As the man who bears the title of Kenpachi, Kenpachi Azashiro carried a deep-rooted pride. Even though Mazuru had risen to become the new King of Hueco Mundo by succeeding Aizen, Azashiro refused to blindly acknowledge his power. To him, strength wasn't something inherited or flaunted—it was something tested in the crucible of battle.
Of course, Mazuru's effortless destruction of Szayelaporro's clone had already demonstrated a terrifying level of power, but that was merely from a bystander's point of view. If he wanted to understand Mazuru's true strength, he needed to test it with his own hands.
"Hadō #90 — Kurohitsugi!"
True to his background as one who had been imprisoned in Muken, Kenpachi Azashiro's combat style shared similarities with Aizen. Without hesitation, he invoked one of Aizen's signature techniques right at the start.
A massive black cuboid erupted from the ground and immediately engulfed Mazuru. Shadows twisted within the cube, promising to rend whatever was trapped inside.
But before the dark blades of shadow could even stab forward, Mazuru released a sliver of his spiritual pressure. Instantly, the Kurohitsugi fractured and crumbled as if the spell itself had lost the will to continue.
*Crack!*
Kenpachi Azashiro remained unfazed. Calmly, he began chanting again—and more Kurohitsugis appeared.
Even though abandoning the chant typically weakened Hadō spells by two-thirds, exceptions always existed. In Aizen's hands, even a chantless Kurohitsugi could suppress most captains. Likewise, the Kurohitsugis conjured by Kenpachi Azashiro defied the standard.
In rapid succession, fifty Kurohitsugis rose and layered themselves atop each other. The effect was like a cascading matryoshka—darkness folding within darkness, each one more suffocating than the last.
They fell like a barrage upon Mazuru, attempting to drown him in an ever-deepening tomb of shadows.
*Boom!Crack! Boom!*
But none of them succeeded.
Even with the terrifying amplification brought by stacking the coffins, they shattered on contact with the invisible barrier surrounding Mazuru's body—a perfect wall of spiritual pressure protecting him from every angle. The coffins were born and broken in an endless cycle, but never once did they leave a mark on him.
Kenpachi Azashiro narrowed his eyes. If unchanted spells wouldn't work, then he had no choice but to go all in.
He raised his right hand, fingers poised, and began chanting—a complete incantation this time.
"The edge of a thousand hands, the noble hand that cannot touch darkness, the archer who shoots the sky that cannot be reflected, the road of radiance, fan the fire wind, come together and become one... heed my command—light bullets, eight bodies, nine scrolls, heavenly crystal, sacred treasure, the great wheel, gray turret—bow before the distant light, and vanish in brilliance."
As the final syllable was spoken, all fifty Kurohitsugis vanished into swirling fragments of reishi.
Then it came.
"Hadō #91 — Senju Kōten Taihō!"
A technique even higher than the Kurohitsugi. In the battle of Karakura Town, Urahara Kisuke had once embedded this very spell with a concealed seal to trap Aizen after Ichigo's final blow. That seal had turned the tide of fate.
Though Azashiro's casting lacked any hidden enchantment, the raw power was nothing short of overwhelming.
It far exceeded even Urahara's execution of the same technique. Because Kenpachi Azashiro had not just cast it—he had executed it using multiple chant. An extremely advanced Kidō technique, multiple chant required an unshakable grasp over spiritual control. Even captain-level shinigami like Abarai Renji struggled with lower-level Kidō, let alone this kind of mastery.
From the air above, brilliant pink beams burst forth—dozens, hundreds—raining down in a spiraling dome of annihilation.
And Mazuru was at the center of it all.
Standing a distance away, Roka—who had stood motionless ever since witnessing the brutal destruction of Szayelaporro—finally moved.
As the suffocating spiritual pressure surged outward, her instincts kicked in. Without hesitation, she invoked the power of Negación and vanished into another dimension to escape the crossfire.
Fleeing was always her first reaction in the face of overwhelming danger.
Kenpachi Azashiro saw her escape and showed no concern. If he'd found her once, he could do so again. Right now, his entire focus was on Mazuru.
Somewhere deep within, he remembered what Aizen had once told him during their time in Muken:
"Failure holds meaning."
At the time, he had scoffed at those words. Azashiro didn't believe in failure. And in truth, he had never known defeat.
Even when he surrendered himself to avoid a confrontation with Squad Zero, it hadn't been because he was bested—it was strategy. Before that, even the entirety of the Gotei 13 couldn't subdue him by force.
So in that sense, he had never lost.
But perhaps… perhaps now was the time to taste that elusive bitterness.
Inside the epicenter of Senju Kōten Taihō, pink light flashed like a supernova.
*Boom!Boom!Crack!*
Thunder cracked, and the sky trembled. Dust rose in massive pillars. The battlefield trembled under the weight of spiritual force.
But then—amid the waves of light—a slash of crimson tore through it all.
The light beams shattered, split, and scattered like silk threads caught in a typhoon.
From the center of the destruction, Mazuru emerged slowly, walking forward, each step echoing with unshakable presence.
*Step. Step. Step.*
His body was untouched. Not a single scratch marred his skin. The massive attack had done nothing.
Crimson spiritual energy wrapped around his blade, humming with restrained force.
He raised his eyes and met Kenpachi Azashiro's.
"You're from the Eleventh Division, a squad known for its brute-force combat. Most of its members wield Zanpakutō made purely for melee. They pride themselves on fighting up close and personal. They've always sneered at Kidō… yet here you are, casting high-tier Hadō like a master."
Mazuru paused for a beat, his eyes narrowing just slightly.
"Maybe you weren't meant to be Kenpachi. Maybe 'Kidō Commander' suits you better."
*****
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