Chapter 80: What Kind of King Do You Say You Want to Be?
Even with Mayuri Kurotsuchi's horrible attitude, Nemu's parting words completely relieved Ichigo's worries.
"Kuchiki, Hinamori, and the others have been taken somewhere safe by me."
Hearing that, a sliver of strength seemed to crawl back into Ichigo's exhausted body. He raised the black bow in his hand, aimed it straight at Arturo, and forced himself into a stance that screamed desperation.
"Who are you?" Arturo stared at him and asked suddenly.
"Ichigo Kurosaki, first year student at the Spirit Arts Academy."
"…"
Ichigo's blunt answer made Arturo narrow his eyes.
"So you are not a Captain. You are not even a proper shinigami yet. Is that it?"
"What's wrong with that?" Ichigo shot back. "You think I'm not qualified to fight you?"
Arturo ignored him and glanced toward Orihime instead.
"If that is true for you, then this woman with mixed spiritual pressure is even less worth mentioning."
"…What are you trying to say?"
Sweat and blood kept sliding down Ichigo's face. His expression hardened, and a bad feeling crawled up his spine.
This enemy's reiatsu was at least three times his. There was no doubt. He was an unprecedented monster.
But the part that felt wrong was his attitude.
Someone rumored to have evolved from an advanced Menos Grande should have crushed them already, yet he was talking like he was weighing them, measuring them, deciding something.
"This enemy's reiatsu is at least three times yours," Komamura's deep voice reached Orihime through the wooden helmet, and she could practically see the grim look behind it. "He is without question a terrifying opponent. Inoue, be careful."
"Mhm!" Orihime answered quickly.
"The one who needs to be careful is me."
Arturo lowered his altitude slightly and stopped above the massive crater that was almost a lake of magma. His cold, brass like eyes swept between Ichigo and Orihime.
"One of you clearly has Captain level reiatsu, yet holds no proper rank."
"The other is so strange that it is hard to say whether she is human or shinigami."
"Your spiritual pressure reactions are unstable. Your condition after battle is poor."
"Normally, the moment you sensed my reiatsu, you should have run as far as possible."
"Yet you came. And you are fearless."
He paused, then continued in the same flat tone.
"Is it reinforcements on the way that give you courage, or conviction to face death?"
"Perhaps."
"But I trust my instincts and experience more."
A strange sound split the air. Arturo vanished.
Not only his body. Even his reiatsu could not be sensed.
So when he reappeared, Orihime did not react in time.
"Inoue!"
Ichigo moved on instinct, but he was too late.
Arturo was less than two meters from Orihime, crouched low. His Zanpakuto traced a semicircle of spiritual light through the air.
His posture was elegant, like a European court swordsman in motion. Every movement was coordinated to the limit, blending beauty and efficiency so perfectly it felt unreal.
Shing.
The sword fell.
Fresh blood splashed across Orihime's vision, painting everything red.
It was not her blood.
It belonged to Komamura.
"Owooooh!"
Komamura stepped in at the last instant and took the strike for her. His helmet split, and a savage wound ran from the edge of his eye socket down toward his shoulder blade.
The injured Komamura roared, the sound like the wild beast everyone saw him as, and he advanced instead of retreating. He swung his blade hard, trying to cleave the enemy in front of him.
Bang.
Arturo sidestepped with an expressionless calm. Komamura's sword pressure shattered the ground, carving a trench nearly ten meters long.
Then Arturo stepped onto the back of the blade, pinning it down and preventing Komamura from pulling it back.
Using that leverage, he sprang upward, spun, and snapped a horizontal kick straight into Komamura's face.
"Ugh!"
The impact was visible. The air itself seemed to explode.
Komamura was launched by an enemy half his size, thrown hundreds of meters away, bouncing across the ground like a skipping stone.
From where they stood, they could not see him anymore.
They could only see dust waves rising in the distance.
"Komamura san?!" Orihime cried out.
"Do you still have time to worry about others?" Arturo asked coldly.
Clang.
An orange barrier erupted in front of Orihime. Arturo's pupils tightened slightly.
The Undying King, an existence with destructive power like countless Zanpakuto, could not break a mere barrier.
"Is this the same nature as the attack that made me feel danger earlier?" Arturo's voice sharpened. "Then dealing with you first was the correct choice."
That single line made Orihime's stomach twist.
Because he saw her as the threat.
And because she failed to sense him.
Captain Komamura had been wounded because he protected her.
Precisely because of that, she could not fall here.
"I absolutely cannot fall here. Kotengokumon!"
She swung the oversized blade, so mismatched with her delicate frame.
The triangular barrier compressed inward, matching the blade's shape, turning into a thin curved edge that pushed forward like a razor.
Arturo had anticipated it and dodged.
That was the moment Ichigo's support arrived.
"Getsuga Tenshō!"
