Chapter 262: Quincy Power
[Achievement reward obtained...]
[You have gained the aptitude and ability to create and develop a Quincy reishi panel.]
That was the full extent of this round's reward.
Matsushita Yusuke would be lying if he said his first reaction wasn't mild surprise.
In his experience, achievement rewards were in a category of their own. The payouts were consistently substantial in ways that ordinary quest completions couldn't match. Skills, techniques, things that opened entirely new directions.
What had appeared now was something he had, on some level, anticipated. But the actual result was completely beyond what he had expected.
Not disappointing. The opposite, in fact.
Matsushita Yusuke was genuinely, unreservedly excited. More than he had been in a while.
He had been sitting with the question of how to unlock a Quincy panel for years. The opening had been here the whole time.
Everyone who knew the Bleach setting understood one thing: pure bloodline in this universe was generally not what you wanted. The rule of thumb was straightforward. The more mixed, the more likely to produce something that broke all the charts.
Case in point: Ichigo Kurosaki.
So after getting the Shinigami and Hollow sides of things under control, the natural next step was developing a Quincy panel to go alongside them. In theory, at least. In practice, it was the kind of thing that had always felt just barely out of reach. Years of searching for an angle, never finding one that stuck, and eventually letting the thought drift.
He had not expected a reward to be the thing that brought it back.
A light at the end of a long tunnel. That was the feeling.
Alright. Time to look at this properly.
Matsushita Yusuke extended his attention and pulled up the panel.
There, behind the familiar Shinigami and Hollow entries, sat a new one.
A third account, ready to go.
[Quincy Level: 01]
[Reishi Control: 0] [Combat Techniques: 0] [Blut: 0]
[Quincy Level 30 unlocks advanced techniques including Quincy: Letzt Stil and related high-tier applications]
[Quincy Level 60 unlocks Vollstandig and access to high-tier combat states]
[Quincy Level 100 fully integrates the Quincy system into the Shinigami framework]
The Quincy panel was meaningfully different from the Hollow one. Matsushita Yusuke's first read through it took a moment to process before things clicked into place.
The Level probably corresponds to something like a reiatsu baseline...
Not surprising. The Hollow side had started from zero too, and he had simply climbed it from there. Same starting point.
The three sub-categories underneath, though, needed a bit more thought.
[Reishi Control]
He worked through it.
This was almost certainly the Quincy's fundamental combat mechanic: drawing in external reishi and shaping it for use. The spirit weapons, the Heilig Pfeil. All of it was reishi gathering given a usable form.
At the higher end, something like Sklaverei, which didn't just gather ambient reishi but actively dismantled the surrounding environment and converted everything into usable material. A genuinely impressive way to operate.
Yhwach producing a lightsaber with a casual wave in the original story was a reasonable demonstration of where that could go.
[Combat Techniques]
Easier to understand. The obvious reference point was Hirenkyaku, the Quincy's equivalent of shunpo or Sonido.
Same category of movement ability, but the Quincy framework always had its own specific tricks inside it. Grouping everything under "combat techniques" was a broad label that covered a lot without being misleading.
[Blut]
This one was exactly what it said.
A technique that ran through Quincy history from beginning to end. In terms of function, it occupied roughly the same position for Quincies that Kido did for Shinigami: something every genuine practitioner learned, studied, and was expected to master.
By channeling reishi into the body through blood circulation, Blut could either activate the body's combat capacities or reinforce physical defense, depending on which version was used.
The Thousand-Year Blood War had a memorable demonstration. Yhwach trying to drive a spirit blade through Ichigo's neck and simply not being able to, despite everything he was bringing to bear. That had been Blut activating unconsciously, without any deliberate intention behind it. If Ichigo had actually trained that ability with intent, his Quincy capabilities alone would have put him in a tier of his own.
A bit of a tangent.
The point was: Blut's usage rate and intensity, across the full range of the source material, made clear it occupied its own distinct domain.
And behind all three sub-categories, the progression notes sat like a fixed point in the middle of everything.
Because the moment Matsushita Yusuke read those lines clearly, something settled.
This was it.
Opening the Quincy side wasn't just about having another panel to fill in. The deeper purpose had always been finding the merge point.
Like Ichigo Kurosaki. Or like what Masaki was living through right now.
Three separate power sources, meaningfully different from each other, but sharing a common root. Once those three could be brought together at comparable levels, the resulting output wouldn't be additive. It would be something else.
Don't believe it?
Look at the protagonist next door. He had brute-forced his way through the entire story on exactly that principle.
Matsushita Yusuke let the excitement settle and collected himself.
This reward was genuinely historic. The kind of result that changed the shape of what was possible. The only difference from other major rewards was that he couldn't put a number on it yet, couldn't translate it directly into a stat figure. That was fine. There was time. Plenty of it, before the main story started properly. More than enough to build up the Quincy side before things got complicated.
One long-standing question answered and put to rest. One major reward collected.
What else still needed doing?
He looked out toward the figures in the distance: Urahara and Isshin and Masaki, exchanging information in the aftermath of everything that had just happened.
He was already thinking about going back to Soul Society. He had a new panel to develop and wanted to get started.
The only problem was that Aizen was standing exactly where he was, completely motionless, and his gaze had fixed onto Urahara Kisuke with an intensity that did not suggest casual interest.
"..."
A sound that was almost below audible, half to himself.
Then, without saying anything further, Aizen stepped forward.
His hand moved to the hilt at his waist.
"He should be carrying the Hogyoku."
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