Chapter 170: Time Type Civil War
Boom!
The spiritual pressure soaring into the sky was murky beyond belief, yet dazzlingly bright at the same time, reflecting a kaleidoscope of colors across an icy field in another region.
That frozen wasteland had not existed from the beginning.
It was also a battlefield, one born from a string of dangerous and brutal clashes.
"Insolent brat. To dare stand in the way of a god's revenge."
Without sparing even a single glance for that terrifying aftermath, Baraggan kept his eyes fixed on his opponent. His gaze was so vicious it felt as though it could corrode flesh itself.
"Just a moment ago, you were calling yourself a king, and now you've changed it to a god. Does that mean..."
Toshiro was not nearly as cold and taciturn as his face suggested. When he spoke, his words carried a clear, cutting edge.
"The moment you said it, you realized something. You are no longer a king, but the one being ruled. But your pride won't let you admit it, so all you can do is bluff under a different name."
"No one in this world can rule over me, just as no one can rule over time and fate. Therefore, I, who can rule over time, can also rule over the fate of others. Compared to king, the word god suits me far better. Because of that, the sinners who once defied the majesty of a god... not one of them will be spared. There will be no forgiveness."
As old, bitter memories resurfaced, deep hatred twisted Baraggan's aged face.
Toshiro had no interest in sympathizing with him. If anything, he only drove the blade in deeper.
"I know you fought the Captain Commander once and died. I also understand that you want revenge. But no matter how much stronger you've become, a loser like you still isn't worthy of making the Captain Commander draw his sword."
"As I already told you, your opponent this time is me."
"Until you kill me, don't even think about leaving this place to chase anyone else."
That was no empty bluff.
The vast snowy field stretching out for kilometers, and Baraggan still trapped here without being able to kill his opponent and pursue his true target, were proof enough.
"Brat, do you really think I can't kill you?"
"I never thought that. Or rather, I never walk onto a battlefield with such arrogance. On the contrary, you are the one whose killing intent is focused entirely on someone else. You look down on me, and even now you refuse to fight me seriously. You still haven't used your Resurrección, insisting on dealing with me in your base form. It seems your resurrection really did grant you tremendous power, so much that it has made you blindly arrogant."
"Arrogant? Certainly. And what of it? Before this battle even began, I decided I would never use my full strength against anyone but my true enemy. And the facts have proven my judgment correct. Even without revealing my full power, you still haven't managed to leave a single wound on me."
Baraggan sneered.
With him at the center, everything within a 50 meter radius had become a dead, sandy wasteland, utterly devoid of frost or snow.
It was not that Toshiro had been intentionally holding back. It was simply that anything that entered a certain distance of Baraggan lost its vitality and weathered away.
"No. You simply don't dare come closer."
"Touching my spiritual pressure is one thing. But if you step into my domain, or worse, touch my body, then you will experience lethargy deeper than the numbness brought by cold, stagnation greater than freezing itself, and a loss of vitality even more absolute than heat stolen away by ice and snow."
That much was true.
The resurrected Baraggan had become far more proficient in using his abilities.
At least in that regard, his arrogance was not baseless.
Toshiro could not be bothered to refute the latter part of Baraggan's speech. He only replied in a calm voice.
"And yet you're still here, and I haven't died. I can keep you tied down in a battle of this level for a very long time."
"..."
Baraggan's face darkened.
This ice using brat was nothing like his youthful appearance suggested. His combat techniques were polished and precise, with no obvious weakness in any aspect. He was bold, ruthless, and completely unconcerned about the consumption of spiritual pressure or stamina. Even more unsettling was the fact that after fighting to this point, he still showed no clear signs of fatigue.
"It seems it isn't just them. The Shinigami themselves are all fools as well. Very well, then I will begin with you. I will pass judgment upon the ones who call themselves gods of death and let you understand who truly governs death."
"Rot, Arrogante."
A purple red glow, so ominous it seemed to carry the aura of the end of days, tore through that aged body and restored Baraggan to his true form.
