"Captain Aizen. Do you intend to act personally?"
Ichimaru Gin heard Aizen speak and stopped in time.
"Continue, Gin. I was only commenting. But do it fast. If this drags on, the Captain-Commander and the others will arrive."
Although there was not the slightest trace of blame in Aizen's eyes, with Gin's smooth and sharp-minded nature, how could he possibly miss the meaning hidden beneath those calm words?
Behind that seemingly casual sentence lay countless thoughts and emotions.
"Kamishini no Yari: Butō Renjin."
As Gin spoke in a low voice, Kamishini no Yari instantly launched a wide-range assault like a nimble venomous snake.
Ichigo, who had passively entered his second-stage Hollowfication, was already in a chaotic state and could not fully control his own power.
At this moment, he was completely unprepared.
Before he could even come back to himself, the deathly dance of Kamishini no Yari struck him hard and knocked him heavily to the ground.
The massive impact made the ground tremble slightly, as if the whole world had paused for that instant.
This Hollowfication ended quickly and unexpectedly.
He had not even had time to properly display a single shred of his Hollowfied power, let alone show the strength and presence he should have had, before he was already defeated.
"Ru… Rukia…"
Ichigo's unwilling cry echoed through the air, sounding like a helpless sigh at his own failure and like an attempt to send the pain and struggle in his heart to Rukia in the distance.
Just like that, he was miserably knocked down and temporarily lost consciousness.
"Ichigo!"
Rukia panicked as she watched him collapse right in front of her.
"Don't worry, he won't die. Now it's your turn, Rukia."
Aizen slowly stepped forward and lifted her up.
He wore a special glove on one hand and reached toward Rukia's chest. The moment his hand passed straight through her, Rukia shut her eyes in fear.
'Am I going to die? Teacher, you're way too unreliable!'
Aizen pulled a transparent orb from Rukia's body.
Perhaps because of the special glove, Rukia did not feel any pain. It was as if nothing had happened at all.
"So this is the Hōgyoku created by Urahara Kisuke?"
Aizen casually tossed Rukia to the ground and examined the orb in his hand.
After being thrown down, Rukia was still shaken. Her hands kept patting across her body.
"Huh? I'm fine? I'm actually fine?"
'When did that orb get put inside me? Was it Teacher? Aizen said this thing was made by Urahara Kisuke, so why was it hidden inside my body?'
Rukia thought it over for a long moment. This was probably why Kazuma had said Aizen would come looking for her.
"No. This is not the Hōgyoku. Where is the real Hōgyoku?"
Aizen had been playing with the Hōgyoku in his hand with an almost intoxicated expression when he suddenly realized something was wrong.
"Are you looking for this thing?"
A familiar voice rang out from the corner.
Kazuma walked out from the shadows while casually tossing the Hōgyoku in his hand, smiling as he looked at Aizen.
Aizen's pupils shrank.
For the first time, shock showed on his calm face.
He was looking at Kazuma — the man he had killed with his own hands.
"You… you?!"
Aizen's voice even stuttered slightly.
"Don't get so excited. It's bad for your health. Want some sake to calm your nerves?"
Kazuma had originally wanted to give Aizen a surprise, but now it seemed more like he had given him a fright!
"How are you not dead? And why is the Hōgyoku in your hand?"
Aizen forced himself to calm down and rapidly analyzed the current situation.
"How am I not dead? But I did die. You saw it yourself, didn't you? That slash of yours really hurt back then! I hadn't taken an injury like that in hundreds of years."
Kazuma was still happily fooling Aizen.
"As for the Hōgyoku, of course I took it out of Rukia's body the first time she went to the World of the Living."
Looking at Kazuma's cheeky smile, Aizen could not tell for a moment whether his words were true or false.
"Hoo…"
Aizen took a deep breath and drew his Zanpakutō.
He had already treated the man before him with enough caution, yet he had still ended up in this situation.
Aizen let out a slow breath and drew his Zanpakutō.
He had already been careful with this man, and still ended up here.
For the first time, Aizen felt uncertain.
"Captain Aizen, allow me."
Ichimaru Gin's expression turned cold.
Resolve settled in his eyes as he gripped his hilt and slowly leveled the blade at Kazuma.
The moment Aizen gave the word, that edge would run the man through without hesitation, proving his loyalty!
