Ethereal. Still.
Though named the same, Muken (Infinite Hell) was a different world entirely from the Hell Higashino Shuuichi had walked before.
It even seemed to sit in another layer of reality. Shuuichi knew Azashiro Kenpachi, who had taken the title by killing Kuruyashiki Kenpachi, should be sealed in Muken right now—yet there was no sign of any place that held prisoners.
Opposite him, Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni was already prepared.
Shuuichi would not hesitate. "Sōtaichō—please forgive the offense." He released Bankai (Final Release).
Reiatsu (spiritual pressure) surged over him. Then he drew the Kabuma clan's chisel-like artifact Zanpakutō, Seyabasa.
In essence, Seyabasa wasn't his Zanpakutō; it carried a cross-domain trait. Though the outward "release" came from him, actual use still required assent from Kabuma Sayako, far away in the clan's underground chamber.
Under those constraints, he could at most achieve Shikai (Initial Release). Seyabasa's Bankai was out of the question.
"Cross the world's far shore—Seyabasa!"
Mind linked to mind, Seyabasa scattered into silver petals that formed the familiar gate once more.
At the same moment in Hell, in the midst of battle with ancient Hollows, Ikeda Kōsuke clutched at his chest. The place Shuuichi had carved the divine sigil flared with a searing heat beyond words.
"What is this?!"
He pressed his hand to it. The sensation didn't fade—it intensified, and then a warm current turned once through his chest. In an instant he felt his strength, braided with Hell's power, pour through the sigil and away—to somewhere unknown.
"Damn that Soul Reaper brat—what did he do to me?!"
A force he could not resist. Ikeda could only watch himself hollowed out, die, revive—then get drained again, die again—on and on.
Worst was the fear: with each draining, he felt his reiatsu sink a fraction. Against his total it was almost nothing—but this was Hell. He had never felt such a thing all the years he'd been here.
Deep within Muken, Shuuichi felt the power surge into him through Seyabasa—rage, hatred, greed, lust—countless dark urges detonating in his skull.
His body trembled.
This was something he had never felt even while in Hell.
"So… this is what Maki Kurando endured when he fought, flooded with Hell's malice?"
Shuuichi grit his teeth.
What remained of his reason told him he could not let that power linger, or he would become a beast without mind.
From afar, seeing Shuuichi swaddled in a tar-black, ashen aura—far more chaotic than Maki's had been—Yamamoto quietly lifted his cane.
Too much to ask, in the end.
He wasn't surprised. If Hell's power were so easy to master, the Kabuma would not have bled so many in vain before coming to him.
He was about to shift his Zanpakutō into Shikai and send Shuuichi off when a broken voice came from within the black.
"Hadō—Jigoku: Shokeikyoku (Hell: Execution Aria)!"
At once, faint gray mist welled through the dim space. The dark sludge wrapping Shuuichi fell away into the floor beneath his feet, spreading outward.
The dead wailed, the living called, fiends roared—voices poured from every side.
All at once, a gray-white skeletal arm thrust up at Yamamoto's feet and seized his ankle.
"What?"
His brows creased.
The hand had appeared without sign. At the barest touch, he felt something tugging at his soul—like a call answered from the deepest place within him.
A tremor from the root of his spirit.
"Nadegiri (Caress Slash)!"
Silver flashed. The gray-black domain split wide at his feet.
Shuuichi's eyes lit.
This was true Nadegiri. The version he'd learned from Unohana was a child's trick beside Yamamoto's.
Even so, the dread clinging to the core of Yamamoto's soul did not clear.
The gray-white hand still clamped his ankle.
"Cutting the connection alone isn't enough?"
With sheer will he crushed the rising storm of malice and rumbled, "Banshō issai, kaijin to nase—Ryūjin Jakka (All things in the universe turn to ashes—Ryūjin Jakka)!"
His cane shed its disguise: an oval tsuba, deep-violet hilt—the oldest flame.
Without a heartbeat of doubt, Yamamoto leapt—and drove the blade's tip into the hand on his ankle.
"Jōkaku Enjō (Castle Gate Blaze)!"
Savage fire burst from the steel like a giant palm, engulfing the arm. Spare tongues of flame rolled across the floor and set the land itself alight.
The ground steamed; vast fog shrouded the space.
Through the haze, Shuuichi watched the gray-white hand dwindle in the blaze, crumble, and finally become ash. He was forced to cancel Hell: Execution Aria.
Hell's core power had nearly grayed out his entire body; if that completed, his very nature would change. He would shift from "thief" to truly branded servant of Hell—and even the Soul King's fingernail fragment could not restore him.
As expected, outside of Hell itself he couldn't maintain the aria ten seconds.
But there was comfort: even someone as strong as Yamamoto could not brush aside that gray-white hand—woven from Hell's core—lightly. He had to enter Shikai and use Jōkaku Enjō, and only by taking an injury to his ankle did he finally burn the hand away.
From this bout, Shuuichi grasped the strengths and flaws of his technique.
Strength: its lethality was real—his strongest strike yet, aimed straight at the soul.
Flaws: slow to take effect, not fast, and bound by his own reiatsu. He could not hold out long against the creeping gray; surrender would come quickly.
Had Yamamoto not been deliberately testing the move—letting Hell's force wash over him, standing in the mist to allow Shuuichi's strike—the aria might never have touched him in a proper fight.
Against high-mobility targets, even less so.
As for Sōsuke and the future Yhwach?
One had Kyōka Suigetsu (Mirror Flower, Water Moon); the other, Allmighty. Shuuichi had no intention of "leading the charge" against either—certainly not now.
Still, he finally had a real trump card.
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