Chapter 140: [Reishi Fusion] and [The Almighty]
Within the Wandenreich, the one with the highest status was Emperor Yhwach.
Next came the Emperor's acknowledged aide, the Grandmaster of the Sternritter, Haschwalth.
Below him...
...stood none other than the last member of the Schutzstaffel to be granted a schrift.
Lille Barro, now the captain of the Schutzstaffel.
Although his status was slightly lower, he had never believed himself weaker than Haschwalth.
If His Majesty was God, then he was the messenger closest to God.
Therefore, His Majesty's power was unrivaled, and he, second only to His Majesty, should likewise stand unmatched by anyone else.
That was how it should have been.
So why...
"I can't feel anything...!"
Reflected in his vision was that sinner cloaked in ominous radiance.
He was clearly standing right there.
And yet, the moment Lille closed his eyes, all perception of him vanished.
Space was subtly warped and blurred, like heat haze rippling in the air.
All reishi was boiling, just as the other party had said. Even if "compressing all power into a single point" had been an exaggeration, it should have been impossible for someone to activate a Bankai, undergo such an immense transformation, and still leave behind no Reiatsu at all.
"No... how is this possible?! It's only the Bankai of a mere Shinigami... Could it be that even I, even I, who stand closest to His Majesty, am still impossibly far beneath him? What kind of joke is this?!"
Lille would rather have believed there was something wrong with his own Reiatsu perception, or that the enemy had used some bizarre trick to erase his Reiatsu, than accept that the cause was simply the overwhelming difference in strength between them.
He was the captain of the Schutzstaffel.
He did not need to prove his strength to anyone.
He only needed to face all things with calm indifference.
And hidden beneath that seemingly low-key, steady demeanor, compared to the others, was a pride so immense it bordered on madness.
That was why, the instant Takeru finished speaking, Lille could no longer suppress himself and roared:
"Drag us to hell? Stop spouting nonsense! The one who should go to hell is you, and it can only be you, the fool who came here alone just to die... Judgment of God!"
The power that Liltotto and the others had so deeply resented being stripped away now manifested within Lille.
His head became fully enveloped by his raised collar. Two vertical yellow marks appeared on his face. A massive halo floated above his head, while his body became wrapped in a cocoon-like substance. His arms were replaced by eight white wings riddled with holes, extending from his back.
At a glance, it was hard to say what kind of creature he now resembled. If a comparison had to be made, only the bizarre angels recorded in the religions of the Human World could come close.
Lille's power surged explosively, and with that transformation, he finally managed to capture Takeru's Reiatsu.
But the next second, he froze.
Because what he perceived was unimaginably vast, like a stellar body endlessly radiating light and heat. The shock it delivered to both his body and soul was so immense that his mind blanked out.
At that moment, Haschwalth was the first to move.
A sword slashed straight toward Takeru's neck.
There was no grand spectacle to it, only pure speed.
From closing the distance to swinging the blade, it had all happened within the span of a blink.
The power condensed along the edge of that sword was as simple and absolute as the laws of nature. If all the "misfortune" gathered from the Three Worlds were compressed into a single object, then that object would undoubtedly become a fatal threat. It carried the feeling of standing as the enemy of all life itself, of a strike that meant death to anything that stood in its way.
But Takeru simply caught the sword blade with a hand covered in scale-like chips, then looked up at the suddenly pale Haschwalth and gave him a smile that sent chills down the spine.
"I know. You're angry because I dragged the people here into this war, and it pains you to think that all you can do is watch them walk toward extinction."
"But let me tell you this. The anger we feel, and the pain felt by the people who have already died, are far greater than yours!"
Boom!
Takeru grabbed the blade directly, lifted both sword and swordsman together, swung them over his shoulder, and smashed them into the ground behind him.
The battlefield, already ruined beyond recognition, collapsed all over again.
"Ugh!"
Haschwalth had never before suffered such a humiliating blow, being slammed into the earth so crudely, like a flail smashed against the floor.
The impact shattered his Seikessen, forcing a groan from him as blood spilled from the corner of his mouth.
Seeing this, Lille finally snapped back to himself and immediately activated his ability, using the holes in his eight wings to lock onto Takeru and pin him in place before piercing him through.
But once the ability took effect, only signs of impact appeared on Takeru's body, as if he had been struck several times by invisible fists and kicks.
His scales remained utterly unharmed, and he did not even take a single step back.
