REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!
Chapter 052: No Ideas Come to Mind
The morning after was its own story.
Matsushita Yusuke was woken up by the cold of the floor, surfacing into consciousness in stages. He sat up slowly, feeling as though the top layer of his brain had been borrowed by someone else and not returned.
Aizen Sosuke and Tosen Kaname were nowhere in sight. He was alone at the table with the leftovers and empty glasses and the particular silence of a place where something loud had happened and then finished.
What happened last night? Who am I? Where am I? What am I doing?
That was apparently what blacking out felt like.
He spent about fifteen seconds pulling his thoughts together, and touched his stomach carefully.
Not painful. That was a good sign.
He settled himself the rest of the way and let the full sequence of events come back.
The beginning had been fine. Everyone was composed. New Year's greetings going back and forth, glasses raised cheerfully, food arriving at regular intervals to absorb the alcohol accumulating underneath.
Then, as time went on, things had started to come apart.
Because that shochu was genuinely something. It had weight to it.
The first one to break was Tosen.
He seemed to have reached the conclusion, somewhere in the middle of round three, that he was the weakest of the three and was not going to win. After a short internal deliberation, he had apparently committed to the only remaining strategy available to him: take someone down on the way out.
He had pivoted and directed his full remaining energy at Aizen.
That assist had been invaluable. It bought Matsushita Yusuke just enough cover to excuse himself for the bathroom, where he took care of a practical problem that definitely had not involved his fingers and his throat.
Low, admittedly.
But this was the final battle of the year, and stat gains were at stake. He was not apologizing for it.
Under the combined pressure of both of them, Aizen Sosuke had eventually broken too.
Matsushita Yusuke had watched the man wave one hand in the air while clutching the doorframe of the bathroom with the other, swaying in a way that left no room for interpretation, and had allowed his eyes to close at last.
He'd won.
That was the entire story.
He had also apparently pushed the hardest of the three, which was why he'd woken up latest and found himself alone on the floor.
He was sitting with this conclusion when the door opened.
A server came in, took one look at him, and immediately began apologizing.
"I'm so sorry, I thought everyone had already... I didn't realize..."
Matsushita Yusuke got to his feet quickly and waved both hands.
"Not at all, not at all. I'm the one who's kept you waiting. I'll be out of your way right now."
He made his way out of the private room and down the corridor, past several other doors that were still shut, from behind which came the sounds of a variety of impressive snoring. He paused to take that in.
Was this standard Soul Society New Year's culture?
Everyone drinking until they blanked out in the booth, no one making the effort to go home, just sleeping it off collectively on the premises.
This place had no standards whatsoever.
Still shaking his head, he made his way downstairs to the counter, already reaching for his coin pouch.
The person at the register got there first.
"Your room's bill has already been settled, sir. Please take care on your way home."
Aizen Sosuke was thorough in all things. He was never going to leave a loose end like that.
Much as Matsushita Yusuke would have preferred to pay his own portion, the reality was there was nothing to pay. He'd have to settle it the next time he hosted instead.
He straightened his collar, put on a reasonable expression, and stepped outside.
New Year's Day.
Most of the shops along the street were closed. The morning was quiet in the particular way of a city that had stayed up too late and hadn't finished sleeping it off yet.
He jogged back to the Academy.
No classes, but the campus wasn't closed for the break either. A good number of students had nowhere else to go and were staying on-site for the holiday, which kept things livelier than the empty street outside had been.
The cafeteria was open too.
Three meals a day, no logistical effort required.
Back in his room, he washed up, took a cold shower, and once he was thinking clearly again he sat down at his desk to take stock of what the past few days had actually produced.
It had been a genuinely productive run.
Starting with the base stats panel.
[Reiatsu Level: 1] (Current cap: 25)
[Zanjutsu: 16 / Hakuda: 15 / Hoho: 15 / Kido: 28] (Total: 100)
[Additional Abilities: Basic Master / Solitary Heart / Grit]
[Overall Assessment: Lower-ranked seated officer]
The four combat disciplines weren't particularly hard to push with smaller quests, and over the past few weeks Matsushita Yusuke had been doing exactly that with the minor interactions the Squad 2 grounds reliably produced. Side dish material, nothing more.
The overall picture hadn't changed dramatically. The Reiatsu Level reset confirmed the +5 from the drinking quest had been collected, and the cap had moved up to 25. The biggest single gain was Hoho, which had made a substantial jump from where it had been sitting before Soifon had made the weakness impossible to ignore. Full credit to her for that.
At this rate she was basically a resource he'd farmed all the way through. Inside, outside, everything in between. Not much left.
Everything else: Kido was still the fastest-growing of the four. The +3 from the drinking contest had landed. No clear marker in the System for what happened at 30, but Matsushita Yusuke had a working theory that the four base disciplines probably had their own threshold points the same way the Zanpakuto panel did. Worth keeping an eye on.
The Overall Assessment was still Lower-ranked seated officer. The numbers had moved, but not enough to shift the bracket. Hopefully there would be more progress before the new semester started.
Then the skills.
Beyond everything already logged, there was one item that had come out of the Soifon fight and hadn't been described yet.
[Skill: Cun Bu]
[By channeling a sudden concentrated burst of force, the user can achieve an instantaneous flash of movement to close distance rapidly on a target. Because the mechanism is purely physical, it functions even without reishi expenditure. One of the inherited techniques of the Fon family.]
This was the same category as the Shihoin family's techniques, broadly speaking. A practical combat aid, built for real situations.
Matsushita Yusuke turned it over in his memory and matched it to the moment.
That had to be what she'd used to appear beside him without any warning. The technique that had gotten past his awareness entirely.
Useful in principle. But the fit with his current approach was limited. Shunpo applications weren't where he spent most of his effort right now, and Kido was still doing the heavy lifting in combat. He'd put this on the shelf for now and come back to it.
More tools never hurt.
On a completely separate note: this last quest had also produced another bump to Soifon's affection meter.
The more they fought, the higher it went.
There was something slightly wrong with that.
Either with the System's criteria or with the person in question. He wasn't sure which.
Back to the actual point: according to the game's logic, once the affection meter with a specific character maxed out, grinding further gains through that person would stop being possible. Which raised an interesting problem.
Was there any way to get her to like him less?
He thought about it.
He came up empty.
No ideas come to mind, actually.
****
70+advance chapters at patreon.com/Eatinpieces (50% OFF DISCOUNT)