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Chapter 52: The Horrors In My Mind II
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Akashi's Inner World... It felt more alive to him than ever.
Cthulhu was asleep.
The Hat Man was standing quietly by the side, as if frozen in time.
Zena's roars resounded throughout as she flew through the sky.
The Hive Queen was sleeping by the side, trying to recover.
The Nuckelavee, Dullahan, Night Hag, and Bloody Mary stood by the side.
"The Eldritch Realm..." Akashi muttered, eyeing his hand strangely. He never felt like he had good control over his Inner World, like he couldn't change it much.
However, the introduction of the Eldritch Realm changed everything. Now, his Inner World felt different to him.
Earth rose beneath and around the central podium, leaving only a big enough hollow for the darkness devoured by Kurayami to pour down.
The gigantic piece of earth that rose, twisted, and deformed, soon forming a floating Island, beneath which was the now mostly dry ocean of Ink.
Hovering over the Island was the central podium from which darkness pours like a fountain.
Stairways rose. Building rose... No, a city rose.
The city was a cyclopean hub of unearthly and terrible beauty, with many columns and palaces with hundreds of terraces filled with corals and phosphorescent brachiates.
He took Y'ha-nthlei as inspiration again, but the latter was an undersea city in which the Deep Ones lived, so Akashi wasn't sure whether it fit.
It was, however, beautiful, "I will have the workers design a suitable city." He muttered.
Now, now he needed fuel.
He needed more darkness.
And that meant one thing: doing his job.
He was still the Tenth Seat of the Fifth Division, assigned to Rukongai's rescue and patrol operations. Now, he had a squad to lead. Districts to watch. Hollows to slay.
Six months passed in the blink of an eye.
The mid-districts of Rukongai had long suffered from Hollow incursions. Entire families lost, homes reduced to rubble, screams carried by the wind.
Shinigami are usually responsible for protecting the districts, but there are simply too many districts and not enough Shinigami.
But in the wake of Akashi's arrival, something began to change. No longer were these districts known for tragedy; there was instead fear, but also worship.
Akashi was feared, even by the monsters that stalked souls. Hell, even by his own team.
That's the expected outcome upon the emergence of the darkness and horrors within him.
On the outer edge of District 54, a young Shinigami; Haruto, green-eyed and still unsure in his movements; faced a charging Hollow with too many eyes and a screaming jaw that split its chest open.
His blade clashed against its claws, each impact shaking the bones in his arm.
"Dammit... I need backup!"
Haruto pressed a button on his communicator embedded in his sleeve. "Unit 3 requesting immediate aid! Hollow threat is Class C, bordering B!"
There was static.
Then a single, distorted roar answered. But it did not come from the communicator.
It came from the sky.
Haruto turned his head and went still. A shadow passed over him; massive, fast, unnatural.
A dark creature soared overhead, wings tearing the air as if ripping through dimensions themselves.
Its serpentine body glimmered faintly with coiled ink and patches of blue-gray; a living myth, a wyvern.
Zenaserisu.
Then, from its back, a figure leapt.
Cloak billowing. Zanpakutō drawn. His descent was quiet, controlled, like falling ink on parchment.
Akashi landed in front of the Hollow without a sound. The impact alone knocked the creature down to the ground.
He jumped to Haruto's side, eyeing his injuries, the gush on his chest, "Sometimes you'll face hollows stronger than you, if you're gonna be injured anyway, you might as well trade injuries instead of hesitating or trying to avoid an unavoidable attack to you... Anyway, it's just a little pain."
'Huh? Is that human talk?' Oh, right, they're Shinigami. If Haruto wanted to respond, he couldn't, having to point to the hollow behind Akashi, "Akashi-sama! The hollow! It's..."
It was trying to flee, showcasing one of the hollows' signature traits, unimaginable resilience.
'Hollows' resilience is indeed enviable,' Akashi mused. He needn't be reminded. He could feel the hollow's darkness moving away in instinctive fright, so he turned around.
Haruto could only stare, slack-jawed, as Akashi's hand slid down Kurayami's length and brought it into a new form; an obsidian longbow with strange black oddities flying around it, akin to fireflies.
