"To think there would be someone offering themselves up as food. Our luck is truly excellent," one of Aaroniero's heads said, his voice accompanied by the wet smacking sound of licking. "It has been so long since we tasted a Shinigami."
Rukia's face was expressionless. No anger or joy could be seen on it.
She should be angry, shouldn't she? The "taste of a Shinigami" Number Nine spoke of was most likely Lieutenant Shiba's Reiatsu.
But she should also be happy, shouldn't she? She could tell that the Hollow before her was not the one that had killed Lieutenant Shiba. That Hollow must have been devoured by him. Precisely because of that, she now had the chance to see Lieutenant Shiba's Reishi again.
Rukia took a deep breath. Now was not the time to let her emotions fluctuate too much. Everything could wait until after she retrieved Lieutenant Shiba's Reishi.
"In that case, food… no, Shinigami, please come with us," Aaroniero said.
Aaroniero feared sunlight. Only after returning to his palace would he remove his mask. That place was the dining room he had prepared for himself.
Uryū silently followed behind Rukia. Aaroniero merely glanced at him and paid him no mind. To him, having one more portion of preserved food was not a bad thing.
"In that case, Lord Sawada, please leave this Hollow to me."
Ashido's hand rested on the hilt of his blade. As a newly joined member, he urgently needed to demonstrate his value to the team.
The thick-muscled Hollow before him looked somewhat similar to the Hollow that had been pulling the sled. Both had broken masks, but Ashido could still sense that the other party's Reiatsu was only at the level of an Adjuchas.
Then there was no problem. He had long since lost count of how many Adjuchas he had slain. Even if this Number Ten's combat strength was greater than average, he was still only an Adjuchas.
"Mr. Ashido, I'll handle the Tenth Espada. I'll trouble you to protect the shopkeeper instead." Tsunayoshi glanced at Yammy and decided to act personally.
Ashido naturally had no objection. Kisuke Urahara, however, gave Tsunayoshi a strange look. "Do you have another plan?"
"Mm." Tsunayoshi admitted it directly. "I plan to spare his life and let him clash with the Miracle."
Ashido naturally could not understand the coded language between Tsunayoshi and Urahara. But a gleam flashed through Urahara's eyes. The word "Miracle" immediately made him think of the Quincy Schrift. According to Tsunayoshi, its wielder was an extremely troublesome opponent.
"Can he do it?" Urahara asked curiously. Could an Arrancar ranked at the very bottom of the Espada really clash with the Schutzstaffel?
"As my old man said, you have to fight magic with magic. When dealing with a big guy, of course you use another big guy."
Tsunayoshi spat out words Urahara could not understand, but Urahara had long since grown used to that. He pressed down the brim of his hat. "Then I'll leave it to you."
It was precisely because he wanted to spare Yammy's life that Tsunayoshi did not allow Ashido to deal with him.
He was not clear on Ashido's exact strength. He only knew that Ashido could usually one-shot the Adjuchas in the Menos Forest.
If Ashido was too strong and killed Yammy in a single strike, Tsunayoshi would not get to watch a big-guy brawl later. If Ashido was not strong enough, Tsunayoshi would have to intervene anyway.
After thinking it over, Tsunayoshi decided it would be more reliable to handle Yammy himself. In any case, he had a method for dealing with a muscle-brained opponent like Yammy: meeting force with force, suppressing this Arrancar driven by rage with the power of the Mountain.
"Seriously, what are you all mumbling about? All of you, die!" Yammy impatiently dug at his ear, then took a heavy step forward and launched himself toward Tsunayoshi's group with a punch.
With a heavy thud, Yammy discovered that his fist could not advance even an inch.
What had stopped his fist was Tsunayoshi's much smaller palm. A mysterious blue light flickered across Tsunayoshi's arm.
"In that case, we'll leave the field to you, Tsunayoshi. Mr. Ashido, let us block the Arrancar who come to interfere." Kisuke Urahara leisurely moved away from Tsunayoshi.
The three Espada had charged out while enduring Tsunayoshi's Reiatsu. Now that Tsunayoshi had withdrawn that pressure, the other Fracción would definitely come out to see what was happening.
Urahara and Ashido's goal was to stop those Arrancar. This was by no means an easy task. It was not any simpler than the others fighting Espada one-on-one.
Seeing part of his prey about to leave, Yammy tried to stop them, only to discover that he could not pull back the arm he had punched with.
When Yammy focused his attention on his fist, he realized that it had been wrapped at some point in a mass of earth-yellow flames. The guy called Tsunayoshi was gripping two of his fingers with one hand, restraining his movements through pure strength.
"How boring. I'll go complete the task you entrusted to me first."
Mayuri Kurotsuchi walked toward a side hall of Las Noches with a bored expression. He had no interest in fighting whatsoever. The reason he acted alone was because he had sensed a strange gaze from the direction of the side hall.
It was a researcher's intuition. The scent of someone of the same kind. Combined with the information on Hueco Mundo Urahara had given him, it was not difficult to guess that the owner of that gaze was Mayuri's target for this trip.
With the thought of finishing early and returning to Soul Society early, Mayuri fully displayed his own initiative and decided to complete his mission first.
