Chapter 084: Shikai: Kongozō
The reiatsu burst.
Light flickered to life around Matsushita Yusuke, flaring and dimming without settling. Unlike any release he had attempted before, the light carried no single color. It was colorless and deep at once, and the presence radiating from it belonged to something outside the range of a normal release.
A quiet sound, almost a murmur, and the blade in his grip began to breathe. The reiatsu inside it pulsed, and for a moment the whole thing dissolved into a soft blur of light.
"Adamantine, split the earth. Illuminate the darkness."
Shikai: Kongozō.
Crack.
A sharp sound, as if the air immediately around him had fractured. For just a moment the space around Matsushita Yusuke looked like broken glass, light catching in the gaps before dissolving.
His right hand closed.
He grabbed hold of the light.
The blinding brightness drew inward, pulling tight toward its own center. Like energy pressing against its containment limit, it compressed until the shape gave way and broke apart.
What it became was a long blade. Heavy-spined, thick, carrying real weight behind the edge. Not savage-looking. Not jagged. Substantial, the kind of blade that meant something when it moved.
The Tang sword silhouette he had spent considerable time designing.
He lifted it and gave it one slow test swing.
The feedback was immediate and clean. It moved like part of his body. The sense of control that returned through his grip was a step above anything he had accessed before, a precision that had no equivalent in the partial release he had been using.
This was Shikai.
The reiatsu flowing through him ran stronger now. Power kept arriving, and alongside it something deeper was organizing itself into coherence, everything this Zanpakuto was making itself known all at once, completely, without withholding anything.
Kijishi stared.
The presence coming off the other side made him uneasy in a way he didn't enjoy. But that reaction was secondary. What actually demanded his attention was the simpler question.
This kid can release his Zanpakuto?
No question about it. This was not a level any Academy student should be able to reach. Even inside the Gotei 13, the number of people who could achieve release didn't crack a hundred.
Still a student? What kind of joke was this?
"Hey. Kid."
Kijishi spoke.
The air of superiority he had walked in with had developed a visible crack.
"Who sent you? Someone put you up to this."
"...?"
Matsushita Yusuke tilted his head, blade at his side, expression openly puzzled.
What was this man talking about?
"Stop playing dumb. Someone like you doesn't come from nowhere. If you can release your Zanpakuto, you've got a name somewhere. Who is it, and what did they give you?"
His mind was running through a list. Faces, names, old grudges, people with the means to act on them. The list was apparently not short.
"Whatever they're paying you." His voice dropped, probing. "I'll double it. Triple it. Walk away right now, call this done, and none of what happened here gets held against you."
The sudden pivot made Matsushita Yusuke raise an eyebrow.
Was this the same person from thirty seconds ago?
Before the thought finished, the familiar notification appeared.
[Quest: Defeat Kijishi Kenpachi (Shikai)]
[Profile: Kijishi is far more calculating than he looks. He has no hesitation when it comes to putting pressure on someone beneath him, but the moment something carries real risk, he recalibrates. He reads the situation and weighs his options. He is at his most dangerous when he is being reasonable. For exactly that reason, he makes an excellent proving ground.]
[Rewards: Reiatsu Level +10, all four base disciplines +3, Zanpakuto Physical +5]
That cleared things up.
So that was why no quest had appeared at the start of the fight.
The trigger had been Shikai. Kijishi needed to see the release before the negotiation instinct kicked in. Without that condition, the whole thing couldn't activate.
Matsushita Yusuke thought it through. For someone who had grown up in the lower districts with no patience for people below a certain threshold of usefulness, this was how Kijishi's version of respect worked. Show him enough power that cooperation becomes the smarter calculation, and he switches modes immediately.
The reward pool was also genuinely solid. No argument there.
And the quest description was specific. The target was Kijishi in Shikai. What came after, if anything, was outside the scope of this.
A small smile crossed his face.
"Honestly? Part of me wants to say yes."
Kijishi's expression shifted into something that read exactly as it looked. Of course. Knew it.
Little brat.
Same as all the rest.
"Then hurry up and surrender. I'll..."
"But what I actually want isn't something you can give me."
Nothing to be done about it. That was what the quest said.
A beat of silence.
"So."
Matsushita Yusuke settled into his stance. He was being more courteous than the situation strictly called for. He announced it first before moving.
"I'm coming at you."
"Wait, wait!"
The words coming out of Kijishi's mouth sounded like a protest.
His hand told a completely different story.
Bawei swept through the air without any announcement. The enormous cleaver it had become sent displaced air rolling across the street, and the deep crimson-violet lightning crackling along the edge discharged into the swing, cutting a thin elongated arc of compressed energy through the air ahead of it.
From a distance it reminded Matsushita Yusuke of something he recognized.
Getsuga Tensho. Same basic structure.
Compressed reiatsu, drawn out through the swing and launched as a cutting wave.
Old trick.
He stepped forward exactly once, and Kongozō rose without a sound.
Where Bawei announced everything it did, Matsushita Yusuke's blade was the opposite. No reiatsu bleeding from the edge. No discharge. No signal of any kind. Just the blade, moving.
From the outer ring, the reaction came before anyone had time to think about it.
He wasn't dodging.
The blade wave rolled toward him and Soifon's voice cut across the street.
"Hey! Idiot!"
She got one more word out before it stopped mattering.
Matsushita Yusuke brought Kongozō down.
The sound it made was clean. One cut, straight through.
The blade wave hit the edge and shattered. No sustained contest, no push and pull where the outcome hung in the balance. The compressed reiatsu broke apart, and the pieces scattered across the ground underfoot.
He stepped directly through them, both hands on the grip, already driving forward into the overhead strike aimed at Kijishi.
The grin on his face was wide and completely unambiguous.
"Hey! Let's see whose blade is harder!"
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