Although Gosuke Shigure had not personally slain any Quincy during the battle within the Wandenreich palace, he was certain of one thing
He had already done everything he possibly could.
If he had not asked Urahara Kisuke to investigate the abnormalities within the shadows of the Seireitei, the existence of that shadow world might have remained completely unknown to the Shinigami.
The Wandenreich would have continued to lurk in silence.
And when the war finally erupted, the Soul Society would once again have been caught utterly unprepared just as it had been in the original timeline.
Even though Jugram Haschwalth and the remaining Quincy had successfully escaped, the most important outcome had already been achieved.
From this moment onward, the Soul Society knew the truth.
The war from nine hundred years ago had never truly ended.
The Quincy had not been exterminated.
They had merely been waiting.
And now, the entire Gotei 13 had entered a state of long-term combat readiness.
If that alone prevented the complete collapse seen in the original Thousand-Year Blood War, then Gosuke Shigure considered the operation a success.
Whether he killed enemies inside the palace or not was, in comparison, insignificant.
Unless he could personally erase Yhwachfrom existence, eliminating Quincy soldiers meant little.
As long as Yhwach lived, those Quincy who bore Schrift could be reclaimed, restored, or reconstituted through his soul distribution.
The root of the problem had never been the soldiers.
It had always been the Emperor.
For that reason, Gosuke Shigure did not participate in the subsequent large-scale searches for the escaped Quincy, nor did he take part in the second-stage investigation of the Wandenreich's abandoned shadow domain.
Their escape had already delivered a warning clear enough.
The decisive battle had not yet arrived.
But it would sooner or later.
And when that day came, the only thing that would matter was strength.
To face that inevitable future, Gosuke Shigure chose the most reliable path.
Accumulate power.
As long as he continued to grow stronger, even the revival of Yhwach would not necessarily spell disaster.
Since his reincarnation into this world, he had rarely fought with all his might.
Yet through those limited battles, he had discovered something extraordinary.
The limits that once defined him as a Shinigami
Had already been surpassed.
Now, there were no walls left.
Only distance.
His Reiatsu continued to expand steadily, without signs of stagnation.
How far it would ultimately reach, even Gosuke himself could not say.
"The boundaries that once belonged to Shinigami…"
"…have already been broken."
While Gosuke quietly cultivated his strength, another man within the shadows of the Soul Society had also turned his gaze toward those same boundaries.
Aizen Sōsuke.
The discovery of the Wandenreich had briefly put him on guard.
For a moment, he worried that his own long-hidden schemes might have been exposed.
But as the Quincy vanished completely, leaving no trace behind, Aizen's concern gradually faded.
As long as the Quincy survived, they would eventually reveal themselves again.
Compared to that inevitability, Aizen found something else far more compelling.
Transcendence.
After years of secret experimentation, Aizen had reached a critical conclusion.
Shinigami and Hollows were not true opposites.
They were merely different expressions of the same soul, traveling divergent evolutionary paths.
Between them existed a spectrum.
And somewhere along that spectrum
Were the Quincy.
Setting the Quincy aside, Aizen focused on the central question:
Could the powers of Shinigami and Hollow be fused without collapse?
Could Hollowfication elevate a Shinigami beyond their natural limits?
Or could a Hollow gain stability and reason through Shinigami power?
If two incompatible forces were merged
Would that fusion break the ceiling imposed upon souls?
Normally, such boundaries were absolute.
But Aizen possessed something extraordinary.
The Hōgyoku.
A device capable of dissolving the barrier between possibility and impossibility.
After failing to locate the escaped Quincy for an extended period, Aizen redirected his full attention back to experimentation.
To him, the Quincy were irrelevant.
Nine hundred years ago, even under Yhwach's leadership, they had lost.
Now, their Emperor remained dormant, and they hid in shadows, unwilling to confront the Shinigami directly.
Losers clinging to the past.
Power, however
Power was eternal.
If Aizen could fully transcend the limits of Shinigami, then even the Royal Palace would no longer be beyond his reach.
As for the being seated upon the throne of heaven
A hollow symbol.
A puppet unworthy of reverence.
Why should anyone kneel before such an existence?
"AAAAAAHHH!!"
A shrill scream echoed through the underground laboratory.
A test subject convulsed violently as milky-white Hollow energy erupted from its body.
Where Shinigami power manifested as black, Hollow power was white.
As the Hollow Reiatsu surged uncontrollably, the subject's spiritual pressure skyrocketed, breaking past its original limits in mere moments.
Aizen watched closely, eyes gleaming with obsession.
But that obsession soon gave way to disappointment.
BOOM.
The soul collapsed inward, disintegrating into nothingness.
The surge had been real.
The growth undeniable.
Yet the soul itself could not withstand the imbalance.
The rapid expansion of Hollow power overwhelmed the subject's spiritual structure, resulting in total self-destruction.
"Still unstable," Aizen murmured calmly.
"But undeniably closer than before."
"The problem lies not in the Hollow power itself…"
"…but in the vessel."
An ordinary soul simply could not contain such explosive growth.
Which led him to a new conclusion.
"What if the subject were a Shinigami?"
In the earliest stages of his research, Aizen had considered using Shinigami as test subjects.
But every Shinigami within the Gotei 13 was registered.
Disappearances would immediately attract attention.
That risk had once been unacceptable.
But now
With the experiments nearing completion
Aizen was no longer willing to stop.
And so, incidents began to occur.
Shinigami disappeared.
Bodies were found.
The official investigation concluded that the culprit was Hollows.
The evidence supported it on the surface.
Yet a closer examination revealed something unsettling.
These Hollows did not attack civilians.
They targeted Shinigami exclusively.
From the moment they appeared, their purpose was clear.
Behind the scenes, Aizen moved freely beneath layers of deception.
Using Hollows as cover.
Conducting his experiments in silence.
Yet even now
Ordinary Shinigami were insufficient.
They could not withstand what he sought to create.
Aizen's gaze shifted.
Toward stronger prey.
Toward high-ranking Shinigami.
And when his eyes finally settled
There was no hesitation left at all.
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