Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 341 - The World-Annihilating Strike
Chapter 341, World-Ending Strike
"That won't do!" Ichibē Hyōsube swung his great brush and sent a spray of black ink streaking toward Wayne. Wayne shifted behind the Soul King's crystal, dodging the splatter.
"You don't get to decide that." Wayne ignored the monk and pressed his palm flat against the Soul King's amber crystal. A dense current of Reishi began flowing along his hand, pouring toward the Hōgyoku embedded in his chest.
"Bastard!" The monk drove his brush into the ground and slammed both palms together. Two massive golden Reiatsu hands materialized on either side of Wayne and came crashing down.
CLANG!
A deafening impact. And with it, an orange-gold membrane of light.
"Negación?! That's impossible!" The monk stared at Wayne, eyes wide with disbelief. In his understanding, a Hollow's Negación could only be cast on an ally, never on oneself. Had Wayne, with his mastery over space, actually managed to wrap it around himself?
Squeak, squeak...
On Wayne's shoulder sat a mouse-like Hollow no bigger than a palm, one the monk could now see clearly. Timd's clone. Of course. The Negación hadn't come from Wayne at all.
"Hmph!" Ichibē Hyōsube snatched up his brush and dragged the tip across the Negación's surface. Ink surged forth, and a massive character for "Break" bled into the membrane surrounding Wayne.
BOOM!
The Negación burst apart. Wayne was exposed again.
"Stop this now!" The monk swung his brush in a wide arc, and ink flooded out in a black tide, saturating the crystal encasing the Soul King.
"Obscuring the Soul King's presence with ink?" Wayne jumped clear immediately. He had no intention of letting that ink touch him, not if he wanted to stay out of reach of the monk's ability.
"I've had a theory for some time. Of the Nine Great Laws, the Law of Causality — what does it correspond to in Soul Society? I think I'm looking at the answer."
"Indeed!" Ichibē Hyōsube swept his brush in a wide flourish, revealing its true form. "Be stained black — Ichimonji!" The black brush tip transformed into a blade amid the endless ink. His Zanpakuto.
"Ichimonji cuts names, not flesh. Everything the blade touches has its name erased from existence. That is the power of causality housed within Soul Society."
"Is it really a good idea to just tell me all that?" Wayne raised a hand and fired a Cero, evaporating the ink creeping toward him. He kept talking.
"You carry the same causality power. You'd sense mine regardless. Telling me or staying silent, you'd have pieced it together either way. You've been releasing Reiatsu non-stop since this fight started — keeping my ink off you. That means you already knew, didn't it?"
"Then why keep fighting me?" Wayne's brow furrowed. "You know our common enemy is Yhwach. He has the Almighty. Only the Law of Causality can even partially block that power."
"My duty is to protect the Soul King Palace. To protect the Soul King." The monk pressed forward and swung again. Wayne had no interest in trading blows, he dodged with Shunpo every time an attack came, keeping his Reiatsu flowing to evaporate the ink. "Friend or enemy, it doesn't matter. The moment your target became the Soul King, my blade followed."
"Obstinate." Wayne barked the word and sidestepped another strike. He raised his hand and sent a black Cero crashing toward the monk's head.
BOOM!
Ichibē Hyōsube brought his blade down in a single vertical stroke. The Cero dissolved within it, its power stripped away, vanishing without a sound.
"If I absorb this already-dead Soul King, I can completely suppress Yhwach. You could find a substitute after the battle. Why stand in my way?"
"It seems Your Excellency knows quite a bit about the Soul King's situation." The monk paused. "True, I could allow that. But a substitute must meet strict conditions. Those who can genuinely replace the Soul King number fewer than five right now. And if Your Excellency absorbs the Soul King's power in full, the Three Worlds will lose their balance permanently."
"Obstinate." Wayne's frown didn't lift. But from Ichibē Hyōsube's position, the man wasn't wrong. If Wayne took everything, the only one who could hold Soul Society together would be Wayne himself. At that point he wouldn't be the King of Hueco Mundo anymore. He'd be lord of all Three Worlds, standing above every living thing in existence.
"Say what you like. As long as the Zero Division stands, no one lays a hand on the Soul King. Not one hair."
"..." Wayne exhaled. "I wasn't looking for a fight with you. But you're clearly not going to be talked down."
His Reiatsu erupted. In an instant he was in Tercera Etapa.
He had to finish this fast. Once Yhwach made it back to Soul Society, crushing him would become a completely different problem.
The same trick only worked once. Next time, Yhwach wouldn't walk into it.
Pale-gold Reiatsu blazed around him. Wayne charged, Zanpakuto in hand.
Mid-flight, he invoked the Law of Illusion and scattered hundreds of clones across the space, flooding Ichibē Hyōsube's field of vision. At the same time he tore the space itself apart, pulling the monk into a warped pocket dimension.
Ichibē Hyōsube didn't flinch. He wielded Ichimonji like a spear and swept it in broad arcs, spraying ink across wave after wave of clones, staining them black one by one. Steel rang against steel. Black ink smeared across every surface until the entire distorted space was drenched in it.
"Shin'uchi: Shirafude Ichimonji!" The ink had saturated everything. The monk began to chant, and the brush-turned-spear shifted color, taking on a new form.
He didn't pause to explain it. He just kept chanting.
"Eternal night, long night — come forth. Show your face, have a cup of wine before you go. Drink deep, and even your life is forfeit. The road of the dead, where flowers bloom in full. Where is the feast? Dye it pitch-black. Split into eight, dark flames burning in the dark, consuming what they find. What remains: stark white bones. Raise them as a gravestone. I mourn for you. I pray that in your next life you never again become an offering to us. Futen Taisatsuryō!"
