Chapter 160: The Zanpakuto Reappearing Across Eras
It was a desert world bleached bone white, its true size impossible to measure.
One could wander for an entire lifetime and still never find its edge.
And yet, at the center of that vast world stood something that had been established in ages past and remained unchanged to this day.
Las Noches.
Built by unknown hands, it had long been regarded as the throne of the strongest Hollows in all of Hueco Mundo.
And yet, ironically, this palace that symbolized the supreme authority of Hueco Mundo had now fallen into the hands of those who called themselves Shinigami.
To Hollows ruled by chaotic desire, that was intolerable.
Setting aside strength, they simply could not accept non Hollows swaggering around so brazenly in Hueco Mundo. It was like watching outsiders stroll straight into local turf and act as though they owned the place.
In the eyes of Akin, Branch Chief of the Technical Development Bureau's Hueco Mundo branch and its Third Seat, the natives were being quite unreasonable.
"This never ends! How many times has it been since we moved into Las Noches?!"
Akin knew perfectly well that what they were doing could not exactly be compared to "building an animal observatory in the wilderness and then being attacked by animals."
But with the defense system jointly created by the Technical Development Bureau and the Kidō Corps, anyone who had seen it even once should have understood the gap in civilization between both sides.
And yet these Hollows, while not stupid, were truly insane. Over the past year, they had harassed them countless times, and many of them were even repeat offenders.
Out of respect for that persistence, the Expeditionary Force had already been commissioned to clear out the most stubborn troublemakers.
But instead of improving, the situation had only worsened.
Before, the strongest intruders had only been Adjuchas.
Now, even a Vasto Lorde had appeared.
"Haven't you identified him yet? I refuse to believe someone with that level of spiritual pressure just popped out of thin air!"
Bang!
Akin slammed both hands onto the table and glared at the burly man on the giant display screen, who was directing the Hollows to bombard the barrier with Ceros.
Usually, Akin was calm and rational.
But after being stationed permanently in Las Noches and harassed by Hollows day after day, even his temper had shortened.
His mind, however, remained sharp as ever.
Inside the control room, the technical staff in white coats were sweating profusely as they desperately searched reishi data.
If the answer could not be found in the newly established local database, then perhaps the enemy had appeared before in the Human World or the Soul Society.
So, by using the Projection Hall's system to search Hollow activity records according to the wavelength of its spiritual fluctuations, they should be able to find something.
Sure enough, after changing the direction of the investigation, someone suddenly cried out:
"Found it! Seventy percent spiritual signature match! It should be this one!"
Akin strode quickly over to the monitor. One glance was enough to make his expression change.
"How could it be him...? How did he suddenly evolve into a Vasto Lorde?"
Almost instinctively, he turned back toward the giant screen in the observation room.
It was truly hard to reconcile that unfamiliar, burly figure with the image on the wanted notice.
Hollow evolution often changed their appearance dramatically, so looks alone meant little.
The real issue was that rising from weak to strong was never something that happened overnight.
Logically speaking, it should have been impossible for that Hollow.
"What in the world happened to you... Grand Fisher?"
Grand Fisher.
Or rather, Grand Fisher, as he was known.
That was the codename Soul Society had given this cunning Hollow, one that had repeatedly evaded Shinigami for half a century.
And he himself had gladly accepted the name.
All that time, he had pitted his wits against the Shinigami and stolen the souls of prey visible only to the spiritually aware.
Notably, he liked the souls of women best.
Women.
Females.
That usually meant lower danger, but their spiritual density was not necessarily low.
Combined with bait tactics, it let him minimize the risk of the hunt.
It was not only a matter of caution.
It was also pure malice.
Unlike his fellow Hollows, who lived in constant fear of regression and were crushed beneath the instinct to survive, Grand Fisher both feared and enjoyed the hunt.
He had always believed he was special.
So while he harbored ambition, he also waited with care for the day he would truly become strong.
When that day came, he would be able to do whatever he pleased without restraint.
He would not have to fear Soul Society's wanted notices any longer.
He would stand above all his kind.
Ordinarily, for a Hollow who had not even become a Menos Grande, such arrogance would have been absurd.
But Grand Fisher had once witnessed true power.
The special abilities of Hollows simply could not compare to it.
That was a power from a completely different dimension.
In a single instant, it had stripped away the power of a woman he had never had any hope of defeating.
