"So arrogant…"
Yushima Ōko looked up at Aizen in the sky and muttered under his breath.
This was probably the most arrogant Shinigami he had ever seen.
Shihōin Yoruichi, meanwhile, stared blankly at the jewel floating in front of Aizen.
She recognized that jewel. Wasn't that the Hōgyoku Urahara Kisuke created—something that could help a Shinigami break through the boundary between Shinigami and Hollow?
Why was it inside Nemu?
Did that mean Aizen's goal was that thing?
Under Aizen's terrifying Reiatsu, every Shinigami present had different thoughts churning in their heart.
Only Higashino Shuuichi silently drove his reishi body and used Hirenkyaku (Flying Scythe Step), arriving directly beneath Aizen. There, he caught Nemu—who now had no value left to Aizen.
"Are you alright, Nemu?" Higashino Shuuichi asked softly, looking down at the weakened girl in his arms.
"I'm fine, Father," Nemu replied, her pale lips trembling as she spoke.
Then Higashino Shuuichi used Kaidō (Healing Arts) he had learned from Kirinji Tenjirō. Gentle spiritual power wrapped around Nemu's body.
The wounds Aizen had inflicted—both on her body and her soul—began to recover rapidly under Higashino Shuuichi's Kaidō.
"Father… that thing called the Hōgyoku is amazing, isn't it?" Nemu suddenly asked in the midst of recovery.
Higashino Shuuichi carried her away from the battlefield while nodding.
"Yeah. For most Shinigami, its existence is basically an all-purpose wish-granting device."
"Then, Father… please take away the part that Aizen-sama left inside me. Compared to me, you should need it more."
After Nemu finished speaking, Higashino Shuuichi stopped.
He lowered his head to look at her. The instant she said that, he could feel it—inside Nemu, that incomplete fragment of the Hōgyoku that was linked to her soul seemed to sense her intent. It tried to follow Higashino Shuuichi's spiritual power and flow into his body.
Things… weren't supposed to develop like this.
The timeline had to rewind to a few days earlier, when Higashino Shuuichi learned that Urahara Kisuke had placed the Hōgyoku inside Nemu.
He immediately contacted Aizen alone.
Using the Hōgyoku and their "performance" as bargaining chips, he persuaded Aizen to leave a portion of the incomplete Hōgyoku behind for Nemu.
At the same time, he used his own methods to inform Nemu of this outcome.
That was precisely why Nemu had stayed unusually calm all along.
Because she knew she would be fine. This was nothing more than a scheme her father and Aizen Sōsuke had set up together.
As for Higashino Shuuichi himself, he had never particularly coveted the Hōgyoku.
But Nemu had been forced to become a chip on the table in this game between him, Aizen, and Urahara Kisuke. Higashino Shuuichi felt he owed her compensation.
An incomplete Hōgyoku might not grant Nemu the same kind of evolution a complete one could—but in Higashino Shuuichi's mind, it should at least help Nemu make up for what she lacked.
Maybe it could awaken her true power, letting her become the kind of "real" Shinigami Kurotsuchi Mayuri had dreamed of day and night.
And yet now, Nemu was voluntarily giving up the chance Higashino Shuuichi had fought to secure for her—trying to fulfill Higashino Shuuichi instead.
Looking at this daughter who had no real blood relation to him, Higashino Shuuichi felt something on her—something that could only be called family.
Higashino Shuuichi smiled.
He cut off the spiritual conduit between himself and Nemu, temporarily stopping his Kaidō treatment.
"Silly kid. Your father doesn't need something like that.
If I did… do you really think I would've handed it over to Aizen?"
Higashino Shuuichi moved his spiritual power, and his shadow wrapped around both him and Nemu.
This way, their conversation would not be known to the outside world.
"But Father, I really don't need—"
Nemu tried to insist, only to find that her own spiritual power—driven by that incomplete Hōgyoku within her—began to circulate on its own.
It actively chased after the power Higashino Shuuichi had withdrawn, then intertwined with his spiritual power.
