Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 150 - One More Edge Seized

That same afternoon, Wayne finished preparing and got ready to begin the afternoon’s advancement matches.

After Mizusue spoke with Wayne about the matter of redrawing the lots, Wayne’s expression had gone completely unreadable.

Unlike Hueco Mundo, where if you weren’t satisfied you simply fought until you were, the open rivalries and hidden scheming among the nobility ran far deeper and far more rotten than Wayne had ever imagined.

The truth was that the largest source of funding behind the challenge tournament actually came from the Four Great Noble Houses.

Namely, the Kuchiki family, the Shihoin family, the Shiba family, and the Gō Yodai family.

Certain elders within the Four Great Houses, in order to profit, had spread word, opened betting pools on the Ranking Tournament, and funneled enormous sums of money toward themselves. And once the top eight was reached, the biggest gamblers had only just entered the game, the so-called random draw was nothing more than the nobles deciding among themselves who they most wanted to watch fight whom.

Of course, it wasn’t only the Four Great Houses involved. There were also many smaller and mid-tier noble families of varying strength. They held no real voice on their own, but once united, they could become a force that even the Four Great Houses found troublesome. So in order to maintain a degree of cooperation, the great families allowed the lesser nobles to take part.

As for why the Seireitei would never press the matter too hard, first, the Shihoin, Kuchiki, and Shiba families each held positions within the Gotei 13. Setting aside whether the participants were the family heads themselves, even if they weren’t, the old man could never crack down fatally on the gambling pools if it meant disrupting the harmony of the Gotei 13. And the Seireitei needed operating funds of its own. The pools were large, but as long as taxes were collected, the old man was willing to look the other way.

Even so, the news hit Wayne like no small blow. Setting aside the very real possibility that he might be eliminated in the top eight, if he failed to follow the script those decaying nobles had written, the consequences would certainly not be good.

Turning the thought over in his mind, Wayne stepped up onto the stage. Unlike the morning’s matches, which had been met with jeers and skeptical muttering, the afternoon crowd erupted into cheers the moment Wayne appeared.

A first-year student fighting three consecutive matches against sixth-years and winning every single one, this was no longer reckless overconfidence. This was a person of genuine ability. It was a kind of glory. Especially among fellow students, seeing a classmate climb onto that stage felt like climbing up there yourself.

And so a wave of cheers and shouts of encouragement instantly drowned out even the crowd noise for the equally popular Kuraki Kaoru.

“Tsukishiro Hinamori. I look forward to your instruction.” Wayne stepped back onto the stage and gave a slanted swing with the broken half of the katana blade he held.

The gesture made Kuraki Kaoru, behind her mask and her head of purple hair, furrow her dark brows.

Then, a voice like a golden oriole rang in Wayne’s ears.

“Are you looking down on me?”

“This is the only blade I have.” Wayne gave a wry smile. “I don’t mean any disrespect to you, senior. It’s just that this is all I have left.”

Hearing that, Kuraki Kaoru’s brow furrowed slightly. But she quickly abandoned any further concern over it. She was going to be a member of the Punishment Force in the future, a so-called fair match like this was fundamentally meaningless to her. All that mattered was winning. And as for advantages and disadvantages, the more favorable the conditions for herself, the better. In this moment, she could only regard Wayne’s broken blade as an advantage that fate had handed her.

With that weight lifted from her conscience, Kuraki Kaoru let out a long breath, then bent her waist and planted her feet, shifting her weight back, ready to attack at any moment.

“Ready — begin!”

CLANG!

The moment the referee gave the command, the match officially started. In an instant both figures vanished simultaneously, then appeared simultaneously at the center of the arena, accompanied by the ringing crash of two blades meeting.

Blades clashed. Both withdrew and vanished in the same breath, then reappeared again via Shunpo, streaks of light and showers of sparks scattered across the arena floor.

“Th-this speed is insane.” The students in the viewing stands could no longer track the two fighters with their eyes. All they could make out were bursts of sparks and the relentless metallic ringing of clashing steel. On the elevated platform to the side, every captain except Tōsen had their eyes fixed sharply on both fighters’ movements, and from time to time, genuine admiration flickered in their gazes.

