_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
Black pine spread outward.
They crawled and climbed across the ground, growing without restraint.
Like a mad brand seared into this shattered land, they stretched on endlessly.
Whenever the bleak, cutting wind howled past,
it swept up black leaves—and at the same time stirred the fear buried deep in the heart.
This was the power of Black Pine at its core.
And it was also the final trump card Shunsui Kyōraku had staked everything on.
"Quincy," Kyōraku said, flicking his arm lightly as he lifted his twin blades again. With every step he took, thick black pine spread along the ground beneath his feet. "Mind giving me an answer?"
"At this very moment, how does the world feel to you?"
"If I had to guess… darker. Lonelier. Maybe even a bit tragic. Am I wrong?"
The instant his footsteps came to a halt,
the wounds covering Kyōraku's body seemed to vanish all at once. He looked exactly like he had before the battle began, relaxed, carefree, and utterly unrestrained.
There was only one difference now.
This time, Kyōraku was no longer indulging in childish games. Instead, he wanted to watch a grown-up drama brought vividly to life, not as a player, but as a spectator.
"Heh. I see now…"
Lille Barro's gaze darkened slightly as he looked down from above at the land drowned in black pine. His face, covered in holy markings, did not change expression in the slightest.
With cold, towering arrogance, he said,
"Admittedly, your Bankai has plunged the entire world into gloom. Even my angelic halo has lost its brilliance."
"But as a messenger of God, the one closest to divinity beneath His Majesty himself, I'm not about to tremble in fear."
Arrogant. Conceited.
Calm to an extreme, brimming with confidence.
From beginning to end, he had never truly taken the Bankai of Katen Kyōkotsu seriously.
"Judgment of Light!!!"
His angelic wings beat violently.
Lille Barro shot into the sky, his body aligning with the sun until the two nearly overlapped into a single dark point, before erupting in blinding radiance.
In that instant—
A world-ending aura far more terrifying than mere chills, hundreds of times more ferocious, was compressed into every inch of that light.
And then… it fired.
—
"Uwa…"
Inside Squad Eleven.
At the very moment the holy light erupted,
even though it was only an image of a battle yet to happen, it still shattered the limits of the screen, inflicting the same tangible, real impact on reality itself.
The shockwave sent Ikkaku Madarame and Yumichika Ayasegawa flying as they watched in terror before the projection.
"Ikkaku, Yumichika… you two okay?" Kenpachi Zaraki growled through clenched teeth.
Just a moment ago,
he had felt an overwhelming pressure slam straight into him.
If he weren't a freak of spiritual power himself, his fate would not have been much better than his subordinates'.
"Ken-chan, that was terrifying! Captain Kyōraku is facing something that destructive all by himself!" Yachiru whimpered softly, praying in her heart for Kyōraku's safety. "I really hope he'll be okay!"
"Okay? That's unlikely…" Kenpachi shook his head. He wasn't trying to be pessimistic. It was simply the instinctive judgment he made based on the sheer destructive force of that holy light.
Now, as the light exploded, the entire screen seemed endless, stretching on without limit.
No one could tell when it would finally stop.
Under those conditions,
Kenpachi instinctively concluded that Kyōraku had no chance of surviving.
—
Hueco Mundo, Las Noches.
The scene there was much the same.
"Someone help me! I can't hold on much longer!!!"
"What kind of power is this?! It's affecting reality itself!"
"Whether it's Shinigami or pure-blood Quincy, their battles are on a world-ending scale!"
…
Wails echoed without end.
As the searing explosion of white light nearly burst through the screen, the entire Las Noches fortress began to shake violently.
The penetrating force of the blast
even inflicted mental damage on some of the weaker Hollows, carving an inescapable shadow of despair into their minds.
"Damn it… no wonder he dares call himself 'the one closest to God'!" Grimmjow snarled, his face twisted as he squeezed his eyes shut against the stabbing light.
God.
A word Arrancar had always despised.
Yet now, against his will, it surfaced in Grimmjow's mind.
Yes.
With just a single act of divine judgment,
he had caused the images and the real world to resonate together.
At that moment,
in the heart of the Panther King, Lille Barro, with his false divinity, surpassed even a true god.
"So… can that Shinigami named Shunsui Kyōraku really survive an explosion on this scale?" Barragan Louisenbairn voiced his doubt.
Proud as he was,
a ruler who commanded the power of decay itself,
he had already been affected by the chilling force earlier. Every bone in his body felt cold and brittle.
And now,
he was facing this earth-shattering explosion on top of that.
After enduring two devastating blows in succession,
Barragan felt his resolve nearing its breaking point, and he did not believe he himself could survive such a blast.
"Hard to say…"
Black curls tossed in the turbulence.
As the Primera Espada, Starrk quickly steadied himself against the shockwave and spoke with a grave expression. "There's no denying it. The power of a pure-blood Quincy is terrifyingly strong. But don't forget, the Shinigami's Bankai has only just begun. Don't underestimate that man."
Ironically,
it had not been long ago that Starrk himself had been cut down by Kyōraku Shunsui in a future vision.
And yet…
Starrk didn't dwell on it.
Instead, because he saw a reflection of himself in Kyōraku, another weary middle-aged man, his reason leaned toward the Shinigami's side.
A powerful intuition told him—
Against explosions of this magnitude, Black Pine would surely have a countermeasure prepared.
Sure enough—
Starrk's words had barely left his throat when, within the image, the voice of Shunsui Kyōraku, who should have vanished completely, bloomed once more like a deathly flower rising from the depths of the abyss, bringing with it renewed chills and the terror of death.
"Pure-blood Quincy…"
"I forgot to mention something earlier. Once the curtain rises on this adult drama, unless we reach the final act of its ending, I, as a participant, won't die so easily…"
As Kyōraku's voice gradually drowned out the roar of the explosion,
in the very next second,
Lille Barro's terrified scream rang out:
"You… Shinigami… damn you!!!"
"What did you do?!"
"..."
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________