"Ashido, you can't hold them back like this! Go down and join the others. 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 the air, facing alone the stream of Hollows pouring continuously from the two rifts.
His Zanpakutō still moved with precision, each swing taking down a Hollow, but his breathing had clearly grown ragged, and fine beads of sweat covered his forehead.
The strain of directly resisting an endless swarm of monsters was simply too great.
Yet Ashido paid him no heed. His eyes remained fixed on the writhing black rifts above them, his voice lower and heavier than usual.
"Fifth Seat Yan Si, have you been hiding your strength?"
"What?" Yan Si nearly failed to keep his expression under control, his heart skipping a beat.
How did this guy figure it out?!
Did I use Chain Lightning Pattern and Veil of Frost and Silence too smoothly just now and give myself away?
Impossible. Absolutely impossible!
Keep it together. He's most likely just trying to bluff me.
He swiftly composed himself and put on an appropriately self-deprecating, helpless look.
"I'm only a lowly Fifth Seat. Even if I wanted to hide something, could I possibly hide captain-class strength? 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 soft "Mm," seemingly accepting the explanation—or perhaps simply lacking the energy to investigate further.
"That's true. Then please go down immediately and join the others. Here... I have a very bad feeling about this."
"You have a bad feeling?" Yan Si did not move. Instead, he pressed the question.
"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 instinctively glanced down at the main battlefield below.
Something caught his attention.
On the battlefield below, especially around Captain Kurayashiki Kenpachi, an unusually large number of Hollows had gathered!
They were like a tide, wave after wave rushing fearlessly at Kurayashiki Kenpachi. 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 been closer to that of beasts driven by instinct.
Such a crazed, concentrated assault defied all logic.
Yan Si focused and carefully observed the area around Kurayashiki Kenpachi.
Soon, he spotted a detail: around the ground beneath Kurayashiki Kenpachi's feet, the air was suffused with an extremely faint Reishi glow that pulsed at a peculiar frequency.
Like the scent of bait, that glow continuously spread outward.
"You noticed it?" Ashido panted as he swung his blade, knocking back a flying Hollow trying to circle behind him. His voice carried exhaustion and gravity.
"The captain cast Spirit Bait on himself. It releases an irresistible 'delicious' signal to Hollows."
He turned his head to glance at Yan Si and continued explaining.
"That's why the captain absolutely cannot go into the air and approach those rifts.
Otherwise, the Hollows pouring from the rifts will only become even more frenzied. It might even trigger an unpredictable chain reaction.
He has to remain on the ground, serving as the biggest 'bait' and the pillar that draws their fire."
Yan Si understood. It was not that Kurayashiki Kenpachi did not want to come up and clear the field—he could not.
The pressure he bore in that position was likely no less than Ashido's as he faced the rifts in the air.
He was the stabilizing pillar of the entire battlefield, as well as the ultimate shield drawing most of the enemy fire.
Yan Si raised his hand. Lightning gathered at his fingertips once more, and a Chain Lightning Pattern shot out, changing direction five times in midair before piercing five Hollows and dissipating.
He furrowed his brow, calculating rapidly. That series of Kidō spells had been highly effective, but without realizing it, he had already used nearly a tenth of his Spiritual Power.
In the Human World, where Spiritual Power was so sparse, that was not good news. His condition was beginning to decline.
He looked at Ashido and asked another critical question. "Has the request to lift the restrictions been approved?"
He meant the Reiatsu Restriction Seal normally applied to vice-captain-ranked and higher Shinigami when they went to the Human World, to prevent their overly powerful Reiatsu from causing excessive harm there.
In emergencies, they could apply to temporarily lift part of the restrictions.
Ashido's sword stroke paused. He seemed surprised that Yan Si knew about the procedure, but he quickly shook his head and spoke at a rapid pace.
"This time, we weren't given Restriction Seals to begin with."
"Huh?" Yan Si was genuinely stunned this time.
He remembered the regulations: vice-captain-ranked and higher Shinigami had to be restricted when entering the Human World unless it was a special emergency mission or had been personally approved by the Captain-General.
This mission was large in scale, but its initial designation had only been to support Soul Burials and clear out ordinary Hollows. Logically, they should have...
"Pah." Ashido spat a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva to the side. Yan Si could not tell whether he had been injured or had merely exerted himself too hard.
He took a deep breath, trying to steady his breathing, then gave a brief explanation.
"Restriction Seals are mainly meant to prevent us from causing unnecessary large-scale destruction to the Human World's environment. But look at the battlefield now—"
Yan Si followed his gesture and swept his gaze across the area below.
Scorched earth covered the land, smoke and dust filled the air, and several camps and patches of forest were burning. The flames reddened half the sky.
Beyond the traces left by the original war, the ground had gained countless filthy Reishi craters left behind by slain Hollows, as well as the aftermath of Shinigami battles.
The entire area was a complete mess. It could no longer be called an "environment."
"On a battlefield this intense, it doesn't matter even if we cause some damage to the terrain. It was already reported before we departed," Ashido concluded.
Yan Si nodded silently.
Indeed, on such a chaotic and brutal battlefield, worrying about environmental protection and preserving the terrain was rather 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 at the same time, any enemies that appeared... could be stronger and more troublesome as well.
He raised his head again and looked at Ashido beside him, whose breathing had grown ever heavier, sweat soaking part of the back of his Shinigami uniform.
This vice-captain had clearly expended an enormous amount of Spiritual Power as well.
The trouble seemed to be getting worse and worse.
The instant that thought arose.
Crack!
A crisp, heart-stopping sound of something shattering rang out!
Immediately afterward, a massive, chaotic, terrifying Reiatsu filled with greed and destruction came crashing down from the sky!
"Urgh!" Ashido, hovering in the air, bore the brunt of it. His body suddenly sank, his control over Reishi instantly thrown into chaos, and he began falling uncontrollably!
Yan Si reacted at once. He flashed forward, extended his right hand, and firmly supported Ashido's back, helping him absorb part of the impact and stabilize himself.
The two of them raised their heads at the same time, looking toward the source of the Reiatsu—the sky.
The dozen or so black, crescent-shaped rifts that had previously hung apart began to twist and expand wildly at their edges, then... abruptly converged toward the center!
They no longer maintained separate forms. Instead, they fused together, devouring and connecting with one another!
In just a few breaths, the dozen rifts vanished completely.
A vast, pitch-black passageway, so enormous it was suffocating, appeared across the sky!
The inside of the passage was utterly dark, as though it connected to an abyss in the cosmos. Only its edges continuously spat out ominous purple-black Reishi sparks.
The moment that gigantic passage 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 passage.
Just a portion of the mask was already larger than dozens of the previous Hollows combined.
The hollow eye sockets in the mask coldly "looked down" upon the tiny battlefield below, and upon the Shinigami.
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