Chapter 215: Taking Advantage of the Situation
In a sense, the Quincy were the true foundational power of this world.
The ability to erase Hollows completely, reducing them to nothingness, was the concept the Soul King envisioned when he first faced the devouring monsters that once threatened to swallow everything. Back then, that answer must have seemed clean and perfect. Cut away the rot. Remove the predator. Restore the world to pure order.
But the world could not endure it.
Later, it became clear that reality itself could not bear the Quincy method. Only by forcing a new cycle into existence, only by creating the current Soul King system through his own power, could the Three Realms maintain stability and continue to exist.
And it was because of this that Yhwach and the Quincy believed the Shinigami were traitors.
They believed the Shinigami had attacked the Soul King, reduced that great saint to ash and bone, and built today's order on top of that crime.
With even a little thought, the accusation was absurd. The power released by a single organ of the Soul King was already beyond comprehension, let alone the Soul King himself. A being that stood as though he were the embodiment of the world held an unimaginable authority.
Yet that was exactly where the real problem began.
Many people could not accept that such a being truly loved this world.
They could not accept that the Soul King sacrificed himself willingly.
So they convinced themselves of a different story. They decided he must have been dismembered, his parts suppressed, his body sealed, and that this ugly but functioning world was stitched together through force and compromise.
And even after all of it, the Soul King never once tried to reclaim his power.
Could he not?
Even Ichibe Hyosube could return through the weight of his name. Even Yhwach could slip past death through countless methods. Yet the Soul King accepted everything with a calmness so absolute it bordered on madness.
He truly, sincerely loved this world.
It was just that no one believed it.
Not Yhwach. Not the Five Great Noble Clans. Not even Aizen's former self.
But once someone truly grasped power near that level, one truth became obvious.
Unless it is permitted, the only thing that can harm a life of that caliber is another existence of the same caliber.
Could a being capable of shaping worlds be killed by a handful of ordinary people working together? Hollows and Shinigami alike possessed ways to prolong their existence, to cling to life, to return.
The Soul King did not.
That alone answered far more than any confession could.
In the past, Aizen had used the Soul King as a mirror, an excuse, a symbol to explain the emptiness in his own heart. Now, after witnessing changes across worlds and carrying experience that no longer belonged to a single timeline, he looked at the Soul King and saw something else.
He saw the sacrifices of saints, the kind of sacrifice made for principle, for justice, for an ideal that did not ask to be rewarded.
The Soul King ended in a state that resembled eternal catastrophe, all because he refused to abandon his belief.
And yes, Aizen had thought about it.
He wanted to save the Soul King from that endless ruin.
The Shinigami world disliked futures built upon the sacrifice of a saint. The Naruto world, on the other hand, revered those who burned themselves to light the way forward. A fate that became tragedy in one world could become legend in another.
Of course, that was a thought for later.
For now, Aizen had more immediate problems to deal with.
Even with Shinigami power and chakra at his command, even with a cause he could justify to himself, the Quincy were still a headache.
Because at this moment, the Quincy were unreasonable.
Yhwach's true madness had not fully shown itself yet. To them, he was still the ancestor of all Quincy, the one who carried their blood, their will, their hope. The Shinigami's old extermination, their ancient grudge, still flowed through Quincy legend. Even when Yhwach used Auswählen on every mixed blood Quincy, many accepted it willingly. They hoped it would make him stronger.
They wanted to destroy the corrupt Shinigami world.
They wanted Hollows to be erased utterly, for those man eating monsters to vanish without leaving a trace, leaving behind only a pure human world.
So if one ignored the horrors of what Yhwach would eventually do, the Quincy story almost looked righteous.
A system built by humans through self salvation, through effort, through training and cultivation. Ordinary people had long suffered at the hands of unseen entities. Hollows killed countless innocents.
Then Shinigami appeared and said they could not be killed.
As if ordinary people should simply accept death because the world demanded it.
Why should humans be bound by a system you Shinigami defined?
Why must Hollows kill humans to maintain balance?