And from that day onward, his life had changed.
He had swallowed the soul of someone with no spiritual power.
His own strength had barely increased.
And yet, to Grand Fisher, that had been enough encouragement.
The fact that he had not died from it already proved he was special, did it not?
But when Las Noches formed the Espada, Grand Fisher, who was not even a Menos Grande, naturally failed to make the cut. He had not even been qualified to enter the palace.
Then came the Shinigami expeditionary army.
Terrified by the horrific tide of spiritual pressure, he fled all the way to some remote land.
That place, too, had been a gathering point for Hollows.
Some were failures rejected by the King of Hueco Mundo.
Some were neutral drifters who wanted nothing to do with power struggles and merely sought a place to live.
And some, like Grand Fisher, were exiles who had fled for one reason or another.
Even in a forgotten corner ignored by the ruler of Hueco Mundo, Grand Fisher was no powerhouse. At best, he could only scrape out an existence among abandoned palace ruins.
Just as he was preparing to head into the Human World to hunt, a miracle occurred.
Four heavily injured Arrancar.
Quite literally, they had fallen from the sky.
Grand Fisher recognized them at once. They were among the lucky few who had initially been selected for the Espada.
Now they had been cast aside and reduced to the ranks of the Fracción.
That said, to Grand Fisher, they were still monsters so powerful that any one of them could have crushed him with a finger.
Assuming, of course, they had still been able to lift even a finger.
Terrifying beings were dying right in front of him.
And suddenly, Grand Fisher was reminded of something that had happened several years earlier.
It was all so terribly similar.
Once might be called coincidence.
But twice?
There was no doubt about it.
This was a miracle.
Unlike that woman from years ago, these former Espada had not lost the power in their souls.
Grand Fisher tore off their masks by force and devoured them.
As the four former Espada regressed, his life once again reached a turning point.
He even vaguely realized that swallowing the powerless soul of that woman years ago had likely been preparation for this exact moment.
It had given him the qualification to become a Vasto Lorde.
And because of that, he had not only rapidly crossed multiple stages of evolution, rising from a lowly Hollow to an Adjuchas, but after another year or so of hunting souls, he had finally evolved into a Vasto Lorde as he had always dreamed.
Feeling the surging power within himself, he had soon afterward heard news that the war had ended.
Grand Fisher immediately decided to follow the example of the former King of Hueco Mundo and take over Las Noches, becoming the new ruler himself.
But when he returned with the Hollows he had gathered under him, he found that a group of seemingly weak Shinigami had occupied the palace instead.
His grand vision of domination had stumbled at the very first step.
That left Grand Fisher in a terrible mood.
"...You still don't plan to retreat?"
He stared at the giant barrier before him, his rugged face, styled much like Yammy's, turning hard and unreadable.
Having once seen the power of the Arrancar with his own eyes, Grand Fisher knew his limits better than most. He knew that without even a Zanpakutō, he could never defeat the Shinigami strong enough to crush the Espada.
So he had not charged in recklessly.
Instead, he relied on his own spiritual pressure, together with the reishi pressure of the horde of Hollows under his command, hoping to force the enemy to withdraw before they could summon another Shinigami expedition.
But after half a day, there was still no sign that the enemy intended to retreat.
Apparently, they thought they could still hold out.
"In that case... I'll smash this turtle shell and scare you out of Hueco Mundo!"
He suppressed the greed he felt toward Shinigami souls and made his decision.
Perhaps Las Noches concealed the secret of how Menos evolved into Arrancar.
No matter what, he had to take the palace.
He needed that secret.
He needed to break his mask.
He needed to become even stronger.
Only then would his position as King of Hueco Mundo truly be secure.
In the next instant, spiritual pressure that far surpassed an Adjuchas shook the very atmosphere.
A crimson flash condensed in his hand.
It was a Cero.
But it looked nothing like an ordinary one. It was almost as though he were cradling a red sun in one arm, ready to hurl it at the barrier.
And hurl it he did.
No, not hurl.
He fired it.
"Get the hell out of Hueco Mundo!"
A beam thicker than a Gillian's Cero tore across the battlefield with a shrill, twisting scream.
The surrounding Hollows were all visibly shaken.
What terrifying power.
That single blast was enough to wipe out dozens of Gillians.
Any ordinary Adjuchas would have been killed instantly.