The instant the chant ended, every clone touched by ink was swallowed by the darkness and gone. The warped space began to collapse with them. Everything stained black, obliterated. That was the full scope of Ichibē Hyōsube's power.
"Hmph! Petty tricks like these won't hold this old man!" The monk shattered the space and burst free.
And the moment he did, a pale-gold shape materialized silently behind him.
A Zanpakuto drove through his back, straight into his heart. Then a second blade. A third.
Wayne's clones emerged one after another, driving their blades in. The monk's body seized, then burst into a spray of ink that detonated outward. Every clone it touched dissolved on contact, eaten away like acid.
"A double-layered illusion." When the last Wayne had dissolved, the monk slowly pulled himself back together from the ink. Those blades had been real. The pain had been real. He'd only survived because of his death-substitution ability. But that ink-substitute had limits. He needed to get out before it ran dry.
"In that case... Seal!" The monk's brush traced a white stroke through the ink, forming a massive circle. An archaic character for "Seal" was inscribed at its center.
BOOM!
The illusory space shredded like paper, shattering into countless ink-stained fragments.
"Not bad."
The monk had barely cleared the space when a voice landed beside his ear, easy and unbothered. Wayne's voice.
"If Your Excellency has anything else to show me, by all means, " The monk turned, ready to press the fight.
The Hōgyoku was gone from Wayne's Hollow Hole.
At the Soul King's heart, it pulsed steadily, drinking in power.
The Reiatsu surge, the charge, the clones, the illusion, all of it had been cover. Wayne's real objective had been a window of time, nothing more. Enough seconds to let the Hōgyoku feed.
It had worked. While the monk was pinned inside the illusion, Wayne had already absorbed more than half of the Soul King's power. That was enough.
"You wretch, do you have any idea what you've done?!" The monk's composure cracked. Without the Soul King, the Three Worlds would unravel in moments. Every living thing across all three realms, gone. No survivors.
"Of course I know." The corner of Wayne's mouth pulled up slightly. "That's why I deliberately slowed the absorption. Giving the world a little room to breathe."
"What are you actually trying to do?!" The monk's eyes narrowed. He knew exactly how long the illusory fight had taken, just a few minutes. Enough for Wayne to drain the Soul King dry with the Hōgyoku. But the Soul King was still holding. Barely, but holding. The balance hadn't broken yet.
"Deliberately leaving some behind... Don't tell me—"
"Don't ask." Wayne's grip tightened on his Zanpakuto. "He's back."
BOOM!
The explosion hit before the words finished echoing. It struck the main hall of the Soul King Palace like a meteorite, and the entire throne room ceased to exist.
"That's... Yhwach?!" The monk spun toward it. And in that instant, he thought he understood.
This was why Wayne hadn't taken everything. The Soul King's seat couldn't be left empty. The only way to make Yhwach fill it was to defeat him while the Three Worlds still had enough balance to hold together. The power left inside the Soul King had been kept for exactly this moment.
"Hah..." From beneath the rubble, Yhwach exhaled.
He had nearly died. The vacuum had been unworkable, and without Reishi he'd had nothing. He'd come within moments of being destroyed on the surface of the sun. Burn marks still mapped his face in lines of charred ruin.
And still he had survived. With the dregs of power left in his body, he had granted himself a voice. Then oxygen. Then access to Reishi. On nothing more than those scraps, he had managed to return to Earth, pass through the World of the Living, and make his way back to Soul Society.
"To push me this far..." His gaze settled on Wayne. "Ace Wayne. You've earned the right to be proud of that."
Blue light. Streams of it, rising from every corner of the Soul King Palace.
"Raise it high! The silver crest, the gray plains, the circular road beneath the veil of light, the agate eye, the golden tongue, the skull's goblet, the coffin of God, raise high your heart! Auswählen!"
As Yhwach chanted, every streak of blue light converged on him and was drawn in.
Auswählen. He reclaimed the power of every Quincy, with two exceptions. Haschwalth and Uryū Ishida. Their power stayed where it was. Those two were too valuable to consume.
"Sankt Zwinger!" The chant hadn't stopped. A deep-blue magic circle spun into being above the Soul King Palace. In an instant, the Reiatsu of every person present began hemorrhaging at a terrifying rate.
"Everyone, fall back to Tsukishiro!" Wayne tore a spatial rift open. His Hollow-beasts poured through first. The Soul Reapers of Soul Society were right behind them, hesitating for just a moment before they Shunpo'd through one after another.
Yhwach had no intention of letting his food walk out.
"Sankt Altar!"
The spatial rift came apart, dissolving into Reishi and collapsing before anyone else could reach it. The palace itself began to follow, walls, pillars, everything breaking down into Reishi that drifted upward and scattered.
"Stop him!" Wayne's roar was directed at the monk. He was already moving, recalling the Hōgyoku and launching himself at Yhwach.
Three abilities, back to back. In the span of a few seconds Yhwach had clawed back the greater part of his power.
But he had no time to fully refine it. So he did the only thing available, gathered everything he had and aimed it at the Soul King's position. The strongest attack he could muster right now.
"Heilig Pfeil: Grand!"
A bow materialized above the Soul King Palace, massive as a crescent moon. One shot. Yhwach was going to level the entire palace and everything in it.
"Zero Division, all of you, stop him!" Ichibē Hyōsube's voice cut through the chaos, and every Zero Division member, still fighting at their own palaces just moments before, turned and charged without hesitation toward that crescent-moon bow overhead.
That arrow could not fly.
If it did, all five of them, and every living thing across all Three Worlds, would be annihilated by Yhwach's hand.
➤ Next: The Final Battle