Before Higashino Shuuichi could even react, the incomplete Hōgyoku had already remade itself into a link between Higashino Shuuichi and Nemu.
Because Nemu herself was an existence created from Higashino Shuuichi's genes, the power in her body was already of the same origin as his.
So this connection met no resistance at all—not from Higashino Shuuichi's body, and not even from his soul.
And the moment this abnormal situation occurred, to be honest, Higashino Shuuichi was afraid—because it completely exceeded every possibility he had imagined.
He tried to sever the connection.
But the power of the incomplete Hōgyoku, in that tiny enclosed space, displayed its unparalleled tyranny.
Even with Higashino Shuuichi's current strength, he simply could not forcibly break the link between himself and Nemu.
And so he could only watch helplessly as the incomplete Hōgyoku transferred the Hollow power inside him… from his body into Nemu's.
"Why is this happening?"
In that instant, Higashino Shuuichi's panic peaked.
But then he realized something—this might not be as bad as he'd feared.
Because he could still control his Hollowfication power.
It was just that the "user" of that power had changed.
It had become Nemu.
A crude analogy would be: Higashino Shuuichi had added a relay station to his Hollowfication.
"Nemu… can you Hollowfy?" Higashino Shuuichi asked.
This special situation had completely blown past his understanding, to the point he needed confirmation from Nemu herself.
The answer he got was: no.
Nemu could not Hollowfy on her own. But she could clearly feel that an extra power now existed inside her.
This Hollowfication power taken from Higashino Shuuichi had instantly pushed Nemu's Reiatsu to a height that never belonged to her.
Calling it "ascending to the heavens in a single step" wouldn't be an exaggeration.
So had the Hollowfication power that flowed into Nemu merely raised her Reiatsu—forcing it, through this bizarre method, up to the same level as his?
Higashino Shuuichi knew it could not be that simple.
If the complete Hōgyoku was a wish-granting device, then in theory, the incomplete Hōgyoku should be the same—the only difference should be how big a wish it could fulfill.
So what was Nemu's wish?
Higashino Shuuichi knew it was to help him.
Then how was the incomplete Hōgyoku interpreting that?
On the surface, this seemed like it only helped Nemu.
Suddenly, a flash of insight struck Higashino Shuuichi.
Don't tell me—
At this moment, Higashino Shuuichi couldn't care about what was happening outside anymore. He pulled both himself and Nemu completely into the shadow world. Then, within this special domain, Higashino Shuuichi removed his reishi body and revealed his original appearance.
"Advance, Heisha!"
Higashino Shuuichi finally released his Zanpakutō in Shikai once again, after so long.
Then he took a deep breath.
He was about to do something no one had ever attempted—something that had never existed even in the original story.
"Hollowfy!"
A white skull mask appeared over Higashino Shuuichi's face. His body was simultaneously wrapped in silvery armor, everything seemingly no different from his original Hollowfication.
But Higashino Shuuichi stared blankly at his right hand.
Because the difference… was enormous.
In his right hand, the Zanpakutō he held was not the one he used after Hollowfying—it was the Zanpakutō of his Shinigami self: Heisha.
And the Zanpakutō of his Hollowfied form had re-formed into an entirely new blade, appearing in his left hand.
Dual blades.
This was a brand-new kind of dual-wielding form for Higashino Shuuichi.
A form Soul Society had never seen—where Shinigami power and Hollow power existed simultaneously.
"Hadō #90: Kurohitsugi (Black Coffin)!"
With the skull mask on his face, Higashino Shuuichi raised his right hand and pointed forward with the blade that represented his Shinigami power—Heisha.
A massive black coffin erupted from the ground within the shadow world.
Its oppressive might far surpassed anything Higashino Shuuichi had ever displayed in any previous era—
Including the version of him from just minutes ago.
Because of the limitations of form, a Shinigami's Reiatsu becoming too high places a tremendous burden on the body. A Shinigami's Reiatsu cannot be amplified without limit.
But Hollow Reiatsu is different.
In theory, Hollow Reiatsu can reach infinitely high.