If Soul Society did not genuinely rely on the Soul King and his cycle to keep existence stable, if all of this were not truly necessary for the structure of the Three Realms, then from the Quincy perspective, as human resistance against Hollows and Shinigami, they would have been the righteous side.
Unfortunately, they did not know the truth.
The essence of this world was a massive cycle. Human souls, Hollows, Shinigami, all were components in a machine designed to suppress Hell.
Birth, aging, sickness, death, civilizations, emotions, were all extra ornaments that appeared within the cycle, not its foundation.
Perhaps some Quincy realized it, deep down.
They simply refused to accept it.
Because the story was too despairing.
How could resistance be wrong?
How could the world be built on something so cruel?
Add to that Yhwach's vague statements, and the madness and brutality of the Shinigami during the war a thousand years ago, a war where they even killed their own, and this mistaken perception was passed down as tradition. It hardened in blood. It became truth inside their bones.
Even at the very end, when Yhwach stopped pretending and intended to turn the entire world into his sustenance, creating a primordial chaos where nothing existed, many Quincy still believed in him.
Because it was difficult to accept anything else.
Who would accept that their fate was trapped inside a cycle from the moment they were born?
Who would accept that their existence was a joke written by rules they never agreed to?
No one would.
So when Aizen tried to forge a new path, the Quincy did not see possibility.
They saw provocation.
They saw betrayal.
They saw an enemy who dared to touch the world's foundation and then walk away as if it were leisure.
In their eyes, it was natural to ask.
How dare you do all this and still think you can escape?
Should you not pay the price of a thousand years of blood debt?
Meanwhile, the Shinigami were equally bewildered.
You Quincy want to exterminate Hollows, then kill the Shinigami, then collapse the cycle.
It is already merciful that we did not annihilate you long ago.
Why are you so eager to slaughter us?
In the end, the hatred had the same root on both sides.
No one wanted to believe that the strongest being in history truly sacrificed himself willingly for this world.
Yhwach did not believe it. The Five Great Noble Clans did not believe it. The later Shinigami did not believe it. The later Quincy did not believe it.
Hollows believed it, perhaps, but they were suppressed and hunted from both sides. Their belief meant nothing.
Hell could not even raise its head far enough to speak.
Many times, if people could simply understand each other, if they could truly accept the other side's words as truth, then everything would look obvious.
But both sides believed the other side was lying.
Both believed only they held the truth.
So the world bled, again and again, into a history built from painful choices.
As Shunsui once said, in this story, no one was truly righteous.
Perhaps only Ichigo was.
He appeared without roots, without allegiance to any organization, saving his family and friends with one sided determination. No one could call that wrong, regardless of position, regardless of identity.
That was why admiration for him felt natural.
Because everyone believed they were doing the right thing, it was also natural to try to correct the misguided person on the other side.
Sometimes, when power was not enough, that education became something far more awkward.
Now, the awkwardness had already arrived.
"This is… honestly a scene that makes it hard to laugh."
Ichigo's voice was low, serious, almost apologetic.
Before him, the Quincy in white had been reduced to a grotesque state. His body had been cut apart into dozens of pieces, leaving only the structure, then rebuilt into a state that could still endure.
His bones remained, his torso remained, and his eyes still burned.
"Your Vollstandig and your abilities are excellent," Ichigo continued. "I truly apologize for treating you like an ordinary foot soldier at first."
He looked at the Quincy and spoke evenly, not gloating, not mocking.
"I used chakra to repair you. You will not die."
Then his brow tightened slightly.
"But your Vollstandig and reishi techniques, I do not understand them yet. And what you said, I care about it too."
Ichigo's gaze sharpened.
"We have already shown our strength. Now you should show your sincerity."
"Sincerity?"
The Quincy's voice was strained, but his pride remained intact.
"If I do not complete His Majesty's mission, what right do I have to live? What face do I have to breathe in this world?"
His eyes trembled with something like devotion.
"I only regret that I am still too weak."
"So loyal," Ichigo said quietly.
"Of course."
Even reduced to this condition, the Quincy answered without hesitation.
