Chapter 1262 The “Hyousube Ichibei”

These past few days, Kisuke has been attacking Ichibei and the obviously very important thing under him, the pulsing flesh.

Kisuke has used almost everything, including activating both his Shunko and Bankai at the same time. In addition, the insects around them didn't bother him and kept on eating the walls of the cavern without any care about what was happening.

Despite all of this effort, he couldn't deal any meaningful damage to either Ichibei and the flesh would regenerate endlessly and effortlessly.

Meanwhile, black spears that seem to be made out of blank ink would manifest out of nowhere and would unbelievably pierce through all of Kisuke's defenses with ease.

He tried dodging and blocking them but these spears would appear without any indicator. It's as if they are already there in the first place and Kisuke himself just walked into them.

'Another reality warper... How terrifying.' Kisuke tried sitting up while the various holes in his body were leaking blood.

Worst of all, Ichibei and the pulsing flesh seem to have some ability to negate both Shinigami and Hollow powers, which resulted in Benihime and Tiamat returning to their sealed forms and his Hollow transformation being dispelled, which included his ability to regenerate.

Although he's not sure of what's happening yet, there's only a single entity who could possibly achieve that, 'And that's the Soul King... The origin of all Spiritual Power in this world.'

Thankfully, his use of Magic Power was still available and he was able to keep himself alive thanks to it.

After closing his wounds up, Kisuke stood up while swaying, "Are you trying to become the next Soul King now that the lynchpin has disappeared?"

But instead of answering his question, Ichibei talked about a completely different topic, "If you have brought that being in the form of a young girl, you could have a chance. Why did you come alone to face me? Was it pride?"

Like him, Kisuke ignored his question and continued on his line of thinking, "No... You're not trying to become the Soul King. That's evident in the fact that you're now trying to devour everything. You just want to keep things in order until the day you can achieve your goal."

Ichibei went quiet.

"And you're asking why I didn't bring Ophis-chan with me, right? I have no intention of serving you food. Though I doubt you could actually do it, I still don't want to risk it."

Kisuke then started picking up the snapped and shattered blade slowly as he continued speaking, "I guess that Ophis-chan made you realize something and you had no choice but to skip a few things."

Kisuke paused for a moment before turning his eyes toward Ichibei, "Did you forget that you're not the real thing and never will be one?"

As soon as he finished his words, Kisuke realized that five black spears were piercing his body and he started coughing blood again, 'Seriously... I still can't find the telegraph for these things... But I was able to confirm its rules.'

"You dodged." Muttered Ichibei and the black spears disappeared. He intended to insert all of those spears on his head, but strangely enough, they appeared all over his body and only dealt non-fatal wounds, "I was still underestimating you it seems. I didn't expect you to figure them out."

For the first time in this 'fight' Ichibei raised his arm and in an instant, a hundred black spears appeared. To his surprise, however, none of them appeared in Kisuke's body and were instead strewn around him.

Kisuke closed his wounds with Magic and a grin appeared on his face, "Finally trying to kill me for real? Did I hit the mark?"

Ichibei didn't immediately reply and gestured his hand. This time, a thousand spears appeared but the same as before, none of them appeared in Kisuke.

Ichibei tried a few more times and Kisuke just smirked at him while watching the countless spears flashing in and out of existence, "Thanks to you looking down on me, I was able to ascertain some of my theories."

Multiple Magic Circles appeared around Kisuke and the scattered pieces of both of his Zanpakutos gathered and rearranged themselves into their original forms.

Ichibei became interested and asked, "Theories, huh? What are they?" He also stopped summoning the black spears and started concocting another form of attack.

"First is that you can't see everything that the Soul King was doing, especially after his death."

"..."

"Second is that you thought that you kept him from disclosing the real situation by setting up what I can only be called a world-spanning barrier. However, the Soul King had a tough time because he had to do it in a roundabout way every time just so that you wouldn't be able to figure it out. To this day, those three, Kurosaki Ichigo, Aizen Sosuke, and Yhwach, still have no idea that the Soul King wanted them to disrupt you."

Ichibei grinned and acknowledged Kisuke's words, "He's good at choosing people with potential, but not so much as a person. Aizen was too ambitious. Kurosaki was too naive. Yhwach, on the other hand, was too drowned in his ideals."

"But I'm standing in front of you now, no?"

Ichibei nodded, still with the same grin, "That's true. However, you're already too late. Even if you successfully evaded my palms, I'm already on the verge of completing it."

'Palms? Is that what he called the net that catches everyone that the Soul King comes into contact with? In any case, he's already confirmed it. He's trying to resurrect this thing by 'completing' himself.'

Kisuke's mind went back to the time that the Soul King's last vestige spoke to him, 'A being that shouldn't have been born, huh?'