Chapter 37
The instant the tip of the blade touched his fingertip, blue-green ripples spread through the air like shimmering water.
"?"
Not only had the male Soul Reaper used a high-level Hadō, number sixty-five, he had even used Eishōhaki!
"Gaki Rekko!"
His Zanpakuto became like a straight gun barrel.
From its slightly curved tip, the "muzzle," a deep blue-green ray shot straight toward Haruto's throat!
"Snap!!"
With a slight exertion of force, Haruto easily snapped the Reishi ropes binding his upper body.
The Seventh Division was no place hiding exceptional talent. A mere low-ranking Seated Officer shouldn't have been capable of that; moreover, the Reiatsu his opponent had displayed while using Kidō showed none of the power a high-level Hadō should have had.
Still, Haruto couldn't entirely rule out the possibility that his opponent wasn't bluffing. To avoid coming to grief through carelessness—
"Hadō #78."
A brilliant light illuminated the night.
The golden sun concentrated on the blade instantly swallowed the blue-green ray released by Gaki Rekko.
"Sizzle!!"
After the violent shift between light and darkness, the surging wind blew out half the torches.
"..."
"H-how is that possible!?"
The male Soul Reaper muttered to himself in disbelief. So shaken was he that his sword stance had form but no force behind it.
"What are you so surprised about?"
Haruto smoothed his windblown hair.
"How did you break free of Hōrin?"
"How should I put it..."
Haruto raised his index finger and drew a small circle in the air. A red cord slowly appeared, looking like a hair ribbon—
It was nothing more than a miniature Hōrin.
"Your Hōrin was far too crude."
"Poorly constructed, weak at binding, loose Reishi, and sluggish to activate. You could say it had nothing going for it."
"And you wanted to bind an opponent with that?"
Haruto was extremely familiar with single-digit Kidō.
Using that move against Haruto was like showing off swordsmanship before a master. He didn't even need a second to find every flaw in that Hōrin and break it in the next half-second...
Without even using his hands.
Besides.
A battle between Soul Reapers was a battle of Reiatsu.
The techniques of Zankensōki only applied when Reiatsu was equal or not far apart. When the gap was absurdly vast, even rule-based abilities could be crushed by sheer power, let alone a mere single-digit Bakudō.
However.
Clearly, the male Soul Reaper didn't understand that. He probably hadn't even dared imagine that the gap between his Reiatsu and Haruto's could be so great. As the Seventh Division's Twelfth Seat, his Rei'i Grade was basically the same number, Twelfth-Class Reii. Compared to Haruto's current Seventh-Class Reii... he was like an ant trying to shake a tree.
"Th-the Hadō you just used..."
"Oh, you mean Zanka no Tachi?"
Haruto seemed to have misunderstood what had shocked him.
He had drawn his sword too quickly just now, and his opponent had been at the crucial moment of releasing Gaki Rekko. He probably hadn't seen what happened before Zanka no Tachi left its sheath at all.
"Though I don't know what trick you used,"
"even a Twelfth Seat like you can use a high-level Hadō numbered sixty-five. What's wrong with me using Zanka no Tachi?"
As Haruto remembered it, Gaki Rekko attacked by releasing ten beams of concentrated wind-attribute power at once. As for what the male Soul Reaper had just used, a single ray that didn't even qualify as a beam...
Well, that was good enough. With such weak Reiatsu, being able to use Gaki Rekko was worth praising.
As for Haruto's Zanka no Tachi just now—
That was how he'd been training lately. His slash had merely released the Reiatsu that hadn't yet dispersed from his Zanpakuto. And the excessively dazzling light Zanka no Tachi produced while charging... that flaw had completely disappeared during the past week's training, as Haruto grew increasingly skilled at using it.
He had also remedied the flaw that prevented him from using other Hadō during that process.
"All right."
Haruto waved the male Soul Reaper away as though shooing a small animal.
"Old man Nagumo."
He looked at Nagumo beside the Soul Reaper, who stood surrounded and guarded by tense-looking gang members.
"Do you have anything to say?"
"No."
Leaning on a metal cane, a rarity in Rukongai, the old man, whose hair and beard were neatly groomed, shook his head with an air of ease.
"That straightforward?"
Haruto asked in some surprise.