"What?!"
Lille's dark face filled with disbelief.
His X-Axis, in Vollstandig, could not even break through Takeru's defense?
That was not strange at all.
Takeru's former Bankai had already been famed for its defensive power.
Although the scales now covering his body were not as thick as his former black armor or his dragon body, the Reiatsu generated through the reishi fission of all the "ownerless reishi" throughout the Wandenreich was continuously gathering inside him.
For his body to stably bear that power over time, it naturally needed a matching degree of pressure resistance.
And Star Ash itself was a kind of explosive. Even a tiny fragment carried immense force, which meant it was an ideal product of extreme energy compression.
Its internal structure determined that it could contain vast quantities of power.
Coupled with the continuity between Shikai and Bankai, what emerged upon Takeru's body was a layer of Star Ash scales comparable to densely compressed celestial matter.
These scales were like the white substance that formed a hard shell during Hollowfication. They were not weapons or armor in the conventional sense, but rather a natural byproduct of his overflowing power, more akin to a new biological function created by the mutation of his body itself.
To shatter such scales, what one needed was not some specialized ability that "killed the target" or "targeted defenses," but overwhelming Reiatsu intense enough to inflict massive destruction upon the reishi-space in which the Wandenreich existed.
Without reaching that level of force, then no matter how "lethal" the ability might have seemed, it would amount to nothing more than a gentle breeze against Takeru, who now resembled a human star.
Takeru twisted his wrist, snapped Haschwalth's sword apart with his bare hand, and hurled the broken piece at Lille.
Lille flinched, but did not panic.
Because in this state, he could "pierce" everything. Any attack that touched his body would simply pass through him, leaving him unharmed.
It was only a fragment of a broken sword. Even if he failed to dodge it, it would not matter.
But before that thought had even fully passed through his mind, that fragment turned into a blade-light so dazzling and magnificent that it robbed Lille of all ability to think.
This was... Yuisen, released with Takeru's hand acting as the sheath.
It was not a purely physical or purely Kido technique.
Amplified by Reiatsu more than a hundredfold, a Yuisen used like this could slice through the special Reiatsu enveloping Lille Barro and kill him outright.
"Unforgivable!"
Gerard's giant war sword came crashing down.
Takeru answered with a backhanded punch.
The massive blade shattered instantly, while the reflected "damage" struck against his scales with a soft pattering sound like rain.
Simply put, that sword had not been able to endure the force it met.
Even though it shattered and reflected the damage back, the retaliation was weakened by the difference in Reiatsu and could not even break through Takeru's defense.
It was far inferior to Haschwalth's earlier strike, which had condensed the world's misfortune, or Lille's lock-on piercing.
"Let me show you what real unforgivable looks like... Sprenger."
A Sprenger amplified a hundredfold in Reiatsu had already been too much for even Yhwach to endure cleanly, leaving him in utter misery.
Gerard never had a chance.
"Aaaaaah...!"
He felt as though his soul had been torn into countless pieces, then stabbed by an endless number of steel needles, and finally roasted alive on a stake.
The agony was so overwhelming that he screamed while clutching his head and collapsed to the ground, utterly losing the ability to fight.
Boom!
His gigantic body crashed down, kicking up an enormous cloud of dust and burying an entire corner of the city.
At that moment, the sound of air ripping apart came from behind Takeru's head.
As though he had already foreseen it, he moved just enough to let the blade pass.
Haschwalth had reconstructed his sword with reishi, but even then, it still posed no threat to Takeru.
"Ikkotsu!"
Takeru twisted his waist and threw a punch as he dodged.
It was like a sun blazing into existence in his fist, brilliant beyond reason.
Haschwalth reacted quickly enough to raise his shield, but the moment it met the blow, the force transmitted through it was so far beyond anything he had ever imagined that his hands went numb instantly, followed by the rest of his body.
The shield smashed back into him, blasting him away like a cannonball for several kilometers, sending him through countless buildings before burying him deep beneath a rising sea of dust, his fate unknown.
Seeing that, Askin's pupils trembled violently, and his limbs turned cold.
"Hey, hey, hey... this is nothing like the intelligence at all! Can a Bankai really change this much? Or is this just a completely different person?!"
"It is the same person."
At that moment, Takeru's voice sounded from directly behind him.
In an instant, Askin felt his scalp explode with dread.
His Vollstandig had long since been activated. His full strength was already on display, and yet he had not sensed a single thing.
