Chapter 132: Who Can Kill Me?
Shino Ward Plaza.
Even without the commotion comparable to a nuclear explosion, this place would still have been the undisputed center of the battlefield.
Simply because the commanders of both sides were here.
The explosion pierced the Shakonmaku and blew away the snow clouds. The firelight made the twilight sky and setting sun burn even more crimson and piercing.
Pant...
Huff, huff...!
Takeru and Yhwach landed on the plaza ground, gasping for breath as they glared at each other. They looked like mortal enemies who had been locked in a bloody war for years.
Both were exhausted to the limit, yet the fierce fire in their eyes made even the flames and sunset seem dim.
"...Did you think I had already been numbed to death, so you suddenly released that space to catch me off guard? Unfortunately, a mere illusion is nothing compared to what I endured in my youth... Ugh!"
Before he could finish speaking, Yhwach vomited.
It was a mixture of bile, gastric fluid, and a small amount of blood. The whites of his crimson eyes were bloodshot from the violent retching.
He was drenched in sweat, breathing rapidly, and the sweating would not stop.
His hands and feet trembled slightly.
Not from emotion, but as if something in his brain had gone wrong, causing muscle spasms through a disordered nervous system.
"It really is trivial... and here I thought I could make you pass out outright."
The Karasu Tengu phantom surrounding Takeru vanished.
Just as Yhwach said, the moment Izanami was released, Takeru used his real body to activate Shunko Susanoo and fired a Yasaka Magatama at him.
That strike, which resembled a Cero and carried power comparable to Soi Fon's Bankai, failed to achieve its goal.
The instant Yhwach returned to his body, he reacted fast and immediately fired a giant light arrow from his great holy bow, forcibly detonating the Yasaka Magatama.
That was the origin of the explosion that shook the entire Seireitei and drew everyone's attention.
"Damned illusion... damned Sosuke Aizen...! I was careless. In addition to guarding against him, listed as a special war power for his unknown 'Mental' strength and for personally using mental abilities, I should also have been wary of the results of his teaching...!"
The ferocity in Yhwach's eyes intensified. He was clearly furious at his own loss of composure and the torture he had just endured.
"But regret is meaningless now. I have not lost yet. And if I am in this state, do you think you are doing any better?"
"A move that can push me this far cannot be some ordinary trick. There must be a price... and if I am not mistaken, you have already gone blind in one eye, haven't you?"
"Isn't it obvious? There's no need to guess. If you're trying to shake my will to fight, don't bother."
At this moment, Takeru's right eye was tightly shut, and bloody tears continuously streamed down his face, dripping from his chin, making it look as though the eyeball had already dissolved into blood.
This was the price of using Izanami.
Compared to last time, the symptoms were even worse.
Because he had used Shunko Susanoo as a Kido cannon to launch the technique.
It was highly specialized.
The power had been magnified significantly.
So the backlash was far heavier as well.
But Takeru did not regret it.
The enhanced Izanami had truly trapped Yhwach and successfully stalled him.
With a slight shift in perception, Takeru confirmed the state of the battlefield.
As expected, the Gotei 13 had the upper hand.
The number of Sternritter had dropped to single digits, and the Soldat were pinned down everywhere, unable even to save themselves.
In that situation...
"As long as I defeat you, everything ends, right?"
"..."
Takeru focused his mind and stared straight at Yhwach with his one remaining left eye.
"Heh. I know exactly what you're planning, including the fact that you're about to attack... No matter. Come. I've waited a long time for this battle!"
Yhwach's killing intent surged as he drew the pitch-black greatsword from his waist. Deep blue flames erupted around him, a terrifying Reiatsu so dense that even the blue reishi changed color and heated up.
"Are you that eager to die again?"
Takeru lowered his stance, his right hand resting gently on the hilt as if caressing something precious. A silver-blue disk formed beneath his feet, and the torrent erupting from it made his clothes whip and snap loudly, shrieking as though they might tear apart at any moment.