And yet, against such a world shattering attack, someone had actually stepped forward and risked everything to block it with a Zanpakutō no thicker than one of a Hollow's fingers.
The one who did it was a red haired young man.
He appeared the moment the beam was about to slam into the barrier.
His seemingly frail body stood like a breakwater against a natural disaster.
Solid.
Unmoving.
Grand Fisher's Cero split apart from the center.
Its aftershocks struck the barrier like spray and rain, utterly harmless.
"What?!"
Grand Fisher was stunned.
Shinigami reinforcements?
Or had they been stationed nearby from the start?
Question after question raced through his head.
And at that same moment, the red haired Shinigami, like a true god of death, began mercilessly slaughtering the enemy.
Dozens of other Shinigami arrived from all directions, clearly road worn, and joined their leader in surrounding and suppressing the Hollow forces.
A chaotic battle erupted at once.
"Red hair... Hollow bone ornaments... You're that Shinigami hiding in the Forest of Menos?!"
Grand Fisher narrowed his eyes. He recognized the identity of the red haired youth who had already carved a path straight to him.
"And who are you? Vasto Lorde aren't common."
Because the enemy was a Vasto Lorde, Ashido, who was normally taciturn, actually spoke.
"I'm a nobody to the likes of you, but that ends today. The current me is nothing like those gutter vermin you slaughtered beneath the ground. If you're smart, take your followers and get lost."
"...I can see that. Aside from spiritual pressure alone, you're already nothing like the Hollows I've cut down before."
Ignoring the warning, Ashido's gaze swept over Grand Fisher's body.
Brown fur as hard as forged steel.
A body stronger than a bear's.
Limbs like thick logs.
Every part of him showed overwhelming close combat ability.
And perhaps beneath that brutal appearance lurked some sinister, deadly Hollow power as well.
Finding an obvious weakness would not be easy.
But that was only natural.
A Vasto Lorde.
Whether Arrancar or not, that was still an existence beyond the level of an ordinary Captain.
Every student who entered the Spirit Arts Academy knew just how terrifying Menos were.
"But over two hundred years ago, my friend Kuruyashiki once slew a Vasto Lorde by himself. Because of that single achievement, he was one of the strongest Kenpachi of any era, and I heard he even drew the attention of Squad Zero."
"So as his friend, I will not retreat before a Vasto Lorde. Nor do I have any reason to lose."
"What did you say?"
Ashido's confidence irritated Grand Fisher.
Even though the red haired Shinigami's spiritual pressure was not weak, it was only about equal to his own.
"You're not even a Captain, and yet you dare look down on the future King of Hueco Mundo?!"
His fury drove him forward.
Grand Fisher attacked at once.
"Perhaps this is somewhat disrespectful to those colleagues who once fell to Vasto Lorde or even died at their hands, but... I won't take the words back. Because I'm not saying them out of arrogance in my own power."
Ashido sidestepped the heavy punch, caught the surprise strike of the tail on his blade, then drew his fingers along the steel and spoke the release command softly, a trace of nostalgia in his voice.
"Born from the slaughter of auspicious omens, honor the darkness and bid farewell forever to old age. Gagaku Kairō."
In an instant, darkness erupted.
Grand Fisher was blasted straight to the ground.
When he finally steadied himself and looked up again, he found twenty spherical monsters circling the red haired Shinigami. Each was around two meters tall, each possessed of a huge maw seemingly made for nothing except biting.
"...!"
"This is... a Shikai? Damn it! I never heard anything about him wielding an ability like this!"
Grand Fisher glared hatefully at Ashido's Zanpakutō, his anger laced with jealousy.
If he had a Zanpakutō too...
If he could release it too...
Then even a Shinigami's Bankai would amount to nothing.
As if seeing through his thoughts, Ashido spoke again.
"The reason I said I wouldn't lose is because the Shinigami who once wielded a Zanpakutō of this same name killed a Vasto Lorde alone."
"That's right. The friend I mentioned just now."
"And I also know that the sword's ability was what drew Squad Zero's attention to him in the first place. It was with this very power that he slew that Vasto Lorde."
"But there are too many people here today. You will never get the chance to witness the true horror of that power. Against a half-baked Vasto Lorde like you... Shikai is enough."
The moment his words fell, the twenty monsters lunged.
The black spheres, combined with their savage devouring style of combat, were so grotesque that they looked even more like Hollows than the Hollows themselves.
