally superior to before—far more efficient for hunting. This meant his adaptive authority was directly tied to a biological evolutionary response, which correlated perfectly with the previous Kenpachi field reports. This Hollow was absurdly broken.
And while analyzing the Hollows was their primary objective, Mayuri also sneaked a look at Hrólf's physical data. He could see immense research potential in the Viking's body, though he kept those thoughts to himself for now; he quite liked being alive, and the Central 46 wouldn't permit that kind of vivisection anyway. Hrólf was actively modifying his own bodily properties using an external runic system—a system the Soul Society was currently trying to adapt to restore their lost Bankai, alongside using the northern witches to further their own goals.
Mayuri shifted to footage of the banquet held after the matches. As he scanned the crowd, his eyes caught something specific.
"It would seem the Hollows are physically evolving," Mayuri noted.
Kisuke leaned over to look. "My oh my, how naughty of you, Mayuri-san."
Kisuke teased him because the screen was currently zoomed in on a female Hollow's chest. However, that wasn't Mayuri's focus at all—it was the small Hollow hole located nearby.
"It is not that, you imbecile," Mayuri snapped. Mind you, Urahara was technically smarter than him; Kisuke had spotted the hole immediately and simply wanted to be a dick. Though, right now, if it weren't for Kisuke's artificial soul cord, he would already be dead.
"The hole," Kisuke acknowledged with a nod.
"Yes. It is roughly 45% smaller than the historical baseline," Mayuri added, having already run the spatial calculations.
"And it's the exact same story for nearly every Hollow in the frame." Kisuke zoomed the lens out across the banquet hall. Some of the younger Hollows didn't even possess visible holes—though that was likely due to having human lineage.
"Wow, he must have some pretty lax marriage laws over there," Kisuke remarked nonchalantly.
"Most of the offspring possess human parents, and there even seem to be Quincy traits integrated into several lineages."
That caught Kisuke's full interest. "It appears he engineered a biological solution to give Quincies inherent resistance against Hollow poison—the exact same structural stabilization given to Shinigami."
Once again, that was terrible news for the Soul Society.
"Do you truly grasp the implications of this?" Mayuri asked coldly.
"That Hollows can smash?"
Mayuri was exceptionally tempted to strangle the man right then and there, but he maintained his composure.
"I'm just messing with ya," Kisuke said with a soft smile before his expression turned dead serious. "I see what you mean."
He understood the threat completely. If this trend continued for a few more generations:
First, the Hollows in Gabriel's domain would eventually evolve to eliminate the Hollow hole entirely. They would become structurally identical to Shinigami while retaining all of their superior Hollow traits.
Second, this interbreeding would produce a generation of terrifyingly powerful hybrids. Hell, there were already children walking around Nocturna Vastoria who were a fusion of three distinct races, only missing Quincy genes in a few rare cases. Those kids were going to grow up fundamentally broken. And while they were just children now, their sheer latent potential was nightmare fuel.
Imagine an entire generation of individuals who shared the exact same baseline potential as Ichigo Kurosaki—except without anyone placing mental or spiritual blocks on their power, and trained in high-level combat from early childhood.
It was an absolute apocalypse scenario. If the Soul Society wanted any hope of changing the future, they needed to act immediately.
"How long do you estimate before their population reaches that threshold?" Kisuke asked, his tone unusually solemn.
Mayuri pondered for a moment, inputting several variables into his terminal. "Factoring in their average reproductive age, marriage rates, and the staggering population density of Nocturna Vastoria... I would say the year 2000 is the absolute latest deadline the Soul Society has."
Anything past the year 2000, and even dreaming about beating Gabriel's regular army would be a pipe dream—and that was completely excluding Gabriel and the 4 Horsemen from the equation.
Furthermore, they were still entirely unaware of Gabriel's personal children. Those kids possessed absurd potential—far exceeding their father's original baseline. They had more potential than pre-Demon Vessel Gabriel ever did: more potential than the man who became a Vasto Lorde in just three months, more potential than the man who grew strong enough to fight Yamamoto, defeat him, challenge Ichibē, and somehow negate the Monk's conceptual power before even transforming. And Gabriel's kids had access to unlimited resources. Realistically, their deadline was far shorter than the year 2000.