BOOM!

After dozens of exchanges at Shunpo speed, Wayne suddenly threw a straight punch aimed directly at Kuraki Kaoru’s chest. Caught completely off guard, she took the punch full on. A faint flush crossed her face, though her expression was pure fury. She didn’t get blown away by Wayne’s punch, instead she used the recoil to her advantage, grabbed his arm, and vaulted backward, swinging around to his rear. At the same time she seized his eye-band from behind and yanked it back hard, while her blade swung in a slashing arc.

With his eye-band pulled taut and the pressure squeezing his eyes, Wayne was forced to tilt his head back sharply, his whole body arcing away in the same direction. He lashed out with a kick that carried a burst of Reiatsu, knocking Kuraki Kaoru’s Zanpakutō off its original slashing path. He barely, just barely, avoided what would have been a blow straight to the back of his skull.

But the eye-band had no such luck, the blade caught it and sliced it clean off, along with a strand of hair from the back of his head.

Wayne used Shunpo to clear the area and put a safe distance between them.

On the other side, Kuraki Kaoru was in the same position, Wayne’s punch had not been light, and she needed a moment to steady her breathing and settle the churning blood in her chest.

“Oh my, oh my. That Hinamori boy hits hard.” Up in the stands, the 8th Division Captain Shunsui Kyōraku, who was famously reluctant to ever strike a woman, wore an expression of deep regret. “Such a lovely young lady. It’d be a real shame if she got hurt — uwah!”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He felt a sharp elbow drive hard into his ribs. The one who delivered it was, naturally, his lieutenant Nanao Ise.

“Captain, please refrain from making remarks that leave people baffled.” The young Nanao Ise adjusted her glasses.

“Yeah, yeah.” Shunsui Kyōraku deflated. “Still, that young man is genuinely interesting. None of the fatigue from the last match is showing, and his Reiatsu has recovered quickly.”

“That is perhaps a question for the 4th Division’s captain.” The 12th Division Captain Mayuri Kurotsuchi spoke up from not far away. “I understand the treatment just now was performed personally by your division’s 7th Seat, Mizusue. And before she went, she paid a little visit to the prize area of my 12th Division.”

Hearing that, 4th Division Captain Retsu Unohana understood what Mayuri was implying. “I will handle this matter when I return.” Unohana’s meaning was clear, her division member, she would deal with herself later. For now, focus on the match.

“Hmph.” Mayuri Kurotsuchi didn’t particularly care about losing one bottle of Reishi medicine, but the thought that this fascinating test subject might end up not joining his division made his teeth itch with frustration. Even if he couldn’t dissect Wayne, the least he wanted was some degree of cooperation. And once Wayne entered the 4th Division, the chances of getting that collaboration would become even more remote.

“Using prize items to restore Reiatsu during the event without authorization — does that count as cheating?” The large dog in the bamboo mask spoke in a low, muffled voice.

“There’s no rule against using prize items before your match. After all, he’s already in the top sixteen.” Isshin Shiba smoothed things over. “And it happened during the rest period, not on the stage itself. Besides, the Gotei 13 has no rule against members exchanging gifts out of mutual affection.”

“Mm.” The large dog glanced at Isshin Shiba, then shifted its gaze toward Yamamoto at the center. Seeing the old man offer no reaction at all, he said nothing more. He turned his attention back to the arena.

On the arena floor, after withdrawing to a safe distance, Wayne instinctively reached back to touch the back of his head. He checked and found no wound, there had only been a sharp sting from the Reiatsu radiating off the blade edge during that last exchange. But his eye-band was gone. His eyes, pale violet, stared forward with no focus at all.

To conceal it, Wayne deliberately kept his gaze from fixing on anything. After a brief moment to catch his breath, Wayne closed his eyes.

He opened his Reiatsu perception to its fullest extent, quickly blanketing the entire arena. He closed his eyes, extended his left hand forward in a single-handed grip on the blade, and rested his right hand lightly underneath the left.

The next second, a pale blue Reiatsu stirred up a swirling current of wind, sending his clothes snapping and flapping. A thread of pale blue Reiatsu took the shape of a blade of light, wrapping itself around Wayne’s broken sword.