The battle axe in his hand changed as well, turning into a new Axe of Destruction that resembled a ritual scepter.
Compared to the past, Baraggan in his Resurrección state, now merged with the pseudo Hogyoku, truly deserved the title Great Emperor of Skeletons.
"Finally getting serious? Then I'll have to go all out too."
Toshiro tightened his grip on the hilt and leveled his blade at his powerful enemy. Bright silver light poured over him, a materialized torrent of surging cold that swept outward like an endless range of snowy mountains.
"Bankai... Daiguren Hyorinmaru!"
The sky darkened without anyone noticing. The clouds grew heavier, the air condensed, and snowflakes began to fall beneath a howling storm laced with the scent of death.
Strands of purple red light seeped through the bleak white heavens and the gloom below.
The ice and snow were melting, or more accurately, weathering away, yet fresh snow continued to fall.
These were all merely the aftereffects of the violent clash and intertwining of the two combatants' spiritual pressures.
"Hmm?"
In the hollow eye sockets of the transformed Great Emperor of Skeletons, purple red light gathered in place of eyes, casting an even more dreadful and oppressive gaze.
And beneath that gaze, Toshiro also underwent a dramatic transformation.
The pre installed self adjusting function activated.
His shinigami uniform expanded instantly, fitting the mature body that had grown from a boy into a young man in a single breath.
The haori that had once looked more like a cape became a proper coat. Combined with the crushed ice armor covering parts of his body, it gave him a heroic and extraordinary bearing.
The last traces of youth vanished.
Now he looked fully like an adult.
"First of all, let me make one thing clear. I'm not like you. This is the result of 12 years of grueling training. It allows me to fully bring out my power, but the price is that it ages me. On top of that, the sudden growth of my body makes my bones itch, my temperament worsen, and leaves me starving once the form ends. I'm still not used to it. That's why I can't start every fight with Bankai like before. It has nothing to do with conceit."
Not only his appearance had changed. Even Toshiro's voice had become much more mature.
That sense of being a precocious child was gone, replaced by a calm, natural steadiness.
"Even if you leap through time right now and seize the power from the peak of your past, present, or future, it would mean nothing to me. Before my power, so called growth and change are nothing more than the death throes of an ant."
Baraggan raised the Axe of Destruction and spoke like a priest reciting a hymn of death.
At the same time, his spiritual pressure spread outward, eroding the land itself.
Even space took on a purplish red stain.
"Listen to the screams of fate, and repent... Fate of the Skeleton Emperor."
The axe fell, as though tolling a death knell.
The weathered earth split apart and spread rapidly outward.
It looked like the end of the world itself, like the prelude to continents cracking and sinking into the sea.
Yet what surged from those collapsing fissures was neither magma nor groundwater.
It was the breath of Respira.
Compared to a year ago, it was denser, stranger, and more dangerous, no longer purely black purple but tinged with purple red.
It looked more seductive. Or perhaps more contagious.
Even the spiritual veins in the earth rotted as death overflowed and surged in all directions.
On the ground, in the air, and in the sky, there was nowhere to stand.
Nowhere to flee.
In Baraggan's eyes, now that he had risen nearly to the absolute peak of Hollows, once he unleashed this exclusive technique symbolizing aging, there could only be one outcome.
The enemy would turn to ash.
Even that hateful master and disciple pair would have difficulty resisting his Respira.
"The current me is a god who truly governs death and cannot be harmed by it. Therefore, no one can kill me, and no one can stand against me."
The Espada rankings. The plans.
Baraggan cared about none of it.
All he wanted was to wash away the shame of the past and rebuild the glory of the King of Hueco Mundo.
But once again, things did not go as he wished.
This was the third time.
The moment the splitting earth reached Toshiro Hitsugaya, everything came to a screeching halt. It was not that it struck something or that the effect had been dispelled.
It was complete freezing.
The collapsing earth and the erupting gas of death were all turned into ice sculptures, frozen so thoroughly that it surpassed even sealing. Every substance simply stopped moving, like a forbidden spell of temporal stasis.
