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Chapter 62: The Endless War I
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And finally, the pinnacle of his curiosity: the Hōgyoku.
Contained within the deepest chamber of his city, encased in obsidian vaults and monitored by every sensor of the living city's being, Akashi had the data; everything Aizen had allowed him to have.
Was it real data? Or another experiment? Did Aizen expect Akashi to try recreating it, or was the data meant to lead him astray? Akashi simply didn't understand.
"Does it matter?" Akashi asked himself as he stared at the data before him, "If everything works out the way I imagine it... If the Voices are right, then Aizen won't matter."
The Hōgyoku's theory was simple, its execution impossibly complex. To grant the wishes of the soul? To bend evolution to desire?
The early designs pointed toward a combination of shinigami souls, other souls from Rukongai; ones with the potential to be shinigami; hollows, and Soul King fragments.
Akashi would need specimens, and lots of them.
He turned to his horrors, "Begin dissecting low-level Hollows. I will extract their darkness and see what remains."
Hollows are plenty. He's in their kingdom, but souls, especially spiritually aware souls. They are rare... Tokinada, "Do not disappoint me, Tokinada... Prepare me the most lavish of feasts."
Akashi stepped back and allowed himself a moment of breath. The work had only just begun, but for the first time in years; perhaps ever; he had the time, the tools, and the freedom.
He let out a breath, eyeing the depths of the Forest of Menos in the distance.
The hollows he'd encountered here were nothing, pitiful in number in comparison to what lay there.
There, is his destination, "When did I become a masochist?" He had to wonder. After all, what normal soul misses the feeling of pain?
But what can he do? Pain seems to be one of the only things that muddles the Voices in his mind.
Two months had passed within the Eldritch City, and though Akashi had not left the Forest of Menos during that time, his soul had traveled far beyond its boundaries.
Gravity training had stripped him to the bone and rebuilt him tenfold, each breath taken under tenfold spiritual pressure a lesson in endurance.
Every step through the suffocating dark made him more meticulous, more honed.
His research had advanced; yes; but now his desires demanded war. It's only in battle that he finds most progress, as if war is natural to him.
After a long, scalding shower, he stepped into his Shinigami robes; folded and prepared by his horrors with surgical care.
The fabric felt heavier today, as if acknowledging the weight of what was to come... Pain, pleasurable pain... Yeah, he was definitely turning into a masochist.
Kurayami hung from his waist, disguised as a modest black katana with a hilt that throbbed like it were alive.
Then he walked forward until his boots clicked against the highest spire.
He leaped.
Wind screamed against his face as the blackened structures of the Eldritch City shrank behind him.
A ripple of black energy surged below, and from the pools of darkness emerged Zenaserisu; Zena, the great metallic wyvern horror, her wings ablaze with coiling darkness and cerulean Reishi.
Akashi landed smoothly on Zena's back.
"Fly," He ordered.
And Zena obeyed, soaring forward into the black ocean of trees below; the Forest of Menos.
The deeper they flew, the denser the darkness grew. Trees like silver-boned giants jutted from the earth.
The shadows turned tactile, writhing against the air, and the cries of the damned echoed from below.
Hollow cries. Shrill. Thunderous. Insane.
He stood on Zena's spine and looked ahead.
An army.
Not a formation. Not a force. No banners. No leadership. Just a living wall of mouths, claws, malformed torsos, tails, wings, and empty, unhinged eyes.
Base Hollows stumbled and raced beneath the trees, disjointed masses of flesh and mask.
Their numbers alone suffocated the ground. They weren't organized, but desperation and hunger had pulled them together.
Dozens of Gillians; towering black giants with blank white masks; loomed among them, the dominant predator, mindless but powerful.
He could see the madness.
They weren't attacking each other like usual. Not now. Not with a Shinigami in sight.
Even from the sky, the spiritual taste of his soul lured them like meat dragged through an ocean of piranhas.
He inhaled once.
Exhaled.
Then Zena vanished into a pool of darkness beneath his feet.
Freefall.
The sky turned into a hellscape behind him as dozens of Gillians opened their hollow jaws.
From the black maws of titanic beasts bloomed red spheres; Ceros; spiritual matter compressed into a laser of utter destruction.
They launched simultaneously, burning the sky crimson.
Akashi fell through the chaos.
Platforms of Reishi materialized beneath his boots just long enough for him to redirect his trajectory.
One step, then pivot. Another, then slide. A sudden burst to the right.
The world became an orchestra of detonations; each Cero exploding against Reishi shields or crashing into the trees, vaporizing anything in its path.
The red brilliance turned the silver forest into a furnace.
He curved his final fall toward a cluster of base Hollows just beneath a pair of Gillians, landing with a soundless impact and unsheathing Kurayami mid-motion.
The first Hollow came; an insectile thing with dozens of twitching legs and a stomach that burst open to reveal a second, screaming mouth lined with writhing worms.
He sliced upward; Kurayami's blade bending and then straightening like liquid, cutting through the beast from pelvis to skull.
Black gore spilled, hissing against the air like acid. The thing twitched violently before collapsing.
The second came from behind; a serpentine creature with limbs made of stitched arms, a mask that stretched across the length of its head.
Akashi spun and reformed Kurayami into a halberd. With one smooth arc, he decapitated it. The body kept moving for several seconds before spasming and falling over with a sickening squelch.
The third launched from the canopy above. It looked human from the waist up but had no lower body; only a writhing tendril of intestines that ended in a gaping mouth.
Its eyes wept blood.
He turned Kurayami into a short spear and stabbed upward. The weapon extended mid-thrust, skewering the Hollow from gut to throat, pinning it into a tree with a thunderous snap.
He turned around, realizing just how many still stood, seemingly unconcerned about death.
They never stopped lunging at him. Fear, they seemingly do not know. They were endless... Truly an Endless War.
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