Chapter 196: Resurrección
The points of light seeped into flesh in an instant, like drops of lava falling on fresh snow, burning clean through before the surface could resist them.
Long years of combat had led Yamamoto to develop Ryujin Jakka to a degree that defied easy description. Even now, he had any number of small, subtle techniques at hand, and combining them in the heat of an exchange had earned him considerable advantage throughout the fight.
But the Hollow seemed to feel none of it.
It charged straight forward, pressing down on Yamamoto and raising its left hand high.
Winding back. Driving the punch.
Whoosh.
Yamamoto's slightly narrowed eyes snapped open.
He freed his left arm and brought it up to block, forearm meeting the incoming strike, and the impact produced a violent, thundering crack.
That is... a lot of force.
The muscles of his forearm swelled at a visible rate.
For someone of Captain-Commander Yamamoto's physical conditioning, that kind of swelling meant a genuinely extreme amount of power behind the blow.
The thought surfaced briefly and passed. In the next instant, both sides stepped back half a step simultaneously, each absorbing the residual impact that had carried through.
The Hollow's recovery was noticeably faster.
The depression where its right arm had taken damage was already crawling back into shape, looking from a distance like a whole bowl of maggots packed inside it and moving at roughly thirty times the speed anything natural should manage.
A wave of milky-white flesh surged outward and filled the wound almost the moment it appeared.
[Skill: Rapid Regeneration]
[Your inherently flexible body sets you apart from ordinary Hollows. Your Hierro is gone. What replaced it is a different kind of vitality, something rawer and more brutal. You can recover at speed even while actively injured, and even wounds that should be fatal can be reversed or reduced through this alone.]
Skills built on each other, extended and expanded each other, and across five years the alt's toolkit had grown enormously.
Rapid Regeneration.
The flesh was sealed before the flames clinging to the surface had even lost their heat, pushing the fire outward and closing the wound in one motion.
The sheer speed and performance of it made even Yamamoto's eyelids twitch. Something that could almost be called surprise passed briefly across his face.
And that was not the only thing that surprised him.
The Hollow alt turned and swung its left hand again.
This time, though, the fist opened into a claw, and it pressed down hard onto Yamamoto's shoulder.
Five fingers closing inward. Pressing. Locking.
Less an attack than a restraint.
Click.
Vivid red light appeared from nowhere and began building directly in front of Yamamoto's face.
Point-blank Cero.
The charge completed in almost no time. Watching the light already beginning to swell with heat, Yamamoto made his decision in the same instant.
"Brat!"
He roared it and closed his left hand into a fist, every muscle in his arm standing rigid and taut.
Eyes wide open, he swung the left fist through a half-circle arc in the air and drove it straight at the Hollow alt's head.
A wild haymaker with nothing technical about it. At this particular moment, the most devastating and effective option he had.
Trade injury for injury? Gladly.
The fist landed. Heat and light surged. A dark-red ball of force erupted and swallowed both figures whole.
It lasted only a moment. Because in the next instant, a battered shape was launched violently from within, hit the ground, and rolled for dozens of meters.
It was the Hollow alt.
Half of its chest was simply gone, along with the left hand.
The fractured ribs were exposed and clearly visible, every broken edge sharp and distinct. The spine, still connected to most of the organs on one side, hung heavily from the open wound. The whole sight was grotesque in a way that resisted easy description.
But the worst was the head.
Or rather.
The space where a head should have been was completely empty.
From the neck upward, only a thin remnant of the lower jaw remained. Everything above it, the tongue, the vast majority of the head's tissue, had been entirely blasted away by the haymaker.
Watching from the outside, even Matsushita Yusuke let out a quiet, involuntary sound.
Seriously?
'By the panel alone, the alt's physical defense should be on par with a baseline upper-tier captain.'
And yet in a fight at this level, it had become, in the most literal sense, shattered on contact.
Of course, that said as much about the old man's level as anything else.
Yamamoto's close-quarters combat was absolutely not inferior to his swordsmanship, and in specific conditions his Hakuda reached levels that had no business existing.
Matsushita Yusuke let those thoughts run through him and looked toward the distance.
The smoke was beginning to clear.
A figure that looked thin and gaunt was slowly walking out from within it, coming into view piece by piece.
Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni.
More than half of his beard had been stripped away. Across his chest the wounds were clearly visible: burn-throughs, peeling, the raw red outlines of the damage showing through.
Getting past his defenses.
In a fight at this level, that single fact said something about the gap between the two sides.
At the same time, the moment Matsushita Yusuke reminded himself exactly who his opponent was, those complicated feelings released on their own.
What was there to be conflicted about? Just getting to exchange blows with someone like this was already no small thing.
Lose, and you still come out even. Get something out of it on top of that, and you come out ahead.
"Cough..."
Yamamoto stumbled slightly as he coughed.
His condition was clearly far from as fine as the walk suggested.
He raised a hand and wiped the corner of his mouth, his gaze settling calmly ahead. For the first time, a faint shift of expression crossed his face. He looked at the battered shape lying in the rubble and let out a cold, quiet sound.
"You can still move."
Not a question. A statement.
As though he had already anticipated exactly what was about to happen.
And he was right.
With a sudden, faint tremor, the body that had been reduced to ruin, that should by any logic have been lifeless, gave a shudder.
Then, silently, the wave of flesh rose.
It grew without sound, the milky-white outline filling in every wound at speed, and in barely the span of a single breath, every injury was gone entirely.
As though it had never been hurt at all. It stood quietly in place, raising its gaze toward Yamamoto in silence.
There was no change to its appearance. The fluctuation in its reiatsu was unmistakable, though.
The cost of those injuries was not nothing.
After a brief silence, the Hollow alt slowly raised its right hand and made a grasping motion to the side.
"You... are strong."
So.
"I have to... get serious."
Reiatsu gathered again, coiling endlessly in its palm.
Yamamoto watched its movements without a word.
"Resurrección..."
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