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Chapter 046: Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained?!
Kido #3?
She'd never heard it. The name meant nothing to her.
The thought had barely formed when, in the next instant, Soifon saw three beams of different-colored light drop straight down from Matsushita Yusuke's direction.
One glance. A blink's worth. That was enough.
Bakudo.
Reishi had a shape and an appearance you could read, and Kido came in fixed forms you could learn to recognize. For someone whose whole profession was built around concealment and reading the environment, sensitivity to this was just baseline competency.
But something was wrong.
What number? What effect?
Three beams, three colors. Was each one doing something different, or was the whole thing a distraction tactic?
It didn't matter. That wasn't the priority.
Why would he have an original Kido?!
Kido was what it was because of centuries of refinement. Constant modification, endless adjustment, all converging on a stable and fixed result. Any unsanctioned tinkering couldn't improve on that. It could only degrade it, cause the reishi to run backward, blow back on the caster.
Common sense. Instinct. Professional judgment.
All three landed on the same answer.
This was a bluff.
Ignore it. Push forward. Don't let him create distance.
Soifon didn't pull back. She drove in, right hand clenching, everything committed to the thrust, the way an assassin committed to the strike that ended the job.
Then.
She realized what the problem was.
The three beams fanned outward and wrapped around her. One by one, coiling around her neck, her wrists, her ankles.
Burning. Rigid. The sensation arrived before the understanding did.
The reishi flow was cut. This wasn't a distraction. It was real, and it was carrying actual reishi.
An invisible weight bore down. Before she could react, her arms were bent back. Her legs buckled. She lost her balance in the air and went down hard.
Thud.
Not a lot to begin with, and being bundled up like that wasn't doing the proportions any favors.
She wasn't done.
The moment her body made contact with the floor, it bounced. On the breath between landing and rising, the reishi inside her surged, and in a single pulse she broke through the binding at her surface.
She twisted.
Half-crouching, she slid sideways across the floor for several meters, came up, and fixed her eyes on Matsushita Yusuke.
Like a cat that's gone fully spiky. Eyes bright with caution and something working its way toward alarm.
"You... what was that?!"
There was something close to panic in her voice.
Because it wasn't the outcome that had surprised her. It was the situation.
Matsushita Yusuke shrugged.
"Shouldn't you have a better answer to that than me? You were the one who just felt it."
"..."
She couldn't find words.
She understood how this worked. That was exactly why she was this thrown off.
The physical sensation told her clearly: Bakudo. That part was unmistakable.
The number couldn't be high. Like everything else he'd used before, a push of reishi was enough to break it.
But that was the problem.
No chant. Changed properties. A name she had never heard before in her life.
Every piece of evidence pointed to the same conclusion. Matsushita Yusuke had developed the ability to create his own Kido.
"You..."
She hadn't finished the sentence.
"Don't stress about it." He said it easily. "Honestly, it's not really original. I just combined a few things that already existed."
Bakudo #1: Sai. Bakudo #9: Geki. Hado #3.
Two suppressive elements, with a partial offensive component threaded in between. That was the custom-built result Matsushita Yusuke had put together for himself.
As he'd already worked out: modifying Kido was, in terms of procedure, no different from mixing drinks.
He didn't have the skill to produce anything worth calling fine work. But taking two things that already existed and combining them in roughly equal measure? That much was well within reach.
The naming convention and power scale for the Kido he'd designed were indexed to the originals. Higher number, stronger effect.
As for the low numbers he'd just deployed...
"Honestly, these are closer to proof-of-concept than anything else. I haven't refined them properly, so the effects are pretty limited."
What mattered was what they demonstrated. The framework, the ideas, the groundwork for everything that would come after.
Soifon followed none of this. It didn't stop her from reaching a conclusion.
"You're pitying me!"
All the fur went up.
She stared at his surprised expression with her lips pressed together, and what flickered in her eyes was something in the neighborhood of fury.
Because just now.
She was certain. He had held back again.
If he'd pressed the attack while she was immobilized, she'd have been in serious trouble. At minimum.
"I said it before! Fight me with your actual ability! What is this? You think I'm not worth the effort?!"
Matsushita Yusuke considered briefly and tried to explain.
"That's not it. Your speed and your reactions are genuinely good. That's all."
Battle windows were narrow. With Soifon's whole body coiled and ready, close combat was not actually an advantageous position for him.
If her shunpo technique could be measured, it was sitting at 40 or above by now. Going hand-to-hand with that would go badly for him.
"If I'd pressed in, I'd have risked getting countered. You probably won't believe this about me, but I actually prefer low-risk approaches."
Which meant.
"For anything I'm not completely sure about, I try not to force it."
That was the situation just now. Same reasoning.
She didn't look like she'd heard any of that. Her jaw was clenched. The expression she was wearing had passed angry and arrived somewhere more specific.
"How long are you going to keep humiliating me?!"
Right. She definitely hadn't heard it.
He'd been about to try again.
But Soifon was shaking, the whole line of her posture vibrating with it, and the reiatsu rolling off her had started to build and rise visibly.
"Today I am going to tear that fake composure right off your face."
She raised her Zanpakuto, and the blade turned once in her hand, light and precise.
A sharp intake of breath. Her shoulders settled. She filled her lungs, widened her eyes, and the release call came out at full volume.
"Sting all enemies to death, Suzumebachi!"
BANG!
The air around her cracked open with visible turbulence, and Matsushita Yusuke found his expression doing something that had nothing to do with enthusiasm.
So it's Zanpakuto time because she can't win otherwise.
He knew she had the talent for it. Early Shikai at her age was genuinely exceptional, no argument there. But engaging someone this worked up, over a point she hadn't even processed yet, was going to accomplish exactly nothing useful.
Maybe just fold here?
Because getting on the wrong end of that Zanpakuto in full release was a complication he had no interest in.
"I..."
[Defeat Soifon in her Shikai state]
[Profile: Don't tell me you've lost the will to push yourself. Backing down the moment things get difficult isn't the right answer. A strong person doesn't flinch. They go in.]
[Rewards: Zanpakuto Physical +10]
Then again.
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
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