Chapter 35: More Teaching Methods Like This, Please
Kasasaki, adjacent to Minamikawase.
Late at night, the quiet road lay empty, and even the glow of the streetlights felt cold.
Without warning, a scorching pillar of fire descended from the sky.
It swept along the asphalt like a fire engine's high pressure hose.
The Hollows lurking beneath the ground were forced out, and the instant they surfaced they were turned to ash.
"That is the last of them."
Byakuryu blew out the crimson flames from his jaws, then dissolved its materialized form and flowed back to Shimiya Takeru's waist, returning to the shape of a scabbard.
Takeru slid the sword in his hand back into its sheath.
That simple motion marked the end of tonight's battle.
In total, it had taken a little over three hours.
It had been grueling, but being able to wield his power freely and test the results of his training was, without question, exhilarating.
At least, it was for Shimiya Takeru.
And after the fighting, there was a benefit no one else had.
The settlement of spoils.
The moment Takeru dropped from the sky and landed on the roof of a small Western style restaurant by the roadside, lines of ink brush text unfolded in front of his eyes.
[System: Oh my, the most outstanding genius since the founding of the Spiritual Arts Academy has cleared the most difficult Soul Burial Analysis since the Academy's establishment, completely dominating the Reishi rich land of this era. The machine soul is greatly pleased.]
[System: However, your domineering self is not satisfied with being bound by mere Academy history. So you cast your gaze upon the land beneath your feet. Since anomalies shift with every age, why should they not shift toward you, the one who represents the next era?]
[System: Karakura Town trembles and respectfully offers a gift of gratitude. You comprehend, in darkness and in an endless sea of fire, for the sole purpose of eradicating villains who encroach on a chosen land: Shihouin Chika's Shunpo Insights.]
A gentle breeze rose.
It passed through the ink wash characters and scattered them.
As it blew through Takeru's body, a chill pierced all the way into his soul.
His mind became clearer than ever.
Every bit of his mental and intellectual strength was forcibly drawn into absorbing that drifting inspiration.
Greedy, yet impossibly efficient.
His grasp of Shunpo soared at an astonishing rate. Saying he advanced a thousand miles in a day would hardly be an exaggeration.
No amount of ordinary training could achieve such an effect.
Even if someone simply implanted memories in him, his body and mind would still need time to adapt.
But what Takeru had gained now was comprehension reached through his own efforts, the same "experience" as that of his predecessor, Shihouin Chika, Captain of First Division of the Gotei 13.
In other words, he had not stolen something from someone else.
He had acquired something identical to what another had once possessed.
Takeru opened his eyes without realizing when he had closed them.
His gaze was as bright as ever, not dimmed by exhaustion from the fierce battle. If anything, there was something extra in it now.
He looked up at the sky, then down at the ground.
Iron railings, walls, streetlights, landscaped shrubs, glass windows. His eyes slid over them all with a distant calm.
It was not disdain, nor the chill of disgust.
It was more like he was looking straight through them, as if they were insubstantial phantoms.
Takeru's figure vanished.
The next instant he appeared at the front entrance of the Western restaurant below.
If a Shinigami had been there to watch, they would certainly have said he was using high speed movement, Shunpo.
They would not be wrong.
But there was one detail to add.
This had not been a simple straight line dash.
In a single second he had dropped from the rooftop, raced down the stairwell, slid around countless obstacles, and stepped out through the front door.
He moved as lightly as a ghost walking through walls.
Or perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that he treated the building itself like a ghost and passed through it.
Either way, the movement carried a detached, almost transcendent feeling.
Takeru himself did not notice anything special.
He only knew one thing for certain.
He had yet to master any elaborate techniques, but the three basic fundamentals of Shunpo initiation, footwork, and the step itself had all improved dramatically.
Calling it rapid progress did not quite do it justice.
It was more like his mind and body had been washed clean by some incredible baptism, then rebuilt from the foundation up.
There was no telling how many years of normal training it would have taken, even for a genius like him, to reach this stage.
In the end, Takeru's talent in Shunpo could not compare to those prodigies who seemed born devoted to a single discipline.
But his growth rate was enough to break through those prodigies' pride.
"My mind and body are satisfied, and I got paid on top of that. I would call that a win win."
Takeru knew full well that the Hollows were not entirely Uryu Ishida's fault. His kind hearted teacher had almost certainly played a role.
On that point, he had only one comment.
The more lessons like this, the better.
…
"Ugh, I am exhausted. I never want to go through that again."
Half an hour later, Takeru, Hachihara, and Rindo Yu linked up in Minamikawase as planned.
Sensing their spiritual pressure clashing earlier, Ichigo had also made his way over on his own.
By the time he arrived, Hachihara was already grumbling loudly.
"It was fun at first, but there were way too many Hollows. It was endless, seriously endless. By the end my stamina and spiritual pressure were both empty, and all I could do was run away and hide."
"Good thing they all started running for some reason. If they had kept coming, I would have had to send you a distress message and beg you to come pick me up."
"That is fine. You may not have noticed, but your face has started to fill out a little lately."
"What?!"
Ignoring Hachihara, who yelped and immediately pulled out her Soul Pager to take a selfie and check, Takeru casually greeted Ichigo as he walked over.
"You all right on your side?"
"I am fine. I finally cleaned everything up." Ichigo nodded, then sighed. "By the way, I could feel what you guys were doing from all the way over there. It was like an actual war. For a second I really thought the whole city was going to blow, and I almost ran off with my family."
"I was doing my best to control the scale of the fighting and keep the damage to the World of the Living minimal."
Rindo Yu answered in an innocent tone.
"I can tell you are in much better shape than Hachihara."
Ichigo knew better than anyone that those two were roughly on the same level.
There was no way Hachihara should be completely wiped while Rindo still looked relatively fresh.
If that happened anyway, it could only mean one thing. Someone had done a better job controlling the field, achieving maximum effect with minimal consumption and still keeping enough in reserve to fight until the end.
"Do not worry."
Takeru sounded completely confident.
"I do not know about Hachihara, but I can guarantee I did not accidentally kill a single human. At most, I caused a bit of trivial property damage."
"…"
Ichigo's mouth twitched.
He did not really believe that a battle where half of Karakura Town's sky had been dyed red counted as "trivial damage."
But the fact that no ordinary citizens had been caught up in it at all was honestly amazing.
He was not sure he could pull that off himself.
Hachihara, having confirmed it was just a false alarm about her face, shot Takeru an annoyed glare.
"Actually, more than any of that, I am curious about what happened to this city tonight to suddenly draw in so many Hollows."
"For that, we will have to ask the Shinigami stationed here to give us an answer."
Takeru folded his arms and leaned back lightly against a streetlight.
As he spoke, he turned his head, looking toward a nearby intersection.
Ichigo, Rindo, and Hachihara instinctively followed his gaze.
Two girls ran in from around the corner and then stopped dead when they saw the group standing there.
"Uh…"
"?"
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