To deal with the Shinigami in front of him, there was only one way—
Take his power back.
That was the conclusion Yhwach reached in less than ten seconds.
And so the poor Haschwalth—who had been toyed with by Higashino Shuuichi like a spinning top—was forcibly subjected to Auswählen (Holy Selection) on his way back to the Ice Palace.
When the power of The Almighty returned to Yhwach's body, Yhwach opened his eyes.
He went to foresee the future.
But what he saw was ruin.
He stood on one end of the wreckage. On the other end, atop a mountain of corpses, was a streak of black dripping fresh crimson—
The Shinigami, Higashino Shuuichi.
He was still alive. Yhwach still hadn't killed him.
But… what about everything in between?
Yhwach suddenly realized he was missing a great deal.
Normally, when he used The Almighty to view the future, it was like watching a film—every event, every sequence, start to finish.
Yet now, he only saw a "result" that didn't even feel like a final result.
That wasn't normal. By all logic, it shouldn't happen.
And Yhwach knew there was only one possibility for why it had become like this.
"What did you do to me?"
If it were a few minutes earlier, Yhwach would never have imagined—never even in a dream—that the one who possessed The Almighty would one day ask such a question.
On the corpse-mountain, Higashino Shuuichi—who had been facing away—turned around.
His face was drenched in blood. His Zanpakuto was chipped.
A Zanpakuto was part of a Shinigami's soul—something that, aside from a Bankai state, shouldn't even be destructible. And yet it had somehow been worn into this state, as though it had cut down an untold number of enemies.
The blood on it was so thick it ran down the drooping tip, joining into a single line with the bodies beneath Higashino Shuuichi's feet.
"Oh?" Higashino Shuuichi bared his teeth in a grin. "I thought the Quincy King with The Almighty, Yhwach-sama, would never ask a question like that in his entire life~"
Bright blood stained his teeth.
"You… tampered with my ability?" Yhwach ignored the mockery and asked, testing the waters.
"Yeah." Higashino Shuuichi admitted it openly. "Not bad, Yhwach-sama—figured it out that fast?"
Yhwach snorted.
"Heh. Higashino Shuuichi, do you take me for an idiot?
If you truly could tamper with my power, then with your style, you'd make sure I never realized it until the moment I died. You wouldn't leave such an obvious flaw."
Higashino Shuuichi answered with a cold snort of his own.
"Tch. If you already know that… then why ask?"
"Because verification takes time!"
As he spoke, Yhwach reached to his left and seized at the air.
With the clench of his left hand, the world on the left side vanished instantly.
"I can still impose my will on this future and shut portions of it at will. That means this is still a future I am meant to see.
And you, Higashino Shuuichi, are not the one who stood against me in the Ice Palace earlier—yet you are absolutely the one I am supposed to see in this future!
You can't fool me!!"
"Hahahaha… Interesting. This is too interesting." Higashino Shuuichi laughed loudly from atop the corpse-mountain. "You know, Yhwach, I always thought that because you had The Almighty, you'd be nothing but a complete moron and a brute.
But now that I look at you… you've got at least a little brain. Enough to become the Quincy King."
"That is not praise," Yhwach replied icily.
"Of course not." Higashino Shuuichi began to walk down the corpse-mountain, step by step. "I'm just in the habit of using respectful forms of address with others. But in this world, there aren't many people I respect from the heart.
And even fewer I'd praise.
You, Yhwach, are certainly not among them."
"You're talking too much," Yhwach suddenly said—an oddly mismatched line.
The blood-soaked Higashino Shuuichi seemed to remember something. He slowly lifted his head and looked up at the blood-stained sky.
"Yeah… it is a bit much. But you're the same, aren't you."
"What are you implying?" Yhwach frowned hard. He couldn't tell whether Higashino Shuuichi truly understood what was happening to him—or whether he was simply laying a trap with words.
"Isn't it obvious, Yhwach?" Higashino Shuuichi lowered his gaze to Yhwach.
And in Yhwach's eyes, he caught a flicker of confusion.
So that was it.
Yhwach still fell short compared to men like Aizen Sōsuke and Urahara Kisuke.
He was, in the end, just someone who indulged in reckless tyranny because he held an overwhelming power.
"My blade is dull.
Your ability is weaker.
I really shouldn't be the same 'me' from the Ice Palace earlier—but if that's true, then you wouldn't be the same 'you' from then, either.
