Chapter 1254 Meeting Ichibei

Kisuke dived back into Hell, and the former normal landscape full of greens had been utterly destroyed with giant maggots continuously gnawing on anything they could put their mouths into. The purple sky, on the other hand, was full of holes that revealed the iridescent glow made from the Dragons' Dimensional Gap.

Upon his arrival, the first thing that Kisuke did was find a relatively 'clean' place and set up a temporary station that would connect to the scanners that he gave to Furoufushi's group, 'It has been some time. They probably scattered enough of them already.'

And as he expected, he immediately received a ping from the scanners and started receiving the data that they had been gathering.

"This is... much worse than I expected." Kisuke muttered to himself while the corner of his mouth twitched uncomfortably, "There are at least a hundred million of those in that small area? There's no way we'll be able to clean all of this up even if I somehow break their connection to the hivemind or take care of the broodmother. Not in a short time, at least..." And time was not on his side right now. Kisuke has a feeling that the situation has already devolved on the other side, and he can't wait to return.

Kisuke operated his terminal more to figure out Furoufushi and the others' location by tracking the cubes he gave them earlier and found out that they are several thousand kilometers away from him right now. He could teleport to their side right now to help them, but that's only going to be a temporary solution to their current plight and would do nothing to solve the problem.

'The maggots are moving to their spot... They can gather most of the attention for now.'

Kisuke then opened another isolated terminal to plug in the data module that Kurotsuchi gave him before he left. And once he uploaded the content, a map showing the 'trail' of the hivemind was displayed on the screen, 'It's beyond the edge of Hell.'

After finding out his destination, he cleaned up his station and tore a small hole in the space. Within that hole, a cane came rushing out, and he immediately caught it, "Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed your time."

[If I knew you'd go on this suicide mission, I would have done more to enjoy myself.] Benihime replied, but there's a slight tone of amusement in her voice.

[You defeated Chaos and you're nervous about this?] Tiamat chimed in.

"Correction. I barely and luckily set it up for you to take care of him. And that's after careful planning and making things more convenient for me. Not to mention I have a lot of people I could lean back on at that time."

[This time, this idiot will be going in essentially blind, desperate to end all of this to save some time.]

"After what Gabriel-san said? There's no way I could take it slow."

When Kisuke said this, Tiamat finally realized the gravity of his actions despite him acting confident, [No wonder Serafall acted that way.]

[Oh? What did I miss?]

[A new lover.]

As his two Zanpakuto gossip like old nosy aunts in the neighborhood, Kisuke ignored them and proceeded to move deeper into the corner of the world.

Since he didn't want to attract any unnecessary attention, he moved slower than he previously did while hiding his breath from all the passing maggots both in the sky and under the ground.

A few days later, Kisuke reached the precipice of the world where he could now see numerous giant flies in addition to the maggots. He wanted to fight, catch, and experiment on these flies, but the risk of them all rushing towards him stopped him from doing so. There's no point in getting tired before he even reaches his target.

Kisuke crouched down and sharpened his senses in an attempt to detect anything from the cliff that never seems to end. He didn't want to do any active reconnaissance in any intensity in case they're capable of picking up a minute amount of disturbance in the surroundings.

But despite spending a few hours going around and trying to get as much information as possible, he couldn't get anything useful aside from the trail of Reiatsu that Ichibei left some time ago.

[Looks like you really don't have a choice but to go in, huh? These things probably already invaded the three worlds.] Benihime's voice resounded in his head.

'As much as I hate it, I think I'd really have to go with that route.' Kisuke replied in his head with a deeply concerned smile plastered on his face.

[But it's not like you have zero plans, right? I refuse to believe that you have nothing prepared.] Tiamat asked once again, [You wouldn't have embarked on this mission if that's not the case. Does it have something to do with the ink on your back? When you used my [Aspect of Life], you already rendered its effects ineffective yet you choose to keep this shadow without any substance. What for?]

'Without substance, huh? If you can't see it, then it's probably safe to say that he also won't be able to anticipate it.'

[...] Tiamat became quiet before asking, [There's something else in there?]

However, Kisuke didn't answer her and just took a deep breath before jumping off the cliff where Ichibei's residual aura was the strongest before finally suppressing any aura leaking from his body. This, in turn, severely limited his senses to his normal sight, touch, smell, and hearing.

With almost no air to slow him down, Kisuke speedily descended as he was slowly engulfed by the darkness of the abyss he jumped into. He doesn't know if the gravity is operating normally around these parts, but he's certain that there's something else that's more massive than Hell itself down here since he kept falling.

Eventually, the purple sky of Hell that provided light stopped reaching him after a few hours of falling. Kisuke thought that this should be impossible, but he figured that there's something in the atmosphere that's destroying the flow of energies.

On the way down, he also inevitably crashed into some maggots and even some flies. However, he had a genius solution to dealing with that, and that is by not reacting to anything that happens.

Because he sealed everything, the maggots and flies thought that he's just a random rock that had fallen from the cliff and ignored him entirely.

And finally, after a total of 10 hours, a blue light appeared in his sights before he entered a crack of unknown material and arrived at a well-lit gigantic cavern that's full of maggots, flies, and eggs. In the middle of this vast expanse was an indescribable, pulsing being of flesh and on top of it was Ichibei, whose appearance barely resembled his previous ambiance, peacefully sleeping.

But instead of fearing the aura that's coming from the pulsing flesh that's on par with Aizen, Kisuke smiled and thought 'How convenient.'