As for the deal between Tsunayoshi's group and Aizen, once Mayuri learned that the contents of the deal involved the Jūreichi, he lost all interest in it.
Creating an Ōken and the like—if Mayuri spent enough time, he could also find a method. But that was not his research field. In any case, if the sky fell, Yamamoto would hold it up. Mayuri had no interest in conducting forbidden experiments all on his own. His days in the Nest of Maggots had not been pleasant.
"I'll leave that to you then, Captain Kurotsuchi. Once you're done, you can head back first," Tsunayoshi said, understanding Mayuri's meaning and deliberately calling out to him.
Mayuri gave no response.
Completing Seireitei's requirements within suitable rules, thereby allowing himself to conduct research more smoothly—this was Mayuri Kurotsuchi's way of survival after taking over Squad 12 .
Seeing Kisuke Urahara and Mayuri Kurotsuchi both ignore him, Yammy's face flushed red. His rage had already risen. He opened his mouth and fired a Cero at Tsunayoshi, who was obstructing him.
Yammy's hand was finally pulled back. The Cero had indeed been effective—only, why did the effect feel limited?
His Cero did not create a violent explosion. Instead, it seemed to wrap around Tsunayoshi like a red cocoon. After spraying it out for a long while, Yammy shut his mouth and retreated. He could clearly feel that the guy inside his Cero had not suffered any damage at all.
As the red light faded, Tsunayoshi waved his hand with some disgust, as if he had just inhaled secondhand smoke.
The reason he had let go of Yammy was that being hit by this mouth-fired Cero felt somewhat like having someone spit directly in his face.
That was why Tsunayoshi had released Yammy and used both hands to block his face. He did not want to be spat on. As for the rest of his body, he had activated Blut Vene throughout it. A Cero of Yammy's level could not injure him at all.
"Is that all the power you have?" Tsunayoshi's tone carried a trace of disappointment. Yammy without his Resurrección did indeed deserve the Number Ten rank.
"Are you kidding me?!"
Red spherical Reiatsu gathered around Yammy's fists. This was Bala, formed by condensing a Cero. Its speed was twenty times that of a Cero.
He swung his fist. The Bala shot toward Tsunayoshi at a speed almost impossible to catch with the naked eye. With a roar, a violent explosion erupted in front of Tsunayoshi.
Tsunayoshi casually swept aside the smoke and dust and walked out. Several pieces of broken stone hovered in front of him.
It had been those stones.
"Not bad speed, but your attack pattern is far too easy to read, isn't it?" Tsunayoshi commented.
A Bala twenty times faster than a Cero was indeed very fast. But what dragged this move down was Yammy himself. If a more sinister Arrancar used this technique, the attack would not be so straightforward.
Yammy's eyes turned somewhat red. His anger rose another level. His fists continuously fired Bala at Tsunayoshi, all to prove that his technique was absolutely effective.
However, this time, Yammy's Bala did not even manage to explode. Whenever one of the red projectiles was about to reach Tsunayoshi, several fragments of stone would intercept it, failing to stir even the slightest ripple.
This was a technique Tsunayoshi had improved by imitating Hanki Sōsai and Urahara's Tsuppane, Benihime. In an instant, he adjusted his Reiatsu to match the opponent's attack and used that to cancel out the enemy's technique.
This type of technique usually required first analyzing the opponent's attack Reiatsu, then adjusting one's own Reiatsu at any moment.
When using other attributes, Tsunayoshi would often only manage to finish analyzing the opponent's attack Reiatsu by the time the attack had already arrived in front of him. There was no time left to adjust.
But using Mountain Flames was different. The trait of Mountain Flames was eruption, allowing Tsunayoshi to erupt with the desired level of Reiatsu in an extremely short time.
"This is my first time using this power, so I'm still a little unskilled."
Tsunayoshi's slightly dissatisfied self-assessment sounded incredibly grating to Yammy's ears. It felt as though Tsunayoshi could defeat him just by casually picking up a stone. His rage surged once more.
Yammy's face grew so red it nearly turned black. He could no longer endure the mockery in Tsunayoshi's words, whether spoken or implied. He directly drew his Zanpakutō and roared loudly.
"Get enraged, Ira! !"
The power sealed within the Zanpakutō returned to Yammy's body. His body began to expand rapidly. Four complete horns appeared atop his head. His crude upper garment was torn apart by his flesh, revealing the number 10 on his shoulder.
Aside from his body's expansion, Yammy's tailbone also began to extend and swell, turning into a massive tail. On that tail, Yammy also grew six new pairs of lower limbs, making him resemble a centipede with a human torso.
Yammy's entire body became as towering as a mountain, and his destructive power increased geometrically along with his size. At this moment, in his eyes, Tsunayoshi was as tiny as an ant.
And the number 10 mark on his shoulder changed the instant he completed his Resurrección. The number 1 vanished.
The current Yammy was the Cero Espada.
No wonder Yammy had looked down on Tsunayoshi and the others when he first came out. Before his hill-sized body, a few mere ants would only mean throwing a couple more punches.
Yammy after completing his Resurrección could be called an absolute power-type Arrancar. With the strength of his physical body alone, he could deal with the vast majority of the Espada.
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