The Long War

A crimson garment appeared around Natsuki's body, and he swung his Zanpakuto.

The Spirit Particle Arrows shattered one after another. A few stray attacks struck him, but he easily blocked them.

The Quincy had forcibly seized control of some of the Reishi nearby, which surprised him.

But his opponent was no Azashiro Kenpachi, who could imbue Reishi with his own will. That meant that once the Quincy's attacks were destroyed, Natsuki could absorb the Reishi they left behind.

With each breath, Natsuki drew in all the Reishi scattered around him after the Spirit Particle Arrows shattered.

In that brief moment, he had already figured out how to deal with the Quincy.

He would make sure there wasn't a single Reishi particle left in the space around them.

Since his opponent had forcibly entered this state and commandeered the Reishi that had originally been at his disposal, all Natsuki had to do was swallow it all. He didn't believe a Quincy could manipulate the Reishi inside a Shinigami's body.

If they could, the Quincy wouldn't need to fight the Shinigami at all. They could simply manipulate the Reishi and make the Shinigami's body fall apart. After all, a Shinigami's body was also made of Reishi.

The fact that the Quincy couldn't do this showed that they could only manipulate the Reishi in the surrounding air.

As soon as Natsuki had the thought, a huge vortex quietly formed.

The crimson mist grew fainter, then vanished.

After its release, Natsuki's Zanpakuto had two different forms.

One was directed inward, while the other was directed outward.

In its outward form, he could infuse all the Reishi nearby with his own aura. This manifested as crimson butterflies and crimson mist. Aside from the mist's ability to slightly blur other people's vision, its greatest use was to quietly absorb their spiritual power and nourish Natsuki. The crimson butterflies, meanwhile, gave him a view of the entire battlefield.

This ability was extremely useful against Shinigami and Hollows, constantly weakening them.

But it wouldn't work against the Quincy.

The mist could absorb the Quincy's Spirit Particle Arrows, but the Quincy themselves didn't possess great spiritual power. Quincy Power wasn't spiritual power at all, so it was difficult to weaken them.

On the contrary, although the Reishi in the area had been imbued with Natsuki's aura, it didn't contain his will. If the Quincy had been a little better at controlling Reishi, they could have manipulated it.

So, to better counter the Quincy, Natsuki entered his other state.

The inward state.

In this state, he lost the environmental boost as well as his view of the entire battlefield.

In exchange, his various powers were pushed to their utmost limits as he forcibly seized the Reishi around him. He could still absorb Reishi, but now that ability was limited to his Zanpakuto.

In the blink of an eye, the crimson mist vanished completely. Only a few crimson streaks remained on the black Shihakusho Natsuki wore, while the blade in his hand glowed with an increasingly intense, blood-red light.

Whoosh!

Natsuki planted his foot on the ground and shot forward.

It wasn't Shunpo, just the raw force of his body, but at that moment, his speed was almost indistinguishable from it.

The Quincy, who had used the Sanrei Glove to forcibly enter their final form and then used "Ransotengai" to make himself move, saw Natsuki charge and prepared to control the Reishi again to attack him.

But when he channeled his Quincy Power to gather Reishi, he found that barely any Reishi responded and converged.

Pfft!

A blade flashed past, and his head hit the ground.

No matter how powerful Ransotengai was, allowing a Quincy to ignore injuries to his limbs and body and keep fighting, it had one condition: their vital points had to remain unharmed.

Once vital points such as the head or heart were injured, the Quincy would die, and Ransotengai would be useless.

"Pure-Blood Quincies really are a pain."

Looking at the Quincy's corpse on the ground, Natsuki couldn't help sighing.

If his Zanpakuto's ability hadn't happened to counter the Quincy to some extent, defeating this Pure-Blood Quincy wouldn't have been easy.

The Quincy's ability to manipulate Reishi was indeed a strong counter to the Shinigami.

But that was simply the way this world worked: a balance of opposing forces.

Shinigami countered Hollows. Against the Quincy, Hollows could actually gain an advantage thanks to their savage fighting style. And to the Quincy, the power of Hollows was like poison. Meanwhile, the Quincy had an even greater advantage against the Shinigami.

If Shinigami didn't have Zanpakuto, it would be difficult for them to defeat the Quincy using only Hakuda, Zanjutsu, and Ghost Way.

Quincies excelled at ranged attacks. Hakuda only came into its own at close range, and both Ghost Way and Shunpo could be affected by the Quincy. Zanjutsu, like Hakuda, only worked at close range.

Natsuki couldn't help thinking of the Shinigami's crushing defeat at the beginning of the Thousand-Year Blood War in the original story.

By then, the Quincy had already found a way to counter the Shinigami's Zanpakuto.

Once even their Zanpakuto had been countered, the Shinigami had no way to deal with the Quincy. That was why so many of them died in such a short time.

The Quincy hiding in the shadows of the Seireitei and launching a sudden, unexpected war was one factor. But the main reason was that their abilities had been countered.

This war lasted far longer than anyone could have imagined.

Or rather, this was what a war between races should look like.

The Thousand-Year Blood War in the original story had taken only a few days, and so had the Ninja World War in the neighboring series. The thought of it seemed absurd.

In the blink of an eye, several years passed.

After nearly eight hundred years of growth and reproduction, there were still plenty of Quincies in the Human World. Only the number of Pure-Blood families had dwindled. There were actually more Mixed-Blood Quincies than a thousand years ago.

Eradicating the Quincy race from the world wasn't something the Shinigami could accomplish in a few days or months. Besides, when faced with the Shinigami's slaughter, the Quincies weren't fools who would simply wait for the Shinigami to exterminate them.

They either fought back or fled.

The ones who fought back were easy enough to deal with: the Shinigami only had to fight and kill them.

But the ones who fled forced the Shinigami to spend time tracking them down.

After all, the order from Central 46 was to eradicate the Quincy race completely. They wouldn't be spared just because they had gone into hiding.