Hollows Have an Instinct for Fear Too / The Last Minute

Izuru Kira nodded, turned around and went back to stand beside Renji Abarai. His gaze was resolute as he spoke:

"I'll protect them."

Tokoyo Misao smiled and nodded, then turned back to face the 120 Hollows.

"Awooo!!!"

Just then, the Hollows, which had been standing there quietly, suddenly opened their mouths and began howling.

So many Hollows howled at once that the sound shattered the windows of the surrounding buildings.

Fortunately, when they had first arrived, Shūhei Hisagi had already set up a silence barrier around the area.

The residents living on either side of the street had fallen asleep instead of panicking.

Chapter 38: Hollows Have an Instinct for Fear Too

Thump, thump, thump. Flap, flap, flap.

All 120 Hollows charged at Tokoyo Misao, launching their attack.

Their footsteps sounded like war drums, each one a deep, heavy thud.

The winged Hollows in the sky flapped toward him too. The sound of their wings alone was like a downpour beating against the ground.

Facing the Hollows charging rapidly toward him, Tokoyo Misao gripped his Asauchi in his right hand, opened his left hand and chanted aloud:

"O turbulent lightning, let this be our pact. Wherever the strike reaches, let all become nodes."

"Hadō #4: Modified: Chain Lightning Crest!"

A white bolt of lightning lit up at his fingertip and darted swiftly among the charging Hollows.

Strangely, however, the white light did not kill the first Hollow outright. It brushed against its body, then bounced to the next.

The white light kept bouncing from one to another, only dissipating after reaching 20 Hollows in succession.

A chaotic lightning pattern appeared wherever the white light touched the Hollows. Nothing else happened; they seemed not to have been attacked at all.

The Hollows showed no fear or hesitation and continued charging at Tokoyo Misao.

They drew closer and closer. When they were only about three meters away, they opened their great mouths and lunged at Tokoyo Misao with their various bizarrely shaped blades and arms.

The next moment, Tokoyo Misao clenched his left hand. "Burst!"

The lightning patterns on the Hollows shone silver-white, growing steadily brighter.

A moment later, they exploded with a bang, instantly blasting the Hollows to pieces and sending clusters of lightning blossoms bursting outward.

The lightning blossoms spread in every direction like slithering snakes, weaving through the sky and the streets packed tight with Hollows.

When the lightning blossoms touched the Hollows, they burrowed straight into their bodies and paralyzed them.

Just like that, the first surging wave of attackers abruptly froze in place and came to a halt.

Twenty down, 100 left.

Tokoyo Misao swept his gaze over them and quickly determined that his Kidō had just eliminated 20 Hollows.

Immediately afterward, he crouched down and pressed his hand to the ground.

"Frost for fibers, freezing breath for warp and weft."

"One binds ten, ten bind a hundred, spreading like lines of verse, intertwining like fate."

Several strands of exceedingly fine frost spirit thread shot out.

Almost too fine to see, they spread toward the rigid Hollows ahead and those blocked behind them in the street.

When the threads touched the first Hollow, they instantly branched into fractals.

One became two, two became four, and four became eight.

In the blink of an eye, the spirit threads had touched dozens of Hollows, leaving a tiny ice-blue mark on each.

"Be still, at this point."

"Bakudō #4: Modified: Hundred-Rope Binding Chain."

The ice-blue marks erupted at once.

Fine, dense frost chains extended from each burst of cold. The chains intertwined and connected in midair, linking all the marked Hollows together before contracting and binding them into a bundle.

Whew. After using the second Kidō, Tokoyo Misao found that half his Reishi was already gone.

There was no helping it. Both were wide-area modified Kidō, and the amount of Reishi they used was staggering.

Thirty-eight. That was how many Hollows he had just bound with his Kidō.

Tokoyo Misao lifted his right foot and advanced on the Hollows, one step at a time.

Holding his Asauchi level in his right hand, he continued chanting:

"Gather in my palm, O mass of heat haze. Compressed heat bares its fangs; burst in an instant and turn all before me to ash."

"Hadō #32: Ōkasen!"

A flash of yellow light instantly burst from the blade of his Asauchi, forming a yellow crescent that struck the Hollows bound together by the ice-blue chains.

Boom! The explosion resounded through the night sky.

The surviving Hollows' howls and cries of pain echoed back and forth through the dark streets.

The blast produced a violent shock wave that pushed the Hollows in the sky back dozens of meters.

The Hollows farther back were also pressed down by the shock wave, unable to advance at all.

Tokoyo Misao, meanwhile, pushed against the wind and continued toward the remaining Hollows.

One hundred minus thirty-eight. Sixty-two left.

But he had only a seventh of his Reishi left as well. He could no longer keep using Kidō.

He strode into the blast. The dust and smoke cleared from where Ōkasen had struck, revealing a wide gap.

Seeing that Tokoyo Misao actually dared to approach with his sword in hand, the Hollows roared again. "Awooo!"

One of the more proportionately built Hollows clenched its fist and charged, smashing a punch down at Tokoyo Misao's head.