But even temporal stasis itself would be frozen and rendered void before him.
Because even reishi had stopped.
In an instant, the ice field was reborn.
Standing there with his blade in one hand, the white haired young man spoke in an indifferent tone.
"I exchanged 12 years of time for this appearance, but in return, I gained the equivalent of 120 years of cultivation."
"That has finally allowed me to push the strongest ice snow type Zanpakuto to its limit. I still cannot freeze an entire world, but within the range of my spiritual pressure, freezing all elements, starting with earth, water, fire, and wind, is no great difficulty. Even that gas of yours that rots all things."
"What... did you say?!"
Baraggan was filled with shock and fury, but he could not ignore the undeniable fact before his eyes.
"How is this possible? Mere ice, a simple freezing ability, can actually counter my aging? Who exactly are you?!"
"Captain of the Gotei 13's 10th Division, Toshiro Hitsugaya. And you got one thing wrong. It isn't that a mere freezing ability can counter your aging. It's that only I can do it. That's why I struck first and cut you off before anyone else could step in."
Hitsugaya casually twirled his blade. A faint, icy smile appeared on his face.
"After all, if you think about it logically, aging is simply time passing until something reaches the end of its lifespan and decays. Hyorinmaru, which can freeze all elements and bring physical time itself to a halt, is the natural nemesis of aging."
"Perhaps my spiritual pressure still falls a little short. But with this elemental advantage, I can at least stand on equal footing with you, even after you've grown much stronger. I may even have a chance to... kill you again."
"To repay the Captain Commander's favor, and to earn enough hazard pay to make up for the salary I lost across a century, I intend to do my very best."
"Freeze the breath of death? Everything in this world must die. You may be able to stop it for a moment, but can you stop it forever? My Respira is infinite. I would very much like to see how an arrogant brat like you plans to kill me again."
He could not endure it.
He absolutely could not endure such provocation.
Purplish red light burst from Baraggan like a floodgate breaking open. The atmosphere rotted, the dust disappeared, and all things decayed beneath the breath of death.
This horrifying power had already surpassed Arturo, and even Yamamoto Genryusai of 1000 years ago might not have been his match.
Even so, Hitsugaya had no intention of retreating.
If the enemy's scheme was not stopped in time, then sooner or later this terrifying military force might find a way to strike at the Soul King Palace.
And by then, whether the so called Royal Special Task Force could stop them would be another matter entirely.
...
Below the Floating Castle stretched a forest of quartz trees.
Starrk, in his Resurrección state, stood beneath a scorching sky thick with what seemed like gunsmoke, though in truth it was just a heavy concentration of spiritual pressure residue, and looked toward the distant battlefield where snow clouds rolled and the earth glowed purple red.
"That spiritual pressure... it might even be stronger than yours. Your Gotei 13 really is full of talented people. Monsters are everywhere."
"Thanks for the compliment."
Standing on another bridge like branch, Kyōraku held both his long blades.
His straw hat and haori were gone, and his shinigami uniform was stained with blood and badly torn.
For the new shinigami uniform, already enhanced by the Focus Aura that boosted both the durability of the uniform and the wearer's body by 10 percent, to end up in that state, he had clearly taken a devastating hit that in the past would have left him half dead.
And yet Kyōraku's slightly dirty face still carried that same composed smile. He even had the leisure to imitate Starrk and look toward the distance as if sightseeing.
"You're giving me too much credit. I'm not some absurd genius like Captain Hitsugaya. In my eyes, his current strength has already surpassed mine. I don't really count as talented, much less a monster."
"Is that so? But you still haven't used Bankai, and yet you managed to survive a full exchange after my Resurrección with injuries only at this level. It makes me, the No. 1, feel a little unworthy of the title. If anyone saw this, they'd probably think I was slacking off again."
Starrk withdrew his gaze and turned toward Kyōraku.
"Just luck. Fire a few more rounds and I'll be done for. That said, if you're willing to stop now, I would be very grateful."
Kyōraku shrugged.
