~1 Month.

-------------(Ichigo-POV)--------------

After leaving Ura-Kyoto, they travelled around Japan for a month. During this month, he was led around by the old man and found as many as twenty strays. More than half of them were stray devils. Stray devils looked more like deformed demons than anything else. Their bodies were heavily mutated and their minds were completely corrupted. He thought killing them was a mercy. Whatever they did before becoming strays didn't matter anymore. After becoming strays, their minds were destroyed and they did everything based on hunger. There was no need to say that they fed on humans. It was a pitiful existence, similar to low level hollows. He was a bit confused though, because he thought that the devils were already low in numbers but there were clearly more stray devils than all the others combined.

That was when he was told about the Evil piece system. The result of combining magic and technology in such a way that it allowed the devils to reincarnate other species as one of them. He was also given more in depth knowledge about the big players in the different pantheons. More knowledge about how these people were in person and not just their stories. The strongest devils, Angels, fallens, the strongest gods, goddesses and dragons, the most renowned criminals and finally, one of the most interesting things he had heard ever since he got here, Sacred Gears.

Special tools or weapons given to humanity by the biblical god to help them fight against the supernatural, at least that's what the world believed. Elder Gen wasn't sure if that was the true reason. Ichigo also didn't believe that to be the reason, or at least the only reason. He felt that any power given without a cost or a struggle would only result in disasters. The elder felt that there should be more to it than just protecting themselves. If the god wanted humans to protect themselves, why did he create the sacred gears with such difference in powers? Some of them could kill gods while there were others that wouldn't be able to help a human kill the weakest stray.

He could have created the same thing with equal powers and distributed them to the humans. While that may have not worked as well, but it would certainly make more sense if he wanted to give humans a chance to fight back. Especially when you consider the Longinus Class of sacred gears. Those things destroyed balance, they were unnatural to the extreme. They would tilt the world in your favor. They were broken, they were cheats. They were not something that God, who was said to love everything equally would create because they gave birth to a lot of bias. No, elder Gen was sure that there was something bigger at play, something that would require such broken powers. Elder Gen was old, he was knowledgeable but he was not omniscient.

It was one of the reasons why he wanted Ichigo to remain with Yasaka and to help and protect her. Ichigo didn't know everything but he knew that the power to break the natural balance was dangerous. It reminded him too much of Hogyoku and Aizen. Having such power in the hands of people like Aizen was nauseating. Imagining 13 Aizen wannabes running around the world was just... wrong, on so many levels. He shuddered at the thought of such a disaster. The more he learned about this world, the more fucked up it got. It was a miracle that life was still prospering in this world.

During this month, he also tried to increase his control and he had limited success. He couldn't contain his spiritual energy inside him because it was similar to breathing. What he took in, he had to let out and due to his mixed nature, he took in a lot of spiritual energy meaning that he had to let out just as much. The best thing he could do was limit his intake so that the amount naturally released was small as well. That's where he had limited success. Again, it was similar to breathing, you could only slow down your breathing to an extent and it required conscious control. Going below that level would be detrimental to him. It would also take a lot of practice before he could do it unconsciously.

Old Gen helped him with that. He told him to meditate, to slow down his... everything basically. He had no need to breathe but he still did it unconsciously, so he slowed down his breathing and his thoughts. To help him further, old Gen started to play some slow music. He told Ichigo to focus on the slow rhythm and try to feel the energy around him entering his body. It took a few days because of the amount rushing inside him but he did. The next step was the difficult one. He had to slow down the waves of spiritual energy rushing inside him down to a steady stream. It was currently like a waterfall and he had to put in effort to calm it down. That took him the remainder of the month.

In the end, the best analogy of what he had done was that he had built a dam around himself with his willpower. The outside world was the reservoir and he could control the amount that would enter the other side, that is, his body. There was a lower limit, if he went below that, it would start to hurt him but all he had to do to access more was to widen the gap in the dam and if he really wanted to, he could just destroy the dam. Since the metaphorical dam was built outside, it would only disorient him for some time but that was it. He could rebuild it later. That is exactly what he did the last week of the month. Destroying and rebuilding the metaphorical dam.

All that aside, he also learned more about the hell gate inside of him. First of all, his spiritual energy had taken the shape of the gate. Whenever he actively released his spiritual powers, it took the shape of the gate rather than the hollow mask it did before. The more spiritual power he gave it, the more corporeal it got. It still hadn't done anything too strange, just the same vibrations whenever he killed a stray. It just reacted stronger to some. It wasn't all that hard to realize that it reacted stronger to those who had killed more, but he instinctively knew that that wasn't all it could do. So he asked Old Gen to find as horrible a person as he could. And not even a few hours later, the old man told him about a necromancer and explained to him what a necromancer was.