The Getsuga carried a dense surge of reiatsu, pressing Arturo and trying to force him away from Orihime.
Arturo answered immediately with a Cero.
The white blast was scorching, and it carried a murky, ominous weight. It was not holy. It was not beautiful.
It felt like a declaration of ending, stripping everything away.
The collision of the two torrents locked Ichigo outside the exchange, sealing him out.
Arturo seized the opening and pressed Orihime relentlessly.
Whatever happened two thousand years ago had made him wary of women like this. Fragile on the surface, yet hiding something that could wound even him.
He had to eliminate her immediately.
For that, he was willing to expose his back to other opponents.
After all, even if that other strange opponent was equal to the Yamamoto Genryusai of the past, it still could not kill him.
"What?!"
The battle unfolded exactly as Arturo expected.
Ichigo felt he had put everything into the strike, yet his blade only sliced open a cloak.
Beneath it was a layer of black restraining garments.
A seal made by Central 46.
Its function was simple.
Resilience. Extreme resilience.
Combined with other Bakudo seals, it ensured the prisoner could not break free by brute strength or reiatsu, allowing him to be contained within Muken.
Central 46 had never imagined anyone would release Arturo willingly.
Now that same garment was being used as armor.
It blocked the strike from behind.
But only ordinary slashes.
If it were Orihime's Kotengokumon, no matter how tough that straitjacket was, it would be meaningless.
From that perspective alone, eliminating Orihime first was absolutely necessary.
Ping.
Arturo parried the greatsword and angled his blade straight toward Orihime's heart.
His swordsmanship was too strong.
The offense and defense had lasted only a few dozen seconds, yet Orihime had lived on the edge of death in every heartbeat.
"Shiten Kōshun. I reject!"
At the critical moment, she released the same move that had defeated Tosen.
The greatsword glowed, repelling everything that was not itself.
"?!"
Arturo felt an invisible force shove him back, and the lethality of his thrust turned against him through that same force.
Without a word, he condensed a Cero in his hand and detonated it instantly.
Boom.
It was like a missile strike.
Hundreds of meters in every direction were blown apart. Flames devoured everything.
"Damn it!" Ichigo shouted.
"Uwah!" Orihime cried out.
The shockwave sent them flying, their bodies tumbling helplessly through the air.
Arturo remained unaffected. He rose like a phoenix, wrapped in dense reiatsu.
"Bankai. Kokujō Tengen Myōō!"
A mountain like armored warrior erupted from the ground, trying to intercept Arturo as he rushed straight for Orihime.
"The barking of a defeated dog," Arturo said.
He did not slow down. He met it head on.
His sword was laughably small compared to the giant warrior's blade. To an outsider, it looked like a moth rushing into flame, a bird throwing itself against a swinging edge.
Yet the result was the opposite.
A deafening clang. A blinding flash of reiatsu.
The armored warrior's sword was thrown high. Its massive body lifted off the ground and toppled backward like a sack, crushing streets and roadways beneath it.
With no obstacle left, Arturo continued his assault on Orihime.
Orihime fought desperately, but after a single exchange she was forced into a disadvantage.
Arturo raised his blade to decapitate her in one strike.
And a familiar crimson streak tore through the air.
It wrapped around Orihime's waist several times and yanked her away, dragging her out of the killing line. Arturo's certain strike cut only empty air.
Arturo looked down coldly.
Ichigo stood on the ground, chain extended.
He had used the chained nature of his weapon deliberately, just like when he once pulled someone out of the Garganta during his first Shikai.
This time, he pulled Orihime back.
Arturo said nothing.
He fired Cero after Cero, bombarding them without hesitation.
In less than ten seconds, the terrain was transformed.
Even the Fifth Division training grounds were crushed into rubble.
Ichigo and Orihime knelt on the ground, unable to rise, covered in dust and abrasions, disheveled beyond recognition.
Logically, with Orihime's Santen Kesshun, it should not have ended like this.
But only they knew what they had just endured.
"It was one thing to force an opening by detonating a Cero earlier," Orihime said through ragged breath, "but the Cero you fire can also curve?"
It was not just curving them.
He fired into the ground and detonated blasts beneath their feet. Some Cero even worked together, cunning like living creatures.
Santen Kesshun alone could not keep up.
If Orihime had not adjusted after several losses and switched to Shiten Kōshun at the right moments, offsetting the worst of the instant damage, they would already be unconscious.
"This is really troublesome," Ichigo murmured, voicing what Orihime could not say aloud.
Arturo had not revealed this earlier.
He looked determined to kill, yet he held back techniques until he judged them most lethal.
That meant even without strange Kidō style tricks, he could keep catching people off guard with pure combat sense.
But the most deadly thing was not that.
It was his intent.
"Do not think about recovering," Arturo said as his voice cut through the smoke. "And do not think I will fail to notice you have methods of recovery, and try to cooperate to stall for time."
He flickered again.
Ichigo's pupils contracted. That movement again.
Not only was it terrifyingly fast, he could erase his reiatsu completely during the shift.
It was almost like Takeru's invisibility technique.
Wait.
"How do you know Orihime and I can heal?" Ichigo shouted. "Have you been watching from the shadows this whole time?!"
"Watching?" Arturo sneered.
"After fighting this long, your condition is miserable, soaked in blood and sweat, yet you have no real wounds."
"Is that not obvious?"
"I must praise your abilities. Comprehensive. Annoyingly so."
"If you were at your peak, you might cause me trouble."
"But I will not give you that opportunity."
"I will not let you hinder my second battle with Yamamoto Genryusai."
"Kill you, then kill him."
"Then bury all of Soul Society and seize all of its spiritual power."
"And Hueco Mundo, and the Human World. None of them should exist."
"Kill all worlds. Seize all spiritual power."
"In the chaos of my return, I will devour everything, accomplishing what the first Hollow failed to do."
"Then I will surpass him. I will surpass the Soul King you revere."
Ichigo and Orihime's expressions changed.
They had expected a monster. They had not expected a world ending appetite.
Killing enemies and stealing their power was one thing.
Killing worlds and consuming the spiritual particles of entire realms was insanity.
"Come," Arturo declared. "Offer your power and your heads to the one who will be eternal, supreme."
"The Undying King."
He activated Sonido and appeared before them instantly, blade falling, their shocked faces reflected in the steel.
Only shocked.
No fear. No panic.
Because in their sight, a figure appeared like a ghost even to trained eyes.
Bright silver armor. A dark cloak snapping in the wind.
Eyes glowing a dazzling blue, like a sun no one should stare at.
Boom.
A suppressed reiatsu slammed into Arturo's back like a heavy hammer, filled with anger and violence. Arturo's instincts screamed, and he shifted his move mid strike.
His gleaming blade snapped toward the attacker's throat.
But compared to Arturo, whose name carried the meaning of a silver king, the one who looked even more like a knight, Takeru, dropped his center of gravity smoothly.
Not to dodge.
To drive power.
Arturo's hurried slash missed, leaving a brief opening.
Takeru had been waiting for it.
His clenched fist flared like an aurora as it hammered into Arturo's face.
Only Flash.
"You said," Takeru's voice was low and cold, "what kind of king do you want to be?"
The fist blazed like a meteor, reflected in Ichigo's eyes, in Orihime's eyes, and in Arturo's widening stare.
Bang.
Arturo's entire face vanished into light.
Then his body was launched. Limbs flailing, flight path invisible, speed violent enough to make it feel like a bullet.
He flew at least two or three kilometers before crashing out of sight.
"Ichigo. Orihime."
A black cat ran up quickly.
"Yoruichi san." Orihime's eyes trembled, and her voice broke with relief. "And Takeru, you came."
She looked like she might cry.
It was not just surviving. It was being pulled back from the edge by people who came for her.
"Takeru," Ichigo said from the ground, complaining out of habit, yet smiling like he already knew the answer. "You're too slow."
"I hid for a bit and watched his fighting style," Takeru replied, gaze fixed on the distant direction Arturo had been sent flying.
Then his eyes sharpened.
"More importantly, do you have any strength left?"
"I'm basically at my limit." Ichigo hesitated. "I was thinking about letting that guy take over the fight, but if I do…"
He stopped.
Even if he got along with Hollow White, it was still Hollow power. If he ran out completely and handed over his body, he would Hollowfy.
That was something Ichigo did not want anyone to see.
"Ichigo," Orihime said quickly, voice bright again now that her companions were here. "Let me restore you. My Sōten Kisshun isn't great for reiatsu recovery, but it's very effective for physical recovery. If your injuries and fatigue are gone, your stamina will come back."
Takeru nodded once.
"Do it. Help Brother Kurosaki recover as fast as possible."
"Even if it ends up not being necessary, it's still insurance."
As he spoke, Takeru felt Arturo's reiatsu approaching again.
Without another word, he moved to meet him.
Orihime immediately focused, activating her healing on Ichigo.
"Can Takeru handle him alone?" Ichigo asked, staring at the battlefield that was opening again.
"I know what you're worried about." Yoruichi squatted nearby, speaking in a cat like tone. "Relax. I lent him all my spiritual power."
"And for some reason, he beat Kenpachi again on the way here, so he seems to be in even better shape."
"Five minutes." Yoruichi's eyes narrowed. "No, three. If you can hold on for three minutes, you'll recover enough strength to move."
"Even if it's not enough, the others should be arriving soon."
"Once everyone links up, we can definitely seal that guy again."
"Seal him?" Ichigo grinned through the pain. "I don't know why, but I feel like Takeru made me recover because he wants to kill him."
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