Maybe it was the new shihakushō, but Naraku felt in peak condition as he stood in the Fifth Division dōjō. He lowered his stance slightly, right hand resting lightly on his sword hilt.
His fingers tightened. As his knuckles cracked, a wave of blistering heat rolled off him, like the air itself had become a furnace.
Threads of blood-red Reiatsu wrapped around his arm like lightning, condensing and refining, then pouring completely into the blade.
The next moment—
The razor-sharp edge sliced through the air, carrying scorching heat and Reiatsu far beyond what most Shinigami his age could muster, crashing straight toward where Aizen stood.
Faced with the incoming strike, Aizen's eyes hardened behind his plain lenses.
The smile at his lips faded. Instead of dodging like before, he gathered his vast, heavy Reiatsu.
Pure spiritual pressure surged from the emission points in his wrist, flowed outward, and formed six fine Kidō circuits along the back of his hand. They twisted together and sketched a simple spell pattern.
The next instant, lightning exploded within.
He stepped in.
Two fully "VFX-maxed" silhouettes slammed into each other. The blast of thunder that followed sounded like a thunderclap at arm's length.
Naraku's sword tore through the wind, wrapped in lightning, cutting down from above toward Aizen's chest.
The sudden shift stunned Naraku, his pupils shrinking. His instincts kicked in and he snapped his blade upward to intercept.
He was fast—but not quite fast enough.
Their swords crossed, and Aizen's strike sliced across the front of Naraku's shihakushō.
Surprisingly, the fabric didn't tear.
Aizen's brow lifted slightly. That should've cut clean through—but it felt like he'd struck something incredibly tough. The closest comparison he could think of was Hollow Hierro.
So Naraku had gotten his hands on something outrageous again.
He immediately thought of the Warden currently "on loan" to the Central Prison—Shutara Senjumaru, the woman who'd rewoven Shinigami history with the invention of the shihakushō.
Still, that worked out nicely.
If he had time, he could ask to borrow it and take a deeper look at the secret behind this new uniform.
And maybe check if anyone had embedded something they shouldn't have in the fabric.
While he was thinking, Naraku had already stopped thinking. He flared his Reiatsu and charged straight at Aizen.
Right now, his momentum was peaking.
Sparks fell like a torrential rain as they clashed. The sound of metal striking metal layered over itself until it was a continuous roar that shook the chest.
If Aizen hadn't placed a Kidō barrier around the dōjō beforehand, the place would've been flattened in seconds.
Even so, the floor was wrecked by stray shockwaves and aftershocks—cracks and shattered stone everywhere.
Naraku grinned, bearing down against Reiatsu far greater than his own. The silver-white sword burned with a bright crimson glow as he brought it down at Aizen.
The hot winds rolling off the strike made Aizen's expression shift.
He'd always taken pride in his talent for Kidō. High-tier spells came easily to him, and he'd already begun pushing beyond the limits of their "intended use."
But compared to this completely unhinged monster, the gap was… baffling.
Most people needed the chant, the spell structure, and the spiritual-flow pattern to use Kidō properly—things that required both talent and time.
Naraku didn't.
He seemed to cast purely on instinct.
Where others needed a moment of prep before a spell, for him it was like breathing—no chant, no buildup, just fire.
It was like he'd carved Kidō into his bones.
Utterly absurd.
Aizen raised his Zanpakutō horizontally in front of his body. Thick Reiatsu layered into a solid defense—
Which shattered a heartbeat later as Naraku's strike landed like a volcanic eruption, ripping it apart with ease and plowing forward.
Aizen's body was sent flying, but his sword kept moving—white-hot pressure ripping through the air and catching Naraku right in that tiny gap between a spent strike and the start of a new one.
Rrrip—
The sound of tearing cloth echoed in the dōjō.
The tough new shihakushō was sliced open in a single stroke, a heavy spray of blood following.
An instant later, the two of them crashed back into each other again, both wrapped in blazing Reiatsu, their blades clashing over and over.
In less than half a second, no one could say how many times they'd exchanged cuts.
Afterimages flickered all across the battered training ground, each one adding another scar to the beleaguered dōjō.
The high-intensity battle continued until Naraku's stamina burned out and his Reiatsu was almost dry.
When the roaring finally cut off, both of them were in rough shape.
Naraku was drenched in sweat like he'd been dragged out of a river, heart pounding, muscles and bones throbbing with dull pain.
His shihakushō was in tatters, full of cuts and tears. Through the gaps, you could see the brutal slash wounds beneath.
That continuous, full-power fight had nearly wrung his body dry.
Aizen wasn't much better off. His Reiatsu advantage was obvious—but his "other stats" fell short of Naraku's.
His body bore no shortage of wounds, some deep enough to show bone.
As for the dōjō—total devastation.
The steel-lined floor, walls, and even ceiling were streaked with burn marks, glowing faintly red. Several training targets had been reduced to pools of molten metal, nothing left of them at all.
It was like a natural disaster had blown through.
And this was with a Bakudō barrier.
Without Aizen's foresight, other squad members—or even Shinji—would've come to "check the noise" by now.
Naraku sprawled on the floor without an ounce of dignity, letting his Reiatsu recover on its own.
Aizen hesitated, worried about getting completely "infected" by this maniac's grind mentality. But in the end, he forced himself to stand and used the healing technique he'd only recently learned to patch them both up.
As the clashes replayed in his mind, his eyes grew thoughtful.
"…Thank you, Sora."
Naraku blinked, confused, staring up at Aizen. The plain lenses hid his eyes, making it hard to read his tone.
"The way you merged Kidō and swordsmanship gave me a lot of ideas," Aizen explained calmly. "The path that had been blocked for me is open again."
Naraku waved it off. "Eh, just think of it as fatherly love."
"…?"
A sea-like wave of Reiatsu crashed over the dōjō again.
...
After finally finishing a day of training, Naraku limped out of the Fifth Division gates, still remembering to greet the guards on the way out.
Watching his battered but unbowed back, the gate Shinigami's eyes filled with admiration.
As expected of a young seated-officer genius. That kind of relentless dedication to training was truly something to emulate.
Naraku had planned to head straight back to the Central Prison barracks, but he'd only gone a few steps before a familiar figure appeared, blocking his path.
"Yo. Took you long enough, Naraku."
Leaning casually against a wall, Yoruichi waved with a wide grin.
"I've been waiting for ages!"