"Then... what about the remaining Rukongai districts?"
After figuring that out, Kirinji no longer cared to dwell on the issue.
Measured by loyalty, a surrendered general like him who had yielded under pressure truly could not compare to Hitsugaya and the others.
But seeing that Rosse still showed no impatience and was willing to continue talking to him as if he were a subordinate, he took the opportunity to keep asking questions.
He wanted to shamelessly ask a few more things and see if he could save more parts of Soul Society during this reckoning.
"If you include me as well, how much would I be worth?"
Before Rosse could answer Kirinji's question, Yoruichi Shihoin, who had been leaning against a piece of rubble, suddenly tore off her tattered captain's haori.
She stepped forward, raised her head, and asked loudly in a bold tone.
The moment her words fell, a disturbance spread among the surviving Shinigami below. Many looked at her with shock and disbelief.
Meanwhile, behind Rosse's camp, Shiba Kukaku looked at Yoruichi with open contempt and ridicule.
In Kukaku's eyes, the Shihoin family had fallen apart because of Rosse. Yoruichi's closest friend, Kisuke Urahara, and her most loyal subordinate, Sui Feng, had all died directly or indirectly because of him.
With hatred that deep between them, at a moment when she should have been fighting to the death, Yoruichi had hesitated and lost her way.
She actually wanted to follow Kirinji's example, using her body and surrender to exchange for the lives of some unrelated Rukongai civilians?
What kind of sacrifice for the greater good was that?
It was a joke.
As far as Kukaku was concerned, Yoruichi was simply running away from reality.
Rosse had already broken her spirit, and she no longer knew how to face this hopeless hatred. So she found a noble-sounding excuse to numb her own cowardice.
"You? Yoruichi Shihoin."
Rosse lowered his head slightly. His gaze swept across Yoruichi's body, marked by wounds yet still carrying its wild nature, and he smiled as he named his price.
"You are worth fifteen Rukongai districts."
"But have you really thought this through? Once you take this step, the price you'll have to pay will be completely different from Kirinji's simple service."
There was no attempt to hide the teasing and possessive undertone in Rosse's voice.
He knew very well that Yoruichi was not sincerely surrendering to him, nor was she some saint willing to abandon revenge for the sake of a few Rukongai civilians.
In the end, Rosse saw her as nothing more than a woman accustomed to going with the flow.
On the surface, she appeared free-spirited, wild, and independent.
But looking at her life as a whole, she had very little true self of her own.
Back then, for Kisuke Urahara's sake, she had abandoned her family without hesitation and fled to the Human World.
Now that Urahara was dead, she was like a stray cat that had lost its owner and no longer knew where to go.
She had always followed the footsteps of others or made choices for the sake of people close to her. She had never actively fought for what she herself wanted.
"Fifteen Rukongai districts... Heh. That's already a much better deal than Kirinji got. What do I have to complain about?"
The corner of Yoruichi's mouth lifted into a carefree smile that was almost unruly.
At that moment, the expression on her face made it seem as though she had forgotten the destruction of her family, and had completely forgotten the deaths of Kisuke Urahara and Sui Feng as well.
Who wouldn't want revenge for a hatred like that?
But the gap in reality was simply too great.
So great that it felt like an uncrossable wall, leaving Yoruichi suffocated and hopeless.
No matter how hard she thought, she could not come up with a single method of revenge, not even one that ended with mutual destruction.
Perhaps she really should have done as Kyoraku Shunsui and the others did, point her blade at her own heart and calmly end her life.
Perhaps that would ease the torment inside her.
Perhaps then she could face her family and friends in Hell without shame.
But Hirako Shinji's fate earlier had been like a loud slap across the face that woke her up.
Reality had cruelly shown Yoruichi that in front of Rosse, even death, that self-deceiving form of release, was meaningless.
If Rosse saw through her desire to escape through death, he might even drag her loved ones out of Hell and destroy them before her eyes.
She knew very well that her surrender now was a shameful act of avoidance.
Maybe Rosse was in a good mood today and wouldn't do that.
Maybe all she needed to do was move her wrist and she could slit her own throat for release.
But for some reason, whenever she looked at the man in the sky, she simply could not lift her hand.
In the end, she lacked the courage to die.
"Since you've made your decision, come here."
Wearing a smile that carried overwhelming pressure, Rosse slowly extended a hand toward Yoruichi.
The gesture looked like someone calling over a stray pet.
Under everyone's gaze, Yoruichi gave up resisting.
With steps that appeared relaxed yet felt incredibly heavy, she crossed the ruins one step at a time and walked toward Rosse's camp.
With each step she took, the eyes of the remaining Shinigami behind her became emptier and more hopeless.
What was this supposed to be?
At the beginning, it had been these captains and Squad Zero members who used all kinds of righteous reasons to rally them and lead them to challenge Rosse.
Most of these ordinary Shinigami had been uncertain at first, but somehow got swept up in the frenzy and followed along.
Maybe it was because of a small sense of justice in their hearts.
Maybe it was because they blindly followed orders.
Either way, they had gambled their lives and come here.
And now?
The leaders who swore they would save the world were either dead or crippled.
The few who remained had immediately thrown themselves under Rosse's command and begged for mercy.
The most important thing, and the thing that filled them with the most despair, was this: Not a single one of these powerful figures had been willing to speak up for them when surrendering.
Then what were these ordinary Shinigami, who had been led here to die, supposed to do now?
Where were they supposed to go?
As Kirinji and Yoruichi fully entered Rosse's camp, the thousands of remaining Shinigami looked at one another.
They searched around in panic, only to discover with despair that there was no captain left in the ruins who could issue orders.