"A nightmare will never become reality no matter how many times it repeats. I will make you understand the gap between illusion and reality, and the gap between you and me!"
Unpleasant memories were stirred up, and Yhwach's breathing turned rougher. In a surge of shame and anger, he attacked first.
He lifted his hand, and light flashed.
Click.
The sound of a blade returning to its sheath rang out.
A slash invisible to the naked eye cut through a light arrow invisible to the naked eye.
Yet the explosion still happened, and flames swallowed Takeru's position.
In the next instant, Yhwach swung behind him.
Clang!
Steel collided with steel, and sparks erupted.
Using Senka, Takeru had silently slipped behind Yhwach through the explosion. This strike was not a casual attempt to pierce the sōketsu or hakusui. It was aimed at cutting Yhwach in half at the waist.
Yhwach's turning slash was not a parry either. He meant to cleave through both Takeru and his blade at once.
The destructive force behind that exchange was terrifying.
Before the flying sparks could fade, the ground beneath them caved in.
A crater hundreds of meters wide formed in an instant, and countless cracks spread outward like ripples. The outer edges of the earth tilted upward like surging waves.
Within the thick dust cloud, the two continued fighting as though their vision were unaffected.
Flashes of blade and sword blazed through the haze. Roaring reishi flames and endless Kido collided and intertwined, making the earth tremble continuously, the force only growing stronger with time.
The dust spread farther and farther, until no one could see what was happening in the plaza at all.
Then, at a certain moment, a magnificent reishi cage rose from the ground, only to be sliced apart by the drawn blade of the majestic Karasu Tengu. The collapsing reishi was carried away by sword pressure, and the blast swept all the dust clear.
Immediately after that,
Yhwach stepped on a giant arrow and shot up from the ground, smashing into the Karasu Tengu's face and inflicting massive damage. The Karasu Tengu staggered backward, its forehead shattered. Taking the opening, Yhwach charged into the diamond-shaped space and slashed at Takeru.
But the hand he raised was caught for an instant by Kido Threads filling the diamond-shaped space, slowing him by half a beat.
Takeru drew and used Yuisen, which Yhwach caught with his left arm wrapped in Kekko.
Yhwach gripped the blade tightly, then swung his freed greatsword at Takeru's neck.
Bang!
As if he had predicted it, Takeru tilted his head back and avoided the slash, shifted his posture to move behind Yhwach and clamp his neck, then used Yuisen to eject both of them out of the cockpit.
The two spun through the air like bullets.
A second later, they crashed into the walls of the Penitence Palace, smashed through them, tore through more than ten buildings, and finally reached the ruins of the First Division barracks. They blasted a huge crater into the ground, bounced back into the air, and separated.
In that instant, both sides, trying to seize the slightest flaw in the other, erupted with even greater power and resumed their savage clash.
Because Takeru lacked part of his vision, he was caught by a kick to the abdomen from Yhwach and crashed into the ruins.
"Circle of Agony!"
Yhwach reached out and clenched his hand. A large number of spirit bows surrounded Takeru and fired in concentrated volleys.
But Takeru appeared above Yhwach's head, his haori already gone.
This was the Shihōin Clan Secret Step Number Three, Utsusemi.
Bang!
No one else should have been able to block a god-speed slash from above.
But Yhwach, as if he had already lived through this scene countless times, almost instinctively raised his hand and activated Seikessen to block.
Likewise, Takeru, as if he already knew Yhwach would definitely block, immediately summoned a silver-blue giant hand and punched him.
A flash of steel.
Yhwach cut the giant hand with his sword, then activated Outer Shell Seikessen to expand outward and erode Takeru's right arm, the one holding the sword.
But Takeru flashed back, and the skin of his right arm peeled off like scales. Even the sword shed a layer of "skin."
Boom!
The Star Ash that had mimicked and covered his right arm and sword exploded.
Takeru retreated a hundred meters away, outside the sea of fire, adjusting his breathing while staring at the flames with his single eye.
