14 - The Adler Group's Superweapon

Ichigo remembered those times while exploring the central parts of D.C.. Now that the battles were almost concluded, he felt a little bad that he was the only one left to return empty-handed. Aside from Otto himself, there was only one combatant left.

The morning sun felt welcoming, but it was also rather ignorant of the cruelty of the ongoing war.

“I just gotta keep going.” Ichigo reminded himself. He had a job to do and a family to support. He marched on the empty street, and at last, he felt something around the corner.

A few steps later, he found himself in a confused and rather hesitant standoff against his enemy. The one standing across him was Erwin, freshly deployed. Only Otto would know why he was deployed so late into the war.

They looked at each other for a while, as if the thought of their obligation had finally set in.

“H-hey...” Erwin said, slowly waving his hand.

Ichigo raised his hand a little in response, but he was on high alert. Erwin acknowledged his hesitation and nodded.

“Do you...remember me?” Erwin asked.

“Your soul presence is familiar. Maybe we’ve met somewhere.” Ichigo answered.

“Yeah, we did.” Erwin said. “I remember. We did meet once.”

“That’s interesting.” Ichigo said. They shared a strange silence.

“Let’s do what we came to do, I guess...” Erwin sighed. The final bastion of the Adler Group and the last elemental glanced at each other one final time as fellow soulfuls. From now on, they’d be enemies.

Ichigo clasped his hands, preparing to fire off a beam of light at Erwin’s direction. Erwin quickly summoned his sword. Soul-bound weapons were indestructible, so what’s the worst that could happen?

Ichigo fired the beam, not at Erwin’s head which he protected, but at his legs. The impact hurt him a lot. It burnt through them. Erwin jumped to the side, and prepared to close the distance. Ichigo halted the beam and summoned his own blade.

By the time Erwin reached Ichigo, the wounds on his leg had sparked with a formation of soul prowess and regenerated. Their weapons clashed against one another. Ichigo’s skills were sharper, and he was forcing Erwin to fall back more and more. Erwin quickly unsummoned his weapon and struck Erwin with a jab, and Ichigo replied with a left hook and a right uppercut. They were relatively equal in hand-to-hand combat. They struck each other, and eventually, with quick-witted footwork and precise striking, Ichigo managed to outstrike Erwin.

Pushing him away with a strong overhand, Ichigo equipped his blade again and charged at Erwin. He slashed his chest open, and went for a piercing attack aimed at his stomach. It landed, and Erwin fell back, his body covered in blood.

“Ugh, he got me...”

“No, there’s no way I’m letting this happen! Otto trusted me to keep fighting!”

The wounds inflated a little, the blood started to overflow with soul prowess. Parts of the flesh were ripped open and inflated, before sealing themselves back, now colored with a distinct black-and-white shade.

“So I wasn’t imagining things. He has some type of regenerative factor.” Ichigo thought, fading away into invisibility. “His body is holding out just fine. But if I destroy his head, he’ll have no way to regenerate.”

Ichigo, while invisible, was still trackable. Erwin chased after his soul presence, and Ichigo dodged his advances and created as much distance as possible. Once he found an opening, he dashed at Erwin, piercing his stomach with his blade. Erwin fought back, landing a slashing attack on Ichigo’s chest. He followed it up with a piercing attack.

It connected, and Erwin’s sword stabbed Ichigo’s stomach. Ichigo fell back, and used that instant to his advantage. He cut off Erwin’s left arm, and with another evasive swing, cut his head off.

“Whew.”

“He felt even stronger after regenerating. I was surprised at his reach as well.”

Ichigo took a few steps back.

“To think I’d go from a dumpling maker to a soulful strong enough to do things like this...”

“But I should probably feel bad about this.”

“I could see it in his eyes. He was determined, he was also fighting for someone.”

Ichigo’s train of thought was derailed. He watched, as a formation of soul prowess appeared on his bleeding neck, and another such formation replaced his severed arm. His body erupted from the inside and stitched itself back together, now decorated with even more soul prowess.

“I told you...”

“I’m not gonna fail Sir Otto!”

And to Ichigo’s concern, he grew a little in size.

“So this is the shit I gotta deal with...?” Ichigo questioned himself. “I blew his head off, and he could regenerate from it like it was nothing.”