He pulled the string and conjured an arrow from nothing, made entirely of his spiritual energy mixed with wriggling, black ink.
He loosed it.
The Hollow's shoulder exploded into tar and shards of bone.
A rider emerged. No, not a rider; a cursed fusion of horse and man, where the horse's muscles twisted in unnatural rhythms and the rider had no skin at all. Its empty eye sockets glowed faintly.
Nuckelavee.
It shrieked once and then galloped. Each hoofprint smoked. It rammed the Hollow with unstoppable force, driving it into the earth before withdrawing with brutal elegance.
But it didn't kill it.
Akashi calmly approached the weakened Hollow and thrust his hand through its mask.
The hollow dissolved into nothingness, but in a way that can not be observed, its darkness was devoured.
Haruto had never seen something so terrifying and coordinated.
"Have the medical team take a look at you," Akashi instructed before leaping into the air, Zena appearing beneath him before taking him into the sky, vanishing into the distance.
Word spread quickly.
Akashi's horrors had revealed themselves in full. He no longer needed to keep them a secret, not that it mattered.
If there were some individuals he'd want to keep secret from, it'd be Aizen and Urahara, but they must already know... They just don't know enough.
Zenaserisu patrolled above like a great watchtower in flight, its body dark and segmented like a dragon sculpted from negative space.
It didn't need air to fly; Akashi had written its story to allow it dominion over the void itself.
In theory, it could fly even in Hueco Mundo or space, as long as Akashi supplied it with spiritual energy.
And on the ground, more nightmares took shape.
Dullahan, the headless knight in tarnished armor, wielded a cursed lance that disrupted spiritual cohesion with every strike.
It moved like fog in the shape of a soldier, silent and lethal. It fought alongside Nuckelavee, dragging Hollows down with coordinated grace, keeping Akashi's hands clean until it was time to feed.
And at the center of it all; Kurayami, the dark orb turned weapon. Akashi now used its bow form more often than not, picking off Hollows from atop buildings, forests, or even Zena's back mid-flight.
At first, he missed more than he hit, for he found it difficult to hit moving targets, especially since he was sometimes on top of the flying Zena.
However, his accuracy slowly but surely improved. He was getting used to the bow, training his archery regularly.
He didn't speak much about his creations anymore. He didn't hide them either.
The fifth division had especially taken notice.
If any of them still had doubts about his quick rise in the ranks, then those doubts are now far gone.
"Man, I'm so envious," A Shinigami from the fifth division commented, "Akashi's Zanpakuto is so cool."
"My friend, you haven't even awakened Shikai," Another remarked with a scoff, although he was the same.
"Seriously? Envious? I don't think you've seen some of his horrors... They're so freaky, why would you want something like that?"
"Freaky? I have only seen the dragon, and it's so cool. What's scary about it?"
"You mean Zenaserisu? She's a wyvern, not a dragon, and she's the most normal of them all, but the others are straight out of nightmares."
"Zenaserisu? How do you know so much about it?"
"From Murasaki, he reads all of Akashi's horror stories, and he found out that Zenaserisu was in one of his books... Well, actually, that's why we call them horrors, and all the ones that appeared he wrote about."
"That... So strange. Is every horror in his stories, like, with him?" The Shinigami was confused.
The other Shinigami acted quite strangely, looking left and right, making sure no one was near before whispering, "Let me tell you a big secret."
"Oh? What?"
"Akashi has already mastered Bankai."
"What!!!!?"
"I had the same reaction, but Murasaki convinced me. He heard from one of the Shinigami in Akashi's team that his Zanpakuto can turn into a bow and all kinds of things."
"Murasaki said that that's his Shikai, and the ability to bring creatures from stories to reality is his Bankai, makes sense, right?"
"Not that you say it, yeah... That does sound too ridiculous for a Shikai... WAit... That means Akashi mastered Bankai!!!"
"I know, right!? He's a genius. He graduated early from the academy like yesterday, and he's already learned Bankai!"
"Wait, Captain Gin has been promoted to become the Captain of the third division, and the lieutenant seat is still empty... Doesn't that mean that it's Akashi's?"
"Don't talk about the lieutenant seat, had there been a division without a Captain, Akashi would've become Captain directly." The Shinigami scoffed.
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