Chapter 175: No Contest
The words fell like a verdict, and in the space of a single breath, everything changed.
The azure ocean reached its boiling point almost instantaneously.
Reishi was arranged with precision and compressed into shape at maximum speed. And in the next instant, everything locked together like links in a chain began a collective cascade.
It started from a single command.
Everything within the entire space answered with violent, overwhelming force.
That enormous expanse, and every particle of reishi within it, was divided evenly into five equal portions. Each portion twisted and condensed, forming outlines that looked as solid as living things.
Five dragons, constructed purely from reishi arrangement, stood arrayed around Matsushita Yusuke.
Hado #99: Goryutenmetsu.
According to what records existed on the technique, this was a representative high-tier Hado that pushed reishi application to its furthest limits.
Through combination and construction, it simulated the shape of something living, then used the energy's own reaction, ignition, and interaction to consume and demolish an entire area completely.
Much like Ittō Kasō among the Gisei Hadō, this was a technique designed solely for maximum lethality. After successive rounds of refinement and revision, Goryutenmetsu was eventually classified at number ninety-nine.
The reason was simple.
This was not a technique aimed at a single target. It was a technique aimed at an entire space.
Unohana had already put considerable distance between herself and the ground below, but even so, a faint, unsettled feeling still lingered.
That Matsushita Yusuke could use Hado #99 was not particularly surprising to her. His Kido talent was self-evident. Saying he had nothing to show for it would have been the stranger claim.
What she was actually thinking about was something else.
Why could he construct a Hado at this scale?
The domain covered a range approaching several kilometers, and everything inside it had been fully dismantled and reshaped. Like a toy in the hands of a destructive child, the ground had given way, the trees had been taken apart, everything had fractured and scattered, redirected by Matsushita Yusuke's intent into something completely different.
Unohana had a general sense of what Goryutenmetsu looked like. Looking at the current situation, her expression showed more than a trace of genuine surprise.
This was already several times larger than it was supposed to be.
The five enormous white dragons that had formed were breathtaking in scale.
They moved through the space like prehistoric creatures crossing an open ocean. Their sheer size was something you had to see to process.
Even Zaraki, looking up at what was unfolding above him, went briefly still.
A hundred years before this point, before Unohana had fully developed him into a captain, there was still a visible rawness to him. Edges not yet sharpened.
"You..."
Whatever he had been about to say caught somewhere before it arrived.
Faced with five enormous rolling dragons, Zaraki experienced something for the first time in his career: he genuinely could not find a way in.
In this moment, he had lost any target he could cut toward. That in itself was a mark of how far his instincts still had to develop.
Matsushita Yusuke looked down at him from above.
This was the moment to say something suitably cool. What was the right line?
Brief consideration. Answer found.
He raised one hand and pressed it gently downward.
"You're looking too high."
A deep, rolling rush of air.
All five dragons descended at once.
They rolled and churned, the milky-white heat radiating from every surface dismantling and evaporating everything in its path.
Zaraki, caught at the center, did not even have time to make a sound before the surging light and heat swallowed him whole.
Unohana fell silent.
In the distance, Tosen had only just sensed something was wrong. Pulling back further at that point was already too late.
All he could perceive was a ring of milky-white heat mixed with blazing light expanding outward in every direction. He had just turned to retreat when the sound arrived, rolling like an ocean wave, and caught him squarely, flinging him sideways like he weighed nothing.
At the same time.
In a corner of Seireitei, Sasakibe Chojiro was enjoying a quiet afternoon tea, privately appreciating the rare luxury of uninterrupted rest.
He was looking out the window, turning over how much work was still waiting for him today.
And then a brilliant white flame erupted across the horizon, right before his eyes.
It rose slowly and with complete certainty, layer upon layer weaving together and colliding, until it assembled into the unmistakable shape of a mushroom cloud.
Like a grotesque flower blooming at the edge of the sky, it stopped Sasakibe dead in his tracks.
"..."
What had just happened?
He set down his teacup and held still for several seconds before the sound reached him at last, a low resonance like distant thunder rolling across the air.
A deep, sustained hum.
With both sight and sound now confirming the same thing, Sasakibe was certain what he was perceiving was real.
Something had happened out there.
But that was not the part occupying him.
Wasn't the distance a little extreme?
Even for someone with a lifetime of combat experience, processing the scale of what he was looking at on first instinct was genuinely difficult.
Sasakibe rose to his feet, any remaining interest in his afternoon tea completely gone. His instincts told him clearly: this was not something he could leave alone.
He needed to go and investigate.
The distance involved was significant. But the detonation of an ultimate-tier Kido set across a base range of several dozen kilometers had drawn exactly the kind of attention it was never supposed to draw.
Back in Rukongai.
The high-quality match witnessed only by a handful of familiar faces was approaching its end.
The ground below had evaporated completely, replaced by a vast crater sinking over a hundred meters deep.
Matsushita Yusuke dismissed his Zanpakuto in silence and let out a long, slow breath.
It was over.
Because he could see Unohana below him.
And in her right hand, she was holding a battered, unconscious figure, arms hanging loose, dangling like a piece of cured meat.
Zaraki.
Whatever extraordinary talent he possessed, against this level of sustained devastation, there was simply no way through.
Matsushita Yusuke's strategy had been cleanly executed from start to finish.
Refusing to engage in any physical back-and-forth from the very beginning was equivalent to dismantling Zaraki's warm-up mechanism entirely.
***
Ahhh classic mage vs melee, don't give the mage time...but then again Yusuke would've still won in my opinion, even if zaraki got close, it wouldn't be a clean victory like this, but he would still win. Yusuke has too many "Hax" abilities for this era of zaraki to win. what do you think?