Another detail they picked up on were the smaller innovations. The clothing worn by the Sins was entirely self-repairing, remarkably durable, and appeared to be custom-tailored to their individual spirit types. Their infrastructure was equally terrifying—the materials used to construct their cities, the high-speed transit, and the energy shielding surrounding the colosseum.
Ah, those barriers.
Mayuri pulled up the energy readings recorded during Grimmjow and Hrólf's clash. His faint, arrogant smile gradually faded.
"Sixty layers..." He stared blankly at the telemetry. "Sixty distinct barrier layers, each featuring a completely different structural composition, with every subsequent layer exponentially denser than the last."
He re-ran the calculations. Then he ran them again. His fingers froze over the keys.
"...Good grief."
It wasn't simply a matter of layering raw power. The barriers were engineered to dynamically compensate for one another, distributing kinetic and spiritual impacts across the matrix to prevent systemic collapse even if a single layer was breached. And Gabriel had casually ordered sixty of them installed on the fly—as if he were setting up a cheap camping tent.
Mayuri stared fixedly at the display. "That man..." He clicked his tongue in pure irritation. "Just how many resources is he throwing at this?"
"Money probably isn't the issue," Kisuke offered, resting his striped bucket hat against his shoulder.
"Did you forget I was standing right here, Mayuri-san?"
"Don't use that tone with me. It gives me a violent urge to dissect you."
"That's rather unpleasant."
"Then leave."
Kisuke chuckled softly, stepping closer to the terminal. He had been reviewing the same raw data, though his focus had been radically different. While Mayuri was obsessed with the biological and technological breakthroughs of Gabriel's faction, Kisuke was analyzing their foundational systems: the energy distribution, the spatial infrastructure, how their gear interacted with environmental Reiatsu, and above all, their medical technology.
He placed a small memory crystal onto the desk. "I've been re-examining the footage from Kuchiki-san's match."
Mayuri raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Specifically, what occurred after Gabriel ordered his attendants to heal him." He brought up the high-speed playback. Byakuya's spiritual frame was displayed in red telemetry, his soul pathways severely ruptured following Lucius's strike. Then came the healing process.
Kisuke slowed the footage down to a crawl. "Look right here." He highlighted the area surrounding Byakuya's chest. "The damage wasn't merely physical. Lucius struck something far deeper. He severed his spiritual pathways, shattered his Reikaku, and completely collapsed the internal mechanism responsible for maintaining his Zanpakutō's connection."
Mayuri nodded gravely. "Yes. The precision of the strike was terrifying."
"Yet they restored all of it in seconds." Kisuke zoomed in on the spiritual re-stitching. "Not just his physical flesh—they reconstructed the damaged spiritual functions themselves. His Reiatsu reserves, his Reishi composition, and his bond with Senbonzakura..." He paused, his shadow falling over the console. "...And they did it without a single sign of soul rejection or structural instability."
Mayuri's expression turned grim. "Are you suggesting they outright reconstructed his soul matrix?"
"Something along those lines." Kisuke stared at the playback. "Except it's even more absurd than that. They weren't just repairing damaged components; they were instantly restoring the entire system to a flawless baseline state." He snapped his fan shut with a sharp clack. "It's almost as if they possessed an exact, perfect blueprint of what Byakuya's soul was supposed to be."
Mayuri's eyes narrowed into slits. "...That is absurd."
"Isn't it?"
"Do you comprehend what you are implying? If they can reconstruct a shattered spiritual structure with that level of sub-atomic precision, then conventional Kaidō and medical techniques are entirely obsolete!"
"That's precisely what I'm getting at." Kisuke's face was completely devoid of its usual playful humor. "Imagine what that means for their military capabilities."
Mayuri didn't reply immediately. He didn't need to—they both knew the horrifying answer.
A conventional military had to account for attrition and casualties. Even the most legendary soldiers could eventually be worn down, crippled, or killed in battle. But Gabriel's empire? Their frontline troops possessed unnatural regeneration, the Horsemen had instantaneous recovery, the Sins could adapt to lethal damage, and their medical technology could rewrite catastrophic soul damage on command.
