"The Head-Captain's look right now is… honestly terrifying."
Inside the shop.
Bathed head to toe in firelight,
the Head-Captain looked like a walking volcano, killing intent rolling off him.
Yoruichi's throat caught.
Her scalp prickled. Her face turned grave in a way she'd never shown before.
As the former head of the Shihōin noble house,
she understood the Head-Captain better than most.
This thousand-year-old man was someone she knew inside and out.
And Yoruichi knew
that in the past few centuries, even when his temper flared,
he almost never looked like this—
as if the urge to kill were about to overflow the screen.
Clearly,
his hatred for Yhwach and the pure-blood Quincy now
burned even hotter than a thousand years ago.
"Yeah." Urahara Kisuke nodded, sighing. "Looks like I ought to take back what I said before: this time Ryūjin Jakka may truly go Bankai."
His gut screamed it at him.
If he didn't personally erase Yhwach, the Head-Captain would never stop.
And thanks to the countdown videos
and the barrier of the transparent light-screen,
viewers across the world and the powerhouses of the Shinigami world
could, for once,
witness Ryūjin Jakka's Bankai with their own eyes
without getting caught in the blast—
the legendary ultimate that could destroy the world.
A once-in-a-millennium event.
Meanwhile,
under the trio's rattled gazes,
the footage continued.
The shocks kept coming, reveal after reveal.
"Rumble—!!"
A meteor smashed into the ground.
The thunder of impact shook the soul-forged earth, deafening all.
Even the transparent light-screen
shuddered under the shock,
the picture strobing so hard it hurt to look at.
But—
after the chaos, the firelight ebbed and the Head-Captain's figure re-emerged.
He saw that where he landed
the surrounding area had become a colossal crater.
"Hiss—"
Gasps drew long and cold across the Shinigami world.
Everyone was stunned.
"This isn't… a human. That's a monster in human shape!"
"The old Shinigami geezer gets more outrageous by the minute."
"No one knows his ceiling. How strong can he get?!"
Inside Las Noches,
Yammy staggered back and plopped onto the floor.
Cold seeped up his spine.
Hollow by nature, his mind felt no anger—
only boundless fear.
Collapsed there and panting, he looked nothing like a cruel Espada,
more like a toddler who had just learned to walk and was about to cry from fright.
Before the Head-Captain,
Espada and Arrancar alike were children—
taught, cowed, and made to fear.
"Compared to that earlier scene, the Scorching Hell in Karakura Town…
the Head-Captain now is him going all out."
Elsewhere,
Starrk spoke with a complicated sigh.
In the Head-Captain's hand,
that almost invisible blade—
the Zanpakutō Ryūjin Jakka—still spat fire without pause.
At this level alone
Starrk felt as if he were watching several Zanpakutō
release Bankai at the same time—
the visual shock and the soul-shaking pressure were that intense.
"If the Quincy King resists…
and Ryūjin Jakka really does go Bankai…
can the human world even withstand it?"
Starrk's brows drew tight.
The thought wouldn't leave him.
He let spiritual pressure flow out to wrap his whole body,
ready to defend at full strength at a moment's notice,
so he wouldn't get clipped again.
On screen,
the Head-Captain's voice came, bare of disguise and thick with killing will:
"Yhwach…
a foe I defeated a thousand years ago…
today, I will erase your life with my own hands once more!"
His aura burst, tearing the air.
Flames ignited reishi and boomed in a rolling chain.
There was no doubt—the Head-Captain held the field.
His spiritual pressure,
stacked with fire pouring from the split earth,
kept pressing down on Yhwach without pause.
"The Quincy King…
won't bow or compromise, will he?"
On the throne,
Aizen stared straight ahead.
That cool, handsome face grew uncharacteristically solemn.
His eyes didn't twitch, wholly focused—
he refused to miss a single detail of this peak clash.
In fact, Aizen felt
that at his present realm—standing at the summit of Shinigami power—
watching this battle
might yield new insights and understandings of strength,
nudging forward a power that had long plateaued—
perhaps even breaking through.
Yet—
contrary to Aizen's expectations,
when faced with the Head-Captain's relentless advance,
Yhwach's scarred face didn't change.
No fear at all.
Instead he bared a smile and answered coolly:
"Rather than boast you'll kill me…
you'd do better to look carefully at the Seireitei's destruction.
You don't have many chances left."
The tone was flat,
but the provocation was obvious,
his half-smile taunting on purpose.
The Head-Captain answered
with fury in words and power in kind.
"Yhwach!
Every sin you've embraced—be it the countless deaths, or the ruin you've wrought upon the Seireitei—
will be crushed to nothing with blood, with the sword, and with the soul!"
At that instant,
the rioting flames around him
surged skyward, fusing into a single titanic pillar that speared the clouds.
Then—
shff.
Something strange happened.
The picture snapped clean and bright again.
The flames that had dyed the screen red
vanished in an instant—
and with them the Head-Captain's outward aura recoiled into his body.
The aged frame stood there, pressure quiet.
Around him, and on the blade in his hand,
no trace of flame remained.
It was almost enough to make one think—
right now the Head-Captain
was just a pale old man on some street corner in the human world.
But those who knew him,
and who knew Ryūjin Jakka,
froze only for a heartbeat before crying out in unison:
"This is…"
"Ryūjin Jakka… Bankai?!"
The world reeled. The populace roared.
No one expected the kings' duel to turn this way—
the murderous Head-Captain
had simply gone straight to Bankai.
Inside the First Division,
as the screen returned to a crystal clarity
like the very first clips when the countdown began,
the captains blinked at the sudden change—
their eyes needed time to adjust.
"What is this…
If you're going to kill Yhwach, you should unleash every ounce of the sword's power—
make the flames multiply and burn the enemy to ash!"
Zaraki shook his head.
A single-track fighter, he didn't overthink it.
In his creed, the more violently power shows, the stronger it is.
This quiet facade only confused him.
"Could it be Bankai? Ryūjin Jakka!"
Not far away,
Hitsugaya in the same row
gripped Hyōrinmaru without thinking, face tightening.
Through Hyōrinmaru came the feedback—
that frosty force still pushing back against fire.
Hitsugaya could clearly feel it.
Ryūjin Jakka's power looked like it had vanished back into the Head-Captain and his blade—
but in truth
Hyōrinmaru's resistance had multiplied.
Which could only mean—
what everyone saw
was a trick of the senses.
The real reason
was that Ryūjin Jakka had gone Bankai.
And indeed,
what followed proved Hitsugaya right.
He, Zaraki, and the other captains
had all underestimated what Ryūjin Jakka would look like—and how destructive it would become—
after Bankai.
The camera moved,
using the bright light from above to catch the Head-Captain's eyes—
then gave a tight, high-definition close-up of Ryūjin Jakka.
"Huh…
something's off!"
"That blade has always been smooth, if I remember right."
"Why does the surface look pitch-black, like iron rust?"
"There's no way it suddenly corroded mid-fight, right?"
The sharp-eyed in the audience
spotted it at once…
(End of Chapter)
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