"Huff... huff..."
Kisuke Urahara gripped Benihime's hilt tightly, every breath heavy and ragged.
The toxin concentration had already far exceeded the limits of Kannonbiraki Benihime Aratame's reconstruction.
Mouthful after mouthful of dark, tainted blood dripped down his chin onto the crater-riddled ground.
Even as those golden threads kept weaving through his chest and stitching it together, his bodily functions were failing faster than the external intervention could repair them.
Askin stepped through the puddles of poison, approaching the half-kneeling Urahara with light steps.
With every step, large patches of white stone bricks beneath his feet melted into a thick black substance.
"My, my. Just looking at you makes every bone in my body ache."
With both hands in his pockets, Askin looked down at him from above. "Forcibly altering the pain defenses of your own internal tissues-isn't that hundreds of times worse than simply being poisoned?"
Kisuke Urahara had no strength left to offer any retort.
The enormous Kannon puppet behind him suddenly raised one long arm and slammed it onto the rubble beside him.
Using that slight recoil, Urahara launched himself up, thrusting Benihime straight at Askin's Adam's apple.
Clang-
Askin merely raised his right hand casually, gathering a thin wall of Reishi a few inches in front of himself.
Benihime's tip pressed against the shield without producing so much as a ripple.
This blade of modification, which originally held the authority to deconstruct all things, could no longer pierce even an ordinary physical defense because its master's Reiatsu had weakened so severely.
Askin turned slightly sideways, not even bothering to counterattack.
Kisuke Urahara lost his balance completely in midair, his exhausted body tumbling diagonally backward.
He was already on the very verge of losing consciousness.
Looking at the Special War Power at his feet, who could no longer