“Is he about to release a secret technique burst?” The thought surfaced in Kuraki Kaoru’s mind.

Like Wayne, Kuraki Kaoru had, before the match, conducted her own investigation of him through the Punishment Force’s records on Rukongai, locking onto this person who had arrived in Soul Society less than a year ago and already achieved considerable cultivation results. She had looked into his background and certain rumors about him. One of those rumors was that Wayne possessed a method to briefly burst his Reiatsu to a higher level. The duration was short. At this moment, Kuraki Kaoru was convinced that Wayne had activated that secret technique again, temporarily boosting his power.

Seeing Wayne begin to gather power and build up, every spectator in the stands widened their eyes. They were preparing to find out exactly what kind of strength this first-year student possessed.

“Good. Then now.” Seeing that Wayne was still charging, Kuraki Kaoru did not rush forward immediately. After all, she couldn’t be certain whether this long buildup of his was a genuine wind-up or whether he had already been fully charged and was simply baiting her to attack.

And so she chose the more measured approach.

In the next moment, Kuraki Kaoru raised her Zanpakutō high overhead and spoke the release incantation aloud. “Bewitch them, Illusionary Butterfly!”

Hm!

A resonant hum rang out. Wayne felt a sharp stab of pain shoot through his brain. It was hard to believe that after witnessing Kaname Tōsen’s Suzumushi, another Zanpakutō with a similar nature had appeared.

Indeed, the way Kuraki Kaoru’s Illusionary Butterfly created illusions operated through sound waves. By releasing sound waves, it threw Wayne’s Reiatsu into disorder, making it impossible for him to correctly perceive the things around him.

“Damn sound wave attack.” Pain lanced through Wayne’s brain. The Reiatsu blade he had just constructed showed signs of dissipating. In the next instant, Wayne hurled a sword wave hard toward where Kuraki Kaoru stood in the distance, but the slash landed far wide of her actual position.

It was clear that Wayne’s ability to perceive his surroundings was already being affected by the Illusionary Butterfly.

“Hmph. My Illusionary Butterfly uses sound frequency to alter the fluctuations of Reiatsu and the sensitivity of the nerves. Right now, you have no way of locating where I am.” Kuraki Kaoru’s eyes narrowed slightly. Beneath the mask, that cherry-blossom mouth had clearly curved upward.

“Urgh...” Wayne’s skull was throbbing with pressure. He had no particularly effective counter to this kind of attack. And on the other side, Kuraki Kaoru was clearly not going to let this opportunity go to waste. She extended her hand, pointing it directly at Wayne.

“Crumble into self-destruction, black dog of Rondanini — consumed by a single glance, burned to nothing, sever your own throat! Bakudō Number Nine — Hōrin!”

As Kuraki Kaoru’s incantation rang out, a yellow cord of Reishi coiled tight around Wayne’s body, binding him fast. Under the sound wave attack, Wayne had no way to dodge this sudden restraint. His body was constricted, and the broken half of the katana clattered from his hand to the ground.

“Ruler! Clad in the skin of flesh, all creation, wings beating, bearing the name of man! Wall of sinless dreams of truth and moderation, standing only upon it — Hadō Number Thirty-Three, Sōkatsui!”

Kuraki Kaoru had no intention of stopping. She chanted the incantation for another Kidō spell.

BOOM!

A wave of white flame crashed over Wayne and detonated in an explosion, blasting him off his feet. The same explosion also shattered the binding cord wrapped around him. In the instant of the blast, Wayne’s mind snapped briefly clear, but there was no time to dodge the detonation already pressing against his face. He could only grit through it and take the hit.

BOOM! Wayne was blown away. Before long, the Zanpakutō’s sound waves swept back through his mind all over again.

“Give up.” The voice of Kuraki Kaoru, once as clear and bright as a golden oriole, now carried a strange and chilling quality, warped by the shifting sound wave attack. “With the Reiatsu you have right now, even a burst won’t let you break through my Butterfly Dance head-on. As a junior, you’ve come this far, that’s no small thing. Give up. The fights ahead are not the kind a new student like you should be part of.”

