Rei dealt with the guards who came out of Kira House through sheer strength. All twenty-six of them were tied up with ropes Rei had found somewhere, and their head of house was tied up too, still roaring in anger.
"Hey, who the hell are you? My father's a Soul Reaper!"
The blond-haired, blue-eyed Kira Kagekiyo roared. He was about the same age as Rei, but noticeably shorter and less mature. Even now, he was actually trying to scare Rei.
Rei didn't waste his breath on him and knocked him out. A "girl" who came out saw it happen, and her three-thousand-decibel scream brought all the servants running.
"How dare you hurt my husband! Kill him!"
The girl was actually the lady of the house, much to Rei's surprise. How old did she even look? She couldn't have been sixteen yet, and she was already married. What a frightening world...
That was right. Kira Kagekiyo was Izuru Kira's father, and this was his mother. But Kagekiyo was still young; perhaps because he had married so early, it would be another two hundred years before he had a son...
Rei didn't know any of that, though, and had no time to look into it. There were more than ten servants armed with brooms and mops. Although they weren't much good in a fight, they still kept Rei scrambling for a while. In the end, he knocked out the shrill young wife too.
Rei dragged the whole string of captives into Kira House's dojo by himself. Everyone was gagged and arranged in a circle, while Rei sat upright in the middle and entered a state of Zan Zen...
Zan Zen... Is he a Soul Reaper? But... what is he going to do?
Kira Kagekiyo, who had regained some consciousness, watched Rei sit upright. Everyone in his household was arranged in a circle around the thug, with the guards who had Reiryoku in front and the servants behind them.
"Well then, let's begin!"
Rei came back to himself. He had already explained the plan to Kurenai. Seeing how much Rei trusted him, Kurenai's desire to protect Rei as his Zanpakuto grew even stronger...
"Hey, there's no way you can heal his head, is there? Who knows how many of us Menos Grande have High-Speed Regeneration? I've never seen one who could regenerate their head."
Yanis was roaring now. Outside, Rei released Blood Drink, filled its blood gauge, then entered his inner world to kill Yanis.
When Yanis blew up Rei's temple, Kurenai would use the blood prepared in advance to heal Rei. Whether it worked or not would come down to this...
The bloodletting began. Rei swiftly swung his sword and cut the wrists and ankles of all twenty-six bastard guards. The whole room reeked of blood. Many woke from the pain, only to die from blood loss.
Rei cut the dozen or so servants too. After a moment's consideration, he spared Kira Kagekiyo, whose father was a Soul Reaper.
Blood Drink's blood gauge quickly filled. With Yanis's consciousness bound, he could no longer control Rei's left hand, and it had returned to normal. The ritual was about to begin...
Rei laid the fully charged Blood Drink flat, sat cross-legged, and entered his inner world.
"Hey, you can't really be going to... Aaaah!"
Before Yanis could finish, Rei had already plunged his sword into his stomach. Yanis screamed again and again.
The greatsword seemed searingly hot, steadily evaporating Yanis's consciousness into Reishi that dispersed throughout the space. Yanis kept shrinking, his height dropping to a meter. Even a six-year-old child was taller than that.
The fear of vanishing completely tormented Yanis. He had been defeated before, back when he was an adjuchas. The closest he had come to death was when he had been forced to seize the body of a Ragged Hollow and evolve all over again.
After countless hardships, he had finally reached the upper ranks of the adjuchas and become a guard serving Lord Baraggan, a Vasto Lorde.
He had thought he could settle down and devour weaker adjuchas to evolve, but greed had driven him to Soul Society to gather intelligence for a reward.
It would have been one thing if he had returned after gathering intelligence, but he had fallen in love with this world where food was everywhere. He had come back to continue hunting the weak... simply because the pleasure of devouring ordinary Soul Reapers was too much for him to resist...
He had thought Rei was just a Plus with high Reiryoku who wasn't even a Soul Reaper. Not only had Rei defeated him in battle, but now he was trying to erase him in their clash of consciousnesses...
"I-I surrender! Don't kill me! I'll do anything you want, just don't erase my consciousness..."
Yanis was truly afraid. Terror made him beg loudly for mercy. He had lived for centuries with a goal, and the drawback of living that way was... the longer he lived, the more he feared death.
"Huh? Surrender? You've got to be kidding me. How can I stop now? Just die!"
Rei had already made up his mind to gamble with his life and had gone all in. Now the one running the game was scared? What kind of sense did that make?
Besides, who knew if Yanis was just stalling? Was he trying to get through this so Rei wouldn't dare risk his life again? So Rei forced Yanis to keep playing, whether he wanted to gamble or not!
