A piercing blue glow of pure Reishi blazed across the sky.

The searing blade light shattered the vast scarlet expanse of the Dream Death world, like a banner piercing through the thick veil of night. It tore apart the ability zone constructed entirely of rules, unleashing a colossal wave of Reiatsu that shook the entire Soul Society.

In that instant, every being in the Soul Society, Shinigami, Quincy, even those without Reishi sensitivity, felt an oppressive force weighing on their spiritual bodies, so heavy it seemed to demand submission.

Many looked up instinctively.

Drenched in blood, Zeidritz knelt on the ground, his body riddled with wounds.

His once impeccably groomed short hair, styled like a gentleman's, was now a tangled mess. Half his face had been scorched away by intense flames, leaving only one eye, his body blackened and singed.

He looked utterly wretched.

Clutching his severed left arm, he turned toward the source of Yhwach's Reiatsu, ignoring the old man standing before him.

Zeidritz murmured softly, a relieved smile on his face. "See, Yhwach-sama… I knew it. You are our almighty Majesty…"

But before his words could fully fade, a torrent of blazing fire engulfed his entire body, burning like a towering torch.

In an instant, all sound ceased.

Yamamoto stood silently, slowly retracting his Ryujin Jakka.

He seemed oblivious to the man who had just perished by his blade.

His gaze, too, reflected the distant radiance of Reiatsu.

But unlike Zeidritz's eyes, filled with relief, Yamamoto's were clouded with heavy foreboding.

"To reach such a level?"

"…"

"Makoto."

Behind the old man, the battle between Shinigami and Quincy raged on.

Yet, compared to the initial onslaught when countless Quincy charged the Shinigami lines, the battlefield had grown far more brutal.

Most of the Sternritter, capable of matching captain-level Shinigami, had fallen to the strongest of the original Gotei 13 captains.

Several had been personally executed by Captain-Commander Yamamoto.

They stood no chance.

Under these circumstances, the remaining Quincy were utterly vulnerable against the organized onslaught of the Shinigami.

Countless Quincy were divided and cut down. Bodies in white uniforms, stained crimson, collapsed to the ground. Some, unfortunate enough to linger, writhed in agony, their screams piercing the air.

But no one had time to tend to them. The Shinigami pressed forward, charging relentlessly.

In the next moment, as if by some unspoken understanding, a dark rift tore open behind Yamamoto.

Kinroku stepped swiftly through the rift. "Captain-Commander."

"Hm."

Without hesitation, Yamamoto stepped into the spatial rift.

As the two most experienced Shinigami, they had realized the moment that Reiatsu surged: the tide of the war between Shinigami and Quincy had shifted entirely toward the battlefield of Makoto and Yhwach.

This was a power that could change everything.

---

What kind of power was this?

Makoto stared at the girl before him, the question burning in his mind.

[Speed]

Without any warning, the cat-eared girl's form vanished from the center of his focused vision.

When she reappeared, her slender arm swung a blade that carved a long arc of light, flowing silently from left to right.

[Strength]

Having shared Yhwach's power in the Dream Death world, Makoto's Reiatsu had reached the pinnacle of tier-1 reiatsu, his physical prowess elevated to a terrifying degree.

His pupils constricted, bloodshot veins spreading across his eyes. Under the [Flawless Circle] bond trait, his reflexes were pushed to their limit.

Yet even so, he could barely track a fraction of Yhwach's movements.

As the blade descended, his body only had time to raise the black Oharai Gougi in defense.

Clang!

A heavy metallic screech rang in his ears.

There was no resisting it.

A crushing force, like a mountain collapsing, surged through Makoto's wrist as he gripped the blade's handle. Even his body, among the Soul Society's finest, groaned under the overwhelming power. His form shot backward like a fleeting meteor, skimming the ground and leaving a long trail of shadow.

With a thunderous crash, he smashed into the depths of a relatively intact ruin, kicking up a cloud of dust.

[Perception]

The seemingly delicate cat-eared girl, her face lit with a faintly manic smile, stepped forward. The monstrous tails beneath her skirt writhed menacingly, her bare feet pressing lightly against the ground.

In her left eye, the black double pupils shimmered, locking onto the ruins where Makoto had fallen.

"Is this all you've got, Makoto?"

"If it's you, you should feel it, right?"

"For me, this is far from my full strength."

"What are you waiting for?"

Her delicate face twisted into an exaggerated grin, lips stretching toward her ears.

Her soft, youthful voice drawled slowly.

"Let me see…"

In the instant her words fell, black, shadowy tendrils erupted from beneath her bare toes, shooting toward Makoto.