"Gin, stand down. You were no match for him more than twenty years ago, and you're no match for him now."
Aizen's voice rang out.
There was a faint helplessness in his eyes, and even more than that, concern for his subordinate.
He knew very well that for Gin, fighting Kazuma at his current strength would be suicide. That was why he stopped him at once, to avoid a pointless death.
"Well then. I admit I underestimated you. Let's finish the battle we never got to end more than twenty years ago."
Aizen took a deep breath, his gaze sharpening.
In the end, he made his move.
He flashed forward like a ghost and attacked first.
In a way, that meant he'd lost his usual composure.
Against every enemy before this, Aizen had always been calm, letting the other side attack first.
But this time, he struck first.
"You're stronger than before. Not bad, Aizen!"
A faint smile touched Kazuma's lips.
He swung the long blade in his hand and easily blocked Aizen's attack.
The force made the surrounding air shudder — proof that Kazuma's strength was nothing to underestimate.
Inwardly, Kazuma sigh.
'As expected of a man even Yhwach had prized so highly.'
'Aizen truly was terrifyingly strong.'
'Unfortunately, in the end, he'd still lost to that cheat-code bastard Ichigo. If Ichigo hadn't used the Final Getsuga Tenshō — shaking Aizen's will so badly that even the Hōgyoku abandoned him — the outcome might have gone either way.'
Aizen's slashes came at Kazuma like endless rain, yet every one was blocked cleanly, as if an invisible wall stood in the way.
As they fought, Aizen slowly came to understand something he couldn't deny.
His Kyōka Suigetsu had no effect on the man in front of him.
With the near-divine power of Kyōka Suigetsu, there was no way every attack should have been blocked so perfectly — as if his opponent had already seen through his every move.
"Captain Kazuma, I truly am curious. Why does my Kyōka Suigetsu not affect you?"
Aizen shook his head, unable to hide his confusion.
He had no choice but to accept the discouraging truth.
"There's no harm in telling you. Around me, a domain quietly forms. It shuts me off from every kind of interference in the world. Inside it, you and I might as well be standing in two completely different dimensions. You can understand that much, can't you?"
Kazuma spoke lightly, his tone calm.
The explanation sounded absurd to Aizen, yet he couldn't come up with a better answer.
"There's also one very important thing."
Kazuma's eyes suddenly went cold, as if he'd turned back into the merciless Quincy-killer from a thousand years ago.
"My reiatsu is far above yours. No matter how strong Kyōka Suigetsu is, it can't control someone stronger than you."
The moment he finished speaking, Kazuma unleashed his vast reiatsu across the Seireitei for the first time in a thousand years.
That reiatsu rose like a towering tide, sweeping into every corner of the Seireitei and dropping the whole place under a suffocating weight.
"Holy! Holy crap! Is Teacher going all out again?!"
Behind Kazuma, Rukia was pinned in place at once by the sheer force. She wasn't even taking it head-on, and she'd already been reduced to this.
One could only imagine what it was like for Gin and Aizen, standing right in front of him.
Under that roaring wave of reiatsu, Gin lost every bit of his arrogance in an instant.
He was slammed flat onto the ground, stripped of all dignity.
His eyes lost focus, though the corner of his mouth still held a trace of self-mockery.
By now he had given up resisting entirely, letting the violent reiatsu wash over him and swallow him whole.
Aizen fared a little better than Gin, but not by much.
He gripped his Zanpakutō and, on the last of his stubborn will, used it to hold himself up on one knee.
He hadn't lost control as badly as Gin, but the exhaustion and strain showed plainly on his face.
He forced up every scrap of reiatsu he had, trying to gather his last strength and push back against the crushing pressure.
As the reiatsu surged, his once-straight body began to sway, as if he might drop at any moment.
Finally, while shaking, he forced himself upright.
But his footing was terrible. His whole body trembled, and the hand on his sword twitched wildly, as if the blade might slip from his grip at any second.
"So .... this is your true strength?"
Despair filled Aizen's heart.
If Kazuma had this much power, why had he waited so long to move against him?
Why put on this whole act?
Had he been hiding his strength on purpose — or was it as Aizen had once suspected, that Kazuma had been playing a cruel game of cat and mouse with him all along?
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