I'm tired.
And you're worn out, too."
After hearing it, Yhwach seemed to understand something… and yet understand nothing at all.
To be honest, in terms of understanding The Almighty, Yhwach at this moment might have been inferior even to Higashino Shuuichi.
"What are you even talking about?" Yhwach finally asked.
Even after being "nudged" this far, he still had one of his seven apertures blocked.
Higashino Shuuichi had expected exactly that outcome.
So he drove his Zanpakuto into the ground, then rested both hands atop the hilt.
"Aren't you curious," he said softly, "why we're standing here talking so peacefully right now?"
…Right.
Only then did Yhwach realize what that discordant feeling in his chest had been from the very start.
It was this "mode" of interaction between him and Higashino Shuuichi.
Two men who should be locked in a fight to the death—why had they suddenly stopped to talk at a time like this?
This wasn't Higashino Shuuichi's temperament. And it certainly wasn't Yhwach's.
"Kirchen Lied: Sankt Zwinger (Holy Hymn: Holy Cage)!"
Yhwach was a man of action. Once an idea took shape, he carried it out immediately.
Just like now: he would attack Higashino Shuuichi and prove that they would never be calmly chatting like this.
But the moment he tried—only then did he truly discover the problem.
His body… and the reishi he commanded… in the face of Higashino Shuuichi, were trembling beyond his control. Afraid.
Forget a large-scale technique like Kirchen Lied: Sankt Zwinger (Holy Hymn: Holy Cage)—with his current condition, Yhwach estimated he couldn't even form a single Heilig Pfeil (Holy Arrow) in front of Higashino Shuuichi.
"What… exactly happened to my body?"
Yhwach realized it now.
The problem was in his body itself.
"If I'm not mistaken," Higashino Shuuichi said, "this probably isn't the first time we've met here—in what you call 'the future.'
I know your power. The Almighty.
You can see the future, then change it however you like, forcing everything to develop in the direction you expect.
Normally, the best way to deal with someone like you is this:
First, bait the activation of your ability.
Then use illusion to deceive your eyes.
Then use a one-hit, killing move and seize the fleeting opening to finish you.
Unfortunately, that approach requires too many prerequisites. I can't meet them.
So I could only use the stupid method I came up with~"
What Higashino Shuuichi called the "best solution" was, in truth, the method by which Yhwach died in the original story.
"What method?" Yhwach asked.
Higashino Shuuichi had practically spelled it out. Yhwach could already guess—yet the answer was still too unbelievable.
He wanted to hear it from Higashino Shuuichi's own mouth.
And Higashino Shuuichi didn't disappoint him.
"Simple. Since you can keep watching the future, changing the future, trying to reach the result you want…
Then in those countless futures… I just defeat the countless versions of 'you' who changed the future.
That's all~"
He said it softly, as though he were describing something utterly ordinary. But near the end, he let out a faint sigh.
"Now do you understand why I said my blade is dull… and I'm tired, too?"
Yhwach sucked in a cold breath.
So it really was that outcome—one he could barely even imagine.
Even as he changed the future again and again, Higashino Shuuichi had actually managed to defeat him again and again, forcing him—over and over—to try rewriting the future.
Only to repeat the same cycle, again and again.
This battle between him and Higashino Shuuichi had never been a contest of raw strength from the start.
It was a contest of will and endurance.
Yhwach did not fear such a challenge—because from the beginning, he wasn't truly a "person" at all.
He was unlike the human Quincy.
At his birth, he had been nothing more than an unconscious mass of chaos.
His existence in this world could be said to endure nearly as long as heaven and earth themselves.
But Higashino Shuuichi?
Just an ordinary Shinigami.
From the moment he was born in Soul Society to now—barely three hundred years.
The gap between Yhwach and Higashino Shuuichi was greater than the gap between a Shinigami and a human.
And yet even so… Higashino Shuuichi had still fought him to a standstill?
No—
Yhwach lowered his eyes to his body. This body that trembled in fear merely by facing Higashino Shuuichi told him a fact he did not want to accept, but had to.
Higashino Shuuichi had truly defeated him in every single "small future" he had altered.
To the point that in thousands upon thousands—perhaps billions, perhaps more—of those endless futures, Yhwach's body had developed an ingrained terror of Higashino Shuuichi that it could never overcome.
Yhwach looked to Higashino Shuuichi again, his gaze lingering on the chipped Zanpakuto.