Suddenly, something flew toward him.
It was a Quincy cross blade.
Yhwach had thrown his sidearm like a projectile.
Takeru was about to knock it away with his sword, but Yhwach flashed in, caught the weapon midflight, dodged Takeru's draw-slash, and struck Takeru's blade with a precise counter-slash.
"!?"
The sudden heavy impact knocked Takeru's Zanpakuto from his hand.
But Takeru did not panic. He raised a hand and fired [Bakudo 61: Rikujokoro], then yanked his right arm, pulling the sword back with Kido Threads.
Clang!
One shattered free, the other recovered his blade.
They swung again almost at the same moment, their swords crashing together and locking in a dead struggle, neither yielding an inch.
Within the storm of surging Reiatsu, Yhwach spoke with mockery and a trace of admiration.
"Though you claim to be a disciple of Sosuke Aizen, and your style carries Yamamoto Genryusai's shadow, if we are being precise, I am your true teacher."
"The total time we fought in that mental space may well add up to an entire year."
"Your swordsmanship, Hakuda, Shunpo, and Kido all advanced because of me. Those are results you would not have gained in decades of ordinary training."
"Otherwise, even if you adapted to my fighting style, I could have killed you on the spot in under a hundred moves. After all, while you adapted to me, I also adapted to your tricks. In that regard, you have no advantage."
"Is that so?"
Takeru's voice was low and forceful.
"Do you think I did all that just to get last-minute training so I wouldn't be instantly killed by you before I understood you?"
"What else could it have been? You used that move and nearly destroyed both of us, then with the growth from your last-minute training, you barely earned the qualification to fight me. But it is only a qualification!"
A fierce light flashed in Yhwach's eyes, and terrifying Reiatsu burst from him. Deep blue brilliance spread across the sky like a rising tide.
"Sanctuary Praise!"
A massive wall of light rose from beneath his feet and around him, isolating the enemy outside.
It was the Quincy's ultimate defensive incantation, one that fused offense and defense.
Any enemy entering this region would be shot down by endless Heiligenschein.
At that exact moment, a silver-blue skeletal giant appeared above Takeru's head. Its large golden eyes opened, and it clasped its hands together like a meteor hammer before smashing down at Yhwach.
"Ugh!"
Ordinarily, Yhwach would not have taken such a strike seriously.
But it happened to trigger the Strong Strike Aura effect, doubling the attack. Combined with the percentage damage of the Command Aura, it actually knocked him out of the sky.
He slammed deep into the already ruined ground and looked thoroughly battered.
"I forgot about the Kido he cast earlier in the outside world... But it was also because it was too weak to bother with... Hmm?"
Yhwach's eyes narrowed.
Takeru, trapped within Sanctuary Praise, was holding his Zanpakuto overhead in a posture that looked like an offering to the heavens, as if inheriting divine power itself.
It was inexplicably ritualistic and deeply unsettling.
"Eight Manifestations... Endonemi!"
Boom!
In an instant, Takeru's Reiatsu rose exponentially.
His hair and skin were dyed silver-blue by the immense concentration of spiritual power, shining with extreme brilliance. There was a transcendent divinity to it, enough to make anyone think of a god or Buddha descending in manifestation.
The whole of Seireitei filled with his Reiatsu.
Under that pressure, the Shakonmaku shattered inch by inch, and the atmosphere trembled so violently that heaven and earth seemed to roar.
The battlefield fell silent.
Countless eyes turned once again toward Shino Ward.
"A Shikai... If I endure for eight seconds until your Reiatsu runs dry, victory will be mine!"
Yhwach's pupils contracted, and his body tensed involuntarily.
He had seen this too many times in the mental space and suffered too many times under Sprenger executed with Reiatsu magnified a hundredfold.
Its lethality was great, yes, but in the end it was only mental damage.
Compared to his childhood, compared to the years he had spent dead, what was this pain worth?
Crackle...
"!?"