“Surely there’s gotta be a way around this.”

Erwin lunged at Ichigo. He was a little slower, but his enhanced mass allowed the advance to knock Ichigo back a great distance. Ichigo quickly activated his invisibility and fell back.

He flanked around Erwin, and occasionally fired off light beams at him. With each beam that pierced his body, Erwin regenerated more and more, and his body looked more and more mutilated and monstrous. Ichigo jumped onto the roof of a nearby two-story building and focused his light into a razor-like beam, swinging it around and decapitating Erwin’s body into two.

But even after that, Erwin continued to regenerate.

“Sir Otto trusts me.”

“He was there for me.”

“I can’t let him down.”

“I cannot...”

“...LET HIM DOWN!!!”

The pieces of Erwin’s body reunited themselves. The body erupted with soul prowess. Ichigo saw a single point on Erwin’s chest that sparked a little brighter than everything else.

“What is that...is that the core of his power?”

“No, that’s...that’s his soul?!”

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

Erwin’s body erupted with bubbles of soul prowess, and recollected itself again. The whole process was gut wrenchingly painful, but it kept Erwin alive. He was now as tall as the building on which Ichigo stood, and large enough to be able to kick it down with ease.

“Nothing’s working against him. This is some next level cheat code fuckery.”

Erwin punched the building down. Ichigo dodged and jumped onto another roof, and Erwin chased him down. Ichigo broke into one of the windows of a much taller building, and Erwin began recklessly pummeling it with his massive fists. Ichigo, hiding amongst the rubble, fired off a light beam pointed exactly at the sparking point on Erwin’s chest. But it was to no avail.

All it did was strengthen Erwin’s determination even more, allowing him to grow and getting his body to be mutilated even more. Ichigo escaped the building and appeared on the street again, facing a monster of a human.

Ewin’s body was surrounded by black and white formations, as if his entire vessel was covered in soul prowess. His face looked distorted, with a pair of white ellipses replacing his once beautiful eyes. There was still a little humanity left behind that form.

Ichigo was horrified, but he didn’t lose his composure.

“His soul is showing.”

“I know at least one way to hurt a soul directly. And if my theory is right, I’ll be able to harm his soul directly.”

“I just have to do it.”

He closed his eyes.

“Just focus.”

“All of your concentration, put it into your soul.”

“I know I can do it. I just have to push myself a little. Just remember what Diego taught me. All I have to do is to let my soul speak for itself.”

“ ✦ Divine Acclamation ✦ ”

A blindingly bright light sparked on Ichigo’s chest. A divine-like sound roared across the battlefield, and Ichigo’s presence reached its fullest potential. He had four sets of thin, long and triangular wings made of light behind his back.

He ascended into the sky while Erwin’s vision was still impaired from the powerful flashbang. A small white halo emerged behind his head.

“ ✦ Spectral Requiem ✦ ”

“I actually did it...”

“Being in this state feels weird, but I do feel stronger. There’s a lot I can try doing like this.”

“But I can’t waste my time exploring my cards. I have to deal with this...thing first.”

“He has incomprehensible regeneration, but his toughness isn’t anything I cannot overcome.”

He clasped his hands. Light marks appeared on Erwin’s chest, and he looked confused. Ichigo, on the other hand, was concentrated.

“✦ Divine Ring of Exorcism! ✦ ”

A powerful beam of light escaped Ichigo’s hands and engulfed Erwin in it. Its main purpose was to fry him alive. But Erwin withstood the attack, for every part of him that was being withered away, there was a part that regenerated and inflated his size. He was now bigger than most of the buildings around him, and his appearance as a human began to shift to that of an actual monster. The more Ichigo focused, the more he overcame the regeneration, and at one point, he saw Erwin’s soul.

“It’s been filled with soul prowess so much that it became tangible?!”

“It’s not just that, this overwhelming amount of soul prowess, the reason he’s growing in size and transforming is because his physical body cannot handle it!”

Erwin’s regeneration suddenly accelerated, covering up his soul. His body erupted into pieces and sewed itself back together again. His hands had large claws on it, his fangs were visible, and beneath all of that, there was a human with unstoppable resolve.

