Rukia Kuchiki sensed the terrifying Reiatsu within that red light. "Orihime, dodge!"
She wanted to help, but the distance was too great, and Aaroniero's Cero was charging too quickly. There was no time.
Orihime Inoue ran to the side while releasing Santen Kesshun to defend herself.
"Ah..." Aaroniero's tentacle turned. "I was looking at the wrong place. It's over here."
The surging red light burst forth, aimed at an empty patch of ground.
The violent Reiatsu tore through Ririn's illusion, and Orihime Inoue's figure was revealed.
The Cero had yet to fully descend, but cracks were already spreading across Santen Kesshun.
Oh no...
Everything in Orihime Inoue's sight was swallowed by red light. In the next instant, she would be completely consumed.
At that critical moment, Nell suddenly leaped from Orihime Inoue's arms, rushed outside Santen Kesshun, and spread her short little arms in front of her.
"Mm... mm..." Nell opened her mouth wide. "Ah-mmph!"
The raging red light twisted and shrank, then was swallowed whole into her mouth.
"What?!" Aaroniero's bloated body trembled. "She actually swallowed my Cero..."
"Mm... mm..." Nell covered her mouth and whimpered twice, but in the end, she still could not hold it in. "Pwah!"
The Cero she had just swallowed reappeared. The violent torrent of Reiatsu struck Aaroniero's enormous body, blasting away a huge mass of flesh.
"Hah... huff... huff..." Nell panted hard. "Don't... don't you hurt Orihime..."
"You little..." Aaroniero's ruined body regenerated rapidly. "Damn brat! I'll slaughter you!"
More tentacles writhed, sweeping toward the tiny Nell.
Orihime Inoue stood in front of Nell and unfolded Santen Kesshun again.
Rukia Kuchiki flashed forward, appearing in front of Santen Kesshun, and swung her blade to meet the massive tentacle.
The twisted tentacle whipped up a howling gale, crashing toward them like a wall.
Rukia Kuchiki gripped her hilt with both hands, poured Reiatsu into the blade, and released even more cold air.
The horrifying tentacle drew closer and closer, giving off a nauseating stench...
Then it vanished before everyone's eyes.
The remaining stump swayed blankly for a moment before thick blood sprayed from the smooth cut.
"How... What is this..." Aaroniero's bloated body trembled. "Aren't you already dead?!"
A figure stood in front of Rukia Kuchiki, his body wrapped in layer upon layer of black bandages. Active spiritual ink seeped through the bandages, dripping to the ground and releasing dense black mist.
A half skull mask of stark white covered his face. The crimson Hell's Eye on Muten Natsu's forehead turned. "Killed by my own Bankai? Why would you dream up something like that?"
"Muten..." Rukia Kuchiki stared at his back. "You really... is it really you?"
"That's right!" Ririn's voice rang with delight. "This time, it isn't an illusion I made!"
"I'd thought about doing it this way for a long time, but when it came down to actually pulling it off, there were still plenty of issues in the details." Muten Natsu's voice carried a faint, blurred growl. "So it took a little longer."
Bankai was the release of a Shinigami's own power.
In theory, being able to release it meant the body could contain it.
For most Bankai, sealing that power back up again meant undoing the Bankai, and the power one could wield would inevitably drop by a large margin.
But Muten Natsu's Rin'en Bokukō was a little different.
At its core, the principle behind Rin'en Bokukō was quite simple.
It used the ink marks formed by spiritual ink released in advance to absorb a massive amount of Reishi at the instant of Bankai activation, unleashing a devastating strike.
The power ultimately released was not the maximum output of Muten Natsu's own strength, but the greatest amount of absorbed Reishi he himself could control.
In other words, Rin'en Bokukō was not a punch thrown with all of Muten Natsu's strength. It was a hammer swung with all his strength.
Both were full-power attacks, but the results were entirely different.
Because of that, when Rin'en Bokukō was subjected to external pressure, that pressure would, to a certain extent, help Muten Natsu control the Reishi he had absorbed.
The freed-up control could then be used to absorb even more Reishi for the attack.
That was what had happened earlier when Yammy was torn in half.
And when Rin'en Bokukō struck Muten Natsu, the power used to control the Reishi would pour the absorbed Reishi into his body.
With only Rin'en Bokukō's control, Muten Natsu would, at most, remain uninjured. He would still be pinned in place by that power, unable to move.
After all, with his control alone, he could only manipulate the Reishi for a single attack.