Higashino Shuuichi had always been like that. Even after temporarily removing his Reiatsu cap through special methods in the Soul King Palace, he still couldn't make the Reiatsu of his Shinigami form exceed the Reiatsu of his Hollow form.
And if the height of Reiatsu couldn't rise, then for a Shinigami, the strength of their abilities couldn't rise either.
In other words—if this were a game—
Then the previous Higashino Shuuichi, who possessed the Soul King's left leg, was like a max-level Shinigami with infinite mana.
Against other max-level players like Yamamoto Genryūsai Shigekuni and Aizen, he held an absolute advantage in endurance and sustained combat… but in terms of raw single-cast skill "quality," those max-level players didn't have much gap between them.
At most, there were counter-matchups—rather than pure superiority.
That was a natural limitation of species and form.
But now, with Nemu acting as a relay station, Higashino Shuuichi had successfully used the incomplete Hōgyoku to exploit a bug.
From this moment onward, he could wield Shinigami abilities at the "height" of Hollow Reiatsu. This would directly raise Higashino Shuuichi's output by an entire tier.
It meant that in this special form, even a casual basic attack from Higashino Shuuichi could be equivalent to another Shinigami's ultimate skill—plus a critical hit.
The only problem… was Nemu's body.
Nemu was an artificial being—she wasn't even a complete Shinigami.
Her body was created through Kurotsuchi Mayuri's technical methods.
It was far, far below the standard of a normal Shinigami.
Higashino Shuuichi realized this when he tried to attempt a Resurrección-style release.
He could see it clearly—Nemu was at her limit.
A body that hadn't fully recovered in the first place was now being pushed even further into collapse.
Higashino Shuuichi could even see blood seeping from between Nemu's clenched teeth.
And yet from beginning to end, Nemu didn't make a single sound of pain. She didn't even proactively tell Higashino Shuuichi about her condition.
Higashino Shuuichi even suspected that if he hadn't noticed, Nemu would have kept enduring until her body finally broke apart from the strain.
"Silly kid… you don't need to do this!"
Higashino Shuuichi immediately dismissed his Hollowfication and began treating Nemu with Kaidō again.
By this point, what had happened was already more than enough to fill Higashino Shuuichi with delight.
He had thought he was just a supporting actor in Aizen's grand entrance show—watching Aizen show off from behind the scenes, then quietly exiting afterward.
He hadn't expected that, in the end, he might become the biggest winner of this game.
"I'm fine, Father. Don't worry about me," Nemu insisted, still trying to hold on.
She couldn't understand what had just happened to Higashino Shuuichi—but she could read the unmistakable joy on his face, and she could sense it in the surrounding Reishi: the genuine happiness welling up from his heart.
She was happy too.
Happy that she could help Higashino Shuuichi.
That was exactly what she wanted to see.
Nemu felt this was what she should do.
A tender father and a devoted daughter—those words were the perfect description of Higashino Shuuichi and Nemu inside the shadow world at this moment.
But outside the shadow world—on Sōkyoku Hill in Soul Society—the scene was completely different.
No one noticed, and no one cared, that Higashino Shuuichi the Quincy and Nemu had vanished.
Even Matsumoto Rangiku merely guessed that Shuuichi-sama had something important to handle.
Right now, everyone's attention was focused on Aizen Sōsuke.
With Muguruma Kensei already the first to fall, the Sixth Division captain Kuchiki Byakuya and the Seventh Division captain Komamura Sajin naturally took up the banner of opposing Aizen.
This time, there was no need to wait for an order from Central 46 or from the Captain-Commander.
Because the Third Division captain Ichimaru Gin had arrived at the lively Sōkyoku Hill via that special Kidō, Senpan Hakujya (Thousand Coiled White Serpents).
He used his Zanpakutō—still dripping with blood—to tell everyone that the former Tenth Division captain Shiba Isshin had just been beaten into a grievous injury by him.
And then—
"Let me also share some unfortunate news with everyone. More than half a month ago, every single member of Central 46… was already killed by us, you know~"
Ichimaru Gin narrowed his eyes, smiling as he announced the message to all the Shinigami present.
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