Bleach: Awakened — Chapter 119 - The Hogyoku Evolves Once More

"What... is this?!"

Muttering to himself, Aizen couldn't make sense of what was happening in front of him. All of it—every last bit, had blown past anything he'd imagined. He didn't understand. Ichigo already possessed that kind of overwhelming power. So why did he want the Hogyoku?

"Are you trying to become the new Soul King?" As though something had clicked, a mocking smile pulled at the corner of Aizen's mouth. "You seek the Soul King's power as well."

"In that case, the two of us don't seem to have any diff—?!"

"What are you talking about?"

Pure contempt. The hand Ichigo had buried in Aizen's chest, the one wrapped around the Hogyoku, suddenly blazed with brilliant green light.

"You... you actually fed the Hogyoku the Soul King Fragment from the depths of your own soul?!"

Aizen's eyes went wide. Disbelief was written all over his face. He could sense it clearly: a new Soul King Fragment had been driven into the Hogyoku. No question about it. That fragment belonged to the deepest part of Ichigo's soul.

In that moment, Aizen felt himself shrink to nothing. The figure standing before him expanded without limit, towering, untouchable, as though Ichigo stood at the pinnacle of all dimensions and looked down at him from above.

SWISH,

Ichigo pulled his hand free and gave it a small shake. His face was calm. Like the person who had just carved a Soul King Fragment from his own soul wasn't him at all.

HISSSSS!

A radiance that felt as old as creation itself poured from the Hogyoku. The Soul King Fragment inside Ichigo alone matched the sum of every fragment the Hogyoku already contained. Its power surged to a new level.

"Oh, not bad at all!"

His vision went slightly hazy. A tearing sensation kept clawing up from somewhere deep in his soul. Ichigo rubbed his temple. Forcibly splitting off a piece of his own soul had left him a little rattled too.

"Why... are you doing this?"

The Hogyoku, dormant until moments ago, blazed back to life. With only the faintest sliver of consciousness, it kept pushing Aizen toward battle, because it was only through battle that it could fulfill its master's endlessly evolving wish.

"Because I want to see, of course. Just how far you and the Hogyoku can actually go."

The slight pallor had already faded from Ichigo's face, color returning to normal. He looked completely unbothered. The aftereffects of the soul-splitting had already vanished.

"...I understand." Aizen stepped back several paces and raised the blade in his right hand. "You do stand in a higher place than I do, Ichigo Kurosaki."

"In return for this charity you've shown me, I will kill you—together with the Hogyoku."

"Ha. Go ahead and try."

BOOM!

A terrifying spiritual pressure erupted skyward. A crushing force that felt capable of collapsing all of existence swept across the Three Realms. Even those in other dimensions felt it clearly, an inexplicable weight bearing down on them, thick and suffocating.

"I will make you regret this." Aizen had fully recovered his composure. "Regret what you just did."

"Regret making me stronger."

SWISH,

He swung his blade through empty air. Space warped and buckled under Aizen's power. Even with Soul Reaper limits in effect here, spatial force could not be used in this place.

"So his spiritual pressure is the first thing to evolve. As expected." Ichigo's eyes half-closed. "Not enough. Aizen. This level is still not enough."

"I know... of course it's not enough."

Rage filled his chest, not at Ichigo, but at himself. This was the first time. The first time in his entire existence that Aizen had received something as charity from another person.

From the moment he became a Soul Reaper and awakened Kyoka Suigetsu, Aizen had stood among the powerful.

For decades. Centuries. He had grown stronger in solitude, kept learning, kept advancing, with no one around him capable of keeping pace. Without his even noticing, he had risen to the very pinnacle of what a Soul Reaper could be.

In Aizen's eyes, the entire Gotei 13, save for Captain-Commander Yamamoto, were weaklings not worth a second thought. And even the Captain-Commander, no longer the demon of the sword he once was, was only so-so at this point: fearsome destructive power, but nothing to truly fear.

After merging with the Hogyoku, Aizen had felt himself transcend the category of Soul Reaper entirely. To truly stand above the heavens. To survey all living beings from a different plane.

Even the so-called Squad Zero, in his eyes, were nothing but a handful of figures propped up by a pitiful, broken husk. Utterly beneath him.

And yet this Aizen, of all people, had needed another's charity just to grow stronger. The person standing in front of him was something Aizen himself had shaped from the very beginning. So why... why was it Aizen who stood on the receiving end? It should have been Aizen granting the other a chance. That was how it was supposed to be. That was how it should have been...

Uncontrollable fury surged from within him. The Hogyoku felt its master's rage clearly. It had been disappointed, this master had nearly given up, and the Hogyoku had nearly been ready to abandon him entirely, but in this moment, it recognized that rage again. Accepted it.

"Die in the flames of my fury." Aizen raised his left hand. "Hado #99: Goryutenmetsu!"

Terrifying spiritual pressure took the shape of colossal dragons. The ground splintered across a vast area. Even without incantation, the Aizen standing here could unleash the full power of a complete recitation. His spiritual pressure, augmented by the Hogyoku, had taken its first steps beyond the Transcendent stage!

"Oh! Now that's some real power!"

Eyes wide, Ichigo let out an admiring sound. Black light rippled along the dark blade in his hand. Golden spiritual pressure gathered in a continuous stream, and at the very tip of the blade, a single point of black light flickered.

"But it's still a little short."

A black crescent condensed and took shape along the blade's length. At its tip, a devastating Cero coiled and waited. Under Ichigo's control, the two merged into one.

"Keep evolving, Aizen."

Gran Rey Cero × Getsuga Tensho. A massive crescent-shaped slash bloomed outward, no longer the faint violet of before, but pure black. A black that contained everything. A black that devoured everything.

"ROAR!"

The dragons howled and came screaming in. The crescent moved in silence and tore through everything in its path.

BOOM!

Two forces of catastrophic magnitude collided, for the first time in countless millennia. They erupted in a blinding white light. No sound of impact. And yet every living being across the Three Realms fell into sudden, total silence.

In the World of the Living, the simultaneous deafness that struck all of humanity had enormous consequences. Even countless years later, the phenomenon had no adequate explanation. In the end it was chalked up to vague theories about anomalous shifts in the Earth's magnetic field, and left at that.

"That really is impressive power."

Ichigo's eyes brightened slightly. He had pushed both his Quincy power and his Hollow power to their absolute limits, and had barely managed to match Aizen's Hado. Only now, for the first time, did he feel even the faintest sense of being on equal footing.

"But what about physically."

Blut Arterie pushed to its limit. Three movement techniques fused into one. His figure vanished. Ichigo appeared directly in front of Aizen with the black blade raised high.

SLICE,

The black blade swept across Aizen's body, nearly shearing the entire left side of his torso clean off. Against Ichigo at full power, Aizen, whose evolution had been limited to spiritual pressure alone, never had time to react.

"You were too careless, Ichigo Kurosaki!"

But the wound meant nothing. The Hogyoku kept exerting its power, and the body that had just been severed was already knitting itself back together. The blade in Aizen's hand drove sharply forward.

➤ Next: Is This All You've Got?