"Get away from me!"
Grand Fisher fought furiously, but he was no match for those thick skinned monsters. Not only did his attacks fail to harm them, their bites tore through even his hardened body.
Even when he tried to break through the encirclement and kill Ashido directly, he could not manage it.
Ashido's swordsmanship was sharp.
And with the support of his new shinigami uniform, which enhanced both attack and defense, he could fully commit to his most aggressive close range style.
Assailed from both sides, Grand Fisher was soon covered in wounds.
His condition deteriorated rapidly.
At the moment Ashido forced an opening, he immediately seized it. The spherical beasts clamped onto Grand Fisher's limbs, and Ashido stepped forward to take his head.
But at the last moment, Grand Fisher suddenly opened a Garganta.
His tail bloomed like a flower bud, ejecting a lump of flesh that looked like some curled, embryonic creature. It shot into the Garganta at incredible speed, while the main body left behind collapsed and dried up into something like a discarded human skin.
"Hiding an escape method instead of a real trump card..."
Ashido wiped the sweat from his face and released his Shikai, staring at the Garganta as it gradually closed.
Most of his stamina had already been exhausted, and it would have been extremely difficult to pursue the enemy through the vastness of the Garganta.
Still, severely wounding a Vasto Lorde using only Shikai was enough to preserve the honor of the sword name in his hand.
Soul Society, First Division Barracks, Office.
"I understand. From here on, Ashido will remain stationed at Las Noches to prevent another attack. Have the branch report any situation immediately."
Resting his chin on one hand, Takeru gave his instructions to Akin on the monitor placed on the desk.
"Understood!"
The communication ended, and the screen went dark.
Suì Fēng stepped forward to put the device away, but a trace of shock still lingered on her face.
"Kanō Ashido actually inherited the Zanpakutō of Kenpachi Kuruyashiki..."
"Strictly speaking, it isn't inheritance, and he isn't wielding the same sword. Rather... the name of the blade has reappeared across eras."
Leaning back in his chair, Takeru spoke with calm certainty.
"Although it isn't some earth shattering secret, an old friend from Kuruyashiki's era mastered the release of his Zanpakutō only today, and the blade bears the same name as his late friend's sword. The result is enough to make anyone sigh."
"Given Kanō Ashido's level, once he masters Bankai, dealing with a newly evolved Vasto Lorde will indeed be easy..."
As Takeru's confidante and bed partner, Suì Fēng knew quite a bit about those top tier fighters who had once faced the Wandenreich.
Ashido had joined the Expeditionary Force and spent his days running between Rukongai and Hueco Mundo, campaigning almost without rest. He had been even more active than Amagai had been when he was still in that post.
But that did not mean there was some insurmountable gap between them.
Ashido simply understood Hollows better.
A man like him, if he mastered the release of his Zanpakutō, would naturally become an even more terrifying walking calamity to Hollows that had not become Arrancar.
And Ashido was not alone.
Amagai and Mochizuki each had their own strengths as well.
Even Mebari and Ichinose, who had not joined any division, had become well known heroes throughout Rukongai.
With Kūkaku's backing, they had opened a Yorozuya to solve people's troubles.
And Kōga had now become the de facto warden of the Underground Great Prison.
"I won't ask how you knew Kanō Ashido would release his Zanpakutō... What should we do about Grand Fisher?"
"Although it felt impossible for the enemy to escape, having a special method of escape is another matter entirely. Since he chose to hide in the Garganta, it means he does not have the courage to remain in Hueco Mundo. The Human World is a more comfortable environment for him, and there he does not have to worry about being hunted by other Hollows. Since this now concerns the Human World... call Brother Kurosaki to the barracks."
"Send Kurosaki Ichigo to hunt him? Isn't that a bit excessive? Besides... he doesn't seem like the type suited for such a mission."
Suì Fēng frowned and offered a very reasonable objection.
"True. Having him hunt someone down does sound unreliable. But if we do the opposite, I think he'll do an excellent job."
"The opposite? You mean..."
"Yeah."
An unreadable gleam flickered in Takeru's eyes.
"Have Brother Kurosaki protect that guy. Since he's already shown himself, we cannot let him disappear again... and we definitely can't let him die without anyone knowing when it happened."
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 10–50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]
[One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Soul Land, NBA, and more — all in one place.]