The Jinx Came True, Great Hollow

"Ashido, you can't hold them back like this! Get down there and regroup with everyone. Concentrate our strength and conserve your spiritual power!"

Yan Si flashed to Ashido's rear flank and spoke quickly.

Ashido, the vice-captain of the Eleventh Division, hovered in midair, facing alone the steady stream of Hollows pouring from the two rifts.

His Zanpakutō still moved with precision, each swing taking down a Hollow, but his breathing had clearly grown labored, and fine beads of sweat covered his forehead.

Facing an endless horde of monsters head-on was simply too draining.

But Ashido paid him no heed. He stared fixedly at the writhing black rifts overhead, his voice lower and heavier than usual.

"Fifth Seat Yan Si, are you hiding your strength?"

"What?" Yan Si nearly lost control of his expression, his heart skipping a beat.

How did this guy see through me?!

Did I use Chain Lightning Pattern and Veil of Frost and Silence too smoothly just now and give myself away?

Impossible. Absolutely impossible!

Stay calm. He was probably just trying to bluff me.

He swiftly adjusted his expression, putting on just the right amount of self-deprecation and helplessness.

"I'm only a lowly Fifth Seat. Even if I wanted to hide my strength, could I possibly hide Captain-level power? Vice-Captain Ashido, you think too highly of me."

Ashido did not turn around, still staring at the rifts. Several seconds later, he gave a quiet "Mm," seemingly accepting the explanation—or perhaps simply lacking the energy to pursue the matter.

"You're right. Then get down there immediately and regroup with the others. Here... I have a very bad feeling about this."

"You have a bad feeling?" Yan Si did not move. Instead, he pressed further.

"Then why not have Captain Kurayashiki Kenpachi come up? In terms of strength, he's the strongest, isn't he?

What, do you think you can hold out longer than Captain Kurayashiki Kenpachi?"

As he spoke, he subconsciously glanced at the main battlefield directly below.

Something caught his attention.

The battlefield below, especially the area where Captain Kurayashiki Kenpachi stood, had gathered an unusually large number of Hollows!

They surged at Kurayashiki Kenpachi like a tide, wave after wave, throwing themselves forward without pause. Even when he cut them down in swathes, they showed no sign of retreating.

Rather than hunting, it looked more like some kind of organized charge.

Something was wrong. The behavior of low-level Hollows should have resembled that of beasts acting on instinct.

Such a frenzied, concentrated assault defied common sense.

Yan Si focused and carefully observed the area around Kurayashiki Kenpachi.

Very quickly, he noticed a detail. Near the ground beneath Kurayashiki Kenpachi's feet, a faint aura of Reishi filled the air, pulsing with a peculiar frequency.

Like the scent of bait, that aura constantly spread outward.

"Did you notice it?" Ashido panted as he swung his blade to drive back a flying Hollow attempting to circle behind them, exhaustion and gravity in his voice.

"The captain cast Spiritual Bait on himself. It releases a 'delicious' signal that Hollows find impossible to resist."

He glanced sideways at Yan Si and continued explaining.

"That's why the captain absolutely cannot take to the air or approach those rifts.

Otherwise, the Hollows pouring from the rifts will only become more frenzied. It could even trigger an unpredictable chain reaction.

He has to remain on the ground, acting as the biggest bait and the pillar that draws their fire."

Yan Si understood. Kurayashiki Kenpachi did not refrain from coming up to clear the field because he did not want to—he could not.

The pressure he endured in that position was likely no less than Ashido's, who was confronting the rifts in midair.

He was the anchor of the entire battlefield, as well as a superhuman shield drawing the vast majority of enemy fire.

Yan Si raised a hand. Lightning gathered at his fingertips again, and a Chain Lightning Pattern shot forth, ricocheting through the air five times before piercing five Hollows and dissipating.

He furrowed his brow, calculating swiftly. His series of Kidō spells had been highly effective, but they had unknowingly consumed nearly a tenth of his spiritual power.