Among everyone present, the highest-ranking and strongest people left were now Lieutenant Abarai Renji of Squad Six and Lieutenant Kuchiki Rukia of Squad Thirteen.
But both of them were kneeling beside Kuchiki Byakuya's cold body. They looked completely crushed by grief and had clearly lost the will to keep fighting.
The remaining ordinary Shinigami knew very well that they could not expect these two lieutenants to create some miracle turnaround.
But from what Rosse had told Kirinji earlier, they could hear the implication.
As long as these two people, who still carried some weight, were willing to lower their heads and surrender on behalf of everyone, perhaps their value alone would be enough to make up for the crime of all these foot soldiers coming here today to oppose a god.
"Heh! Why are all of you staring at us like abandoned dogs?"
Just as the Shinigami looked toward them with hopeful eyes, Abarai Renji, who had kept his head lowered, suddenly let out a hoarse laugh.
Ignoring those desperate looks, he slowly rose to his feet.
"What? If you want to surrender, don't you have knees of your own? Or do you cowards think your lives shouldn't be fought for by yourselves? Do you think it's only natural to expect us to step forward, using our lives and value as a shield for you?"
"Since you chose to follow us here, then either be ready to surrender at any moment or be ready to die. Just look at yourselves."
Gritting his teeth, Renji mercilessly tore apart their hypocrisy.
"Don't you think a life that only knows how to cling to others is completely worthless?"
After cursing the spineless crowd, Renji suddenly raised his head.
The sadness and confusion had disappeared from his tattooed face.
His gaze was fierce, like a lone wolf cornered with nowhere left to run. He stared at Rosse in the sky and roared.
"Captain-Commander Rosse! This should be the last time in my life that I call you by that title!"
"I have to admit that many of the policies you introduced truly brought unprecedented change to the rotten Soul Society and the Rukongai!"
"You also broke down the class barriers and gave strays like us, who crawled through the mud of the Rukongai, the right to stand tall alongside those arrogant nobles!"
"For that alone, I, Abarai Renji, want to sincerely thank you before I die!"
At this point, Renji suddenly threw back his head and laughed.
"HAHAHAHAHA!"
"If... if you had become my captain from the very beginning, maybe I would have stood by your side without reservation, just like Captain Hitsugaya and the others!"
"But it's too late!"
Renji suddenly raised Zabimaru and pointed it at the sky.
"My heart is already filled with my captain and my comrades! No matter how worthless a stray from the Rukongai like me may be, I can never watch my captain die while I survive by wagging my tail and begging for mercy!"
"RENJI!"
Kneeling beside Byakuya's body, Kuchiki Rukia seemed to realize something.
She looked up in terror and screamed toward Renji's back, reaching out to grab him.
But in the end, all she saw was his back beneath the setting sun, unshakable and utterly resolute.
Then Renji squeezed every last bit of spiritual pressure from his body, looked toward the sky, and unleashed the final roar of his life.
"ROAR, ZABIMARU!"
BOOM!
With a deafening explosion, a gigantic baboon-bone serpent over a hundred meters long burst from the ruins below.
Opening its huge jaws, it carried Renji's anger and pride as it charged toward Rosse in the sky without hesitation.
This kind of desperate attack had happened countless times on today's battlefield.
And the result was the same as every previous attack that had rushed forward like a moth to a flame.
No miracle occurred.
Before a monster like Rosse, even the captains who had evolved once were as powerless as insects.
Abarai Renji, who had not even fully mastered Bankai yet, stood even less chance.
Still, Renji's honest and unyielding words had managed to draw a trace of appreciation from Rosse's calm heart.
"Your spirit is admirable. For a stray dog, you've barked with style."
Facing the massive bone serpent rushing toward him, Rosse did not even draw his sword.
He simply raised his right hand casually and tapped the air with his index finger.
Buzz!
A deep blue beam, dark as the ocean depths, shot from his fingertip.
This was the first time Rosse had truly used his Devil Fruit power today.
What looked like a thin stream of highly compressed water had been condensed by an SSS-rank powerhouse like Rosse to a terrifying degree.
Its penetrating power and destructive force were enough to pierce the defenses and heart of any SS-rank fighter instantly.
And right now, it only had to deal with a newly advanced S-rank whose spiritual pressure had already run dry.
Pshhh!
In an instant, without even delaying it for half a second,
Renji's Zabimaru shattered in midair like fragile glass under the impact of the deep blue water lance.
Then the attack, carrying the pressure of the deep sea, continued forward and pierced Renji's chest, instantly destroying his heart.
The impact carried his body back and pinned him firmly to the scorched earth not far from Kuchiki Byakuya's corpse.
"Rest in peace. You did well, Abarai Renji. Your performance in the name of loyalty was excellent."
Rosse's quiet words drifted through the silent battlefield like a judgment from a god.
At the same time, Kuchiki Rukia's grief-stricken cries rang out.
"Renji!"
Rukia threw herself beside Renji's body, her cries echoing through the sky.
Seeing this, Rosse slowly raised the hand he had just lowered.
His slender finger pointed toward the devastated Rukia below.
There was no pity in his eyes.
There was no anger.
Only complete calm.
This was the final farewell gift he offered to Kuchiki Byakuya and Abarai Renji as the ruler of this battlefield.
Buzz!
Another deep blue beam of equal power shot mercilessly from Rosse's fingertip.
An attack moving at the speed of light left no chance for anyone to react.
The light from the depths instantly pierced Rukia's small body.
In that brief moment, she felt no tearing pain.
Her mind did not even have time for an extra thought.
Kuchiki Rukia's body, along with the corpses of Kuchiki Byakuya and Abarai Renji, silently turned into silver ash under that absolute destructive force.
When the wind blew, it all scattered away.
Nothing remained to show they had ever existed in this world.
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