Not speed.
Not Reiatsu.
Nothing.
How was he supposed to fight that?
"Ultimate Poison Ball!"
Askin forced himself to act and released a massive sphere.
Unlike his earlier poison field, this one was a true barrier that spread outward and swallowed an enormous section of the surrounding city.
It resembled Senbonzakura Kageyoshi: Senkei.
Within the sphere, the atmosphere itself contained a fatal concentration of poison. Movement became nearly impossible. Every step caused unbearable pain, and even breathing brought a sense of suffocation.
Together with the Molecular Halo wings on Askin's back, he could freely alter the concentration of the poison gas and reshape the poison sphere at will.
The poison ball would even grow stronger if Askin himself were to die. No one could escape such a territory. It was a complete fortress of poison.
Once he suffered a near-death state or died outright, its power would increase sharply.
"Then die together with a small fry like me! I only hope His Majesty revives me later for the great merit of taking down a special war power!"
Yet the so-called "fortress of poison" burst like a soap bubble the moment it was formed.
Poison fell like rain, but the instant it drew close to Takeru's body, it evaporated.
"What?!"
"My Bankai is not change, but evolution..."
Takeru looked at Askin, who turned stiffly to face him. The halo in his pupils and the spiritual light behind his head shone together in resonance, as if a pair of eyes had opened upon the surface of the sun itself and were now gazing down upon all living things.
"The form you see now is the unification of all my powers into one."
"Before, I could seal the techniques of others. Now, so long as a technique makes use of reishi, it is impossible for it not to be affected by my Bankai."
"At best, it simply fails to work. At worst, even the spiritual body itself dies under the radiation."
"But the indiscriminate radiation produced by the world cannot compare to the radiation I generate personally."
"The closer you are to me, the more directly you are exposed to my spiritual light. The harmful effects become millions of times stronger."
"You do not need to do anything. Your techniques will naturally fail to activate, and then you will die."
"From that perspective, I am not merely an enemy to all life, but the natural predator of Quincy, who excel at fighting through reishi."
Thud!
Askin collapsed on the spot and stopped breathing.
There was no flashy special ability worth bragging about.
By simply possessing overwhelming power in his hands, he naturally achieved something that ordinarily would have required a specialized ability.
This was Takeru's Bankai.
The power of [Brahman and Atman Are One: Endonemi].
Its name was [Reishi Fusion].
In other words...
...it was the transformation process of gathering all fissioned reishi power together in a single push toward a higher dimension.
All the diverse abilities and multiple stages of Takeru's former Bankai had merely been outward reflections of this true nature.
The endlessly self-repairing armor.
The guaranteed switch back to Shikai after being cut.
The transformation into a dragon and fusion with his Zanpakuto after death.
The sealing of enemy techniques.
All of those abilities could now be traced back to the same underlying quality within this new Bankai.
"Now it's your turn, Yhwach."
Takeru's gaze flashed like lightning as it locked onto the King of the Quincy in the sky.
Nearby, Lloyd moved as if to protect his lord.
But in the very next instant, Takeru was already standing before Yhwach.
The pressure wave generated by his charge alone smashed Lloyd's body apart.
It was even more grotesque than being fed through a meat grinder. He was almost reduced to sand.
Yet neither Takeru nor Yhwach spared him even a glance.
Boom!
It was as if they had already exchanged blows in the future.
Nothing of the clash itself could be seen in the present.
Only a torrent of Reiatsu erupted, and its aftershock swept through the city, shaving away every structure that rose above a certain height.
"Truly an extraordinary power."
Yhwach gripped Takeru's wrist tightly.
He prevented the hand-blade from piercing through his chest and gouging out his heart.
"The Schutzstaffel, upon whom I placed such high hopes, are as fragile as children before you. But if it is you... then that is nothing to be surprised by."
"..."
Takeru narrowed his eyes, and the rings within his pupils shone even more brightly.
In contrast, Yhwach's own eyes had now become abnormal as well, transforming into double pupils.
"So, you're finally willing to use your full strength?"
"Though it was not my wish, at this stage, I can only open these eyes ahead of schedule."
Yhwach stared directly at Takeru with those doubled pupils, the corners of his mouth curling into a playful smile that showed no tension whatsoever.
Then, in the next instant, a tremendous mass of azure reishi surged in from the horizon and poured into his body all at once.