Tokoyo Misao turned slightly sideways, narrowly dodging the fist as it brushed past him.

At the same time, his left hand seized the Hollow's forearm and pulled hard, using the force to launch himself into the air.

With a bang, the Hollow's fist struck the ground, smashing a hole in it and sending rubble flying.

But Misao was already airborne and was not hit by the debris.

Once in the air, he raised the Asauchi in his right hand and slashed it across the Hollow's neck in an instant.

Squelch. A spray of blood spurted from the Hollow's neck.

At the same time, a Hollow in the sky plunged toward them like an eagle swooping on a rabbit.

Its sharp claws were fully extended, aimed straight at Misao's back.

Rather than putting more force into his slash and cutting straight through the Hollow's neck, Tokoyo Misao used his momentum to cut around it.

The instant he landed in front of the Hollow again, two squelches sounded as claws sank into flesh.

His maneuver had turned the Hollow into a shield, letting it block the two sharp claws descending from the sky.

With its neck wounded and its back struck by the claws, the Hollow gradually dissolved into Reishi without even letting out a wail.

Meanwhile, the descending Hollow's attack had been blocked, and its strength was spent for the moment.

Tokoyo Misao held his Asauchi, a deep blue Reishi glow surrounding the very tip of its blade.

He thrust straight at the eyes of the Hollow as it flapped its wings, trying to return to the sky.

A flash of silver crossed the dark street and pierced straight through the Hollow's head.

The next moment, its body also dissolved into Reishi.

"Sixty left."

Crack, crack. Tokoyo Misao rolled his neck and walked toward the Hollows again.

Half of the original 120 Hollows had actually been eliminated in just one minute.

Although the academy textbooks clearly stated that Hollows were all mindless beasts, they now looked afraid.

The remaining Hollows stared at Tokoyo Misao as he walked calmly toward them and kept backing away.

For the moment, none of them dared to attack.

Chapter 39: The Last Minute

Tokoyo Misao had walked into the moonlight that broke through the dark clouds and spilled onto the street.

He did not attack. He simply stood in the moonlight, silently watching the 60 remaining Hollows.

The Hollows hesitated too. Quite a few at the very front were desperately pushing toward the back, unwilling to face the powerful fellow before them.

For a while, the battle came to a standstill.

"Big Brother Misao is incredible. Really, truly incredible!" Izuru Kira was visibly excited, his hands clenched into tight fists.

He made no attempt to hide his excitement, and the admiration shining in his eyes was brilliant even in the dark.

"The Kidō Misao used just now was amazing. Was it a self-modified Kidō?" Momo Hinamori had recovered by now and no longer looked as frightened as before.

During the battle, she had clearly seen that the highest-numbered Kidō Tokoyo Misao had used was Ōkasen, which she could actually use herself.

But hers fell far short in both effect and power, and it was not because of a difference in Rei'i Grade.

Everyone present could clearly sense that Tokoyo Misao did not have much Reishi left.

He had not concealed his Rei'i Grade. It really was only thirteenth grade, the lowest of everyone present.

"That must be the strange way of using Kidō Rukia talked about. It really is amazing.

"But what was even more amazing was how he faced those Hollows surrounding him, dodged their attack, used a Hollow as a shield, then seized the chance to take out another one. That was even more incredible."

Renji Abarai was paying more attention to the close-quarters fighting Tokoyo Misao had done at the end.

That was because his own fighting style also focused mainly on close combat.

But unlike Renji, who charged in yelling and hacking away, Tokoyo Misao's fighting had shown him exactly what technique meant.

It was completely different from fighting on the academy's training grounds.

Dodging attacks with the smallest movements, evading at close range, directing an opponent's attacks, and finally taking control of the battlefield.

On the training grounds, the students were not in mortal danger, so naturally they could think along those lines or instinctively try to put them into practice.

But now he was surrounded by 120 Hollows. A single mistake would mean instant death; the pressure was on an entirely different level.

Yet Tokoyo Misao could do all that with such ease. He was terrifyingly strong.

"The problem now is that Tokoyo Misao clearly can't use any more wide-area Kidō, so he plans to use all his remaining Reishi for close combat. I don't know whether his stamina will hold out."

Shūhei Hisagi spoke up as well.

His tone made no attempt to hide his genuine admiration for Tokoyo Misao.

At the same time, he sat cross-legged, working hard to recover from his injuries.

"Just ten more minutes. As long as his stamina and Reishi can hold out for another ten minutes, I'll be able to use my Shikai and help."

Shūhei Hisagi could use his Shikai even while gravely injured, but that would be nothing more than a dying struggle.

If he could recover a little before releasing his Zanpakuto and joining the fight, their chances of victory would be much higher.

As he worked to recover his Reishi, he looked at Tokoyo Misao with some concern.

Clearly, Misao really did not have much Reishi left.

Even with plenty of stamina, facing the remaining 60 Hollows in close combat was far too dangerous.

He had to recover quickly and help before Misao could no longer hold out.