BAD NEWS- the og author DROPPED this fic.....I'm just joking, look at ur little heart skipping a beat, but in all seriousness there is "bad" news, the og author for the past month has only been updating one chapter a day, and I've always been uploading 2chaps a day. if u do the math u see the problem. so I'll be updating less, eventually I'll be uploading 1 chap a day, but for now its, 1 chap a day, then 2 chap day, then 1, then 2....u get it.
Chapter 237: Solo Leveling
Matsushita Yusuke left Squad 1's headquarters and headed straight back to his own territory.
It was closing in on two in the morning.
By any reasonable standard he should have been winding down, cleaning up, and getting to sleep. Tonight was a little different, though.
He had loot to count.
As previously established: two back-to-back fights, two sets of potential rewards. For Matsushita Yusuke, this was a windfall in the most literal sense of the word.
During the day he had been dealing with people, managing the fallout, handling everything that needed handling. No time to touch any of this.
Now his hands were free. There was no longer any good reason to keep ignoring it.
Before that, though.
Matsushita Yusuke crouched down by the bed, thought for a moment, then began feeling around underneath it.
A moment later he came back up grinning, a full bottle of wine in hand.
Survived Soifon's prohibition sweep. Kept hidden for exactly this kind of occasion. Tonight it earned its keep.
No one to share it with, technically.
Matsushita Yusuke found he didn't mind that at all.
Solo run. Solo rewards.
He poured himself a full glass, took a small sip, and exhaled through his nose.
He had been vaguely prepared to sit here feeling sentimental about the decades and everything that had gone into them. But thinking about it more carefully, there wasn't much point. Skip the preamble.
Let's get to the good part. I'm ready.
Without further ceremony, he started going through the results.
First: the initial fight with Yamamoto.
[Challenge: Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni (Staged)]
[Overview: You walk a difficult road, thorned on every side...]
He skipped past the flavor text and went straight to the number.
[Completion: 60%]
He looked at the rating and rubbed his chin.
A little low. But also not surprising when he thought it through.
From a purely logical standpoint, the first fight had produced something like a standoff. The gap between them was real, and all Matsushita Yusuke had really accomplished was giving Yamamoto a proper stress test. Forced the old man to feel something that might generously be called urgency.
Sixty percent felt about right for that. Squeaked past the pass mark, nothing more.
Comparable to a dungeon run where you blow through the first three mini-bosses clean, then hit the final boss at the end and successfully get his health bar to show up on screen. A solid first clear attempt. Not exactly a legendary performance.
Better than nothing, worse than winning.
Matsushita Yusuke pressed his lips together, expression going mildly resigned.
Not exactly a satisfying result. But it was the appetizer, so he'd live with it.
Let's see what it actually paid out.
[Rewards: Zanjutsu +10, Hakuda +10, Hoho +10, Kido +5]
He stared at the rewards, then started scratching his head.
He lined up the before-upgrade panels in his head and his expression turned a little complicated.
[Reiatsu Level: 79] (current cap: 95)
[Zanjutsu: 74] [Hakuda: 69] [Hoho: 80] [Kido: 93] (Composite: 100)
Genuine growth across the board. That much was real. But taken together, the honest assessment was that none of it moved the needle where it actually needed to move.
Because he had run enough high-end fights by now to understand the difference between strong and genuinely exceptional.
The gap was roughly this: scattered competence versus total mastery across all four disciplines.
He was currently the former.
His four stats were each individually impressive enough to hold their own in most situations. But the moment you put them up against Yamamoto, even "not quite enough" was being generous. The disparity went well past what those numbers could bridge.
To actually compete at that level, he needed at least one stat that could go the full distance.
A rough data target to put to that idea:
At least one ability needs to reach 100.
Sword combat, close-quarters fighting, footwork, Kido filling the gaps. Thinking through it that way, one round of sparring with Yamamoto had not gotten him anywhere close to the threshold for standing level with the old man.
Pressure. Genuine pressure.
Matsushita Yusuke sat with that thought for a moment, then shifted his attention to what came after. Because the rewards weren't finished.
[Rewards: Physical Zanpakuto +5, Rule Zanpakuto +10]
Still growth. Still meaningful. Just not decisive.
Combined totals after the increases: Physical at 87, Rule at 86.
Both were approaching the edge of another threshold. A bit more refinement and the right conditions should appear for a new form, the same way they had for the Kido-type. As a side note, Matsushita Yusuke had worked out that the Kido-type's transformation had come naturally at 90. That gave a rough benchmark for what the others would need.
Four Zanpakuto still with substantial room to grow.
He swirled his wine glass slowly and took a broader look at his panel, exhaling once.
No decisive technique reward this time. No single thing that changed the picture overnight.
What he had gotten instead was accumulation. Quiet, steady, building-toward-something accumulation.
Whether it was Zanpakuto growth or raw stat improvement, the actual ceiling still had a long way to go.
So probably fair to say: nowhere near the point where everything compressed so far finally releases at once.
Matsushita Yusuke accepted the conclusion without particular anxiety.
Whatever. Next reward. Let's go.
He looked ahead, and his expression shifted from relaxed to focused.
The reason was simple.