To mobilize the enormous amount of Reishi absorbed by Rin'en Bokukō and truly turn the massive Reishi injected into his body into his own strength, he needed the ability to manipulate Reishi and the ability to precisely control the sudden surge of power within himself.
In other words... Myōki's ability.
The instant he was struck by Rin'en Bokukō, the preset modules activated one after another. Soul Essence Stealing was fully unleashed, capturing the absorbed Reishi, controlling and adjusting it, then using Raku Zetsu to seal the power inside his body and prevent it from leaking out. The final result was...
"Rin'en Bokukō isn't just my attack." Muten Natsu raised his hand. "It's also my food."
A shark was still a fish.
Aaroniero's earlier perception had not been wrong. Muten Natsu's Reiatsu really had been getting weaker and weaker.
But Aaroniero had misunderstood. It was not because Muten Natsu was on the verge of death, but because he was gradually gaining control of the power inside his body.
"Food?" The stump of Aaroniero's tentacle writhed, and several sharp bone spines shot out, flying toward Muten Natsu with a piercing whistle. "You're the one who's my food!"
More tentacles thrashed. Poisonous gas, blazing fire, wind blades nearly impossible to see with the naked eye, ever-lengthening limbs...
In a single instant, dozens of different attacks came at him, densely sealing off every direction Muten Natsu could dodge.
But he had never intended to dodge.
Black ink bloomed in the center of his palm. Layer upon layer of ripples spread outward, shaking the air with a dull sound like thunder.
Ink Fortress, originally meant for defense, erupted with unprecedented, terrifying force in the hands of Muten Natsu, whose strength had temporarily soared after swallowing Rin'en Bokukō.
The formless poison gas and flames were directly scattered. Even the seemingly solid bone spines and limbs fell apart the instant they touched Ink Fortress.
"Ink Fortress..." Muten Natsu shifted slightly. "Flash."
Aaroniero hurriedly raised the Nejibana Trident... Where was the trident?
In the hand of his humanoid upper body, only a piece of the shaft remained.
The broken Nejibana Trident was falling together with his head.
Only in the next moment did a piercing shriek arrive late, following the slash that had been too fast for the naked eye to perceive as it passed through the cut that split Aaroniero in two.
Black ring-shaped ripples spread along the path of Muten Natsu's blade, further dividing Aaroniero's enormous body. Something that could have been blood or mucus sprayed out.
For some reason, Orihime Inoue suddenly remembered cutting cabbage at home.
First she would split it in half with one cut, then slice half the cabbage apart one cut at a time.
The massive, bloated Aaroniero was now receiving the same treatment as a cabbage.
"Muten Natsu!!!" Fine flesh buds extended from the broken chunks of meat, wriggling like maggots. They touched one another and reconnected the damaged body. As the humanoid upper body resembling Kaien Shiba fused into it, Aaroniero's voice gradually became two. "Don't think this..." "...will be enough to kill me!"
Muten Natsu turned and slashed again, cutting Aaroniero in half once more, only for the pieces to stitch themselves together even faster.
"Even if you cut me thirty thousand more times..." "I'll still survive!" The hideous tumor writhed as Aaroniero's two voices overlapped. "The next time we meet, I'll devour even more powerful Hollows!" "I'll become stronger than you and tear you apart alive!"
"Not a chance." Cold black fire burned along Myōki. Muten Natsu swung his blade, and the Hell Flames danced across Aaroniero's wounds.
"Useless, useless, useless!" "Don't think you can kill me this way!" Aaroniero's skin and flesh, burning with black flames, twisted and contracted before he cast it off. "Let me tell you something else interesting!" "Everything I told you before was true!" "Back then, Kaien Shiba really did rely on the strength of his own spirit to take control of his reconstituted Soul!" "He really could have become an excellent undercover agent as a Hollow!" "But I ate him!" "Swallowed him whole!" "I turned everything about him into mine!" "Get angry! Scream!" "Then hold on to that bone-deep hatred and wait for the day I descend again. Wait for the moment you die!"
"Aaroniero..." Several bandages on Muten Natsu's body snapped. Pitch-black spiritual ink surged out wildly, surrounding Aaroniero like a tidal wave. "You're the one who deserves to die!"
The Hell Flames surged as Muten Natsu swung his blade, cutting Aaroniero apart again and again.
But Aaroniero's laughter only grew wilder. His ruined body shed the burning flesh. "I know, you see. The more you use the Hell Flames, the more they hurt you!" "Before you can burn me away, you'll be burned to death first!"