Kisuke continued, "Look at Grimmjow. He lost multiple limbs against Hrólf, and his body was scorched to cinder. Yet he was already regenerating before the fight was even officially called."
Mayuri let out a dry, hollow laugh. "An exceptionally resilient specimen."
"That's one way to put it." Kisuke swapped the monitor to Lucius's trivialization of Byakuya. The footage showed the hybrid standing effortlessly before the Captain. One finger—that was all it had taken to shatter centuries of refinement.
Mayuri examined the impact frame. "His strike was particularly fascinating. He didn't just shatter the metal blade; he severed the underlying spiritual link between soul and steel."
Kisuke nodded grimly. "Exactly. The damage to Byakuya's Saketsu was no accident—it was surgical, deliberate, and terrifying. And that's not even considering the Reiatsu he was casually emitting."
Mayuri quieted. "Ah, yes. The spiritual pressure."
Silence fell over the laboratory. Both scientists had monitored the raw telemetry. Both had seen the sensors overheat. And both knew that the Soul Society's high-grade measurement equipment had completely failed to gauge the true upper limit of Lucius's power output.
It wasn't just that the numbers were high—the fluctuations were fundamentally anomalous, as if his spiritual makeup didn't belong to any known category of existence.
"He isn't a conventional Hollow," Kisuke observed softly.
"Obviously."
"Nor a Shinigami. Nor a Quincy."
"Obviously."
"Nor a Fullbringer."
Mayuri turned his head toward him, annoyed. "Do you intend to list every race in existence?"
Kisuke offered a small, quiet smile. "I'm just saying... his composition appears to seamlessly integrate elements from every single source. His spiritual structure is unlike anything this world has ever seen
"And what?" Mayuri asked, waiting for the man to finish his thought.
"That Hollow is probably a fusion of every race," Kisuke replied.
Mayuri raised an eyebrow at that. "And how confident are you in that guess?"
"About ninety percent," Kisuke said calmly, before stepping into his explanation. "A few years ago, when they attacked and I returned, I ran an analysis through his spiritual energy residue—the kind that lingers for a while after someone leaves. Do you know what I found?"
Mayuri simply looked at him, silently telling him to go on.
"Back then, his spiritual makeup was already a blend of Quincy, Shinigami, Hollow, Fullbringer, and Dragon."
"You mean the creatures from the West District?"
"Exactly." Kisuke walked forward, keeping his hands tucked into his pockets. "I managed to get reports back from Europe. It seems that a few years before the war, two witches reported a massive spike of energy over there—dragons vanishing into thin air. It didn't last long, so they didn't think too much of it at the time."
Mayuri was beginning to see the full picture. "So, you are saying this Lucius Hollow is his personal project?"
Kisuke nodded. This was disastrous—it meant that out there, Gabriel had a literal Soul King candidate standing in his army. Only Kisuke truly grasped what that meant for now, choosing to keep the full horror to himself a little longer.
"It's not all bad, though," Mayuri countered. "I have figured out quite a lot regarding their barriers, their defense matrix, and several of their key soldiers. It should be relatively simple to construct countermeasures."
That was a massive advantage. They had gained a rough idea of how Hollow society operated, and having seen so much already, they could begin formulating actual battle plans. Yet Kisuke still felt an uneasy knot in his stomach.
"He allowed us to see all of it, knowing full well we would try to use it," Kisuke pointed out.
"Yes. Every monitoring tool we deployed was destroyed the instant the fights concluded," Mayuri admitted, though he had initially written it off as mere arrogance on Gabriel's part.
"Mayuri... how long do you think it will take for the Soul Society to catch up to his city?"
"With enough investment into the Research and Development Department, along with a higher recruitment rate, I—"
Kisuke cut him off. "How long?"
Mayuri fell silent. The Soul Society was still desperately recovering from the war—yes, the devastation had been that severe. Even ten years later, they were still stuck in the trenches. So many sectors had been utterly annihilated that the Seireitei had to be physically relocated, as the original site remained corrupted; any Shinigami who stepped near it could feel themselves being actively erased from existence.
