Chapter 36: Divine Grant– Cheat-Mode Service
For Mizuma, ever since Ryūgetsu's transformation, his reiatsu had taken on a faint temporal property — the ability to age or decay matter. The effect, however, was pitifully weak. Forget rivaling Baraggan; even a bottle of store-bought oxalic acid could corrode better than he could.
After years of wielding it, Mizuma was intimately familiar with that trait — which was why he recognized it instantly.
The crystal — or more precisely, the Divine Sword sealed within it — radiated a reiatsu very similar to Ryūgetsu's. It also carried the power to age or rejuvenate objects, except… far stronger.
At the very least, it could serve as both refrigerator and ripening agent.
What in the world? Did the Soul King research temporal powers too?
Mizuma hesitated, then cautiously drew Ryūgetsu and released a wisp of its transformed reiatsu, letting it brush against the Divine Sword's aura.
And then—chaos erupted.
As though the two had achieved resonance, Ryūgetsu and the Divine Sword began to emit a hazy white light. The intensity climbed—rapidly, endlessly—until the entire trial field exploded in a blinding flash.
"Eeeek—!"
The shrill cry echoed inside Mizuma's mind like a person doused with freezing water mid-dream. His vision flickered like a faulty TV screen, switching back and forth between the trial field and a familiar room—
Ryūgetsu's inner world.
Only… something was seriously wrong.
Ryūgetsu lay beside her bed in pajamas, wrapped in her blanket, trembling. Her cow-patterned cat, "One-Ear," was cowering in the corner, puffed up into a terrified furball.
There's a kind of pain you feel just by watching—Mizuma grimaced instinctively, as though he were the one suffering a midnight leg cramp.
Then, still dazed and teary-eyed, Ryūgetsu spotted him in the doorway. She crawled over like a miserable caterpillar, grabbed his pant leg, and looked up at him with the face of a crying cat.
"I was just taking a nap, Master… what did you do…"
She sniffled, voice trembling with wounded innocence.
"If you're mad at me, you can scold me or hit me, but why would you… ugh… attack me like that all of a sudden…"
"It's not me attacking you…"
Mizuma had no energy for her theatrics. His eyes widened, throat tightening, as he sensed something beyond her pain—something else.
Ryūgetsu was swelling.
Not in size—
in reiatsu.
In just twenty seconds, her spiritual pressure had surged by over a third.
And the source was… the Divine Sword.
A link had formed between them—like a spiritual channel. The sword's reiatsu was flooding into her like a bursting dam. Normally that would be a blessing, but the energy contained within the Divine Sword was astronomical. Even the tiniest leak was already pushing Ryūgetsu to the brink of bursting.
And that wasn't all.
Think of it this way: if a Shinigami is a battery and a zanpakutō is a device, then of course the battery powers the device.
But could it work in reverse? Could a zanpakutō supply reiatsu back to its wielder?
Mizuma's current experience answered clearly—yes.
Once the link was established, Ryūgetsu stopped consuming Mizuma's reiatsu. Instead, she converted the Divine Sword's energy into a form he could safely absorb—then pumped it straight into his body.
His reiatsu began to skyrocket.
To put it in simple units: Mizuma's maximum reiatsu had previously equaled about nine "truckloads of Kenseis."
That number might sound modest, but reaching it from zero in under twenty years meant his growth rate had already surpassed Tōshirō and Gin—nearly on par with cheat-level prodigies like Kurosaki Ichigo.
But in less than a minute, his level had been force-fed up to eleven truckloads of Kenseis.
Even Kirio Hikifune's Gaton Estate couldn't provide service this premium—it was outright absurd.
Yet such rapid growth wasn't without a price.
No—that's wrong. It wasn't a "future consequence." The downside was already happening.
Mizuma himself was about to explode.
From nine to eleven—barely a 20% increase—but the method was the problem.
If normal training was like lifting weights to gain muscle, then this was force-feeding raw meat down his throat—a gluttonous binge with zero restraint.
Any ordinary Shinigami would've popped like an overfilled balloon instantly.
The only reason Mizuma could endure even ten seconds of it was because he possessed genuine captain-class reiatsu—
and because Ryūgetsu served as a buffering interface, slowing the torrent just enough for him to survive.
Even so, he nearly collapsed to his knees.
The link could be broken from his end—should he?
No. He hadn't come this far just to drop the prize because it was too good to handle. He'd never forgive himself.
Gritting his teeth, Mizuma made a snap decision.
At the 8th Division quarters, his physical body—still pretending to be unconscious—suddenly opened its eyes.
With a swing of his blade, he created a third clone and sent it sprinting into a deserted alley.
Ready.
The next moment, Mizuma began diverting his overflowing reiatsu into his other bodies.
The crushing pressure eased at once.
Between his original body and three clones, he now had a total capacity of roughly thirty-three truckloads of Kenseis—enough to buy himself time. No matter how wild the Divine Sword's flood became, it couldn't fill three reservoirs instantly.
Even if this left his clones stuck active indefinitely (since their residual reiatsu would return upon dismissal), that was fine. After dying twice in a row—one death especially gruesome—he could justify skipping clone duty for quite some time.
At the current rate, all three clones would reach capacity in three minutes and seventeen seconds. After that, the overload risk would return.
If he wanted the benefits without bursting like a piñata, he'd need a solution fast.
Fortunately, time flowed more slowly within his inner world, giving him breathing room to think.
Mizuma sighed, crouched, and nudged Ryūgetsu's shoulder with the calm cruelty of a seasoned capitalist.
"Alright, enough lying around. Get up—help me think of a way out of this."
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〔TL〕
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Every 2 review after 100 ps = 1 bonus ch.