"...Are you serious?"
Starrk gave him a long look.
"When I tried to chase down Ichigo, you cut in halfway and went straight for my throat. Does someone like that really sound like he'd be willing to stop and let me leave?"
"..."
Kyōraku was silent for a moment, then shook his head helplessly.
"For someone who looks like he can never be bothered to get serious, you're unexpectedly sharp."
"You take things that others couldn't accomplish even with great effort and act as if they are as natural as breathing. Is that also what it means to be No. 1?"
He sighed as he said it, and a chill hard enough to touch seemed to rise from the depths of his eyes.
"The more it's like this, the more certain I am that I have to keep you here. Much as I hate exhausting myself, everyone else who could deal with you is already occupied, so I have no choice but to take you on myself."
"I can't let an Arrancar of your level, especially one whose combat style is this brutally efficient, run loose on the battlefield and wreak havoc, can I?"
"That makes sense. To be honest, I wouldn't mind switching opponents either."
Starrk casually aimed his gun at Kyōraku.
"Young Ichigo has grown stronger since the last time I saw him. If no one had interfered with his Bankai, I would probably be the one marching toward a dead end. So if someone steps out to tie me down, I don't need to go looking for trouble myself."
"Besides, anyone capable of tying me down is bound to be no ordinary opponent. Which means killing them is a necessity too."
Then he pulled the trigger.
Boom, boom, boom...!
Light bullets comparable to Gran Rey Cero poured out like a torrential downpour.
The environment of the Jigokucho was not as ideal as Hueco Mundo, where beings with Hollow factors could unleash their full power, but it was still vastly better than the Human World.
Starrk's firepower now was even more intense than when he had sniped at Ichigo in Karakura Town.
It put tremendous pressure on Kyōraku.
Unlike Sonido, Shunpo could not evade perception.
Surviving under that barrage was far from easy.
And this was no longer the original battlefield where they had first clashed. The landscape here had already been torn apart beyond recognition.
That meant he could no longer rely on terrain to shield himself. It was not enough to simply dodge the bullets either, because the missed shots would still explode and create massive shockwaves.
If he did not keep shifting positions constantly, sooner or later he would be caught in overlapping shockwaves and swallowed whole by their aftereffects.
So in truth, it was less that Kyōraku was tying Starrk down and more that Starrk was relentlessly hunting Kyōraku.
But if Starrk tried to disengage, Kyōraku would never let him go.
That silent understanding had defined their entire battle up to this point.
As the stone forest, vast enough to rival a modern city, vanished beneath the explosions, a brief pause opened in the fighting.
Nanao, hiding behind a rock, could not help trembling as she stared at the blazing sea of fire surging skyward.
The power on display was far beyond anything she had imagined.
For a moment, she even suspected that her Captain had already died inside it.
Then, in the next instant...
A disheveled figure emerged from a nearby shadow.
"Whew... whew... ah, that was close. I escaped another one. Feels like I'm getting more and more skilled at this. By the way, little Nanao, did you bring water? I'm pretty thirsty after all that running."
"No water. But I do have supply supplements."
"That works too."
He took the supplement from her, something that restored energy, nutrients, and hydration all at once, and drank it down in one gulp.
Kyōraku let out a long sigh.
"With Ukitake gone, I feel like my true colors are finally exposed. Against a strong enemy, all I can do is run for my life."
"Captain! Is this really the time to be saying discouraging things? The enemy is almost here. Pull yourself together. Captain Ukitake may not be here, but I am. And you're not just running for your life. You're buying time for me!"
Nanao spoke urgently.
"I really thought this time I'd end up fighting that bat boy, or maybe the Arrancar who stole your Zanpakuto, and at least get a chance to take it back or ask where it went. I never expected to be up against the No. 1 Espada. But there's no point regretting it now."
"It really is too late."
Starrk's voice suddenly came from above.
"?!"
Kyōraku and Nanao jerked their heads upward at the same time.
Starrk stood on a rock overhead, one gun leveled at the two of them.