"I've lived long enough and experienced all kinds of days. Only the contest between me and a youngster like you..."
There was no regret left in Nagumo's tone.
"Whether I won or lost,"
"I came here only to witness the final scene with my own eyes: whose hands District 66 would ultimately fall into."
"M-Master Nagumo?"
Amid the shocked and bewildered looks of the gang members around him—
"As things stand, you came out ahead after all."
"..."
"Hmph. You got your wish, then."
Whether that was what Nagumo truly thought no longer mattered. The old man knew perfectly well that he was certain to die today.
Since that was the case, and he was already so old, he might as well carry himself with a little more composure.
Just then...
"Are you kidding me!?"
Fear of death restored the male Soul Reaper's ability to move.
He grabbed Nagumo by the collar, and after confirming that the old man who usually treated him with such respect had indeed resolved to die—
"Thud!"
He threw Nagumo to the ground.
The metal cane gave a mournful clang before rolling smoothly into the tall weeds by the roadside.
"Brat!"
The male Soul Reaper gripped his Zanpakuto so tightly that even the capillaries beside the throbbing veins on his right hand burst.
"Gaki Rekko... Gaki Rekko isn't my strongest Kidō! I only just learned it, so breaking it doesn't prove a thing!"
"I don't know what trick you pulled, but there's no way Hadō number seventy-eight is that weak!"
"Don't think you can fool me by shouting some random name!"
His hysterical roar was no quieter than the commotion he'd made when he released his Kidō.
"So?"
Haruto replied indifferently.
Of course Zanka no Tachi couldn't be that weak.
The only difference from his usual practice was that he'd released the Reiatsu that would otherwise have dispersed. Its destructive power was less than one twentieth of the original's. If it had been the complete Zanka no Tachi, there wouldn't even have been a corpse left of the Soul Reaper opposite him by now.
"So..."
The male Soul Reaper was momentarily at a loss, then roared in anger and embarrassment:
"Brat! I'll show you what a Twelfth Seat can really do!"
He plunged his unsheathed blade straight into the ground at his feet, then thrust both arms forward, overlapping his palms in an X:
"Ye lord! Mask of blood and flesh, all creation, flutter of wings, ye who bears the name of man!"
The chant for the intermediate Kidō had barely begun to ring through the night when Haruto forcibly shoved it back down his throat—
"Hadō #63."
"!?"
If he wanted to know whether Haruto's Hadō was real, all he had to do was experience it for himself, didn't he?
"Raikōhō!"
In the palm aimed at him from a distance, the same golden light as Zanka no Tachi was taking the form of electric serpents that wandered in every direction.
"Crackle!"
As the lightning flashed—
"Boom!!"
Smoke and dust billowed.
A huge crater had appeared out of nowhere before Haruto.
"It's a little more powerful than before."
The Soul Reaper, Nagumo, and the gang's trusted men guarding them had all been blasted to nothing in Raikōhō's radiance.
Instantaneous sublimation without pain was the greatest mercy Haruto had shown them.
As for the ordinary gang members who had surrounded them from other directions and were now scattering and fleeing frantically, Haruto couldn't be bothered to deal with them one by one.
"Crunch."
Haruto leaped into the crater in a single bound.
From the swirling blackened dust, Haruto used his sheath to pick out a familiar blue-green object. It was mixed in with the ashes, after all, so he thought it best not to rummage through them with his bare hands... He simply hadn't reacted in time back on Yoshiwara Street.
"Just as I thought."
Haruto held the object and examined it carefully for a long while.
"A Kidō Orb..."
"According to Naa Ichihara, while Gaki Rekko isn't a Kidō numbered eighty or higher, it isn't something a low-ranking Seated Officer can use either."
"This guy probably came across it by chance..."
"Maybe it had something to do with his time in exile."
Gaki Rekko.
The move wasn't worth much to Haruto. It was recorded in Nanao's Kidō book; he simply hadn't learned it. But to ordinary Soul Reapers without the right connections, a Kidō Orb that could help them quickly master a high-level Hadō was quite valuable.
So Haruto promptly decided to sell it.
"..."
Haruto put away the Kidō Orb and the little money scattered on the ground. For the souls in the remote areas of Rukongai, coins of all sizes, from the smallest to silver dollars, were among the sturdiest objects they would encounter in their lives.
"Inukai!"