Viscous Spirit Ink rose into the air, tracing intricate black characters. A strange power surged through them, transforming into restraints that indiscriminately bound everything nearby.
Hollowfied Sakanade was caught by the Bakudō, yet showed no trace of panic.
A powerful burst of Reiatsu erupted, scattering both the black characters and the Spirit Ink.
Hollowfied Sakanade's lips curled upward. "Do you really think a Bakudō of this level would work on me?"
"Seems pretty useful to me." Muten Natsu closed the distance in an instant. "It helped me pinpoint your location."
Myōki flashed with a cold gleam, its razor-sharp edge streaking straight toward Hollowfied Sakanade.
Hollowfied Sakanade flickered and appeared behind Muten Natsu. "What good does pinpointing me for an instant do?"
He unleashed Shunpo in rapid succession, his figure flickering from place to place. "All I have to do is shift my position a little, and you'll lose yourself in my power all over again...!"
Crimson blood sprayed as a wound split open across Hollowfied Sakanade's face.
"A little shallow." The light screen before Muten Natsu's eyes refreshed. "Don't worry. Next time, it won't be."
Hollowfied Sakanade stared at him in disbelief. "You've... already adapted?"
"Adapted isn't quite the right word," Muten Natsu corrected him. "I just found a suitable method."
Just as Hollowfied Sakanade had said, the more someone had honed their Zanjutsu until it became instinct, the harder it was for them to adjust to Sakanade's inversion.
Under Sakanade's influence, whether attacking or defending, they had to stop and think before they could make the correct choice.
But in a battle decided in the blink of an eye, even an instant of hesitation could be fatal.
So... Muten Natsu stopped thinking.
Instead, he left the judgment to Myōki and attacked according to Myōki's cues.
It was slightly less accurate than judging for himself, but the increase in speed was enough to compensate for that loss of precision.
Myōki was like Muten Natsu's second brain, processing his inverted perceptions and flipping them back again.
In fact, the images seen by the eyes are already inverted. The brain compares and processes that visual information together with tactile information received through the hands and the rest of the body. To reconcile the two, it flips the visual image once again. This process is completed shortly after birth.
Now Myōki was simply reproducing that process, making the corresponding adjustments to Muten Natsu's vision, hearing, and touch.
Muten Natsu accelerated even further, rapidly closing the distance between himself and Hollowfied Sakanade.
"Looks like... I can't keep hiding it anymore."
Hollowfied Sakanade raised his left hand. At the center of the white ring floating above the back of his hand, the black-and-red flame suddenly flared.
As the flames rose, Hollowfied Sakanade kept his left hand extended horizontally while bringing down the Zanpakutō in his right hand toward the empty space behind him.
Without a long-range means of attack, Hollowfied Sakanade's blade could never have reached Muten Natsu. Even if he had slashed directly in front of himself, they were still separated by one or two body lengths, much less when he was cutting behind himself.
Yet Muten Natsu suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of danger.
It was an instinct he had honed through his battles with the Primordial Form.
What people called instinct was really a judgment made by combining past experience with information gathered by the other senses while skipping the conscious thought process entirely.
It was like answering a question on an exam. Before you had even fully understood the choices, you somehow felt certain that one particular answer had to be correct.
So even though Myōki gave no warning, Muten Natsu abandoned his attack and retreated to create distance.
Hollowfied Sakanade's Zanpakutō came down, slicing through the empty air behind him.
At that very moment, blood suddenly sprayed from Muten Natsu's back.
"A little shallow," Hollowfied Sakanade said with a faint chuckle. "Don't worry. Next time, it won't be."
His earlier feeling had been right.
Muten Natsu sealed the wound with Spirit Ink.
His eyes had seen nothing, and his ears had heard nothing, yet he had unquestionably sensed the attack.
The question was how his opponent had done it.
Distance... position... direction of attack...
The words Hollowfied Sakanade had spoken earlier suddenly surfaced in Muten Natsu's mind:
["That's not enough. It isn't enough for you alone to hold your breath. You have to make your other self hold its breath too."]
A figure flashed past his side. Muten Natsu instinctively struck at it, only for his blade to cut through empty air.
"What a shame..." Hollowfied Sakanade sighed. "It would've been better if it couldn't become visible."
Muten Natsu's gaze sharpened as he finally made out the faint figure.
That translucent, illusory silhouette was himself!
More precisely, it was a version of himself with its colors inverted.
It wore the same expression as him, and every movement it made was identical to his own.
"That is... a Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō."
Beside Hollowfied Sakanade was another Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō just like it, its colors likewise inverted from his own.
As Hollowfied Sakanade spoke, he moved his left hand. The Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō beside both him and Muten Natsu shifted accordingly, changing their positions relative to their original bodies.
Muten Natsu immediately understood how the wound on his back had appeared.
When Hollowfied Sakanade held his left hand straight out in front of himself, his Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō was also positioned in front of him, facing him directly.
Just like looking into a mirror.
The same applied to Muten Natsu.
So when Muten Natsu attacked Hollowfied Sakanade from the front, their two Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō stood between them with their backs to each other.
That meant when Hollowfied Sakanade swung his blade behind himself, his Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō also swung backward, striking Muten Natsu across the back.
"That ring..." Muten Natsu stared at the ring floating above the back of Hollowfied Sakanade's left hand. "Is it a mirror?"
"Correct."
Hollowfied Sakanade turned his Zanpakutō in his hand.
"My power causes both me and my enemy to form a Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō. It absorbs Reiatsu from its corresponding original body and grows stronger. As time passes, the connection between the original and the Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō becomes increasingly close. At first, it can't even do something as simple as hold its breath. But once it approaches the point of materialization, it can already replicate the original body's attacks."
Such an ability would not be particularly useful in anyone else's hands, but for Hollowfied Sakanade, it could be decisive.
When a Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō first formed, it could not replicate the original body's movements. When Muten Natsu held his breath, his Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō was still breathing.
That meant Hollowfied Sakanade could make even an opponent who had taken precautions inhale Sakanade's scent and fall under its influence, giving him an advantage in the battle that followed.
And if the fight was not ended quickly enough, the Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō would continue to grow until it could replicate the original body's movements. Through the increasingly close connection between them, it could even transfer damage it received back to the original.
Hollowfied Sakanade closed in with Shunpo.
Muten Natsu swung his blade to meet him, but his attention remained fixed on the movements of the Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō.
He could block Hollowfied Sakanade's attack, but his Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō, which merely copied his movements, could not block the attack from Hollowfied Sakanade's Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō.
After all, the mirror was in Hollowfied Sakanade's hands. He could change the positions of both Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō whenever he wanted.
Sakanade's inversion, the Sakaemadowashi Senkōhō copying their movements, the mirror constantly changing their positions...
Muten Natsu's thoughts grew more and more tangled.
***
..
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.
***