"But being able to go on your way beside a close companion doesn't really sound lonely anymore."
"Little Nanao!"
"Understood!"
The instant Starrk fired, Nanao flashed through a series of hand seals, releasing the spiritual seals set within her body and activating an unprecedented Kidō.
Kyōraku swung the shorter Katen Kyokotsu to meet the incoming shot.
Although the light bullet was incredibly fast, he had already spent long enough being hunted by Starrk to grasp the rhythm of his attacks. His timing and angle were flawless.
Then, something bizarre happened.
The light bullet struck the blade, but instead of exploding, it was absorbed into it. In the next instant, with one swing, Kyōraku released a slash of the same color and nature.
"What?!"
"Starrk, watch out!"
Lilynette's warning rang out from within him, jolting Starrk's instincts hard enough that he immediately used Sonido to retreat.
The several meter high boulder Nanao had been hiding behind was instantly ground to dust, and the earth behind it for hundreds of meters was leveled, sending debris and smoke into the air.
"That just now was..."
Appearing in another location, Starrk looked down at the two of them through the falling dust with visible uncertainty.
"Our attack got absorbed... I think."
Lilynette sounded equally unsure from inside him.
"...Not I think. It was absorbed, then instantly converted into his own attack."
Starrk replayed the scene in his head frame by frame.
And reached the correct conclusion.
"Phew. Glad I made it in time. If I'd been hit at that range, it might actually have killed me. Sorry, little Nanao, for dragging you into something this dangerous."
Seeing the intense tension on Nanao's pale face, Kyōraku spoke in a half joking, half sincere tone.
"The entire Jigokucho is a battlefield. If I don't stay with you, Captain, where exactly would be safe? Besides, if I wasn't going to follow you, then why would I shamelessly pester Captain Commander Takeru every other day for guidance while developing this Kidō?"
Nanao pushed up her glasses, hiding that brief crack in her composure as best she could.
Kyōraku only smiled.
Then he moved a few steps forward, subtly shielding his lieutenant with his body as he focused completely on Starrk.
In response, Starrk silently raised his gun and fired a single bullet.
Kyōraku lazily swung his short blade.
The shot was absorbed and transformed into a slash.
Starrk shifted away from the ensuing destruction and spoke in a much more solemn tone than before.
"I see. Just as I thought. You didn't have this ability back when you were busy running for your life, but you got it after meeting up with your companion."
"And if I pay close attention, I can tell her spiritual pressure is deeply linked to your blade. She isn't directly feeding her spiritual pressure into you. No, it's more like she's attached some kind of spell to your Zanpakuto."
"A spell that temporarily grants that already bizarre sword of yours a new ability."
"How troublesome. Since you've already put it like that, even if I denied it, you probably wouldn't believe me."
Starrk's sharpness drew a bitter smile from Kyōraku.
"Still, using conversation to buy time and recover a bit of the stamina you've drained from me isn't exactly a bad thing, so I may as well tell you."
"This is the protection of the Eight Mirror Sword, a Kidō developed using the Ise Clan's divine artifact, the one your people stole, as a prototype. As for what it does... well, you're already looking at it."
At those words, Nanao's expression became complicated again.
In truth, things were not nearly that simple.
The Eight Mirror Sword had been handed down by the Ise Clan for generations. Losing it should have brought severe punishment if not for the chaos that followed the collapse of Central 46.
Even so, losing the sword did not sever the Ise Clan's connection to it completely.
The curse within their bloodline still remained.
And so, after repeatedly asking the famed war god of Soul Society for a battlefield Kidō and seeing little real progress, Nanao decisively changed direction.
She chose to use the curse itself as a catalyst to develop a new battlefield Kidō.
The technique required her to spend time refining the curse inside her own body as a Spiritual Seal, condensing it into a usable form, then activating it on a chosen target so that target's Zanpakuto would gain an effect similar to that of the Eight Mirror Sword.
The problem was that she absolutely could not be disturbed during the process.
That was why Kyōraku had deliberately split off from her earlier and done everything possible to buy the time she needed.
