Akio's POV
And I also have this. In his hand was the heirloom artifact of the Oshiro clan. With this I can train in secret my Shikai. I don't wanna reveal my Shikai now cause...
If someone awakened his Shikai he would be promoted to seated officer right away and I am just 6th year in the Academy. Even after Ikkaku awakening partial Shikai he hasn't awakened his full Shikai, so I would just be inviting more trouble and hardships for myself. I have already caused too much trouble by involving myself with the captains. So let's not show the world now.
And I wanna reveal it in some cool way. Like when a gillion is attacking and I awaken my Shikai, wouldn't that be way cool? Definitely this former is main reason not this one for me not disclosing my Shikai.
And now back to the topic how I got the artifact.
Flashback....
The world snapped back into place with a soundless shudder. One moment, Akio was standing in the warped, monochrome dimension, the assassin's body dissolving into spiritual particles before him. The next, he was back in the moonlit Karakura back alley, the humid night air thick and real against his skin.
The transition was jarring. The silence was no longer absolute, replaced by the distant hum of human life and the chirping of crickets. But one thing had not changed. Lying on the cracked asphalt where the assassin had fallen was not a body, but an object: a handheld mirror with an obsidian glass set in an intricately carved silver frame.
The Hakoniwa no Kagami.
Akio approached it cautiously. Powerful artifacts, especially those that create pocket dimensions, were typically bound to their user's spiritual signature. Upon the user's death, such items should have either shattered, returned to their point of origin, or become inert, locked away until another of the bloodline could unlock them.
He knelt, reaching out with his senses rather than his hand. His newfound shadow perception brushed against the object. He expected to feel the fading, discordant echo of the assassin's Reiatsu or the deep, ancient imprint of the Ōshiro bloodline.
Instead, he felt… nothing. A void. A blank slate.
A realization dawned on him. Of course. The Ōshiro lord had been clever, in a cowardly way. To maintain plausible deniability, he hadn't just lent the artifact; he had completely severed his own spiritual signature from it, allowing the assassin to imprint his own. And now, with the assassin's death, that signature had evaporated, leaving the artifact unclaimed and adrift.
It was a priceless opportunity. And a dangerous one.
He picked up the mirror. It was cold, heavier than it looked. The obsidian surface showed no reflection, only a depthless black. This was a weapon that had been used to try to kill him. But in his hands, it could become something else.
Taking a steadying breath, Akio focused. He channeled his Reiatsu, not in a burst, but in a slow, steady flow into the mirror. He felt a slight resistance, then a yielding, as if a lock was turning. His unique spiritual pressure, tinged with the silent, predatory nature of Kagegari, flooded the artifact. The silver frame warmed slightly under his touch, and for a fleeting second, the obsidian surface shimmered with a faint, crescent-moon light before returning to black.
The bond was made. The Hakoniwa no Kagami was his.
Back to present....
Akio stood inside his room with the artifact in his hand.
He focused his will on the mirror, pouring his intent into it. 'Open.'
The world didn't so much dissolve as it folded. There was no sound, no light, just a sudden, profound shift in reality. The gorge vanished. He now stood in an endless, grey expanse. There was no ground, no sky, no horizon—only a uniform, soft grey light that came from everywhere and nowhere. It was utterly silent, a void waiting to be filled.
A perfect training ground.
His first goal was to master his new sense. In the real world, his "Shadow Network" was a constant, chaotic stream of information—shadows shifting with the sun, people moving, the dance of light and dark. Here, there was nothing. It was the ideal environment to calibrate his instrument.
He started with Range. He stood in the center of the void and pushed his awareness outward, feeling for… anything. At first, he felt nothing but his own presence. He pushed harder, straining his spirit, forcing his perception to expand into the infinite grey. A headache began to pound behind his eyes, a sharp, spiritual exhaustion. Just as he was about to relent, he felt it—the faint, almost imperceptible "edge" of the dimension. It had a limit. He marked the sensation, a benchmark for his current maximum range.
