Royd's fury boiled over after Batsu'unsai nearly put a hole through his skull.
He swept out one hand and unleashed Sankt Zwinger again, filling the air with a storm of Heilig Pfeil.
Batsu'unsai barely reacted.
One sweep of Lunar Sundial brought the Lunar Phase Barrier back into existence.
The incoming arrows crossed its boundary and slowed to a crawl, hanging in the air as though time itself had seized around them.
Then Batsu'unsai noticed something strange.
She studied the suspended arrows more closely.
There was something missing.
Yhwach's Sankt Zwinger should have carried its distinctive annihilating property, yet these arrows possessed nothing of the sort.
She had been too busy fighting to notice earlier, but now that she knew what to look for, the difference was obvious.
'Wait.'
Her eyes narrowed.
'Is this bastard even Yhwach?'
Batsu'unsai began running through everything she knew about the Sternritter.
Schrift B through Z.
Their abilities.
Their combat styles.
Anything that could explain what she was seeing.
Then she remembered one.
Sternritter "Y"—Royd Lloyd.
A Quincy capable of copying another person's appearance and power.
That would explain everything.
And confirming it would be easy enough.
She only had to push him until the disguise cracked.
The full moon still hung high above Soul Society, bathing the battlefield in silver light as Batsu'unsai tightened her grip on Lunar Sundial.
Then she attacked.
Harder.
Faster.
Royd immediately felt the difference.
'What the hell is wrong with this woman?!'
The pressure on him suddenly doubled. He barely managed to keep up as the naginata came at him from every angle, each strike sharper than the last.
He couldn't understand what had changed.
He hadn't said anything.
He hadn't provoked her.
So why was she suddenly fighting like she wanted to tear him apart?
The answer was simple.
Royd could copy Yhwach's power, but he was still only a copy.
There was a gulf between borrowing someone's strength and truly being that person.
And as the fight dragged on, that gap became impossible to hide.
If nothing changed, Batsu'unsai was going to kill him.
"Qualkreis!"
Royd abruptly created distance and summoned several arrow-shaped constructs that converged around Batsu'unsai like the bars of a prison.
Batsu'unsai didn't even slow down.
"Full-Moon Rewind."
Time rippled around her.
The Qualkreis blurred.
So did the massive Heilig Bogen forming behind it.
Both attacks seemed to lose their place in the present, fading backward through their own existence until they vanished entirely.
Royd's eyes narrowed.
He slammed one foot into the ground.
A pillar of compressed reishi flame erupted beneath Batsu'unsai with enough heat to scorch the surrounding air.
She disappeared before it reached her.
The flame pillar tore into the sky, barely catching the edge of her haori.
Royd had anticipated the dodge.
A massive Heilig Pfeil burst straight through the flames and shot toward Batsu'unsai's face.
She saw it coming.
"You're seriously trying that again?"
Lunar Sundial came around in a brutal horizontal swing.
CLANG!
The naginata smashed into the giant arrow and split it apart, scattering fragments of glowing reishi through the air.
A thousand years ago, Yhwach had caught Kazuma with tricks exactly like this.
Batsu'unsai remembered.
She wasn't going to fall for the same setup twice.
Royd clicked his tongue.
He had already used nearly everything available to him, yet nothing had worked.
The fight was slipping further out of his control with every passing second.
Batsu'unsai rested Lunar Sundial against her shoulder.
"So this is all Yhwach amounts to?"
The lunar ornament at the end of the shaft suddenly spun.
Eclipse Acceleration.
At the same moment, Batsu'unsai activated Shunshin 2.0.
The two techniques stacked.
Calling what followed "speed" barely described it.
She vanished.
To everyone watching, she simply disappeared from one place and appeared directly in front of Royd.
It might as well have been teleportation.
"New Moon Mark."
The ornament shifted into a thin crescent.
Royd's movements immediately slowed as the mark took hold, his body responding just a fraction too late.
Against Batsu'unsai, that fraction was fatal.
She leapt.
Lunar Sundial came down diagonally with enough force to split the air apart.
Royd tried to activate Blut Vene.
Too slow.
All he managed was to raise his Quincy cross-blade across his chest.
The naginata struck it.
CRACK!
The weapon snapped in half.
Lunar Sundial never stopped.
"Thunderous Half-Moon Slash!"
The blade buried itself deep in Royd's torso.
Batsu'unsai twisted with the momentum, using the long shaft to drag herself into a full rotational strike.
Then another and another.
She spun through the air, carving repeated crescent arcs through Royd's chest before finally tearing free.
When she landed, blood sprayed behind her.
Royd staggered in place.
His chest had been torn apart by the barrage, reduced to a mangled ruin of blood and shredded flesh.
Whatever dignity Fake Yhwach had been trying to maintain was disappearing almost as quickly as the rest of him.
...
"AAAAAGH!"
Royd's scream tore across the battlefield.
"You insect! How dare you wound me!"
He clutched what was left of his chest. Batsu'unsai's Thunderous Half-Moon Slash had torn through flesh, shattered bone, and mangled his organs so badly that the cavity was almost hollow.
Blood poured between his fingers and pooled beneath his feet.
The fact that he was still alive was honestly impressive.
The man had the survival instincts of a cockroach.
Every breath came ragged and wet, his body trembling from the damage.
Batsu'unsai stared at him.
"You're still alive?"
