Bleach: Reborn — Chapter 342 - The Final Battle
BOOM!
A tremendous explosion thundered through the Royal Palace, and the individual Zero Division palaces, arranged in a hexagonal formation, crumbled apart piece by piece under Yhwach's world-ending strike.
The members of the Zero Division were completely helpless against Yhwach's enormous crescent-shaped arrow. Even when the Great Monk unleashed his Zanpakuto's ability once more, he could not fully shatter the arrow of pure energy. He had only managed to diminish a portion of its force.
"Shacchū!"
Kirio Hikifune of the Zero Division suddenly pressed her palms together, and vast trees began to grow all around her, lifting the nearly shattered Royal Palace back up to prevent its complete destruction.
"Just what did that guy Ace Wayne do? To make Yhwach so desperately eager to destroy this place." The Great Monk sat before the Soul King's crystal, half-kneeling on the ground with both hands braced on his Zanpakuto. His Shihakushō had been reduced to tatters. After he had cut through half of the arrow, the remaining force had been blocked by him and the rest of the Zero Division together, that was the only reason the Royal Palace had narrowly survived without falling apart entirely.
He had also successfully protected the Soul King in full, but the cost was real. Every member of the Zero Division was now in a state of total exhaustion. Kirio Hikifune, having poured out her last reserves of strength to release Shacchū, had returned to her slender figure and collapsed onto the ground, heaving ragged breaths, her ample chest rising and falling with each one. Not far from her, Ōetsu Nimaiya leaned against a crumbling wall. His sunglasses had long since been shattered, and beneath them his gaze was unfocused, he was on the verge of losing consciousness.
Behind him, Tenjirō Kirinji lay on the ground, his fate unknown. A massive burn wound on his chest had nearly scorched clean through his body, and Senjumaru Shutara was stitching the wound shut with her needle and thread. The many mechanical arms that had once spread behind her back, however, were now reduced to just two, broken and barely functional.
The reason the Zero Division was in such a sorry state was inextricably linked to Wayne. The moment that enormous Heilig Pfeil came crashing down, Wayne had used the Law of Space to slip outside the bounds of the Royal Palace, the one who was supposed to help absorb the damage had instead chosen to run at that very moment.
As an exchange, however, the instant after Yhwach unleashed the massive Heilig Pfeil, Wayne had closed in on him and drove a slash straight into his back.
BOOM!
Yhwach was cut down by Wayne's blade and crashed into the ruins of the Royal Palace. Having had no time to activate Blut Vene, his back bore a deep gash that cut all the way to the bone. The Blut Vene pattern then spread across Yhwach's bones and internal organs, at the critical moment, Yhwach still managed to protect his body.
"Destruction Cero!" Wayne's blade vanished. He dove again, pressing one hand against the back of Yhwach's skull while the other aimed directly at the wound on Yhwach's back.
Destruction Cero, a Cero combining the power of regular Cero, Rule Force, Dark Cero, and Gran Rey Cero of various types, unleashed by Wayne from his position above even Gran Rey.
The pale-gold Cero blazed brilliantly, shattering Yhwach's Blut Vene on impact. It tore through his body and incinerated every one of his internal organs.
"D — damn you!" A massive cavity had been burned through Yhwach's chest by Wayne, even his heart had been scorched through. And yet, even so, Yhwach did not die.
"I grant myself... life!"
As Yhwach chanted his Schrift, the vitality within his body recovered at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"I grant myself... spirit..."
"Grant this, you bastard!" Wayne charged forward, raised the Sky-Rending Greatsword that had already manifested, and brought it down directly onto Yhwach's shoulder.
CLANG! THUD!
Blut Vene could not hold up Yhwach's defense. Wayne's slash cut Yhwach's right arm clean off, shoulder and all.
"What?!" Yhwach's eyes went wide. No matter how frantically his all-seeing eyes spun, he could not see what Wayne's next move would be.
"I grant... Urgh!" Before Yhwach could finish chanting his Schrift, his throat was seized in Wayne's iron grip. Before Blut Vene could crawl up to his neck, Wayne had already poured his Reiatsu and spatial force into that grip and tore Yhwach's throat apart by sheer force.
Blood sprayed everywhere. Yhwach invoked Gremmy's imagination ability, and his bodily wounds recovered within fractions of a second. But Wayne had no intention of giving Yhwach any more chances.
His hand pressed further inward along Yhwach's ruined throat, reaching deeper and deeper until he closed his grip around Yhwach's cervical vertebrae.
The next second, Wayne wrenched Yhwach's cervical spine backward with one hand.