Even the overcrowded Rukongai districts were emptier now, yet the balance of souls hadn't shifted as wildly as expected, despite the massive body count. The world's balance was barely holding together.
Add to that the intel Isshin had brought back—along with Nel's revelation that ninety percent of Gabriel's Hollow army was still stationed inside Hueco Mundo—and the reality was terrifying: the Soul Society had been completely fucked by a mere ten percent of his forces.
It would take years just to rebuild the Soul Society, even longer to secure the necessary funding, and hundreds of years to bridge the technological gap. Not everyone was Gabriel with his Idle Transfiguration; they didn't get infinite retries.
So, for the Soul Society to catch up to current Nocturna Vastoria—assuming Nocturna Vastoria didn't advance an inch in the meantime, and Gabriel didn't decide to wipe them all out for shits and giggles—it would take hundreds of years.
"Conventional methods will not suffice," Kisuke said, his face darkening. "Mayuri, how long ago was the war?"
"It happened ten years ago."
"Ten years," Kisuke repeated softly. "In such a short amount of time, their power just keeps growing exponentially. All the cards are in his hand. Do you truly believe we would stand a chance if they attacked now instead of back then?"
That was a heavy question to answer—not because the conclusion was difficult to reach, but because of what that conclusion meant.
"It would be a massacre," Mayuri admitted quietly.
"Any countermeasure we design today will be completely obsolete by next year," Kisuke stated, voicing the grim realization he had reached. The Hollows were constantly evolving.
"Are you falling into despair, Urahara?" Mayuri questioned, frowning. Was the great Kisuke Urahara actually being overwhelmed?
"No. I am simply stating that mortal means will not win us this war. Their leader is a being older than the Soul King himself." Kisuke looked directly at Mayuri. "The only being who was ever able to stop him... was him."
Mayuri's eyes widened. "You don't mean..."
Kisuke reached into his robe and pulled out his Hōgyoku.
"Yes," Kisuke said, his voice dropping to a whisper.
He was planning to use the Hōgyoku.
"We create our own Soul King."
A/N Well last chapter, hopefully yall don't get shapfted again, I will have the peeps on my discord decide which story getting posted about next.
Also, here a timeline, i got, correct me if i miss something.
Complete chronological timeline
1904: Gabriel dies at the age of 19, killed by a Hell Hollow. He becomes a Hollow and rapidly evolves to Adjuchas within his first few weeks.
1904: Gabriel encounters Harribel and her group, falls in love with her, and follows them for three months before eventually being accepted.
1904: Harribel agrees to marry Gabriel if he kills Barragan. Gabriel evolves into a Vasto Lorde, modifies Harribel and her companions using Idle Transfiguration, and kills several powerful Hollows, including the pink-haired scientist.
1905: Gabriel kills Barragan, becomes an Arrancar, marries Harribel, and establishes himself as King of Hueco Mundo.
1905–1947: Gabriel builds his Hollow empire, recruits Starrk, Nelliel and the future Espada, establishes the Seven Deadly Sins and Four Horsemen, constructs the Hollow metropolis, creates the Malnacidos Corps and develops the Nephilim Program.
1948: Tokinada kidnaps a Fullbringer's family member. Gabriel retaliates by invading Soul Society, winning the war and wiping out approximately 50% of its population. Ichibei, Yamamoto, Ukitake, Tokinada and several other important Shinigami die.
1949: Aurelón Infierno Sanguinoso is born.
1949: Serafina del Dolor Sanguinoso is born.
1949–1950: Víborran Malnato Sanguinoso is born.
1950: Lobéria Sangredía Sanguinoso is born.
1950: Leonido Abrasán Sanguinoso is born.
1950s: Soul Society begins rebuilding. The Visored ban is lifted, Urahara is reinstated, and the imprisoned Kenpachi is released.{Honestly, this should be roughly before Aurelon was born or soon after}
1972: July 15 — Ichigo Kurosaki is born.
####:######### ##- The Great ######.
Yes, I already have the ending planned. This is here so when it happened, people don't say i pull it out my ahhs.
/
Discord link above