“I’ll kill you!”

“I’ll kill you so that you don’t touch Sir Otto!”

Erwin swatted Ichigo away as if he were a fly. He tried to grab him, the scene reminded of a child trying to grab a butterfly from the air. Erwin walked over the buildings, crushing them without a care in the world. He summoned his sword into his giant hand, striking it at the ground. The dispersed ejection of soul prowess struck Erwin, knocking him away.

Before he could recollect himself, Ichigo saw Erwin preparing to throw a part of a building at him. There was no way for him to escape the impact. Until...

Erwin’s arm was destroyed.

“Ichigo!!!” Jian yelled. “What the hell is this thing?!”

“Shit, she saved me...but she’s gonna make this thing grow even more in size!” Ichigo thought, before talking into his earpiece. “It regenerates anything I harm it with. Chopping his head off doesn’t work either, and it gets bigger all the time.”

“But now that she’s here...”

“I might have an idea.”

“I will never...stop...until Sir Otto is safe!” A demonic scream escaped Erwin’s mouth, almost deafening the soulfuls and shattering glass windows across the battlefield.

“I will not fail him!”

The arm quickly regenerated. A shockwave was released from Erwin’s soul, destroying most of the buildings around him. He swung his arms around, attempting to strike Ichigo down. Jian was a target too, she barely avoided most of the larger attacks.

“Lieutenant-Commander! Are you alright?!” Ichigo said.

“Do not worry about formalities.” Jian replied, aiming at the monster. “You have your divine acclamation active, correct?”

“Yes, and I think that might be the key.” Ichigo said, avoiding chunks of debris being thrown at him. His ability to fly was one of his saving graces.

“Elaborate.”

“His soul has so much soul prowess that it became a tangible physical object. At least...it should be. I can interact with it by dimming it, so in theory, I should be able to destroy it too.”

“That sounds insane.” Jian said, shooting the debris out of the air to support her ally. “But it might work. Considering that I can see his soul too.”

“A soul is concealed within the vessel.”

“But in this case, his body and probably mindscape gave up...I really have no clue what the fuck I’m looking at.”

“What’s the plan?” Jian asked.

“You’ll shoot a hole through its chest, Jian Fang.” Ichigo said. “And I’ll charge in and destroy his soul.”

“It was a stroke of luck that she came here in time, and that it’s her specifically.”

“I’ve been getting lucky like this my whole life. And all I can do to thank them is to just keep going.”

Erwin continued to ravage through the landscape. While Ichigo was keeping him busy with his constant flanks and mild attacks, Jian was preparing a devastating attack. Ichigo, however, was starting to lose his voltage. Some of the debris was hitting him, and his body released those strange shockwaves of soul prowess every time it regenerated.

“How long?!” Ichigo asked, trying his hardest to not get hit.

“Just a bit more...just a little more...” Jian thought.

“An axis strong enough to completely destroy its chest in one shot...should be ready...right about...”

“NOW!”

With one attack, Erwin’s body was destroyed. The soul prowess-infused flesh flew everywhere. There was no sign of blood, even the blood itself was infused with soul prowess to the brim. And in that gaping hole, there was a spark.

It shone with incredible brightness, and was surrounded by a pitch black darkness. It oozed with soul prowess through and through, and was producing way more than enough to keep even a monstrous vessel like this afloat. A shade of dullness absorbed it, it was the soul dimming from Ichigo’s acclamation.

Ichigo charged in as fast as he could, and with one swing of his blade, managed to break the soul in half.

“He did it...” Jian sighed, catching his breath.

The shards of the soul lingered around for a bit, and would soon...

“What was that?” Erwin’s voice stampeded through the battlefield.

“Did you just try to...destroy my soul...?”

“How dare you..”

“How dare you think...that I'll give up?"

"No..."

"My soul...will not waver..."

"Not here."

"Not ever."

The shards of Erwin’s soul refused to dissipate. They reunited. And an unfathomable buildup of soul prowess was looming...

“So how dare you think...”

“ ✦ THAT I’M GOING TO LEAVE SIR OTTO ALONE?!?!?! ✦ ”

“Ichigo!” Jian yelled before having to take cover. Ichigo was caught in the epicenter...