Ironstone Style Cleave

As the Flying Hollow missed again,

A beam of light shot toward him.

Red-black energy, carrying an aura of destruction, erupted from before Gillian's mask and hurtled straight toward where Shuichi stood. The air along its path scorched into ripples.

Shuichi swung his blade.

This was not a casual swing. He increased his Reiatsu output by at least threefold. A blade of sword energy flew from the edge, thicker, brighter, and fiercer than the last.

The two red forces collided in midair.

Red against red, sword energy against Cero.

The sword energy did split the Cero. Blade-sharp spiritual power cut into its center like a red-hot knife through butter, dividing the Cero's energy beam down the middle and bending it to either side as it streaked past Shuichi into the night sky behind him.

But it only lasted an instant.

The Cero's impact was too powerful. The sword energy began to shatter before it had cut through even a third of the beam. Cracks spread from the cut in every direction like fractures across ice. Then the Cero swallowed the sword energy, and the remaining beam continued charging at Shuichi.

Shuichi did not hesitate.

Shunpo.

His figure vanished from where he stood. The Cero passed through his former position, its beam streaking westward and carving a blinding trail across the night sky until it vanished into distant clouds.

Gillian's Cero was stronger than he had expected.

The Flying Hollow came again.

The Steel-Skinned Hollow with membrane wings rapidly climbed from below and to the side. The sound of its wings tearing through the air shrieked like a whistle. It had learned its lesson this time. Rather than diving from the front, it attacked from Shuichi's blind spot, claws spread and wing membranes drawn in, its entire body like a black arrow.

Shuichi's Reiatsu perception caught it.

Kidō.

He opened his mouth to chant, but the Flying Hollow was too fast. High-level Hado required time to chant, while low-level Hado was meaningless against a Steel-Skinned Hollow like this. His mind made its judgment in a third of a second, and his incantation caught on the words, "Ashes of..."

Too late.

He stopped chanting.

"Bakudō #4: Hainawa!"

With the chant abandoned, a rope of Reishi light shot from Shuichi's palm and coiled precisely around the Flying Hollow's neck. The instant it touched the Hollow's skin, the glowing rope tightened on its own, wrapping once, twice, three times, like a snake coiling around its neck and the base of one wing.

The Flying Hollow's body stiffened in midair.

Its flying posture was ruined. The wing membrane was cinched by the light rope and could not fully spread, leaving its wings unbalanced and their flapping rhythm completely disrupted. It beat its wings desperately to maintain altitude, but the rope only tightened further, reducing the wings' range of motion. It tried to tear the rope apart with its claws, but they were too short to reach its neck.

After struggling in the air several times, the Flying Hollow lost lift.

It fell.

Beneath Gillian's mask, a second Cero was gathering. Red light gradually brightened, like an eye opening in the darkness.

Shuichi did not wait for it to finish. He poured out Reiatsu and drove his spiritual power, making that red sword scar "come alive" on its own.

It was an ability he had not fully mastered: summoning chains from the traces left by a slash.

Golden chains grew from the sword scar, surging outward from within the crack. Link after link locked together, wholly gold, their surfaces flowing with faint Reishi light. They extended along the cracks in the mask, winding, tightening, and biting deep into its bony substance.

The Cero's gathering was interrupted.

The swelling red glow beneath Gillian's mask suddenly flickered, like a flame being strangled by the throat. Its energy became unstable. Red turned dark red, dark red turned black, and tiny white sparks of electricity emerged from the blackness.

Then it exploded.

The unfinished Cero exploded across Gillian's own face. There was no direction, no focus; all the energy burst across the mask's surface. A muffled boom rang out, like an earthquake exploding deep underground. Gillian's entire head was engulfed by the blast, black smoke and red fire mingling in the night sky.

Gillian staggered backward, its massive body stamping deep footprints into the ruins. The ground shook with every step, and one foot crushed an already half-collapsed building, sending rubble and dust soaring dozens of feet into the air.

Shuichi did not wait for it to regain its footing.

Shunpo.

His figure vanished from the air and appeared directly before Gillian's head, level with its mask. Reiatsu wrapped around his blade. Gripping the sword with both hands, he made no fancy movements. He simply slashed.

The blade fell on the scar across the mask. The angle, the force, the Reiatsu output—everything was the best he could manage at present.

Nothing happened.

Shuichi immediately used Shunpo to pull back, avoiding any close-range attack.

The blade had slid across the mask's surface. Gillian's facial bone was harder than that of every Hollow he had encountered before.

He had somewhat underestimated Gillian's defenses.

Gillian steadied itself as it retreated.

Those hollow eyes stared fixedly at Shuichi. Red points of light lit up beneath the mask once more. This was the third time. Cero gathered quickly; from the start of its charge to firing, it took only a few breaths.

The red point appeared from nothing and grew from small to large.

Shuichi gripped his sword. He did not think too much, and had no time to think. He swung out another powerful red blade of sword energy.

The sword energy cut across the night sky and struck the Cero just as it began to gather.

Twice in a row.

The Cero's energy detonated again. The unfinished red ball of light burst apart, its shockwave and fragments spreading in all directions. Gillian's head was blasted backward, and its enormous body staggered back again, its feet plowing two deep trenches through the ground.

Shuichi froze slightly.

Then he used Shunpo again.

He remembered something.

Ironstone Style.

One of the sword techniques Yachiru Unohana had taught him.

Shuichi gripped his sword with both hands and raised it above his head.

Ironstone Style had only one move: a downward cleave from above the head. The blade's path was a straight line, without variation or follow-up. If this strike failed to kill, the one who died would be the user. It was too slow, its path too straight, too easy to predict, evade, and counterattack. Using this strike meant gambling with one's life.

But Shuichi was not gambling with his life now. His opponent was a Gillian that could barely stand, its mask covered in cracks after two Ceros had exploded across its own face. Its defenses were no longer whole.

He brought the blade down.

The Reiatsu poured into the blade was not sharpness, but weight. This strike was not a cut, but a smash. The blade landed on the mask.

The mask cracked.

Starting from the center of its forehead, the fracture ran down the bridge of its nose all the way to its jaw. The line was straight and clean, without a trace of hesitation.

As the blade cut in, Gillian's entire head split apart to both sides like a cleaved watermelon.

Gillian's eyes flickered the instant its mask separated, then went dark.

Its enormous body began to collapse into a phantom. Starting from its edges, its outline blurred like ink dropped into water, slowly, irreversibly spreading outward. Black motes rose from the disintegrating body by the thousands, like black snowflakes flowing backward into the night sky, returning to the cycle of Reishi.

Gillian vanished.

In the distant Soul Reaper camp,

"Captain!"

"He got it!"

"Gillian is down!"

Some pumped their fists, some slapped their thighs, and some leaped up from the ground.

But they did not celebrate for long.

Shuichi's gaze passed through the lingering mist of Reishi left behind by Gillian's collapse and fell on the Steel-Skinned Hollows. With Gillian down, these Menos Grande-class Steel-Skinned Hollows had become the greatest threat in the ruins of Kaimachi.

"Let's go!"

"Support the captain!"

More than a dozen black figures rushed out of the camp. Some held Zanpakutō, while others had already begun chanting Hado. Reiatsu lit up one after another in the night like stars.