In wars, necromancers were tolerated. They were considered a lesser evil than letting their own soldiers die. In times of peace though, however tentative the peace was, they were shunned and looked down upon. Of course that pissed them off and they hid themselves from the world. After the Great War, their value was completely dropped and they started researching not for the sake of helping their side but to gain personal power and prestige. Their research required a lot of dead bodies. Freshly dead were the best so they decided to kill the people themselves and in turn got themselves branded as public enemies. Even that was not enough for them. They started to delve deeper into some shit they weren't supposed to, souls.

Many agreed to what a soul was but they still couldn't figure out how a soul was created in the first place. Souls existed. They existed in many shapes and forms, you could interact with them and even change them but how they came into existence was something no one knew and many believed should be left untouched. Necromancers didn't care. They started to create some true abominations that shouldn't have existed in the world in their pursuit of power and knowledge. The moment they started to play with souls, they were no longer considered a living being. They disrupted the natural balance, making them go from public enemy to having a kill on sight order from all factions.

Anyways, this one was traveling around Japan picking the more remote towns and villages as his targets to keep away from the supernatural world. Elder Gen found a trail and told him to follow it and destroy anything related to this thing. Usually there would be an entire team meant for this, but the old man let him go on the promise that he destroy everything related to the necromancer. He soon turned up in a small town a bit away from any large cities. He could feel around ten thousand or so humans and it didn't take him more than a few seconds to find the odd one out. It was stronger but more importantly, it felt unnatural. Like a mixture of different things. It also felt slimy and deathly. Basically, it felt wrong. Zangetsu also informed him that the hell gate was vibrating again.

He quickly made it to the place and found an old dilapidated house. There was nothing inside the house but there was definitely something beneath it. He found an underground entrance and went down. The moment he reached the bottom, his carefully constructed dam started to shake. He also felt the disturbance in his inner world.

'Oi, Ichigo! The gate is fucking opening!' Zangetsu yelled at him. That was a bit alarming but he understood what Hell wanted. Hell wanted the gate to manifest outside.

He stopped worrying about that when he saw the amount of dead bodies around him. The place was filled with them. Young, old, male, female, even toddlers were lying dead around him. He had to exert extreme willpower to keep the dam from completely breaking. If he accessed all of his spiritual energy, the pressure released would be enough to crush all the humans within a hundred kilometers. He didn't want that of course, so he had to force himself to calm down.

He started to go deeper and saw the abominations he was told about. The hell gate had already started to manifest behind him. The abominations were even more bizarre and unnatural than the stray devils. The stray devils were born when the reincarnated species gave in to the changes made to their souls and let the changes rule them. They started to follow whatever twisted desires these changes brought them. Due to their souls changing, their bodies changed as well. The things he was seeing right now were more than just changing a soul. It was completely breaking it apart to try to create something new. Something that shouldn't be possible.

Someone who didn't even know about cars would not be able to create them. This was even worse. If the soul was a car, these people didn't even know what a round shape was, let alone all the gears, the pipes, the engine and so many more. They didn't even know what part was what, where it should go, how it works, and they wanted to create the final product? It was impossible. Without even knowing about language, they wanted to create an encyclopedia. He could keep giving such examples but it would still not be enough to describe the insanity.

As he went deeper, his anger rose, the gate had already manifested and had started to open. Soon he was standing in front of the twisted thing. Its twisted nature was shown in its body. There was flesh in some places but it was mostly a skeleton. The skeleton itself was black in some places, brown, green and red in others. It was bulkier in some places and thinner in others. A complete and utter abomination. He didn't even have to say or do anything for the chains of hell to rush out the opening door and start to bind the thing. The thing itself didn't have any time to do anything before the chains started to drag it to hell. He really wanted to kill this thing as painfully as possible, but he didn't know if it would even feel pain.

Thankfully hell didn't target the body, it targeted the soul. This thing would be tortured for a long time, he took some pleasure in that thought. Before he could even hear a peep from the necromancer, it was dragged into hell and gate quickly closed. He took a moment to calm down and then started to look around. He only found dead bodies. He came across a relatively intact man lying on the floor, the only one who seemed to still be breathing.

"Hey. You still there?" Ichigo asked softly as he knelt down. The man stirred for a second before looking up at him. The man's dead eyes lit up for a moment before he asked in a hoarse voice.

"Where is... that.. thing?"

"In hell." Ichigo answered truthfully. The man didn't have much time. He could already hear the heartbeat getting weaker.

