"This powerful spiritual pressure, now this is worth fighting for!"
After Baraggan felt Ulquiorra's extremely powerful spiritual pressure, he instead extended his palm and laughed heartily, then a death power several times more intense than before erupted.
Ulquiorra remained expressionless, and then pointed a finger at Baraggan.
"Black Cero!"
A pitch-black Cero, like ink, condensed at his fingertip and blasted towards Baraggan.
"Chirp!"
Baraggan raised the golden great axe in his hand, and a wall constructed entirely of death power instantly formed in front of him, completely nullifying that terrifying Black Cero, without even raising a wisp of smoke.
"Moonlight Sword!"
Ulquiorra, with a single wave of his hand, instantly formed a pale green light blade in his hand. Wielding the light blade, Ulquiorra, using Sonido, quickly approached Baraggan for close-quarters combat.
"Clang!"
The moment the light sword collided with the golden great axe, Ulquiorra discovered that his Moonlight Sword was being continuously corroded by the death power swirling around the golden great axe.
Seeing this, Ulquiorra's four wings vibrated simultaneously behind him, transforming into an afterimage and rapidly increasing the distance from Baraggan.
He only stopped after instantly retreating hundreds of feet.
The next moment, Ulquiorra beckoned, and a feather immediately fell from the four black wings on his back, which he caught.
Ulquiorra grasped the feather with both hands, then clasped his hands together, and quickly pulled them apart. The feather instantly transformed into a long spear shining with a pitch-black light.
"Thunder Lance!"
Ulquiorra raised his right arm and directly hurled the pitch-black long spear.
Seeing this, Baraggan first paused, then gripped the chain at the back of his great axe, and forcefully hurled the golden great axe in his hand, causing it to collide with the pitch-black spiritual pressure spear.
"Bang!"
The aftermath of their collision transformed into gusts of strong winds howling within the barrier.
Initially, the pitch-black Thunder Lance struck Baraggan's golden great axe, sending it flying. Just as its remaining power was about to touch Baraggan, it became powerless under the shroud of death power, turning into dust a foot in front of Baraggan.
"So it's just a similar name, your Thunder Lance is far worse than Lord Yekawa's thunder!"
Facing Baraggan's provocation, Ulquiorra remained silent, not uttering a single word.
Seeing that his verbal taunts had no effect on Ulquiorra, Baraggan stopped talking nonsense, raised his battle axe, and engaged Ulquiorra in close-quarters combat using Sonido.
Facing the golden great axe hack coming at him, Ulquiorra had no choice but to summon another pitch-black Thunder Lance and confront Baraggan head-on.
"Clang!"
"Clang!"
"Clang!"
After exchanging several blows with Baraggan, Ulquiorra discovered that Baraggan's death power was actually transmitted through the Thunder Lance to his right arm.
Ulquiorra immediately retreated, simultaneously discarding the now incomplete Thunder Lance.
Initially, Ulquiorra wanted to imitate Yekawa by using Speed Regeneration to counteract the death power, but he found that his Speed Regeneration could not achieve reverse growth against Baraggan's death power; at most, it could only slow down the corrosion of the death power.
Therefore, without the slightest hesitation, he condensed a Moonlight Sword in his left hand, and with a swift motion, directly severed his right arm. The entire process was seamless, and his expression showed no change, as if he wasn't cutting off his own arm.
The severed arm fell, and before it even hit the ground, it turned into nothingness and completely dissipated.
The severed part of Ulquiorra's arm then wriggled, and the arm instantly recovered to its original state.
"Indeed, my Speed Regeneration is still far from Lord Yekawa's!"
Ulquiorra looked up at the battle-ready Baraggan and calmly said:
"I lost, you won!"
Baraggan, who was about to resume battle with his axe, suddenly felt displeased.
"Hey, boy, are you looking down on this old man? The victory hasn't been decided yet!"
Unexpectedly, when he looked up, he found that Ulquiorra had already released his Resurreccion state and was preparing to exit the Four Directions Thunder World.
"You brat…"
Seeing this, Baraggan had no choice but to stop fighting.
Since both Baraggan and Ulquiorra had sub-hogyokus implanted, Baraggan's weakness of lacking recovery ability had been compensated. Under his almost bug-level death power, even if Ulquiorra's spiritual pressure was slightly stronger, it would be difficult to defeat him.
On the other hand, Ulquiorra's recovery ability was already the strongest among all Vasto Lorde. What he lacked was powerful offensive means. To truly defeat Baraggan, he either needed to unilaterally crush him with extremely strong spiritual pressure like Yekawa, or he must have a sufficiently lethal trump card to directly kill him with one blow.
Otherwise, if Baraggan was given a moment to breathe, with the recovery power of the sub-hogyoku and the terrifying nature of his death power, he would be virtually unresolvable.
Therefore, Baraggan was relatively restraining towards Ulquiorra, but Yekawa keenly sensed that Ulquiorra was actually holding back. If it were a true fight to the death, the outcome would still be unknown.
Thus, the first round of battles among the seven Vasto Lorde had basically determined the winners and losers. Next would be the second round of battles between the winners' bracket and the losers' bracket.
However, Szayelaporro still had no intention of participating in the battle. Yekawa did not interfere much with this, as important research personnel always deserved certain preferential treatment.
After all, Szayelaporro's role for Yekawa and even the entire Hueco Mundo was not merely limited to him being a Vasto Lorde Arrancar's combat power. It could be said that he was the pillar of Hueco Mundo's future technology, so his combat power was not the most important aspect. But it cannot be denied that he was definitely one of the top combatants among the Vasto Lorde Arrancar.
The subsequent battles continued for about another week, finally determining the Espada rankings under Yekawa.
Espada Number Zero — Szayelaporro Granz
Espada Number One — Coyote Starrk
Espada Number Two — Baraggan Louisenbairn
Espada Number Three — Ulquiorra Cifer
Espada Number Four — Nelliel Tu Odelschwanck
Espada Number Five — Tia Harribel
Espada Number Six — Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez
Espada Number Seven — Wonderweiss Margela
Espada Number Eight — Nnoitra Gilga
Espada Number Nine — Ruby Antenor
Espada Number Ten — Yammy Rialgo
The rankings were determined by Yekawa based on each individual's combat performance in this ranking battle. As for Szayelaporro, who had not participated in any battles from beginning to end, Yekawa directly ranked him as the most special Number Zero.
The first zero to seven were Vasto Lorde Arrancar that Yekawa had strengthened by implanting sub-hogyokus, while the remaining three were powerhouses who had fought their way out from among the various factions of Adjuchas Arrancar, so Yekawa also classified them as Espada.
As for having eleven Espada, it is obviously quite reasonable, isn't it….
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