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Chapter 61: Minds For Research
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And If the First could become a Quincy with only remnants of blood and bone, what else could it become?
What else could he become? Hollow?
Akashi turned to the horrors, his voice calm and quiet, "Begin preparations for the next phase. Verify if introducing hollows into the First would conflict with the Quincy within it."
It seemed unlikely, as the way the First works is that it has a pool of 'Genes' from which it can choose what to become.
However, there is still a possibility that the hollow and Quincy within the pool would conflict, and Akashi wouldn't take the risk.
He looked back to the First, who now stood perfectly still; awaiting the next instruction like a soldier at parade rest.
His creation. His mirror.
"Kurayami," He whispered beneath his breath, heart trembling with... Happiness, "Hahaha hahahaha, Kurayami, have I told you how much I love you?"
He did, a lot. Kurayami was, after all, his miracle.
Beneath the still-scorched canopy of Hueco Mundo's surface, somewhat deep within the Forest of Menos, Akashi's city had begun its slow ascent to full functionality.
Darkness overflowed atop it, slowly but surely changing the city into a more elegant form, one in accordance with Akashi's vision.
Within, worker horrors scurried tirelessly in and out of laboratories built into the walls of living buildings.
It was in these very labs that the next chapter of Akashi's ambition would unfold.
The First stood at the center of one such lab, surrounded by flickering crystal orbs that glowed and pulsed.
Dozens of worker horrors circled the First with slow, ritualistic movements.
Their countless, eyeless faces focused intently on the pale blue glow flowing within the entity's limbs.
Akashi stood off to the side, arms crossed, his expression unreadable.
The First had become a Quincy; at least in bloodline. But blood was only part of the equation... Technique is another.
Reishi was the invisible dust of Hueco Mundo, even denser here than in the human world or Soul Society.
It drifted like pollen in the air, invisible to most senses but easily gathered by those trained to wield it.
Hueco Mundo was saturated with it, which made it the perfect crucible for what came next.
The First had already mastered basic Reishi manipulation, forming glowing orbs of condensed energy in his palms. Now, the focus shifted toward something far more intricate: Blut.
'Blut... I remember it being about blood vessels,' Akashi mused to himself, pacing before a vertical blackboard etched with a drawing of the First's body, specifically focusing on its blood vessels.
He remembers that it's more than that. Blut has two forms, attack and defense; Blut Arterie and Blut Vene; they function on separate Reishi circuits. They can't be active at the same time.
He paused and narrowed his eyes at the First, who stood patiently like a statue of pale perfection.
His hair, once black, now shimmered with hues of electric blue under the artificial lighting of the lab, and his irises glowed with similar intensity.
"Begin phase two," Akashi commanded.
The First's body twitched, then stilled, but the Reishi surrounding him didn't as it flowed into his body, into his veins under his will.
They were marking the vessel map, charting which veins activated when the First focused on offense versus defense.
The pain didn't register; he felt what the First felt, and yet the First dulled the sensory overload with his eerie detachment.
The connection was symbiotic now; Akashi the mind, the First the body.
Results trickled in.
Blood vessels lit up differently depending on intent. Blue glyphs marked the skin during Blut activation, or at least, that he hoped before pain struck, unimaginable pain.
He stopped and only mustered a frown despite the pain.
The worker horrors mapped out the blood vessel circuit he went for, noting when the pain started, and the marks that had appeared on his skin.
Soon, Akashi continued, the glow shifted from vein to artery, a subtle internal exchange that even the worker horrors struggled to capture completely.
The two systems were distinct, and simultaneous usage would certainly trigger a violent backlash.
"As I thought, it's not as simple as injecting Reishi into blood vessels," Akashi whispered.
From artery to vein, then to artery again, rinse and repeat til Akashi came to the conclusion that Blut Vene is safer to experiment with than Blut Arterie.
Blut Arterie is the offensive form of Blut, which grants inhuman attack power, but its violence is also what makes it too volatile and dangerous.
Worker horrors surged forward, quickly using healing Kido to fix the damage. Although they weren't as good as Akashi at it, they weren't that far off, courtesy of the Hive Mind.
Another group of horrors nearby had begun studying something far more personal to Akashi: his Zanpakutō, Kurayami.
More precisely, the voices that whispered incessantly to him every time he used her.
They were growing louder along with Akashi's growth, and he wants to understand how to make them no longer a problem.
To maintain balance, Akashi turned his attention to his favorite art: Kidō. Hundreds of worker horrors were assigned to the Hybrid Combat Division, where Zanjutsu and Kidō were being forced into harmony.
Yoruichi was the perfect example of how far the communion of two arts could go.
Most Shinigami specialized in one or the other, not both. But what if every swing of the sword carried with it a layered incantation?
It was different than Yoruichi combining Kido with Hakuda, but he wasn't nearly good enough at Hakuda.
"Let's begin with level Hadō #63. Raikōhō; imbued into every sword strike," He ordered, "Start with a weakened version, then go up from there."
Akashi's spiritual energy simply wouldn't be able to afford casting a 60th Kido spell too many times.
Another division branched into a more brutal project: gravity-based Kidō.
They constructed a chamber of refined obsidian where spiritual pressure could be magnified and condensed through dense gravitational fields.
The aim was to refine his own Reiatsu through stress; compressing, folding, and reshaping it under immense strain.
"Start with a gravity factor of fifteen," He said as he stepped into the chamber, "Then increase it every hour by five."
Inside, every movement became a labor. Sweat poured from his brow. The air tasted like metal.
But his soul, under pressure, began to scream and mold anew. The pain was exquisite, the training absolute.
It wouldn't have normally been so intense, but Akashi wasn't just standing there. He was training his Zanjutsu.
It was difficult to make movement, as if he was moving in slow motion, but it was possible for the greater the Reiatsu, the greater the resistance.
It's to the point that the monstrous Kenpachi managed to survive in the cold vacuum of space, and having several clones of Gremmy self-destruct at point-blank range with only moderate injuries.
Akashi wasn't at that level, but his spirit body is extremely strong, much too used to injuries and life and death situations, from the numerous spars he went through to the battles against the nobles.
However, even with all of that, he still felt great discomfort in the gravity chamber, but slowly, he got used to it.
Akashi found that he could move if only a little faster, and swing swifter, his Reiatsu overflowing to resist the falling gravity, his control over it getting smoother by the minute.
"Much better than I first thought," Akashi muttered with ragged breath. Gravity training helped not only in training his spirit body but also his soul and spiritual power/control.
Just when Akashi was getting used to the pressing gravity, it suddenly changed, and a factor of five increase was very noticeable when he was already struggling with fifteen.
That's how his morning went, and how he plans for it to go while he stays in the Eldritch City.
In the evening came the more forbidden topics; Time/Space Kidō. Aizen had been generous, though Akashi suspected it was merely another test.
Honestly, he wouldn't feel at peace if he didn't attribute every single act of kindness from Aizen as a conspiracy.
Within the obsidian libraries of the Eldritch City, volumes on spatial rifts, dimensions, and space configurations were being read and theorized upon by countless worker horrors.
He himself pored through scrolls and hollow-recordings about Garganta; the Hollow's personal gate through space.
More intriguing still was Kūmon, the inter-dimensional sliding technique used most often by Gillians. This is usually how they reach the human world.
Negación, a beam used by Menos to isolate and protect others from interference, was especially promising for prison constructs or targeted extractions.
"Negación, huh..." Akashi muttered, "Should definitely be the focus."
And finally, the pinnacle of his curiosity: the Hōgyoku.
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