The Reiatsu he emitted afterward no longer resembled what it had been before, and with those eerie eyes, it felt as though he had completed some silent transformation and surpassed his previous limits.
"As expected, forcing my eyes open early caused the power granted to the Schutzstaffel to return to me by force. That is not good news for you."
"I, on the other hand, think this is the best possible time to kill you."
Takeru suddenly threw a punch.
That same sun-bright strike reappeared, but before he could see what had happened, he was blasted backward.
"Kill me? Even Yamamoto Genryusai would never dare say such a thing."
Yhwach glanced at his right hand, which was giving off threads of white smoke, then at Takeru's completely unharmed body, and changed his tone.
"But you... you truly do possess that qualification."
"Yamamoto Genryusai? Your way of addressing the Captain-Commander has changed."
Takeru dusted off the scales on his body, speaking as casually as ever.
Yhwach grinned.
"Because your appearance has made me realize something. Yamamoto Genryusai has grown old. He is no longer that cold-blooded, heartless sword-demon who once drove me to my death a thousand years ago."
"He has become a mascot that even insignificant insects can toy with, a completely useless relic. So I choose to call him by the name that suits who he is now."
"And there was another thing I had wrong as well."
"I should not have regarded you with the same mindset I had toward Yamamoto Genryusai. You are stronger than he is. Just as I myself have grown stronger, the Soul Society, too, has advanced with the times and produced someone who surpasses Yamamoto Genryusai."
"And that person is you... Shimiya Takeru."
"You were given a mission like this, and so, in desperate moments, you are able to save everything. So long as I do not summon power great enough to overturn fate itself, no matter what I do, I cannot crush you."
"That future... now that these eyes are open, I can see it clearly."
"I cannot help but say it again. Truly an outstanding power."
"Unfortunately, such an outstanding power may destroy the world, but it cannot destroy the fate that lurks within shadow. Before time itself, it is even more insignificant. The Yamamoto Genryusai of a thousand years ago has already grown old and frail, and while you now seem young and mighty, one day you too will grow old."
"There are countless futures that end in your destruction."
"I need only find one... and use it to crush you."
"Come. Let me see by what method I should shatter your Bankai, force despair onto your face, and then, while savoring that rare sight, slaughter you."
"...Then let us do it this way, Gremmy Thoumeaux."
With Yhwach's call, someone emerged from his shadow.
It was a blond youth in a white uniform, his hood up.
"So you're finally willing to let me out, Your Majesty? I thought you had completely forgotten about me."
Gremmy Thoumeaux, a member of the Sternritter.
The holder of the schrift [V], symbolizing the ability [The Visionary].
He was the strangest member of the Sternritter by far. Not only had he not been granted power in the same way as the others, he was also normally forbidden from going outside at all, usually sealed away somewhere within the Wandenreich and almost never in contact with anyone.
Yet his smiling, obedient appearance showed none of the loneliness or gloom one would expect from someone kept in isolation for so long. On the contrary, he seemed cheerful and lively.
"I would never forget you. I simply felt there was no reason for you to enter the battlefield so early. I think you should understand what I mean."
"I don't understand at all~"
"No matter. Bring back Haschwalth and the others first."
"That, at least, I understand."
Then, before Takeru's eyes, the ones he had just crushed or killed appeared again, either out of nowhere or restored to life.
Some had clearly died.
Others had already had their power taken back by Yhwach.
And yet they now looked as though nothing had happened.
Worse, they had become even stronger.
Lille Barro had transformed into a grotesque creature with a long neck, a bird-like head, four legs, a perforated body, and eight wings.
Gerard had become a giant composed of light, his form no longer even remotely human.
Askin had also revived in his "Hasshein" form, but for some reason, three entirely different Reiatsu were now mixed within him.
His own.
And two more.
They belonged to two Sternritter who had died in the previous war.
Guenael Lee, [The Vanishing Point], who had died at Ashido's hands.
And Shaz Domino, [The Viability], who had been killed by Yushima Oshu.
Those two, in truth, had been lifeforms Gremmy created from nothing through imagination.
Now, when reviving Askin through imagination, Gremmy had folded those two dead powers into him as well.
It was not an act of kindness.
It was merely Gremmy's twisted sense of fun, treating Askin like a toy he could bully at will.
But whatever the reason, Askin's strength had undeniably increased because of it.
"I am facing someone for the first time who can blow away both [The Shield of Substitution] and myself while ignoring the doubled return of misfortune."