Rukia Kuchiki tightened her grip on the hilt of her Zanpakutō and bit down hard on her lower lip.
Aaroniero was telling the truth, but Muten Natsu as he was now would never stop, no matter what.
Was there any way...
Rukia Kuchiki's gaze shifted, catching an abnormal contraction in Aaroniero's flesh.
During the earlier battle, Rukia Kuchiki's Sōkatsui had blasted a hole through the wall, letting sunlight stream in from outside.
Aaroniero's contraction just now had happened to avoid that beam of sunlight.
Sunlight?!
A guess formed in Rukia Kuchiki's mind. She swung Sode no Shirayuki to create an ice mirror, reflecting the sunlight through the cold Hell Flames and onto Aaroniero's writhing flesh.
Wherever the sunlight touched, blue smoke immediately rose, and the flesh contracted before collapsing.
"It's sunlight!" Rukia Kuchiki finally confirmed her suspicion. "He's afraid of the sunlight here!"
Rukia Kuchiki swung her blade upward, but this palace had clearly been built specifically for Aaroniero. The interior was enormous, and with Rukia Kuchiki's attacks alone, destroying the overhead cover enough to let sunlight in would be difficult.
"Koten Zanshun!" Orihime Inoue understood what Rukia Kuchiki intended and pointed upward. "I reject!"
Tsubaki-oni shot into the sky, transforming into an orange-yellow flying blade that passed back and forth several times above the palace.
The unfurled barrier effortlessly cut through everything it touched, and large chunks of brick and stone rained down.
Bright sunlight now shone unobstructed onto Aaroniero.
"Aaaaaaah!!!" "Oooooooh!!!" Two shrill screams rang out at the same time. The flesh tumor that had been so active a moment ago immediately stiffened and contracted, vanishing at a speed visible to the naked eye. "No..." "Don't!!!"
The ground cracked again and again as Aaroniero tried to carve a path underground and escape.
Muten Natsu reversed his grip on Myōki. "Now let's see... who dies first?"
Myōki stabbed into the ground. Surging spiritual ink flowed along the passage Aaroniero had opened, then suddenly ignited into cold Hell Flames, releasing violent power that blasted the writhing flesh out.
Under the burning of the Hell Flames and the shine of sunlight, Aaroniero's body collapsed at an almost terrifying speed beneath Muten Natsu's attack. In the end, only a cylindrical object, something like a test tube, remained.
Inside the sealed glass test tube, roughly the size of a human head, red liquid sloshed. Soaking within it were two fist-sized spheres shaped like human faces. Their faces were covered by complementary broken masks, and the black number [9] could be seen on them.
Muten Natsu extinguished the Hell Flames. Holding Myōki, his approaching figure was reflected in the glass of the test tube that contained Aaroniero.
"No... don't come over here!" "Don't come near me!" The 9th Espada Aaroniero, inside the test tube, had lost all his earlier arrogance. "I was joking..." "I was just saying things..."
Muten Natsu silently raised Myōki.
"Muten Natsu! Think about it!" "Are you really going to do this?" Aaroniero's two voices grew more frantic than the last. "I have everything Kaien Shiba had. I am Kaien Shiba!" "Are you really going to kill me again?"
"He won't." Rukia Kuchiki gripped Sode no Shirayuki and pierced the glass test tube with one thrust. "Because I will."
"Rukia..." Muten Natsu looked at Rukia Kuchiki and met her beautiful violet eyes.
"He is not Kaien Shiba-sama, and he does not possess everything Kaien Shiba-sama left behind." Rukia Kuchiki twisted her wrist, shattering the glass test tube. "Everything Kaien Shiba-sama left behind is with Kūkaku Shiba and Ganju Shiba, with the Captain and the members of the Thirteenth Division..."
"And with one stubborn little brat." Rukia Kuchiki met Muten Natsu's gaze and gave her answer firmly. "But it will never be with a vile Arrancar."
"Aaaaaaah!!!" "It hurts! It hurts! It hurts!" Without the protection of the glass test tube and the liquid, Aaroniero was exposed to the air and screamed at the top of his lungs. "Help me! Aizen-sama, save me! Aizen-sama!" "You... didn't you tell me? That as long as I followed you, I could be freed from all suffering!" "Then what is this?! It hurts! It hurts!" "I don't want this! I don't want this! I don't want this! I don't want this!" "No! No! No! No! I don't..."
***
..
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow me on p-@-treon.
[email protected]/PinkSnake (50 Chapters Ahead).
You can also follow as a free member to read a few advanced chapters.
***