In the Human World, where spiritual power was so thin, that was no good news. His condition was beginning to decline.

He looked at Ashido and raised another key question. "Has the application to lift the restrictions been approved?"

He meant the Reiatsu restriction seals normally placed on Shinigami of vice-captain rank and above when they traveled to the Human World, to prevent their excessively powerful Reiatsu from causing undue harm there.

In an emergency, they could apply to have part of the restrictions temporarily removed.

Ashido's sword arm paused. He seemed somewhat surprised that Yan Si knew the procedure, but then shook his head and spoke quickly.

"We didn't have restriction seals placed on us for this mission to begin with."

"Huh?" Yan Si was genuinely stunned this time.

He remembered the regulations. Shinigami of vice-captain rank and above had to be restricted when entering the Human World, unless it was a special emergency mission or had received the Captain-General's special approval.

Though this mission was large in scale, it had initially only been designated as support for Soul Burials and the cleanup of ordinary Hollows. By all rights, they should have...

"Pah." Ashido spat a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva to the side, though it was unclear whether he had been injured or had simply exerted himself too hard.

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his breathing, then gave a brief explanation.

"The main concern with restriction seals is that we might cause unnecessary large-scale damage to the Human World's environment. But look at the battlefield now—"

Yan Si followed his gesture and swept his gaze over the ground below.

The earth was scorched black, smoke filled the air, and numerous camps and stretches of forest were burning. The firelight dyed half the sky red.

Beyond the traces left by the original war, the ground was now littered with countless filthy Reishi craters left behind by slain Hollows, along with the aftermath of Shinigami combat.

The entire area was a complete wreck. It had long ceased to qualify as any sort of "environment."

"On a battlefield this intense, it doesn't matter if we cause some damage to the terrain. It was reported before we set out," Ashido concluded.

Yan Si nodded silently.

Indeed, on such a chaotic and brutal battlefield, worrying about environmental protection and preserving the terrain was a little pointless. Staying alive and completing the mission took priority.

But that also meant another problem. Ashido and Kurayashiki Kenpachi could fight at full strength, but any enemies that appeared... could also be stronger and more troublesome.

He raised his head again and looked at Ashido beside him, whose breathing had grown increasingly heavy, sweat soaking the back of his Shinigami uniform.

This vice-captain's spiritual power expenditure was clearly enormous as well.

The trouble seemed to be growing by the second.

The instant that thought arose.

Crack!

A crisp, heart-chilling sound of shattering rang out!

Immediately afterward, a terrifying Reiatsu, immense and chaotic, steeped in greed and destruction, came pouring down from the sky!

"Urgh!" Ashido, hovering in midair, bore the brunt of it. His body suddenly sank, his control over the Reishi instantly thrown into disarray as he plummeted uncontrollably downward!

Yan Si reacted at once. He flashed forward and extended his right hand, firmly supporting Ashido's back, helping him absorb part of the impact and stabilize himself.

The two of them raised their heads at the same time and looked toward the source of the Reiatsu—the sky.

The dozen or so black, crescent-shaped rifts that had hung separately in the air had begun to twist and expand wildly along their edges before suddenly converging toward the center!

They no longer maintained their separate forms, instead merging together, devouring and connecting with one another!

Within just a few breaths, the dozen rifts had completely vanished.

In their place appeared a vast, pitch-black passageway stretching across the sky, so enormous it was suffocating!

Its interior was incomparably dark, as if it connected to an abyss in the cosmos. Only its edges continuously spat out ominous purple-black Reishi sparks.

The moment that enormous passageway appeared, every Hollow on the battlefield below, no matter what it had been doing, froze in unison.

Then, reflected in the constricted pupils of Yan Si and Ashido, an enormous pale bone mask slowly emerged from the depths of that massive black passageway.

Even just a portion of the mask was larger than dozens of the previous Hollows combined.

The mask's hollow eye sockets coldly "looked down" upon the tiny battlefield below, and the Shinigami.