An ordinary attack could never leave such an irreparable notch on a Zanpakuto.
But what if, in a Bankai state, Higashino Shuuichi had fought him in those countless futures again and again without end?
It wasn't only Higashino Shuuichi's body that was exhausted.
It was his soul.
His Zanpakuto.
Yhwach understood it now. In this "world," the reason he hadn't struck Higashino Shuuichi was because of his body.
And the reason Higashino Shuuichi hadn't struck him…
was because Higashino Shuuichi was truly tired—so tired that even lifting his blade felt like labor.
"So… is this the final future?" Yhwach asked at last, a trace of interrogation in his tone.
Higashino Shuuichi returned a faint smile.
"Maybe. But even if it isn't, it doesn't matter.
In the next future you see… it'll still be me."
When the "picture" returned to the Ice Palace of the Wandenreich, Yhwach was still on his throne.
Higashino Shuuichi was down on the palace steps, kneeling on one knee, his Zanpakuto planted point-down into the stone floor.
He had already been close to forcing his way to Yhwach's side.
But the instant Yhwach used Auswählen (Holy Selection) to reclaim his power, that violent surge blasted Higashino Shuuichi back.
"Chichiue-sama—your blade!" Nemu was still in the Ice Palace. With a single glance, she saw it: as Higashino Shuuichi was flung away, the Zanpakuto in his hand was breaking apart into fragments, scattering through the air.
By the time Higashino Shuuichi landed and steadied himself, the entire blade was reduced to less than a third of its original length, shattered and barely holding shape.
"So it really is a stupid method…" Higashino Shuuichi murmured.
Of course he noticed what had happened to his Zanpakuto.
He couldn't not notice.
Because that constant, crushing pressure on his mind had already been bearing down on him even as he flew back.
But Yhwach was no better off.
His body had already been frail, and now—after that endless confrontation with Higashino Shuuichi—it had become a candle in the wind.
"Cough… cough…"
Yhwach collapsed off the throne and tumbled down the steps, rolling all the way to Higashino Shuuichi's feet.
His face aged in an instant. His power turned feeble and hollow.
Yhwach knew it—his grand ambition hadn't even begun, and it might already be ending once more.
If he had another chance to redo everything, perhaps he wouldn't choose to awaken early.
But in this final moment, lying on the floor with his eyes fixed on the ruined Zanpakuto in Higashino Shuuichi's hand, he asked:
"Was it worth it?"
A Zanpakuto destroyed under Bankai… once destroyed, it was destroyed.
Even if Higashino Shuuichi could, like Aizen, still use that power after losing his Zanpakuto, it would inevitably be greatly diminished.
Because Higashino Shuuichi didn't have a Hōgyoku.
What Yhwach didn't know was that Higashino Shuuichi possessed a damaged Hōgyoku.
And even without that damaged Hōgyoku… Higashino Shuuichi would have done it anyway.
"Of course it was worth it," Higashino Shuuichi said quietly. "Your Quincy abilities are just too useful. But if you're alive, you become an obstacle to me using them.
So for me…
A dead Quincy is a good Quincy."
He crouched and leaned in, whispering into Yhwach's ear.
Then Higashino Shuuichi had Nemu step outside and stand guard, and he drove that broken Zanpakuto straight into Yhwach's heart.
Immediately after, he controlled the reishi, making it drive Yhwach's searing blood to wrap around him—letting himself be submerged in it, bathing in that blood.
For Higashino Shuuichi, personally killing Yhwach and removing a future threat was only one reason.
What he wanted most was to use Yhwach's heartblood essence to completely strengthen the Quincy power that belonged to him alone.
For that purpose, let alone crippling his Zanpakuto—before coming here, Higashino Shuuichi had even prepared himself for Nemu's sacrifice.
What he hadn't expected was that the final price would be only this: his Zanpakuto was ruined, and he hadn't even needed to play the trump card of Nemu—his fusion of Shinigami and Hollow power.
In the end, it was because Yhwach panicked and awakened too early.
Compared to the peak he held in the original story, his current power was still far too lacking.
To be honest, Higashino Shuuichi did feel a bit of regret that he hadn't fought Yhwach at full strength.
But he didn't regret his choice.
Because this—this was the value of him being a transmigrator.
If he had transmigrated, only to still end up facing a peak Yhwach in the end… then what was the point of arriving so early in the first place?
//Check out my P@tre0n for 30 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.