It now seemed that his preparations had not been in vain.
"Bankai—Baboon King Sōōmaru!"
After Vice-Captain Chōjirō's attack failed to achieve its intended effect, a thunderous shout rang out.
The next instant, Reikaku Renji Abarai had already released his Zanpakuto in Bankai. The dozens-of-meters-long Sōōmaru coiled around him.
Then, Reikaku Renji Abarai swung his Zanpakuto. Streams of red spiritual pressure erupted from Sōōmaru's vertebrae before converging into the enormous skeletal snake.
"Baboon Bone Cannon!"
Boom!
A beam of red spiritual pressure erupted from Sōōmaru's skull, sweeping across part of the Twelfth Division's barracks.
The metal rods above those barracks offered no resistance whatsoever against Sōōmaru's Baboon Bone Cannon. The red beam directly destroyed four or five buildings.
Rumble!
With some of the metal rods destroyed, the Twelfth Division's resistance against Reikaku Vice-Captain Chōjirō's lightning weakened considerably.
At once, metal rods shattered one after another beneath Vice-Captain Chōjirō's lightning.
"Argh..."
"Arghhhhh..."
With the barrier formed by the metal rods gone, lightning ravaged the Twelfth Division, severely wounding many Seated Officers.
And that was only because most of Genryūmaru's power had been neutralized by the metal rods.
Without the rods blocking it, those dozens of Seated Officers might well have lost their lives.
"Dance—Sode no Shirayuki!"
A crisp, icy shout rang out.
"Tsugi mai: Byakuren!"
Boom!
A torrent of frost resembling a white lotus burst from the ground and swallowed Reikaku Renji Abarai.
Rukia appeared atop one of the Twelfth Division's barracks, white frost still rising from the Sode no Shirayuki in her hand.
The blade of Sode no Shirayuki was the outward manifestation of its power. All water in the surrounding area condensed into ice crystals beneath that chill.
"Cry out—Benihime!"
The next moment, a red slash shot into the sky, cleaving the thunderclouds and lightning above the Twelfth Division in