Haschwalth walked out of the void, sword in one hand, shield in the other.
"When faced with a contradiction that cannot be reconciled, the only answer is to go all out and erase it."
Lloyd had revived as well. The spiritual power he had exhausted had been fully replenished, and after his body blurred for a moment, he transformed into Gremmy's appearance.
The five of them surrounded Takeru in a pentagram formation.
Only Yhwach and the real Gremmy remained outside that circle, appearing to observe from the rear. But judging by the sharp rise in their Reiatsu, they were clearly not there merely to watch.
"Shimiya Takeru, your Bankai can last eight days. Over those eight days, the reishi within the bounds of this world will gradually be burned away. Even I cannot prevent that. However, so long as I make sure Gremmy is not killed by you, then we can continue exhausting your strength infinitely until your Bankai deactivates on its own."
As he spoke, Yhwach's eyes shifted again, now becoming triple-pupiled, and the aura around him turned even more unfathomable.
"After I kill you, there will be as many ways as I like to reshape this world. Even the citizens of the Empire who died because of you may yet be allowed to live again."
"I believe you have already resolved to kill everyone here and descend into hell bearing that sin. Unfortunately, no matter what resolve a person carries, it does not determine the future they arrive at."
"The only one who can determine the future... is I, who possess the power of [The Almighty]!"
"But I am willing to grant your wish."
"Counting yesterday, in exactly eight days, I will send you to hell with my own hands. And on the ninth day... I will take from you the Soul Society you are trying so desperately to protect."
"Is that so?"
Takeru looked around at the enemies surrounding him, his expression unchanged.
"You seem to have forgotten that I spent an entire year with you inside that mental space. If you think that by relying on numbers and infinite lives you can exhaust me in only eight days, then you are no more than a clown showing off a trivial trick before a master."
"When the ninth day you speak of arrives, you will discover that everything you have done was meaningless."
"Shut up!"
Without warning, Lille raised a newly formed elongated arm, aimed high, and fired a gigantic beam of light.
No, it was more accurate to say it was a strike from a sword of light that seemed capable of splitting the entire world apart.
Boom!
Takeru neither dodged nor retreated. He met it with a single punch.
In an instant, the earth became a silver-blue ocean, drawing in endless power and shattering Lille's [Judgment Light].
Then he stomped the ground, and the eight Kido Aura rings descended around him once more.
"Ooooooooooo...!"
Takeru let out a terrifying roar that made the whole world shake. The atmosphere boiled even harder, igniting visible silver-blue flames that made the scene look like Ragnarok itself.
He leaped upward and drove a punch straight into Gerard's face.
He did not care what the other one said or tried to do.
He simply smashed that colossal body into the ground.
At the same moment, Haschwalth and Askin attacked him from behind from opposite sides.
As Takeru turned, a mysterious strike landed on him. His chest caved inward, and he spat out a mouthful of blood.
It was Yhwach's doing.
But then spiritual light surged through Takeru's body, and the injury healed instantly.
The glow that erupted from him was so intense that it blinded Haschwalth and Askin, and before either of them could react, he had already grabbed them by the throat and driven them both toward the earth like falling meteors.
Boom!
Half the city was reduced to ashes in an instant.
Watching this from afar within Silver Frame City, Haschwalth's female subordinate felt her heart sink.
This battle was destined to become an epoch-making clash, one whose victor would not easily be decided.
And yet, she likely would not live long enough to see how it ended.
Meanwhile, in Hueco Mundo, inside Las Noches...
"What day is it now..."
Akin stared unblinkingly at the display screen, his eyes bloodshot and his face pale.
He no longer remembered when he had last slept.
All he had done was inspect equipment and monitor incoming data, unwilling to miss even the slightest clue.
Then, amid that state of anxiety and uncertainty over what to do next, the corridor space packed with instruments suddenly shattered, and the large-scale reishi phenomenon that had appeared before manifested once more.
Only this time, it was different.
A strange pillar of light shot straight into the sky, then scattered in all directions like water spraying from a fountain. Within those glowing droplets drifting through the air were figures.
Akin, crawling out from the pile of machinery that had been blown aside, still had not seen them clearly.
But he had already felt several familiar spiritual pressures.
And the joy that surged through him in that instant nearly made his heart burst.
Tears almost came to his eyes.
"They're back! The Captain and the others... they're finally back!"
.....
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