With only one hand, Wayne could not crush it outright. By now, Blut Vene had spread across both the inside and outside of Yhwach's body, even encasing his internal organs in iron protection. And there was only one technique capable of penetrating Blut Vene.
"Destruction... Cero!" Wayne unleashed Destruction Cero once more, different from the blow that had torn through his body moments ago. This time, the Cero was fed through the unhealed wound in Yhwach's throat and pumped directly into his brain.
BOOM!
A muffled explosion erupted inside Yhwach's body. Countless chunks of blood burst outward from within him. The force of the Cero also blew out Yhwach's eyes, those twin eyes capable of seeing through all things were obliterated entirely.
Yhwach had pushed Blut Vene to its absolute limit, but this internal explosion was something he simply could not stop. More than that, this all-penetrating Cero had been fired from directly inside his cervical spine straight into his brain, even Blut Vene could not prevent the blood inside his body from boiling or his cells from being seared. At such close range, however, Wayne could not entirely escape the blast either. By the time the power of Destruction Cero was spent, both of Wayne's hands were gone.
"Die!" Wayne kicked Yhwach to the ground. The full power of his third-stage Resurrección erupted, his violet eyes turning pale gold. Dark Cero condensed, and he hammered Yhwach where he lay, again and again, until Yhwach had been reduced to a charred lump of flesh, only then did Wayne's assault cease.
"W — Wayne, Your Excellency." The Great Monk's weakened voice reached him. "Stop attacking — the Royal Palace and the world itself can barely hold together any longer!" Wayne's assault did not stop, but the damage his Cero was inflicting on the Royal Palace was undeniably mounting.
To maintain the Royal Palace's stability, Kirio Hikifune had consumed nearly all of her Reiatsu. By now she had grown impossibly gaunt, and even her once-proud bust had shrunken and deflated as a result.
Each time Wayne unleashed another Cero on Yhwach, the already fragile Royal Palace took another blow and broke apart a little more. When the Royal Palace shattered completely, the entire world would cease to exist.
"What are you standing around for!" Wayne looked up and shouted toward the Great Monk. "If you're not dead, seal Yhwach right now! Do you want to wait for him to come back to life?!"
Even reduced to a charred lump of flesh, Wayne was firmly convinced Yhwach would not die so easily.
After all, Haschwalth and Uryū Ishida were not far away, and Yhwach had not yet stripped either of them of their Reiatsu, which meant Yhwach had not yet played his final card.
Even so, Wayne's assault had been as relentless as a tempest, giving Yhwach no room to breathe and giving Haschwalth no time to use Ausgleich.
The reason was simple: once Uryū Ishida sensed that Wayne's power was enough to kill Yhwach, he defected on the spot.
From the moment Yhwach was struck down by Wayne, Uryū Ishida had placed himself directly in Haschwalth's path. No matter what ability Haschwalth tried to use, Uryū Ishida blocked it one by one, even taking damage upon himself to hold Haschwalth rooted to his side by force.
"Understood!" The Great Monk hauled himself to his feet with great effort. "All Zero Division members — sacrifice yourselves and transfer every last drop of your strength to me!"
At that command, all members save for Ichibē Hyōsube drew their Zanpakuto and severed the arteries in their own throats.
The power of Shacchū collapsed in an instant, and the Royal Palace began to break apart. But the time bought by that collapse was enough for the Zero Division.
The Great Monk recovered a portion of his Reiatsu and immediately entered his fully unleashed state. The black character "Seal" and the white character "King" descended simultaneously onto the charred lump of flesh.
BOOM!
Just as the seal was about to land, a slender arm suddenly thrust out from within the charred mass, straining against it in opposition.
Indeed, even at this point, Yhwach had still not fully died.
Seeing this, Wayne immediately activated High-Speed Regeneration to restore both his arms, grabbed hold of the Sky-Rending Greatsword, and brought it down on that arm once more.
THUD!
The arm was severed and flew off, but a second appeared immediately. Then a third. Then a fourth.
Heaven only knew what ability Yhwach was drawing on, or what power he had granted himself, but those arms kept growing from the charred mass one after another and kept pushing the enormous "Seal" character away from him.
"Myriad Realm Severance!" Wayne pressed both hands together and pushed his spatial power to its absolute limit. Layer upon layer of spatial ripples spread outward, and countless rift-blades descended like shards of shattered glass, cutting into every arm as they grew. The instant each shard contacted an arm, the arm was torn out by the root and sealed away into one unknown severed-boundary rift after another.