Before the shadowy tendrils could ensnare her ankles, Yhwach's massive, sturdy tails beneath her skirt lashed out like scythes, preemptively slicing through every abyssal shadow surging from the ground with pinpoint precision.

"You really have a thing for attacking from beneath a lady's skirt, don't you?" she mocked, her voice dripping with scorn. "As expected. An utterly deplorable freak."

The girl's teasing gaze fixed on the young man emerging from the ruins, her smile as wild as a cat toying with a mouse.

Yes!

Just as this freak had toyed with her body in countless ways,

Yhwach swore she would toy with Makoto until his death!

"Have you already decided you're a 'lady' now?" Makoto retorted, unfazed by her taunts, letting out a derisive chuckle. "It seems that 'hell' transformed you quite thoroughly, Yhwach. You're not actually enjoying this, are you?"

His words cut through her mockery, his tone laced with defiance.

He gripped the Oharai Gougi in one hand, its black-and-red ribbons coiling around his right arm like chains. His left hand casually wiped the blood from his lips, his body dusted with debris.

He looked somewhat disheveled.

Yet his eyes burned with unyielding clarity.

The moment his words landed, Yhwach's gaze darkened, her exaggerated smile tightening into a grimace, her teeth grinding as she spat each word through clenched jaws: "Makoto Fujimiya!"

Her simmering rage ignited the last embers of her rationality in an instant.

Her form vanished once more.

But Makoto seized the fleeting moment of her step, his voice sharp: "Slow!"

"Accelerate!"

The former targeted his enemy, the latter himself.

[Sokushinteigi]

The interplay of lies and truth.

Yet, against the current Yhwach, even this rudimentary tactic drained Makoto's Reiatsu to the point of feeling as though a part of his body had been carved away.

Yhwach, in her Almighty state, wielded only one eye but stood among the pinnacle of Transcenders, a mere step away from rivaling the Soul King.

The toll of such a gap was unimaginable.

Still, this crude suppression significantly narrowed the vast chasm between Makoto and Yhwach.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

A rapid flurry of metallic clashes erupted, countless exchanges blending into a continuous blaze of sparks.

Seizing a brief opening, Makoto thrust the Oharai Gougi forward, its tip grazing the spine of Yhwach's reishi sword, leveraging the slightly longer reach to slash with ferocious momentum.

Yhwach's slender, pale arm merely flicked upward, effortlessly dodging his strike. The clash of blade and spine produced a grating screech, and as she advanced, her reishi sword twirled with a flourish, the sheer force of its airflow threatening to tear skin.

Makoto's hands, gripping the black blade, crossed at the critical moment. The blade spun with the momentum, shifting from a forward grip to a reverse hold, deflecting the heavy arc of her weapon in a ringing clash.

[Zanjutsu +10]

[Hey, Makoto, let me have a taste of my rich flavor too!]

Ignoring the Zanpakuto's eager chatter, Makoto used the force transmitted through the blades to retreat several steps with Hirenkyaku.

"Huff… huff…"

Makoto's breaths came in low, ragged gasps.

Blood dripped from his left cheek, where a cut, roughly the length of a finger, marred his skin.

Despite pushing his strength and reflexes to their limits, even employing the power of Sokushinteigi within the Dream Death world, the gap between him and Yhwach remained staggering.

He knew full well that if this continued, the moment his Reiatsu was fully depleted, this now-deranged foe would drag him out of the Dream Death world and make him a true corpse.

He was painfully aware of the disparity between them.

Yet Makoto remained calm.

He knew he still held one trump card capable of turning the tide.

But that card required careful, meticulous setup to maximize its effect.

Patience.

He needed more patience.

Suppressing the trembling in his heart and the primal fear of facing death, Makoto took a deep breath, forcing a confident smile to mask his tension.

"Why are you so angry, Yhwach?" Makoto's voice was calm, cutting through the tension. "Is it humiliation? Fear? Or perhaps… an insatiable craving for your mind's descent?"

Those three simple sentences pierced the girl's heart like a thorn, drawing a shrill roar from her lips. "Shut up!"

"I can see everything!" She snarled. "Yuseiboushi, Sokushinteigi, Sakuingyakuka! Every ability of that blade in your hand, I see it all clearly!"

"With just this level…"

"Really?" Makoto interrupted, his voice unwavering.

His smile deepened. "Then… how did I see so many of your futures? That pitiful, half-sealed, so-called omniscient eye of yours… can it really see everything, Yhwach-…chan?"

Her voice froze.

Her single eye, bearing the double pupils, locked onto the smiling young man before her, as if trying to peel away some impossible future from his being.