Rei pulled Blood Drink out. This time, he was going to slash Yanis across the forehead... To be fair, Yanis's face still looked like Rei's own, and cutting him gave Rei an indescribable feeling...
"I can suppress my own power! I can be a tool to help you grow stronger! Really, please believe me!"
Yanis had made up his mind not to fight anymore. He desperately pitched his usefulness, unwilling to take this gamble. In this situation, no matter what happened to Rei, he was certain to lose.
The facts proved that Hollows were afraid of death too. In the original timeline, the No. 7 Espada had begged for mercy after being beaten by Byakuya Kuchiki. Unfortunately for him, the sister-con could never have spared him, because he had touched the sister-con's reverse scale...
Blood Drink stopped in front of Yanis's forehead. It had nearly struck, but at least it had stopped.
"You're saying you want to live on as my tool?"
"But I don't trust you. How can you prove you won't seize my body when I'm weak?"
Rei rested the sword lightly on Yanis's shoulder. As he asked his first question, he also looked at Kurenai. After seeing Kurenai nod, he asked the second.
"Well... I'll discard the core Reishi of Body Possession. That way, I won't be able to keep taking over and altering the Reishi of your body. If you die, I'll die too... How about that?"
"And you can look through my memories to see whether I'm telling the truth..."
To stay alive, Yanis had exposed his greatest secret. He had no other choice.
The corners of Rei's mouth rose slightly, and he said with a wicked smile, "All right. But if you're sincere, first withdraw your consciousness back into my left hand. How about it?"
"Okay!"
This had become a matter of trust, and Yanis agreed at once. Rei's consciousness, however, thought to himself, Green-skin sure is naive.
If Rei decided he didn't want Yanis and cut off his left hand after Yanis withdrew his consciousness, Yanis would really be dead. He wouldn't even have a chance to blow up Rei's temple and take him down with him.
It had taken a long time to describe, but only a few seconds had passed in the real world. Rei came to again, and when he looked at the black markings on his left arm, they had indeed all receded to the back of his left hand.
As Rei watched, blood suddenly spurted from his left hand, and a red Reishi needle fell out. Before it hit the ground, it dissolved and vanished without a trace.
"Have you submitted completely? Hahaha, hahahahahaha..."
As if possessed, Rei laughed wildly more than a dozen times before gradually falling silent. Only then did he notice the many pairs of eyes watching him, as though they were looking at a madman.
"Sorry for disturbing you all..."
After apologizing, Rei swung his sword repeatedly to cut their ropes, then rushed out. He needed to find a quiet place to thoroughly verify what Yanis had said...
At the summit of the mountain behind the town, trees grew sparsely around a huge granite boulder. Rei sat cross-legged on top of it.
In his inner world, his consciousness's hand was thrust into Yanis's head. Since both were consciousnesses, as long as Yanis didn't resist, contact in this manner allowed Rei to know exactly what he was thinking.
Sure enough, everything Yanis had said was true. After discarding Body Possession, he could no longer reincarnate into another body.
Moreover, since Yanis wasn't the owner of this body, he couldn't take it over after Rei's consciousness vanished completely. So if Rei died, the body would collapse, and Yanis would die too.
Rei's consciousness was currently stronger than Yanis's, and Blood Drink had a consciousness as well. If Yanis's consciousness, now reduced to a little brat, tried to rebel, either of them could easily suppress him.
Yanis had truly become a parasite dependent on Rei for survival. Since Yanis could devour Hollows and convert them into Reiryoku to feed back to Rei, perhaps he was a somewhat beneficial parasite.
Rei also read a great deal of interesting information, with more details about Baraggan in Hueco Mundo and less about the Seireitei...
What delighted Rei even more was that, as a Menos Grande, Yanis could not only devour his own kind to strengthen himself but also devour souls. There were quite a few souls in Rukongai who had awakened their Reiryoku.
A change occurred in Rei's left hand. Six spiraling black markings appeared from his palm to his elbow, and his index finger turned pitch-black. Rei only needed to thrust that finger into an opponent to take their Reiryoku.
This was originally Yanis's ability. His tail could not only use Body Devouring but also pierce an opponent to absorb Reiryoku.
Yanis had never dared pierce Rei before because he feared that if his tail stayed inside Rei too long, Rei would cut it off with one stroke. Then he wouldn't even have been able to use Body Possession.
"Hollow abilities really are all overpowered, and then there are all those bizarre abilities in Hueco Mundo... Whatever, I'll find someone to test this ability on first..."
Rei was delighted once again. With an ability like this, it would be hard for him to become a good-for-nothing even if he wanted to.
But he also knew full well that the Seireitei would never tolerate an ability like this. If the Seireitei found out he had a Hollow inside him, it would definitely send the Gotei 13 to eliminate him...