“Hah... hah...” Wayne drew in long, ragged breaths. The stabbing pain in his skull did not ease in the slightest. Even covering both ears did nothing to stop the sound waves from passing directly through his body and rattling him from within. “Shame though... you haven’t pushed the sound waves into ultrasound. What a waste of that blade in your hands.”

“Hm?” Kuraki Kaoru blinked at Wayne’s words. In her frame of reference, she had no idea what ultrasound even was.

“ROAR!” Wayne drew in one long breath and let it out in a thundering roar. The roar, saturated with Reiatsu, surged toward Kuraki Kaoru like the cry of a dragon. In the next instant, the sound waves scrambling his mind faded sharply, and the threads of stabbing pain dissolved away within the force of his roar. But, it only held for a few seconds. Once the roar died out, the fine, crawling noise crept back into Wayne’s skull, like a devil whispering in the dark.

But Wayne had found the weakness of that blade. As long as he could generate a sound wave greater than hers, her sound wave attack would lose its effect. His response to this realization: he clenched both fists, wrapped them in Reiatsu, and drove them into the ground. The arena floor fractured instantly into a web of cracks, and a deep rumbling reverberation rolled out. Countless chunks of stone launched into the air. In the next second, Wayne swept his leg out and kicked the flying debris straight at Kuraki Kaoru. As she dodged, she instinctively began using her blade to deflect the incoming stones, and the moment she did, the sound wave attack weakened at once.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

The sound of stone striking steel rang out without pause. Kuraki Kaoru saw the situation and immediately tucked her blade behind her body, relying on Shunpo to dodge the debris instead. But the stones were too dense to avoid entirely. Shunpo was fast, but she had not yet reached the level of Shunpo mastery that would let her evade all of them.

Shink!

Amid the relentless barrage of stones, a metallic shriek of something cutting through the air suddenly flashed through, its speed far outstripping any of the stones. Looking closely, it was the broken half of the katana blade. The one Wayne had snapped in an earlier fight. No one had expected that he had been keeping it hidden this whole time, waiting for exactly this moment to strike from the shadows.

Clang! Kuraki Kaoru could not dodge in time. She could only swing her sword to parry. At the sharp ring of impact, the sound wave attack from her Illusionary Butterfly dropped to its absolute minimum. In that moment Wayne’s mind snapped back to brief clarity. He closed the distance in a single Shunpo, then flowed directly into Shadow Step, three flashes, and appeared behind her. His left hand rose in a vertical blade strike. Reiatsu burst to its maximum in an instant, condensing a short blade of pure Reiatsu between his palm, and he drove it down in a chopping strike at Kuraki Kaoru.

BOOM!

The overwhelming Reiatsu left Kuraki Kaoru in a moment of stunned disbelief. It was several times the force of any exchange they had made throughout the entire fight, she had absolutely no time to adjust her own Reiatsu. Wayne had caught her completely off guard. Her Illusionary Butterfly flew out of her grasp.

The sound wave attack vanished entirely. Wayne’s condition snapped back to peak in an instant. Kuraki Kaoru, her Zanpakutō sent flying, staggered backward, and then Wayne’s right hand shot out, closing around her throat, and lifted her off the ground. Before Kuraki Kaoru could even process what was happening, the short Reiatsu blade condensed in Wayne’s left hand had already pressed to a point directly in front of her eye. If her head moved even one centimeter forward, Wayne’s savage Reiatsu would pierce straight through her right eye.

“Hiss...” Wayne’s cold and decisive killing manner drew a sharp intake of breath from every student in the arena. If this had been an actual battlefield, the girl suspended in the air right now would very likely have already ceased to exist.

“Surrender, or die.” Wayne’s expression at this moment was ferocious. Even with his eyes closed, Kuraki Kaoru could feel the killing intent rolling off his body.

“I... I concede.” In the end, Kuraki Kaoru surrendered, her reluctance impossible to hide. The battle was over.

“Top sixteen to top eight — Tsukishiro Hinamori wins!”

➤ Next: The Letter — Words Unspoken