Yet no matter how she tried, the vision in her mind remained singular.

She would charge forward, swing her blade, cleave through Makoto's sword in a high-speed Zanjutsu duel, and drive her hand through his heart.

But his words sowed doubt in her heart.

Yes.

Even after partially unlocking her omniscient eye in this unreal "death," Yhwach couldn't see Makoto's true nature.

Even now, she couldn't confirm his real identity.

How did this boy know so much about her?

But…

Did it matter?

Whether it was the madness induced by the countless abyssal tendrils in the black cocoon, the deep-seated arrogance of the Soul King's heir believing all things equal, or simply the visceral loathing for Makoto and the burning desire to erase his existence…

Yhwach questioned herself.

Did it really matter?

Before her mind could resolve the question, her body answered.

She charged.

With Hirenkyaku pushed to the absolute limit beneath the Soul King's power, her form vanished and reappeared in an instant.

Makoto's expression betrayed his inability to react.

Her reishi sword traced a fluid arc, carrying condensed Reiatsu so potent it could tear anything apart.

The [Flawless Circle]'s heightened reflexes couldn't grant Makoto the ability to survive this near-peerless blade speed.

No matter how fast his reactions, his body's strength and structure imposed a stark limit.

Just six strikes.

In a cacophony of piercing clashes, with sparks still lingering in the air, the white edge of her reishi sword knocked Makoto's black Oharai Gougi aside.

The gap in sheer power and speed was not something ordinary Zanjutsu or reflexes could bridge.

It was absolute.

In that moment, Makoto's pupils reflected a dazed, blank expression, as if his body couldn't keep up with his mind.

Yet Yhwach's heart pounded with an exhilaration she had never felt before.

Within the [Flawless Circle], where time itself seemed to freeze under hyper-accelerated reflexes, her smile was both cruel and innocent.

Her pale hand extended forward, aiming directly for her own heart.

Her fingertips moved slowly, piercing the air, breaking skin, and delving deep into Makoto's chest, straight through his beating heart.

He watched it happen, fully aware.

He felt the moment death descended.

But in that same instant, as Yhwach raised her head with a triumphant smile, her double-pupiled eye reflected unmistakable confusion.

She saw it clearly, Makoto was smiling too.

Pfft,

Her slender arm pierced his chest, through his heart, spilling torrents of blood.

His face paled in an instant.

Yet he gripped her shoulders tightly.

From Makoto's lips came a faint, strained whisper, audible only to them, his smile growing ever wider.

"…I've caught you."

***

Hi guys, I hope you're all doing well! I want to share that I'm currently working on a new project related to Lord of Mysteries.

If you're interested, feel free to visit my profile and start reading. Below is a brief summary:

[Lord of Mysteries: Incarnation of Chaos]

Have you ever wondered what would happen if someone from a Lovecraftian world got isekai'd into another world built on Lovecraftian themes? Well, it's absolute chaos.

Meet Alaric, a human(questionably) survivor of the madness and chaos caused by a certain crawling chaos, who, thanks to the kindness of a certain bubble daddy, got isekai'd into the "fake it till you make it" world.

What will he do in this strange new world? Climb the ladder of power to become that impossible god unless you're just a pawn of a certain russian priest or a certain goth mommy?

Or become a cheshire cat, leaping onto the 4D chessboard to disrupt the schemes and mind games of these bizarre folks?

For Alaric, it's not a tough choice. But before he picks either path, he must, of course, uphold the time-honored tradition of isekai'd victims(questionably) that forms the foundation of this world.

What's that tradition?

Keeping a diary.

---

[Alaric's Transmigration Diary]

[Day 1: I encountered Amon. Used a special technique to summon a projection of the Ancient Sun God, who personally delivered a heavy slap to Amon. Hope Amon appreciates this weighty paternal affection.]

[Day 2: I received an invitation from the Aurora Order. Told them I want it all... looks, brains, and combat prowess... and invited them to join my newly founded Joker Club.]

[Day 3: I met Leonard and acknowledged Gramps Pallez. Declined Leonard's enthusiastic suggestion for the old man to move in with me, as I'd rather not have a old man critiquing my every move, even in private moments.]

[Day 4: I told Klein I plan to pray to a deity named The Fool. Watched his eyes widen in shock and kindly offered him some eye drops.]

[Day 5: I listened to Medici perform a two-hour comedy routine. Suggested he go professional and invited him to share a meal.]

.

.

.

[Day 666: I fully absorbed a certain crawling chaos fragment within me. From now on, I am the Fifth Pillar.]