Next, Precision. He willed the dimension to change. A single, black, flat stone appeared ten feet away. Then, a shadow was cast from it by the ambient light. It was the only shadow in all of existence. He focused on it, learning its every nuance. Then, he created a disturbance. A tiny, grey pebble materialized and dropped onto the stone.
There. His senses registered it not as a sound, but as a minuscule vibration in the shadow, a tiny ripple in the stillness. He did it again and again, reducing the size of the pebble until he could sense a grain of sand disturbing the shadow. He then created a second, identical stone twenty feet away and repeated the process, training his mind to distinguish the precise location and nature of each tiny event across distance.
Then, Through the Marks. He held up Kagegari. "Position Play." With five flicks of his wrist, he sent five tiny wispy threads flying to different points in the void, marking them. He closed his eyes.
Instantly, a perfect, three-dimensional map of the void appeared in his mind. He knew the exact location of each mark, their distance from him and each other. He could feel the empty space between them. He pushed further, trying to sense the dimension itself through the threads. He felt a low, constant hum—the ambient spiritual energy of the pocket dimension, the "fabric" of this reality. It was a profound level of awareness, making him not just a occupant of the space, but its master.
Satisfied, he moved to Position Play Drills.
Cooldown Reduction. He focused on the five marks. He willed himself to the first. The world didn't move; he was just there. Immediately, he jumped to the second, then the third, fourth, fifth, and back to the first. He became a blur of motion, a human pinball ricocheting through the void in a silent, dizzying pattern. The spiritual strain was immense—a tightening in his chest with each jump. He pushed until the strain became a manageable rhythm, then pushed further, shortening the interval between jumps until the void seemed to contain five simultaneous afterimages of himself.
Combo Integration. He created a training dummy—a simple pillar of grey stone. He exploded into motion. A Sōryū flurry—a fist, an elbow, a knee—hammered against the dummy. Before the "impact" could even register, he was gone, teleporting to a mark behind it. His hand shot out in a Gekiryū grasp, seizing the space where the dummy's neck would be, his momentum using the teleport's disorienting effect to make the grab inescapable. He practiced until the transitions were seamless, until Hakuda and teleportation were not two separate actions, but one continuous, brutal flow.
Hiryū . This was the hardest. He envisioned a powerful force—a Cero blast—firing at him from the dummy. Instead of dodging, he focused on the shadow threads connecting him to his marks. He willed them to become a net, a barrier. He tried to "catch" the imaginary energy, to absorb and redirect it. He tried to connect the concept of Hiryu with the shadow threads.
The first attempts were failures. He felt nothing but his own straining Reiatsu. But he persisted, refining the intent. He wasn't trying to block; he was trying to guide. Finally, on the tenth attempt, he felt a tangible pull on the threads. A phantom force slammed into his spiritual net, and with a grunt of effort, he whipped his arms to the side, visualizing the energy being deflected harmlessly away. It was crude, exhausting, and a long way from (jissai - practical use), but the principle was proven. The fourth pillar of Ryūken was within his grasp.
The Void-Cut Refinement. He faced the empty void. He inhaled, sheathed his invisible blade, and focused. His first attempt was the same wide, crescent wave that had shattered Ikkaku's spear. It roared forth, a slash of absolute black against the grey, draining a significant portion of his energy. He waited, recovered, and tried again. This time, he focused on compression, on control. He didn't want an uncontrollable wave; he wanted a controllable slash. The next slash was narrower, more focused, a concentrated arc of void that traveled faster and hit with more piercing intensity. He practiced until he could vary the size and power at will, making it a versatile tool instead of a single, draining trump card.
Hours bled together in the timeless void. When Akio finally willed the dimension to dissolve, stumbling back into the rocky gorge, the real world was deep in night. He collapsed to his knees, sweat-drenched and spiritually depleted, his muscles screaming.
But as he looked down at the obsidian mirror in his trembling hand, a slow, hard smile spread across his face. The artifact was no longer a threat; it was his greatest asset.
He had turned his enemy's weapon into his sanctum. Every second spent in the grey void was a second his enemy believed was passing in peace. And with every second, the gap between them closed.