Chapter 129: Beyond Human Territory
The stat panel side of things was fairly straightforward. But whatever threshold Matsushita Yusuke had set for himself before all this, both the scale of the gains and the overall level they'd reached had cleared it completely.
Genuinely satisfied. No complaints.
And the next section?
The Zanpakuto panel.
[Zanpakuto Ability Panel]
[Physical: 72]
[Elemental: 39]
[Kido: 68]
[Biological: 41]
[Rule: 29]
Solid gains overall.
The Physical type had been force-fed to 70 through exceptional circumstances, so slower growth after that point was expected. Two points wasn't much, but the base was already there, and it worked. Hard to complain.
Past 70, the next target was 100, and that thirty-point gap was a genuine wall in every sense. Filling it was going to require reiatsu at an entirely different scale. Something in the range of Aizen's output, realistically.
On the ability side, Yusuke had also noticed genuine improvements in his precision. The reishi construction was cleaner and more detailed now. Burning out after three weapons wasn't going to happen again.
More precise and more to work with. That was the direction.
With that in mind, the Physical type slowing down after this point made complete sense in its own way.
Moving on: Elemental and Biological, discussed together, because both were sitting in the same position. Neither had broken through to full release yet.
Elemental had put on a standout performance during the Kijishi fight, but to be clear-eyed about it: as an ability, it wasn't universally powerful.
The reason was simple.
Karmic Fire had usage conditions.
The first was that Yusuke himself needed to be in significantly bad shape. As long as he was at anything approaching full capacity, releasing Karmic Fire wasn't possible.
Why? Because of what the release actually did to him.
In Karmic Fire's released state, his body dispersed: breaking down into reishi particles that scattered outward, seeping into the surrounding environment, infiltrating the surfaces of whatever was nearby and forming a kind of attached state at a cellular level.
That was how the ability actually activated.
People ran on emotions. Desires, obsessions, fixations: Karmic Fire read all of it. Once attached, it targeted those cracks directly, burning through them with precisely calibrated effect.
Which meant the ability only worked on opponents who had emotional vulnerabilities to exploit. The conditions were genuinely strict. Against someone who wanted for nothing, desired nothing, had no attachments pulling at them, the ability was useless.
Kijishi had been the ideal target. The man was consumed by status and reputation, soaked in every variety of pleasure and indulgence. Every weakness the ability looked for, he had it in full.
He was practically designed for Karmic Fire to destroy.
Others? Most people would still be viable targets in principle. Unohana's overwhelming desire for battle was its own form of obsession, and technically speaking, Karmic Fire could work on that.
But Yusuke wasn't going anywhere near it.
Because using Karmic Fire on Unohana meant a genuine fight to the death, full stop. The ability was designed from the ground up as a last resort for that exact situation. A card you played when there was nothing else left and walking away was no longer an option.
For now, it stayed in reserve. A bottom-of-the-deck card.
As for why this had been categorized under Elemental: Yusuke had puzzled over that for a while, but eventually just accepted it. Presumably the System saw "body breaks apart into its base components" and filed it under elemental transformation.
What, did this System wander over from One Piece?
Anyway. No real objections to Karmic Fire as an ability. Given its nature as a close-quarters life-or-death tool, it filled its role. Yusuke was satisfied.
On to Biological.
This one also had specific conditions for use, and the applicable situations were limited. He hadn't found a good opportunity yet, so he was keeping his judgment open. Better to see how it actually performed before drawing any conclusions.
Both Elemental sitting at 39 and Biological sitting at 41 were largely down to Unohana's repeated unsolicited visits. The quest rewards those sessions generated had been quietly pulling up what had previously been his weakest categories.
A training partner who comes over uninvited and refuses to leave: somehow deeply productive.
Back to the main event.
Kido type. 68.
Every single point on that number had been earned through quests, no shortcuts, no forced advancement. All of it built through genuine progression.
The talent gap there required no further comment.
One step from Bankai. By any reasonable measure, currently the second strongest Zanpakuto he had. The Shikai, Shingonkai, was already operating at a level that matched or exceeded a standard Bankai. Whatever came after that was worth looking forward to.
He gave it a month. Maybe less.
Like a farmer watching a crop come in, Matsushita Yusuke sat there taking in the progress bars with a deeply contented expression.
And then the last one.
Rule type. 29.
Behind the others. But there wasn't much to be done about that.
Rule-type Zanpakuto were rare in Soul Society to begin with, which meant viable experience sources were equally scarce. He'd been grinding it one point at a time, and 29 under these conditions was honestly a bit of a lucky break.
Close to Shikai. But when exactly that would land, he had no estimate.
No rushing it. One step at a time.
He let out a quiet breath and pulled his thoughts back together.
Zanpakuto side: slower movement than the four core stats, but with two types sitting right at the edge of a breakthrough, there would likely be a meaningful jump in the near future.
Overall: satisfying.
With both sections reviewed, Matsushita Yusuke took one last look at the overall assessment.
Mid-Rank Captain.
What did that actually mean in practice?
He ran through a few comparisons and landed on an answer that was equal parts funny and slightly uncomfortable.
I'm basically sitting at one Kensei right now.
Not a joke. A genuine assessment.
Day-to-day he casually threw around comparisons like "how many Kenseis is that," but the man actually wasn't bad. Stronger than the weakest captains in the room, running an attack-specialized Zanpakuto that helped him hold a solid mid-table position. In that sense Muguruma Kensei was a useful benchmark: below him meant you couldn't sit at the table, above him meant you were getting somewhere that actually mattered.
Simple model. Practically useful.
The slightly embarrassing part was that he was proud of it.
Somewhere along the line I became the guy who gets excited about being one Kensei worth of power.
Smiling to himself, Matsushita Yusuke switched panels.
And as he did, whatever ease had been on his face quietly stepped aside.
Because this next section was something he'd been looking forward to in a very different way. For a Shinigami, what came next was power that sat entirely outside the normal framework.
Time for the beyond-human side of things.