He hadn't been expecting much from the first reward. He hadn't won that fight. Best comparison: grinding every angle you had, getting the opponent into kill range, then taking a reversal from a perfectly-timed counter you never saw coming. Outplayed, fair and square.
Because he had gone in with that expectation, what he actually got felt reasonable. Predictable, even.
The second reward was a different situation entirely.
On the optimistic reading: Yamamoto had verbally acknowledged the outcome. He had apologized.
On the practical reading: it was the first time Matsushita Yusuke had controlled a fight with Yamamoto from start to finish and come out on top.
Friendly match in format, maybe.
But since when did a solo queue win not count as a win?
He looked at the second summary panel with genuine anticipation.
[Challenge: Yamamoto Genryusai Shigekuni (Staged)]
[Overview: You walk a difficult road, thorned on every side...]
Skip the text. Straight to the number.
[Completion: 80%]
Matsushita Yusuke's fist came down hard.
Eighty percent.
Sixty had been enough for a solid base reward. Eighty was a completely different bracket. The rewards from a completion rate like this were going to be something else.
He was already grinning as he looked at what came next.
What he found was a single, short line.
[Reward: Reiatsu Level +5. Reiatsu has reached its absolute peak.]
Just...
That's it?
For a brief second Matsushita Yusuke just stared at it blankly.
But the confusion didn't last. Because the moment he actually thought it through, the wrongness in his initial reaction became obvious.
Simple reward? Yes. Just the one line. Technically true.
But was the actual content thin?
Absolutely not.
Because as he had noted before: past a certain point, even the smallest advancement became genuinely difficult. He had spent decades building Squad 11, developing people, completing objectives, accumulating every resource he could, just to push things this far.
The sixty percent fight had already delivered meaningful growth. The eighty percent result had done something else: it had broken through the existing ceiling entirely. Matsushita Yusuke had stepped, for the first time, into what could legitimately be called peak territory.
Narrowly speaking, his reiatsu was the only stat that could currently call itself maxed.
But turn it around and look at it differently.
Aizen was the textbook case of someone who ran maxed reiatsu and Kido support. And nobody would argue he wasn't a problem.
Right now, on reiatsu alone, Matsushita Yusuke was standing on exactly the same level as Aizen.
That landed.
Just that. Nothing else to think about for a moment.
He was in the same tier as that guy. Matsushita Yusuke could not stop the slightly goofy grin from appearing.
Of course, Aizen was a special case and couldn't be used as a general benchmark, and in the original story the Hogyoku had broken his cap entirely on top of everything else.
But did that mean Yusuke couldn't break his own?
He didn't see why not. Just a matter of timing.
He set that thread aside for later.
What he wanted to think about right now was what the raw reiatsu increase actually unlocked. Concretely.
First answer came quickly.
Absolute defense.
Counterintuitive, but the logic was solid. This was exactly Aizen's argument from the original story. Soifon bouncing around with her two-hit kill needle, convinced she could finish anyone with a couple of well-placed stings. Then Aizen caught her, stood there looking interested rather than threatened, and explained the core principle from a researcher's standpoint.
Without sufficient reiatsu, breaking through someone's defense is difficult. End of discussion.
Soifon was probably the most effective demonstration of what that principle felt like from the wrong end.
And now, with peak reiatsu, the same principle applied in Matsushita Yusuke's favor. Short of someone operating at the same level, most opponents were going to run face-first into a wall they couldn't move.
Sounds like it only helps against weaker opponents?
He thought further.
The more interesting angle was the interaction between reiatsu and the Kido-type Zanpakuto.
Ichion Enpo's entire structure depended on Matsushita Yusuke's reiatsu as the scaffolding it built on. When he was younger, the domain could cover a range of maybe ten or so kilometers. More recently, he could encompass an eighth of the Seireitei without much effort if he chose to.
That was already a frightening scale.
But it wasn't his ceiling. Because with the total reiatsu now fully peaked, the strength and range of the ability could push to places they simply couldn't reach before.
Ichion Enpo at peak reiatsu could now be driven to its actual limit.
And then there was the other thing.
If the Kido-type Zanpakuto hit 100, there would almost certainly be another shift on top of that.
Thinking about it, he found himself genuinely curious about what that would look like.
Every branch, every ability, felt like it was slowly unwrapping itself over time. The process moved at its own pace, but the direction was always the same, and it was always forward.
He paused to look at his updated panel properly.
[Reiatsu Level: 100] (Shinigami ceiling: 100)
[Zanjutsu: 84] [Hakuda: 79] [Hoho: 90] [Kido: 98] (Composite: 100)
[Overall Assessment: Top-Tier Captain Level]
Sitting with that for a moment.
He had not expected reiatsu to be the first thing to max out.
Kido was close behind: 98 was right on the edge, and pushing through to 100 from there was a matter of time rather than possibility.
One small concern surfaced. With this stat distribution, wasn't he starting to overlap with Aizen's profile?
Then again, his Zanpakuto was not an auxiliary type. He had no output ceiling problem to worry about. Nothing to be anxious about there.
He moved on to the Zanpakuto breakdown, still in a good mood.
[Zanpakuto Ability Panel]
[Physical: 87]
[Elemental: 79]
[Kido: 96]
[Biological: 80]
[Rule: 86]
Across the board: solid growth.
And the future was looking good.
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