She sounded almost offended.
"I really thought that one would do it."
That only made Royd angrier.
Whatever restraint he had left disappeared.
Dozens of Heilig Pfeil formed around his fingertips at point-blank range. He was so close to Batsu'unsai that firing them would catch them both in the blast.
Apparently, he no longer cared.
If he was going down, he intended to take her with him.
Batsu'unsai immediately understood.
"You can die by yourself, thanks."
Thunderous Half-Moon Slash had already planted three New Moon marks on him.
They activated.
Royd froze.
So did the arrows gathering around his hands.
Batsu'unsai disappeared with Shunshin 2.0 and put plenty of distance between them before the one-second temporal lock ended.
Royd regained control—and the entire volley fired uselessly past her.
The Heilig Pfeil slammed into several nearby buildings and detonated, blowing apart walls and rooftops.
Batsu'unsai stared at the wreckage.
"Hey! Property damage costs money!"
She immediately raised Lunar Sundial.
"Full-Moon Rewind."
Ripples passed through the ruined structures.
Broken walls climbed back into place. Shattered roofs reassembled. Scorch marks vanished as the buildings rewound to the state they had been in three seconds earlier.
Within moments, there wasn't a trace of damage left.
Batsu'unsai sighed.
"All right. I'm tired of playing with you."
Her expression changed.
"Bankai."
Moonlight exploded from Lunar Sundial.
"Eternal Moonsea: Celestial Ecliptic Armillary."
She ran one hand along the shaft of her Zanpakutō.
The naginata transformed.
Its weapon shaft extended to nearly ten meters, while the blade became translucent, formed from condensed moonlight rather than ordinary steel.
The lunar ornament at the base expanded dramatically, becoming an enormous armillary structure composed of twelve interlocking orbital rings.
Starlight traveled along each ring like glowing constellations in motion.
Then the world around her changed.
A Lunar Sea Domain spread outward from beneath Batsu'unsai's feet, covering a hundred-meter radius.
Daylight disappeared.
The sky above Soul Society was forcibly plunged into night, and the moon swelled into a brilliant full disc.
Across the darkness, the zodiac constellations corresponding to the Human World appeared one after another, impossibly clear against the stars.
The battlefield became something out of a dream.
Even the captains watching from a distance fell silent.
Unohana stared at the scene with open envy.
This was the first time she had ever seen Batsu'unsai's Bankai.
And of course it had to be beautiful.
Batsu'unsai got an endless silver sea, moonlight, stars, and glowing celestial rings.
Unohana got a horrifying lake of blood.
She thought of her own Bankai—sticky, bloody, and generally capable of making everyone around her question whether they had wandered into Hell by mistake.
Then she looked at Batsu'unsai's serene moonlit world again.
The difference was infuriating.
"Pretty doesn't mean practical."
Unohana muttered under her breath.
"Exactly. That's definitely it."
Apparently, she needed the reassurance.
Across the Lunar Sea, Batsu'unsai leveled her weapon at Royd.
"Yhwach."
Her voice carried through the night.
"Failing to erase you completely a thousand years ago has remained one of the Gotei 13's greatest regrets."
The edge of Lunar Sundial gleamed.
"Today, I'm correcting that mistake."
Batsu'unsai had already worked out that the man in front of her was probably Royd Lloyd.
She simply saw no reason to expose him.
Real or fake hardly mattered.
If Soul Society publicly killed "Yhwach" here, the boost to Shinigami morale would be enormous.
Royd forced himself to laugh.
"You think you can kill me?"
"Hahahahaha! Absurd!"
He straightened as much as his ruined chest allowed.
"An insect like you isn't worthy of fighting me! If you want my life, bring Yamamoto Shigekuni or Satou Kazuma here!"
The words sounded confident.
His body did not.
Batsu'unsai's Bankai was crushing him beneath an overwhelming weight of reiatsu.
Every breath had become difficult, and despite his best efforts to maintain Yhwach's regal arrogance, his legs were visibly trembling.
Sweat ran down his forehead.
He continued talking anyway.
If nothing else, his mouth still worked perfectly.
Then a voice exploded from the spectators.
"WHAT THE FUCK?! EVERYONE, LOOK!"
Rukia pointed at Royd.
"MY MASTER'S WIFE SCARED YHWACH SO BAD HE PISSED HIMSELF!"
Silence.
Every captain nearby turned toward her.
Royd had tried to hide the trembling in his legs, but this crowd was made up entirely of monsters. Even the weakest person present had achieved Bankai.
Tiny movements weren't going unnoticed.
And Rukia, apparently blessed with particularly sharp eyes and absolutely no filter, had spotted the dampness near his trouser leg.
Naturally, she reached the most embarrassing conclusion possible and announced it to everyone within shouting distance.
Several captains looked genuinely stunned.
Kazuma really did know how to pick disciples.
One had become absurdly powerful and eventually stabbed him in the back.
The other seemed determined to cause public incidents every time she opened her mouth.
Then—SMACK!
Kuchiki Kōga slapped Rukia across the back of the head.
"Bullshit."
Rukia grabbed her head.
Kōga pointed toward Royd with complete seriousness.
"That's obviously cold sweat caused by his terror of Master's wife. He did not piss himself."
He paused.
Thought about it.
Then nodded slowly.
"Although…"
A grin crept across his face.
"Your version does sound a lot better."
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