Suddenly, Yhwach caught the sound of electrical sparks.
The composure on his face froze.
He saw something on the seemingly divine Takeru that did not belong to anything divine.
Black-red lightning crawled over Takeru's body, wildly active. It looked like arcing electricity, yet also strangely soft, carrying the characteristics of plasma.
But whatever form it took, one fact did not change.
It was the manifestation of a power that distorted space.
Black Flash.
By rubbing his physical strikes against his Kido Reiatsu, Takeru generated a reishi phenomenon called space distortion.
It was not easy to trigger, but once triggered, destructive power increased explosively.
The increase was exponential, and reishi activity would rise as well. As a spiritual body, this granted an exceptional combat state, deeply stimulating combat instincts, which in turn fed back into the state.
The two effects amplified each other.
That was why every successful trigger made the next one easier.
"You said you've seen all my tricks. Have you seen this one?"
Takeru gripped the sword with both hands, and all the black-red lightning converged onto the Zanpakuto.
"Yuisen!"
Yuisen?
A thought flashed through Yhwach's mind.
How could it be this move?
Takeru had not drawn the blade from any sheath, nor was there any "sheath" wrapped around the blade to serve as the necessary medium.
This was not a pure slash. It could not exist without a medium.
No matter how abstract that medium was, it still had to exist.
Could it be...
"He's using that strange reishi lightning as a sheath?!"
That was exactly what Takeru had done.
But the Yuisen he was about to unleash was not just one.
In the next moment, [Sanctuary Praise] exploded apart.
It scattered as if consumed as fuel.
Yhwach, fully prepared for combat, froze instead.
"To actually... use [Sanctuary Praise] as a sheath?!"
Takeru vanished as well.
He turned himself into a blade, forcibly shattered the [Sanctuary Praise] imprisoning him, and used it as a sheath. Blood sprayed from his entire body, darkening his shinigami uniform to a deeper black as he entered an invisible realm of divine speed, arriving before Yhwach as though he had crossed time itself.
The Zanpakuto wrapped in black-red lightning entered that same invisible realm of divine speed, even surpassing the limits of spiritual pressure perception.
Even if Mayuri Kurotsuchi brought out his most advanced camera and slowed the recording a thousand times, it still would not capture a trace of the trajectory.
No one could react in time.
Yhwach might have been able to.
But after enduring repeated Sprenger strikes in the mental space, his brain and nervous system were damaged. Under normal circumstances, the injury did not matter much.
Now, however, it became a fatal burden.
"So... this was your purpose in using illusion techniques from the very start...!"
Yhwach tried to force open his [eye], but it was already too late.
In fact, his thoughts themselves might not have been faster than Takeru's blade.
To almost everyone, the blade in Takeru's hands was no different from "light."
And at that acceleration, there was nothing in the world it could not cut.
"?!"
Yhwach's eyes widened as a line cracked down from his forehead.
"!?"
But Takeru's single remaining eye narrowed, shock flashing through it.
No wonder.
Because in that moment, two Yhwachs stood before him.
One Yhwach had stepped in front of the other.
He had blocked the fatal strike for him.
And died in his place.
The collapsing body reverted to its original form, a man in a Quincy uniform.
A Sternritter, holder of the schrift [Y], symbolizing the ability [Yourself], one of the twins able to imitate their target.
The younger brother, Loyd Lloyd.
"Loyd of [Y]?"
Not just Takeru.
Even Yhwach had not expected his subordinate to transform into him and use "Yhwach's" power to block that attack with his own life.
That could only mean Loyd Lloyd had been hiding in the shadows from the start, waiting for the moment to prove his loyalty.
As an outsider to the clash, he could calmly choose the exact timing to intervene.
And if he also possessed "Yhwach's" power, moving from his hiding place to Yhwach's side in an instant would not have been difficult.
As for attacking Takeru directly, that had been impossible.
Once Yuisen activated, both the man and the blade entered an ungraspable state. If you could not even see it, how could you strike it?
