Chapter 172: Crank It Up
The compressed reiatsu ignited in an instant, and the heat and light that followed punched straight into the sky.
Tosen Kaname, standing at a distance, had been about to move closer for a better read on the situation. He became, in the most literal sense of the word, collateral damage.
The sudden eruption, like a point-blank detonation, sent a shockwave rolling outward with enormous force. It caught him squarely, flipped him off his feet, and left him rolling across the ground before he could drag himself upright.
What on earth was going on over there?!
They had just been exchanging words. A handful of sentences at most. How did it go straight from handshake to that?
And with absolutely nothing held back.
He couldn't see. But reading from reiatsu alone, Tosen could put together a rough picture.
For nearly a mile in every direction from the point of impact, the ground had become something close to an inferno.
Searing heat. Scorched earth. Everything dissolving.
Sand, rock, tree, and scrub brush — all of it ignited at once. Every detail of the landscape reduced to ash in the single instant the blaze appeared.
Between sky and ground, only the warm red of still-burning embers remained, and the grey of everything already consumed.
Nothing else beyond that.
No.
Actually, there was one more color.
Unohana Retsu's figure was hovering several hundred meters above the ground.
She looked down at the landscape below, brows drawn together in an expression of moderate annoyance.
The reason was simple.
More than half of her haori had been scorched through.
She had not been the primary target. She had reacted immediately. But Gisei Hadō, that category of forbidden Kido whose power came with a personal cost, was by its nature something that did not behave like ordinary techniques. Its very existence was a kind of abnormality.
Going straight to that level of attack on the opening move. What a reckless thing to do.
But.
Good.
In fact, that was exactly how it should be.
Kill him or be killed. What Unohana had come to see was something closer to that essential instinct, not a careful exchange of probing strikes.
The Kenpachi succession meant more to her than anything else. This was the one territory she had never conceded to anyone, the one thing that even the Captain-Commander had never seen fit to weigh in on.
It was not simply a delegation of authority. It was a form of respect. And in this moment, the demon of the sword who had been waiting a thousand years for exactly this...
She gave the opening the highest praise she had.
"Now. Show me what you're actually made of."
That was what the crazy old woman presiding from the air had to say about it.
Not that either of the two people actually fighting had any attention left for her.
Zaraki Kenpachi's condition was, to put it plainly, a mess.
Taking a direct hit from Ittō Kasō had left significant burn damage across most of his body. Skin and flesh had peeled away in patches, leaving an exposed, raw outline that looked nothing short of brutal.
And yet this appeared to have had almost no effect on Zaraki's movement. If anything, it finally produced the first genuinely animated expression he had shown all morning. His voice climbed with something that sounded almost like enthusiasm.
"Ha! Wouldn't have guessed it, looking at you. But you really don't hold back, do you."
Facing Zaraki's rising energy, Matsushita Yusuke's own response was considerably more composed.
Opening with everything available was part of the only approach that made sense in a fight like this. It was also what he had already settled on during the walk over.
Just how strong was Zaraki at this particular stage?
Honestly, he didn't have a clean read on that.
Because going by the source material, this person's strength had never really been trained into him in any conventional sense.
Yamamoto's lesson on holding a sword with both hands. Unohana's sessions pushing him to the edge of death in the dark. Yachiru finally awakening his Zanpakuto release. All of those things, at their core, were capacities he already had, or had always known somewhere underneath, without ever learning them through deliberate effort.
Put plainly: this was Soul Society's home-grown talent freak.
On the exact same tier as Ichigo.
And given that, in the source material, Zaraki had needed to actively suppress his own reiatsu just to enjoy a fight at all, there was a strong chance he was not yet operating at full depth.
So: full pressure from the start. No space, no room to settle.
Ittō Kasō had been the opening line. Nothing more than an opening declaration. The beginning of the assault, not the end of it.
"I'm on a schedule. Let's finish this quickly."
Bankai. Kido-type Release. Ichion Enpo.
With the motion of both hands spreading wide, the Zanpakuto in Matsushita Yusuke's grip dissolved in an instant, shattering outward into drifting fragments that scattered across the air.
They did not disappear. Carried on the faintest breath of wind, they spread in every direction, blooming outward like dandelion seeds releasing.
A visible ring of light expanded steadily from his position. An azure ocean spread across the ground with Matsushita Yusuke at its center, and Zaraki Kenpachi was completely inside it.
"..."
Unohana, watching from above, had the good sense to continue putting distance between herself and whatever came next.
But the further she pulled back, the more peculiar her expression became.
He had gotten stronger again?
She had experienced this ability firsthand during their private sessions. Having gone through it herself, she had a direct sense of what it was.
A Kido-type Zanpakuto that imposed a defined domain and operated within a bounded range.
In principle: stay outside the domain, avoid the range, sidestep the unfavorable conditions.
In principle, that was correct.
But the reality appeared to be something else entirely.
The range of Matsushita Yusuke's ability had expanded noticeably from what she remembered. A brief comparison was enough to give Unohana her answer.
Roughly one and a half times larger than before. How had he managed that?
Bankai could be developed further through training, but improvement at this scale was genuinely surprising. And if its owner could hear her assessment, he would probably feel at least a little smug about it.
Growth in Zanpakuto stats was the most direct form of advancement available, especially after reaching Bankai. Every single point of progress translated into layered reinforcement across multiple dimensions.
Domain range. Total volume of control. Even specific enhancements to how the power could be applied offensively.
All of it together was the foundation Matsushita Yusuke was most confident in.
His gaze flickered briefly, then settled on Zaraki.
"..."
At this level of reishi control, the elaborate preparation that Kido normally required was largely unnecessary. He had moved well past the need for any of that.
His right hand closed.
Binding force materialized immediately. Four Bakudo layered together into a single composite surge and erupted outward, locking Zaraki in place.
This was reishi manipulation at its furthest reach. Reach for it, and it was there.
Of course.
There was an even more explosive use for it.
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