"Eye of Causality!" The Great Monk raised his left hand, and an eye identical to Yhwach's, three-pupiled, appeared in Ichibē Hyōsube's palm. A beam of pitch-black light shot forth from that eye. The sealing power intensified once more, wrapping around Yhwach and enclosing him completely within it.
"Seal!"
A sound like a great metal door slamming shut rang out, and the massive "Seal" character descended with crushing finality onto Yhwach.
"Imprisonment!" The Great Monk pressed his palms together, and two enormous golden hands clapped around Yhwach and drove him within.
"Power of the Soul King — come!" Streams of golden light began converging upon Yhwach. The power of the Soul King he had always coveted now became the sole vessel binding him in his seal.
Swiftly, the golden light finished converging, and Yhwach's charred body was sealed entirely within an amber crystal by Ichibē Hyōsube.
"Hah..." The sealing complete, the Great Monk sat on the ground and caught his breath.
"Is it over?" Wayne descended from the air. At the same time the Great Monk was sealing Yhwach, Wayne had left the ground to avoid being caught up in it.
"Half of it is over." The Great Monk spoke and fixed his gaze steadily on Wayne. "Wayne, Your Excellency absorbed too much of the Soul King's power, and the strength I had remaining has now been used to seal Yhwach. However..." The Great Monk paused.
"The crisis facing the three realms has not yet been resolved."
"What do you mean." Wayne's gaze sharpened.
"The Soul King's power is insufficient to reinforce Yhwach's seal. I must ask that Wayne, Your Excellency return a portion of the Soul King's power."
"Ha. Pull the other one." Wayne ignored the Great Monk's words. Now that the Soul King's power had entered Wayne's possession, what reason was there to hand it back? Furthermore, the Great Monk was now completely spent, trying to take the Soul King's power from him was pure fantasy.
"Yhwach still has countless arms inside my severed-boundary rifts. To prevent him from using even that small fragment of flesh to resurrect himself, I need to go and destroy them all." Wayne resolved to leave for now. Yhwach's remains had to be completely annihilated, or sealed. Otherwise he would not rest easy.
It was the same as with Aizen, back then, if Kisuke Urahara had not strongly advocated using a seal to preserve Aizen's life, Wayne might have disposed of both the seal and Aizen together once the sealing was done. And as events proved, Aizen's survival had in fact been useful to Wayne, at least in the matter of fusing with the Hōgyoku, it had been effective.
"Yhwach has only been sealed by you all. As for whether to find an opportunity to permanently extinguish his life, or to leave him as an amber display — that is entirely up to you." Wayne addressed Ichibē Hyōsube.
"The Soul King's power still has uses for me, so I will not be returning it. The power of your Zero Division and the Soul King's power are kindred in nature, I believe that by spending a measure of your cultivation, you can permanently reinforce the seal. For the sake of the three realms, please make the necessary sacrifice."
"Wayne, Your Excellency, what exactly is your aim?" The Great Monk's eyes burned wide with fury. Reducing one's own Reiatsu to repair the Soul King's sealing crystal was not itself unacceptable, but if it came to that, Soul Society's overall strength would fall an entire tier below Hueco Mundo, and it would be a gap that could not be recovered for an extraordinarily long time.
And the moment Yhwach had unleashed that colossal Heilig Pfeil, Wayne's deliberate evasion had also served the purpose of draining his own power.
Strike at what the enemy must defend, even in a crisis of this magnitude, Wayne had still played both his enemies and the Zero Division of Soul Society like puppets on a string.
"My aim?" Wayne smiled faintly. "My ambitions lie elsewhere. Dominion and governance, I have no interest in any of it. I... perhaps differ little from what Aizen sought, except that I have more ties binding me to Soul Society." With that, Wayne tore open a spatial rift.
"I am no longer needed here. Haschwalth is yours to deal with, I must go and clean up the severed pieces of Yhwach's body." His words finished, Wayne stepped straight into the spatial rift, leaving Ichibē Hyōsube alone, sitting amid the ruins of the Royal Palace.
"Ambitions lie elsewhere... is it?" The Great Monk turned the words over in his mind with quiet deliberation. The Soul King's power, shared in its origin with his own, prevented him from seeing clearly into Wayne's future, yet when he traced the threads of cause and effect running through all lives in Soul Society, Ichibē Hyōsube found no sign of world-ending catastrophe within them.
"Alas... first Soul Society, and now the Royal Palace." A long sigh. Ichibē Hyōsube picked up his Zanpakuto and walked toward the fallen bodies of his Zero Division members. He would use his own ability to revive them, the reconstruction of the Royal Palace would need them all to accomplish together.
➤ Next: The One Who Moves the Pieces