Precisely because of that, Yhwach had wanted to dodge but had no idea where to dodge to.
The only thing Loyd Lloyd could do was stand before Yhwach and take the blow that was guaranteed to hit.
"Well done. Loyd of [Y], you saved my life. I will remember this merit and your loyalty... cough...!"
Yhwach coughed up blood at the end.
His body had nearly been split in two.
To activate double Yuisen under hundredfold spiritual pressure and aura enhancement was already terrifying enough. Adding Black Flash on top of that made it even more monstrous.
Even with another "Yhwach" stepping in front, only two-thirds of the power had been blocked.
The remaining one-third struck Yhwach himself.
Even so, in that grievously wounded state, Yhwach looked at Takeru with a victor's smile.
"To ensure my death, you chose not to attack from afar. You condensed all your power into the blade, rushed right in front of me, and struck before I could react..."
"I must admit, this assassination-style technique caught me off guard. You abandoned wide-range destruction in exchange for flawless speed, lethality, and precision. This is true killing technique."
"Your perfectly concentrated strike infused all of its power into the target and guaranteed the target's death. Precisely because of that... you could only kill one 'Yhwach,' not a second."
"This battle is mine!"
Facing Yhwach's declaration, Takeru remained silent, still holding his blade.
Blood dripped from the torn sleeves and hem of his shinigami uniform.
Even his body, tempered by the influence of [Fairy Tale Dragon's Blood] to rival Espada-level combat physique, could not withstand such a violent combination of techniques.
His absurdly amplified spiritual pressure also plummeted sharply.
The Shikai effect had ended.
His spiritual pressure was at rock bottom, and even his tough body could no longer bear the burden.
No wonder Yhwach, despite being severely wounded, dared to proclaim victory.
"To be honest... although both you and Yamamoto Genryusai gathered companions to stop me, you, being younger, pushed me, who is far stronger than I was a thousand years ago, to the brink of defeat."
"From that perspective, you are more outstanding than Yamamoto Genryusai."
"But you are not as ruthless as he was. You gathered companions, yet I achieved victory with the help of my subordinate, while you can only stand here alone."
"Your Zanpakuto... your power... foretold your fate from the beginning."
"Your birth, regarded by all as hope, was merely Soul Society's final flicker of light."
"Well then, child of the meteor with the unknown [Soul] I cannot see through... your mission is complete. It is time for you to fall and hand this world to its true master!"
Covered in blood, Yhwach grinned savagely and tightened his grip on the Quincy cross blade.
"It's too early to declare victory."
After a long silence, Takeru finally spoke.
"The strongest guardian of Seireitei has exhausted his power. Who can kill me now? Even if Yamamoto Genryusai and the others rush back, they cannot stop me from cutting off your head in one strike and then calmly retreating with it."
"Frankly... war is only a necessary means for me to gain enough power to create the future. So I do not mind regrouping and waging another war later, a war I will surely win."
Yhwach looked deeply at Takeru, as if to memorize the second strong enemy in a thousand years who had nearly killed him.
Then he raised his grand blade.
At that moment, a figure appeared soundlessly in the air behind him.
It was Mochizuki.
Almost at the same instant, a blade resembling an asauchi appeared in Mochizuki's hand.
It was [Amamizukan], released from Bankai and restored to its Shikai form.
That blade contained and compressed all the reishi that had originally fused with Seireitei.
After losing the Fusion Technique, his strongest shield, he had gained his strongest spear.
It was no exaggeration to say that what he held was a mass of spiritual pressure denser than [Sokyoku].
The average temperature across Seireitei rose by three degrees in an instant.
"!?"
Yhwach sensed the spiritual pressure and tried to turn, but his heavily wounded body slowed him.
And the nervous system damage from the Izanami mental space delayed his perception and reaction by half a beat.
So,
Thud!
Even the Quincy King's Seikessen could not stop the blade.
From behind, Mochizuki drove the weapon in his hand through Yhwach's heart.
.....
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