REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!Chapter 024: Four More and They Only Get Stronger
Excellence is its own justification.
Aizen said it, and then didn't wait for a response. He just went quiet.
No follow-up. No pivot to something else. He was simply staring at the cup in front of him, visibly somewhere else entirely.
"Aizen... sensei?"
"Ah. Sorry. My mind wandered for a moment."
He came back with a small nod and a smile that was polite without quite being comfortable.
He'd responded. But something about the whole exchange had clearly unsettled him in a way he hadn't fully processed, and it was still sitting on the surface. Aizen Sosuke didn't let things show often. When he did, it was noticeable.
He didn't linger. He tidied his materials, offered a quick goodbye, and was out the door faster than usual.
"See you next week, Matsushita-kun."
Matsushita Yusuke watched him go and stood there for a moment.
Hang on.
What about this week's quest?!
No quest meant no farming, and missing a farming window was genuinely worse than most other things that could happen to him. But there was nothing to be done about it. Aizen hadn't given him an opening, and chasing after him would have been the wrong call entirely.
Fine. Take the week off. Rest properly.
That was the intention. In practice, Matsushita Yusuke spent the week doing the exact opposite of resting, just without any quest rewards to show for it.
Which turned out to be useful in its own way.
He went back to the dual chant.
Looking at it with fresh eyes, outside of the pressure of an actual fight, it wasn't as complicated as the experience had made it feel. After a few practice runs, the core mechanic came into focus.
The key was compatibility. You had to pick two techniques that could sit alongside each other without actively fighting.
Same principle as before: every Kido incantation had its own rhythm, its own shape. The way the syllables rose and fell, the way the reishi was directed through the words. Two incompatible techniques pushed against each other at every joint. Force them together and you didn't get two Kido. You got a rejection response and a lot of pain.
The clearest example was Hado and Kaido. From the angle of reishi usage, from the angle of how the incantations moved, the two were mutually exclusive in a way that went beyond difficulty into simply wrong. Trying to combine them would be like pushing a brass section into the middle of a choir mid-performance and expecting something musical to come out.
So what he'd done in the field, Hado and Bakudo, hadn't been a perfect fit either. But they were close enough that the seams could be held together. Barely. At enormous personal cost. But possible.
Next time he tried something like that, he was going to be ready for it. Properly ready. Not functioning-on-sheer-stubbornness ready.
The thing was, there was no shortcut here. Dual chanting on demand required deep familiarity with both techniques involved. The same way multiplication tables only became genuinely fast when the numbers stopped being calculations and started being reflexes: 7 times 8, no gap, no thought, just 56. Flip the order, same answer. The sequence didn't matter once it was fully internalized.
Kido worked the same way. More serious than it looked, honestly.
Matsushita Yusuke put his focus on Hado and Bakudo specifically. By his current assessment, Kido was the most efficient lever available for improving his actual combat ability, and the dual chant was the most practical application of it.
Standard Hado had a tracking problem. Most of the numbered techniques below a certain threshold, Geki, Byakurai, were fast enough that they landed before an opponent could react. But anything with more power behind it, anything at the level of Sokatsui, telegraphed itself. A decent opponent would simply step out of the way.
Bakudo solved that. Pin them first. Then fire.
The chemistry between the two was obvious once he'd practiced the combination a few times. Matsushita Yusuke spent several days running through variations and came out the other side in a genuinely good mood, the kind that was hard to suppress and he didn't particularly try to.
The week passed.
Before heading into the next round of Aizen's class, he pulled up his panel to check the numbers.
[Reiatsu Level: 7]
[Zanjutsu: 15 / Hakuda: 11 / Hoho: 10 / Kido: 19] (Total: 100)
A week of maxing out every available class, and the gains were: Zanjutsu up one, Hoho up one, Reiatsu Level up one.
He'd been grinding at full capacity every single day. That was the output.
The life skill column, on the other hand, was filling up steadily with things like Flower Arrangement and Natto Appreciation, which said something about the Academy's approach to a well-rounded education that he wasn't entirely sure how to interpret.
The Zanpakuto panel had moved more interestingly.
[Physical: 3]
[Elemental: 1]
[Kido: 2]
[Biological: 1]
[Rule: 1]
Physical had jumped twice in one week. Looking at that, Matsushita Yusuke felt something he could only describe as the system rewarding him for his combat performance.
Two points in a single week was unusually fast.
He did the math on the longer timeline. Five years of school remaining. Slow grind, but consistent. By graduation, at this rate, all five categories should be sitting at or around 30, which meant Shikai unlocked across the board.
And once that happened...
He was already grinning.
The classic endgame boss encounter: you beat the first form, and then the boss looks at you and says "Impressive. But you've only defeated my weakest self. There are four more of me, and they only get stronger."
Five Zanpakuto categories, five distinct abilities, each with its own release waiting behind a different door.
The mental image alone was extremely satisfying.
Then class time arrived, and reality resumed its normal pace.
When he saw Aizen at the podium, the awkwardness from last week was entirely gone. The composure was back in place, smooth and complete, like it had never shifted. He stood in front of the room the way he always did, warm, in command, casually elevated above everyone present.
He looked out over the assembled students and spoke in his usual tone, like the week had been unremarkable in every respect.
"It's been a week. I hope everyone's technique has had time to develop."
A brief pause.
"No point in waiting, let's begin."
[Quest: Study calligraphy under Aizen Sosuke]
***
70+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces