Chapter 068: [Novice Mastery (Technique)]
Matsushita Yusuke spent the first class of the new semester in quiet agony.
When it finally ended, he made an excuse about needing the bathroom and slipped out.
Time to find a quiet corner and properly take stock of the haul.
He ducked into the familiar bathroom. The same one where he had received his Zanpakuto last year, as it happened.
Some kind of cosmic running joke, probably.
Whatever. Stats first.
[Quest complete... Reward acquired]
Every other detail was skipped without a second glance. His full attention narrowed onto a single point.
[Kido: 30]
The moment the number locked in, the notification panel flickered once, and new content spread out below it.
[Kido reaches 30. Technique acquired: Novice Mastery]
[Novice Mastery (Technique)]
[As your understanding of Kido has deepened, your practical command of it has taken a clear step forward. You can now cast all Kido numbered 25 and below without a chant. You have also acquired comprehensive knowledge of all Kido.]
A brief moment of blankness. Then Matsushita Yusuke blinked.
A large volume of information assembled itself from nothing, the way a two-hundred-megabyte download completes on a fast connection. A few heartbeats. Done.
No chant needed. And the complete Kido catalog.
This was incredible.
Kido was, as he had encountered before, a field with a strict knowledge hierarchy. The higher-numbered spells were generally kept behind closed doors, accessible only at captain level.
Why bother with that restriction?
The answer came to him quickly.
Of course.
Anyone with the incantation and enough reiatsu could theoretically cast something like Kurohitsugi. Even the weakest Shinigami alive.
But the operative word was enough reiatsu. And that was almost always the actual bottleneck.
Among spiritual beings, the gap between individuals could reach a scale that defied reasonable description. Reiatsu at its extremes didn't just mean someone was stronger. It changed the fundamental nature of what a being was. If it weren't for the shared faces and common language, the difference between levels would be something like the gap between an ant and an elephant.
Putting that kind of power within reach of the weak was a recipe for chaos.
Even if most people could never generate the reiatsu to actually fire the high-level spells, keeping the knowledge locked away was still a form of order maintenance. It worked on multiple levels at once.
Having worked that out, Matsushita Yusuke's expression shifted into something thoughtful.
Another technique. And another one connected to Kido.
Every technique he had accumulated so far was pointing in the same direction. Stack them together and something was starting to take shape at the edges of his thinking, something he couldn't name precisely yet but could feel was there.
Techniques could be used in combination. That was the whole reason he had been able to build his own custom Kido in the first place.
The whole being greater than the sum of its parts: he had a few parts now. What would happen when they all worked together at once?
That was going to take time to develop properly. Set it aside for now.
His attention swung back to the more immediate point.
The name. [Novice Mastery.]
It sounded modest at a glance.
But having actually felt what it had just done, Matsushita Yusuke understood. This was already something substantial. The range of Kido applications now available to him had expanded considerably.
In plain terms: a power spike. A version update.
The numbers were about to start moving faster.
He couldn't help it. He broke into a grin and made a noise that was entirely too cheerful for a public bathroom.
Even so, in the current moment, this wasn't actually what he was most focused on.
What he was most focused on was the reward waiting behind the blue main quest.
[Rewards: Hogyoku Power (fragment), Kido Mastery, Kido Chant Omission (50%) Technique]
Kido Mastery. Full series chant omission at fifty percent.
No comparison, no sense of scale. He had that now.
Right now, at the basic level, everything up to number twenty-five was already chant-free. Skip past the intermediate level entirely, jump straight to mastery, and what was that even going to look like?
He could barely think about it without the excitement getting out of hand. The Aizen quest was non-negotiable. No way around it.
"Is someone in there?"
"I... don't think so?"
"Then why did I just hear someone in there going heh heh heh?"
"...Is it a ghost?"
Matsushita Yusuke pushed through the door with an expression of profound awkwardness and walked out at speed.
Different location next time. Public spaces had noise ordinances for a reason.
He put his face back together and headed quickly to Aizen's office.
The office had moved from last year. Apparently the employment situation had been difficult recently, with a number of people cycling back into Academy positions, which made space tight. As an elective instructor, Aizen's room assignment was the first thing to get shuffled when logistics demanded it.
Expected, all things considered. Aizen didn't make much of it.
He poured Matsushita Yusuke a cup of hot water and asked, with what sounded like genuine concern:
"You mentioned stomach trouble earlier. Feeling better?"
"Yes, much better. Thank you for asking, Aizen-sensei."
Giggling to yourself in a bathroom stall and getting caught. A story for the ages.
"Good to hear."
Aizen nodded once, took a small sip of his tea, and let a thoughtful quality settle into his expression.
"Matsushita-kun. You mentioned to me before that your Zanpakuto requires combat experience to guide its development toward release. Do you remember telling me that?"
The sudden shift caught him slightly off guard. Matsushita Yusuke looked up and answered honestly.
"As far as I can tell, yes, that's still how it seems to work. Did you have something in mind, Aizen-sensei?"
"To be direct with you: Captain Kijishi contacted me yesterday."
There it is.
Matsushita Yusuke's eyes lit up before he had any chance to control it.
Squad 11. Grimy, chaotic, not a pleasant environment by any standard. And absolutely perfect for grinding Physical-type development. The Physical panel was going to need these people more than anything else available to him right now.
"Are they coming to challenge me again?"
Aizen didn't answer directly. He looked at Matsushita Yusuke with an expression that sat somewhere between a smile and something more measuring.
"You seem eager, Matsushita-kun."
Realizing he had come across as slightly too enthusiastic, Matsushita Yusuke cleared his throat and tried to frame it more reasonably.
"Just a little excited. That's all. I haven't had any clear direction for developing the Zanpakuto recently, so if there's an actual combat opportunity, it seems like the right kind of situation to find what I'm looking for."
Reasonable. Defensible. Solid framing.
Whether any of it had landed, Aizen made a quiet sound and set his cup down.
"They have indeed come to challenge you."
Called it.
"But."
Hm?
"This time, Captain Kijishi says he intends to step in himself."
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