5 Strange Impulse.

Ichigo started to blend in the city slowly. It didn't take him long to gather most of the basic information about the city, since he could actually talk to them. They called their world Gaia, named after the Goddess of Life and Nature. Gaia had 3 continents, namely the Azure, Vermillion and Black continent. Right now he was on azure continent, which was mostly populated by humans and the second largest continent. There were many other things he found out but the main things were, Azure belongs to humans, Vermillion belongs to beast men and elves of some sort and Black belongs to demons.

The beast men were humanoids but were very different from humans in terms of appearance. They had fur all over their bodies and also had claws and protruding jaws with canines, high strength with low fertility rate. The elves were similar to humans with some differences like longer arms, bigger ears and overall weak bodies, but very high fertility rate. And lastly demons were very different from humans. There were different demons like tree demons, rock demons, slimes, giant snakes, giant insects and most importantly dragons.

When Ichigo heard about dragons and the strongest dragon, the gray dragon, he had a strange urge to go and kill it. It was like he knew the dragon and had some sort of enmity with it. But of course he had yet to even see a real dragon let alone make an enemy out of one. Ichigo stopped paying attention to many things and started to enjoy himself a little.

He came to know that this city was called Merchant City and was the largest gathering of merchants in the continent. He also learned about adventurers guild and adventurers and decided to become one. It was very easy for him. He learned about different kingdoms and their war but he was really not interested in any of that. Though you could say that he was a soul reaper and it was his job to help all the unwilling souls pass on and wars would cause a lot of them.

The city was full of strange and interesting people. Many of them had bright hair color so he didn't have any difficulties blending in. He started to think why he was sent to this world, because clearly the previous place was much better in helping him regain and also increase his strength. A month after entering the city, he had earned some money by doing jobs for the adventurers guild and rented a place for himself. More importantly, he had gotten used to the changes his body has gone through.

Lately he found that there was an increase in the number and excitement of the adventurers of merchant city, he didn't really ask anyone about it, but he heard about how it will be time for the yearly expedition soon.

He was in his room meditating when he suddenly had the urge to fight the gray dragon again. He was very confused because it was the fourth time it had happened. He knew that the impulse was coming from somewhere but he still didn't know where and he didn't have time in the past few weeks to stay still and think about it. But now that he had his own place he sat down and started to feel where this impulse was coming from. The only thing he knew was that the impulse could come from deep within him, something he held dear or maybe, the dragon had hurt someone close to him?, he didn't know.

As he was on this train of thought, he started thinking about orihime, 'Is Orihime somehow connected to the dragon.' The more he thought about it, the more he felt that she was. 'If she or whatever being that is helping me could send me to this world, they should also be able to send her as well.' But as he was thinking about it, the impulse came in again, much stronger than previous ones. It felt a lot like when zangetsu tried to help or stop him. 'This feels like zangetsu trying to warn or stop me.'

Just as he thought about it, his eyes went wide and he looked towards the chain on his arm. 'Is the dragon somehow connected to Zangetsu.' As he was looking at Zangetsu, he heard a very weak nearly inaudible voice, 'Ret.... rieve.... m.....e.', but due to his recent breakthrough, he was able to hear it, it was clearly Zangetsu's voice.

"Zangetsu, what do I have to retrieve? does the dragon have it? Zangetsu?!" but there was no response. Ichigo started to think. 'What would Zangetsu want me to retrieve? I think he said to retrieve him, does that mean, the dragon has a part of my broken zanpakuto.' As Ichigo reached this conclusion, the urging and strange Impulse inside him vanished.

"I knew it, I was sent to this world for a specific reason. It should be to collect Zangetsu or at least a piece of him." Ichigo somewhat relaxed. He felt that he had shed a weight on his shoulders that he didn't even know he was carrying. He was anxious and slightly irritated thinking about what to do in this world. He didn't know what he had to do in this world and was getting more and more irritated and angry as time passed, knowing that Orihime was somewhere helping him while he was wasting his time doing nothing.

'The question remains whether I have a time limit or not.' The moment this thought passed his mind, the urging suddenly came back, ichigo smiled wryly, "It seems like I do. Haah, I should leave immediately."

Packing some stuff that he had and also some food, Ichigo got up and started to ask about the black continent. He went to the adventurers guild and found that there were yearly expeditions to the black continent to acquire different resources, mainly ores and precious rocks, from the black continent. 'Ah, so that's the reason for the sudden increase in the number of adventurers and the excitement in the air.' Ichigo thought that it was such fortunate timing for it to happen. 'Was it simply a coincidence or was I sent here with such timing on purpose?' He didn't think further and tried to enter the expedition.

It wasn't hard for him to be included in the expedition as there were many free spots in the team and also, the guild needed as many workers as possible. to gather and protect the resources and even if he died, no one would really care about it. When the preparations were done, they immediately departed. It was announced that it would take about 1 week to get to the black continent. Ichigo didn't have many or rather any friends or acquaintances, so he went to his assigned room and meditated. He only came out for food and the toilet and remained in his room for the entire time.

Three weeks later, they had already landed on the continent and were constructing temporary camps and barricades. Ichigo was told to help deal with any monsters or demons that showed up. As soon as he was alone, he took off towards the center of the continent at full speed. Ichigo at full speed was much faster than he himself thought he would be.

He kept going towards the center, well at least he believed that he was going deeper into the continent. His disappearance from the campsite didn't really cause any disturbance since all the leaders were focused on collecting resources and defending themselves.

Ichigo kept going, stopping only to eat, defecate and sleep. He came across many different kinds of creatures, but he ignored most of them and only one caught his attention, enough for him to stop and observe it. It was a gigantic turtle. It had a mountain on its back and it was walking very slowly, well if you consider its size, each of its step covered at least a kilometer.

As he was observing the turtle, the urge came back and soon after he heard a loud roar coming from the mountain on the turtles back. He looked at where the sound came from and saw a relatively small dragon, well smaller as compared to the other creatures he saw. The dragon looked about 8 meters long from head to tail and about 6 meters tall. It didn't stop and came straight at him with its claws stretched out. From what he could sense, the dragon was strong. It had powers similar to Aizen when he had fused with hogyoku.

Ichigo was getting excited. Recently he had been anxious, irritated, angry, sad, frustrated and stressed. He finally found something he could release all his pent up frustration and stress on. He used matter soul manipulation to change zangetsu's chain into a katana similar to tensa zangetsu and released his contained reiatsu. But what happened next shocked and confused him. He saw the dragon falling to the ground and cowering in fear.

"Wait, what? What happened to all the bluster you were showing moments ago? Come on, stand up, I want to relieve all this stress."

By the end of it, Ichigo was already shouting and just his shouting caused the dragon to faint. Ichigo sighed, turned the sword back to a chain and walked towards the dragon. As he was walking towards it, one of the teeth of the dragon broke off and flew to zangetsu's chain. The tooth was about the size of a dagger, it merged with the chain and the chain grew an extension to which a small blade was attached. It was similar to a pocket knife and it was fully black. Ichigo felt himself growing stronger and then it came to him that he was this strong without his zanpakuto. 'How strong will I be when Zangetsu is fully restored?'.

Ichigo was thinking about his strength when he suddenly felt lighter and he started to float. He was once again covered in a white cocoon. He once again shot off towards another place. 'Aah, whoever's doing this does not have much patience. I'll probably have to find pieces of Zangetsu to wherever I'll be sent to. I just hope the reason or condition they have for helping me is not too exaggerated.'