"But now that you're carrying a companion, you can't run nearly as freely as before. So let me see just how much you can absorb, and how much you can reflect... Spear of the Wolf Pack."
Starrk, ignorant of the Ise Clan's history and the true nature of the Eight Mirror Sword, relied on his own sense of battle and immediately unleashed the strongest exclusive skill available to him at this stage.
Like Susanoo given form, two massive spears of reishi condensed on either side of his shoulders.
The torrents that erupted from them were not Ceros, yet the density far surpassed even Gran Rey Cero, and their destructive power was no less than Lille Barro's Judgement Light.
Only the color was different, a deep, heavy hue like the bottom of the sea.
"I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you. Our little Nanao is a Kidō genius, and she had guidance from someone truly extraordinary. Besides, I'm not exactly inexperienced when it comes to this kind of fighting."
Kyōraku suddenly threw his short sword toward Starrk.
The blade absorbed the torrent and tore through it without resistance, arriving right before Starrk in a blink.
Before Starrk could even react, Kyōraku used Kageoni to emerge from the shadow cast by Starrk's body under the combined light of the torrent and the sword, crossing more than 100 meters in an instant as his long blade came down toward Starrk's head.
Having already witnessed what Takaoni could do, Starrk had no desire to take that blow head on. He withdrew the spears and dodged.
The moment Starrk moved, Kyōraku caught the short blade again and pressed the attack, unleashing the power of Spear of the Wolf Pack still residing within it.
The resulting slash was as fearsome as a Getsuga Tensho, blasting Starrk away before he could fully recover.
Below, Nanao stood on ground torn apart by the torrent's aftermath, using everything she had just to maintain a barrier around herself.
Seeing Starrk forced back, she finally let out a quiet breath.
If he had continued pouring on pressure at that level, the situation would have turned disastrous.
Fortunately, Kyōraku had seized the initiative.
"...Using a Kidō borrowed from someone else so skillfully that even I took a loss for a moment, and you still claim you aren't a monster?"
There was a slash across Starrk's chest, and blood trickled down from his forehead. For him, that was not a state he should ever have been in.
Because of it, his gaze toward Kyōraku had grown much more severe.
He had realized it now.
This was a powerful enemy, one whose danger could not be judged by spiritual pressure alone.
And for someone like Starrk, who preferred to overwhelm opponents with straightforward force rather than chew through complicated countermeasures, Kyōraku was an especially bad match.
"It can't be helped. I work with people who fight like this all the time. I may look like I'm standing here alone, but in reality, you could call this 3 against 2. You can call me underhanded or shameless if you want. As long as I win, I don't really care how shameless I look. Surely you aren't saying there's anything wrong with that."
Kyōraku sounded almost playful.
"Why would I? We weren't much better when we snatched away your companion. Besides, if you still can't beat me after going this far, then what does it matter?"
The wounds on Starrk's body visibly healed.
That was Super Regeneration.
A standard ability possessed by every Espada since Arturo's death.
Even after dying once, they had not lost it.
"...I was hoping I'd at least be able to make the injuries pile up over time. This is going to be rough. I just hope it doesn't become a war of attrition fought on a tightrope. That would be exhausting."
Seeing that, Kyōraku's smile dimmed, and a faint gloom flickered in his eyes.
"Then what about Bankai? Though information about your Bankai was shared with me by Ulquiorra a long time ago. So you should be prepared for the possibility that the effect won't be very impressive."
Starrk shot back calmly.
The effect won't be very impressive. Is that the truth, or a bluff?
Kyōraku's mind raced.
His attempt to turn Starrk's own attack into a sudden kill had already failed. From here on, he would have to adapt on the fly.
The overall state of the war was still unknown. He could not casually sacrifice his remaining combat ability.
But if necessary, then even if the result was less than ideal, he would have to stake everything.
He only hoped it would not come to that.
Kyōraku glanced out of the corner of his eye toward the Floating Castle, steadied his breathing, and launched another assault against Starrk.
.....
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