"Compared to Shinigami who know nothing of propriety, righteousness, integrity, and shame, who rebelled against their creator, who deceive the world with lies and despicable acts, His Majesty's desire is far nobler than what Shinigami do. Is that not natural?"
"Lies and despicable acts…"
Ichigo repeated the phrase, his expression tightening.
"Isn't Yhwach the same? He claims to be the Soul King's son, then wants to break into the Soul King Palace and rebuild the world according to his own ideas. If he does that, the Soul King dies."
Ichigo's tone turned colder.
"No matter how grand his words sound, in reality he wants to commit patricide, and achieve his goals with his own methods. Neither the Quincy nor the Shinigami are good in my eyes."
"Nonsense."
The Quincy's fury surged like a flame forced into a bottle.
"How can a brat like you, who knows nothing, understand His Majesty's greatness and sacrifice? You who stand with the Shinigami…"
Even bound inside spatial confinement, reduced to a torso, Quilge Opie still tried to roar his hatred into the corridor.
The man whose Schrift was J, The Jail, had barely been able to display his full strength before Ichigo crushed him.
In truth, it was almost unfair.
Quilge's Vollstandig, God's Justice, could even absorb the power of barriers and abilities themselves. His Jail was a binding barrier capable of trapping powerful Shinigami, making escape nearly impossible. In theory, he should have been able to stall them for a long time, even alone.
But chakra was not reishi.
And Aizen and Ichigo were not simply Shinigami.
So just as Ichigo had said earlier, the battle ended in minutes. Quilge was reduced to his current state and sealed.
Ichigo had not wanted to do it.
He had hesitated.
But Quilge's ability was too dangerous. Without severing his limbs and locking him down, his Ransōtengai combined with God's Justice could keep him fighting even in conditions that should have meant death.
Ichigo did not want to keep killing someone he did not hate.
So after thinking for a long time, with a faint pity in his eyes, he used a Truth Seeking Orb to cut him down to what remained, then sealed him.
Meanwhile, Aizen, perfectly embodying his traditional habit of conserving effort, had watched from the side, offering calm advice, correcting Ichigo's stance and timing, refining his methods like an instructor supervising training.
Only at the end did Aizen step forward.
He looked at Quilge, and at the remnants of God's Justice, and smiled gently, almost kindly.
"Your loyalty to Yhwach is admirable," Aizen said. "It even makes me feel ashamed."
His tone stayed soft, but the words slid like a blade.
"However, striking directly when the situation is unclear is also one of your bad habits."
Aizen's smile did not reach his eyes.
"Assuming the enemy cannot progress, assuming they cannot perceive you, placing too much trust in your own ability and judgement, that is the greatest mistake any civilization can make."
His gaze turned faintly cold.
"As for Yhwach, I have no interest in involving myself with him right now. But I also advise you not to hinder what I intend to do."
A pause.
"Otherwise, your outcome will not be pleasant."
"Do you think you can grasp His Majesty's greatness? Ridiculous."
Quilge spat the words out with bitter conviction.
"I cannot defeat you. That does not mean you can defeat His Majesty. His Majesty's greatness far exceeds your imagination."
"How great Yhwach is, and how capable he is…"
Aizen sighed, almost as if tired.
"I probably know better than you."
He did not say the rest aloud.
That even with omniscience, Yhwach still could not distinguish Kyoka Suigetsu.
Aizen turned away from the Quincy's hatred and looked at Ichigo, who had fallen silent, his brow furrowed in thought.
"What is it, Ichigo?" Aizen asked, voice thoughtful. "Is there something you want to know?"
Ichigo did not hide it. He looked uneasy, not afraid, but troubled by what came next.
"I was just thinking," he said quietly, "everyone's story is different. Everyone says they're right. If this keeps going… what are we supposed to do?"
<><><><><>
[Check Out My Patreon For +50 Advance Chapters On All My Fanfics!]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]
[Every 100 Power Stones = +1 Bonus Chapter]
[Join Our Discord Community For Updates & Events]
[https://discord.gg/MntqcdpRZ9]