Chapter 240: What Is This, a Daily Challenge?
Matsushita Yusuke squinted slightly and tried to focus.
He wasn't going farsighted. The lighting was just bad.
The text came in clearer after a moment.
[Challenge: Multiple Captain-Level Opponents]
[Overview: At your current combat level, ordinary opponents simply aren't in your weight class anymore. So if you're looking for a path forward that doesn't involve going back to bother Yamamoto, you might want to try a different approach.]
[Note: You may select any number of opponents for a one-versus-many challenge. Progress is calculated based on the quantity and quality of opponents, with detailed breakdowns and reward distribution applied accordingly.]
That was a lot of text.
Annoying to read.
But the complaints got buried pretty quickly under what he was actually reading.
Because this was exactly the solution to the problem he had been sitting with.
No version boss required. Multiple paths to growth available simultaneously. Was that the implication here?
Put more practically: he could pick his own opponents, set his own difficulty, and build challenges from there?
Matsushita Yusuke was suddenly reminded of mixing cocktails.
Cola today, lemon soda tomorrow, a depth charge the day after. Life gets interesting.
He had not expected this game to be this generous with the design options.
Not only had the version updates been ahead of schedule, but now he had a self-designed dungeon feature on top of everything else.
Remarkable. This was almost certainly paid content, if he had to guess.
But he caught the issue before he got too comfortable.
The System's evaluation standards were strict. He knew that from the Yamamoto fights.
If the challenge was something he could roll through with his eyes closed, the result would probably come out looking a lot like the Isshin spar: nothing.
He was going to have to engineer some actual difficulty for himself.
Which brought the next question: how?
Because the problem with group fights was that a pile of weaker opponents was still just a pile of weaker opponents. The math on that had been demonstrated clearly enough in canon. When Aizen showed up at the battle of Fake Karakura Town, he cleared the whole field in about the same time it would take to walk across it. Soifon's nail-clipper technique contributed to his famous reiatsu lecture and not much else.
The gap in reiatsu between fighters didn't just determine who won. It determined whether a fight could even happen.
Matsushita Yusuke had hit the Shinigami ceiling on that stat. At current levels, Soifon could stab him with her Zanpakuto all afternoon and he probably wouldn't notice.
But.
He narrowed his eyes and went quiet for a moment.
Because he had just remembered Ichigo Kurosaki's particular situation.
Theoretically speaking, Ichigo had been sitting at the ceiling of all three worlds from practically the opening chapters. Everyone knew that. And yet he spent a significant portion of early canon trading blows back and forth with Gillian-class Hollows and getting knocked flat by Renji's Zanpakuto.
The reiatsu gap should have meant complete immunity to attacks at that level.
So was he sandbagging?
Not quite.
He thought through it again with the actual plot in mind.
Ichigo had three separate power sources inside him all pulling in different directions. The result was that he could only access the portion that leaked through: a fraction of his Quincy power, nothing more.
So the information sorted itself out.
The reiatsu a person was theoretically capable of using and the reiatsu they were actually putting out were two different things. They could be separated. Controlled.
Cleaner phrasing: sandbagging was legitimate, legal, and fully achievable. As long as he pulled his output down to match his opponent's level, he could have a real fight on his hands.
Matsushita Yusuke stared at nothing for a moment.
He had genuinely never considered deliberately suppressing his own reiatsu defense before.
It was theoretically possible, Ichigo was the proof of concept, and if it didn't work out in practice he could always do what Ichigo did and just shout "what are you even saying" until the moment passed.
That settled the main question. What remained were the specifics.
Which abilities did he actually want to develop further through this method?
Reiatsu was already capped. From a Shinigami standpoint there was nothing left to push there.
But if he applied the suppression logic: could he limit himself to specific Zanpakuto types and use that as the variable? Force a particular ability to carry the load and let that drive the improvement?
Today's challenge: win using only the Elemental-type Zanpakuto.
What was this, a daily challenge?
Everything clicked into place and Matsushita Yusuke felt his vision sharpen.
"Captain Matsushita?"
Isshin's voice pulled him back.
Matsushita Yusuke snapped to the present. When he turned to look at Isshin, his expression had taken on a distinctly interested quality.
He was, in a fairly literal sense, a little excited.
Because right now Isshin Shiba looked to him like a cocktail ingredient.
A walking can of lemon soda.
"Captain Matsushita, are you alright?"
"Huh? Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, don't worry about me. Just remembered something that made me happy."
He reeled himself in and exhaled slowly.
The self-designed challenge mechanic had a lot of potential. But the actual planning was going to take some thought.
These captains, even on the weaker end, all had their own networks and active responsibilities. If too many of them ended up out of commission at once, Yamamoto would notice immediately and the fallout would be significant.
No point agitating the old man into flipping the table.
Gradual. Measured. Work through it slowly.
The mechanic itself was fundamentally about taking resources that had previously been impossible to use and finding a way to use them. Which was, when you thought about it, a core competency. The ability to recycle existing assets efficiently was the mark of a good designer.
He pulled himself back to the present fully.
Isshin was looking at him with the careful expression of someone who had picked up that something was happening but wasn't sure what.
He needed to redirect this quickly. Something to make Isshin drop the thread.
What topic worked for that?
The answer came fast.
He opened his mouth slightly and raised one finger.
"Right, right. Let's get back to what we were talking about before. Is there anyone Captain Isshin has his eye on at the moment?"