"Good." The man answered with a smile.

"Can you... destroy this place?" The man looked at him and asked with a smile.

"I will. What's your name?" He said getting back up. The man was dead before he answered the question. He sighed before cursing.

"Damnit! Is this what you want? You want me to find fuckers like these and send them to you?" Ichigo asked the gate that was still there, following him like a shadow. The gate vibrated and he had a feeling of approval transmitted to him.

"Good. I can get behind that." Ichigo said with gritted teeth. Just thinking that there were more out there that played with the lives of others like this made him burn with rage. Hell also seemed to agree with his rage as it send him a feeling that felt like it was asking for permission. He didn't know what it wanted but he agreed in a moment of impulsiveness. He had to hold back a grimace as he felt his right arm burn for a moment. His right hand, up till his forearm, had some tribal looking black lines going around it. It looked like multiple crosses drawn on his arm looking more like a tight cloth than a tattoo, similar to what he had in his bankai during his fight with Gingo. The back of his right hand though, had a very familiar looking design. It was the same skull like design that was on his substitute soul reaper badge. It looked good, if he was being honest. With that tattoo though came the ability to control, or at least direct, the chains of hell. It felt like he had gotten promoted. From an interviewee to a tentative employee.

He sighed thinking about whether he should bury all these dead bodies or destroy the place as he had just promised. He also remembered what elder Gen had said. To destroy anything related to the necromancer. With his mind made up, he started to fire Ceros to destroy everything around him. It didn't take all that long. Then he went back outside and destroyed the house as well. He started making his way back to the old man. After this, they were supposed to go outside of Japan to spread his name as well as make some personal connections with some 'important' people.

---------------(General-POV)---------------

What Ichigo didn't know was that the manifestation of a Hell Gate was not a small matter. Hell was one of the first ever dimension to be created. During creation, Heaven and Hell were the only two places to be born. They were the first to be formed and both had too extreme of conditions to give birth to any life. Hence, they quietly kept on expanding until the inevitable happened. They collided. Both of them broke into different parts creating the different types of heaven and hell. Some of these part fused together. Some fused in perfect ratio, some had more heaven in it and some had more hell, giving birth to a diverse group of worlds whose conditions were milder. Some managed to give birth to life. These were the creation gods. They were born from the energy created by the collision and the pieces of heaven and hell left floating around.

Each had its own unique thought and ideas. Using the powers they had, they created more living beings to fill the empty world that could now support life. They gathered together with others and started to experiment creating beings with different shapes and sizes. Most didn't survive for long but many also thrived for millions of years. Soon they came across the humanoid shape and realized that it was the most convenient shape to take and give, so that's what they did. Then they started exploring the different worlds created in the collision. They brought some of them closer and kept the others far away. During this time, one of them formed a bond with the realm he had chosen, giving him more freedom on what he could do.

Everyone else followed and after a few more thousand years, it lead to another inevitability. They fought against each other. Many died but their death gave birth to more creatures. The primordials and the dragons were born. They had their own ideas and feelings which led to either more fights or the birth of more creatures. The children of the creation gods and these primordials didn't like each other and tried to find places far away from each. They discovered that the worlds they were living in were only the remnants of a huge collision and the real places were something so humongous that they couldn't even imagine it. Of course that lead to a frantic search for the original worlds and greed. Which lead to more fights and more death.

They found the original heaven and hell and realized that these two places were not as simple as the others. They had their own ego and the egos learned of the existence of a bountiful world outside of themselves. They started to pick and choose whichever entity they liked and gave them small benefits, that lead to the birth of more creatures. Heaven was benign by nature and attracted those with benign nature. Hell was vicious in nature and attracted the more vicious creatures. That formed a dynamic, heaven for the good and hell for the bad. The two original worlds accepted as well and soon a cycle that encompassed the entirety of creation was born.

The creation gods had created their own cycles but this was one that bound even them. Realizing this, they got scared. They warned their children and creations to stay away from the originals. Some agreed but many disagreed. The two worlds provided too many benefits to stay away from them. This lead to more wars. Which lead to more death, which finally led to Heaven and Hell to enforce their rules. The vicious and the selfish were dragged to hell. Heaven welcomed those that lived for others and helped them.

This led to a tentative peace that lasted for a few dozens of millennia. Humans were also born during this time. Then the great war happened which brought old grudges back to life and things became as they were now. Basically, hell was not as simple as it sounded and the manifestation of the hell gate was not a simple matter. Of course Ichigo wouldn't know the full story for a long time but he would soon realize that for a mortal to be selected by hell was not a simple thing.