After calling and sending the agreed-upon messages to Ozpin, I sat down before my apartment’s kitchen counter and drummed my fingers against each other as I considered what to do next.
“If I were you, I’d roll all the Gacha Coins you’ve been sitting on. You’re probably not lucky enough for a miracle roll to grant you everything you need to deal with Salem, so I’d think about taking on those Scenarios you’ve been holding out on too,” Katayoki droned from my Inner World.
Welp, he was a part of my soul and hadn’t steered me wrong yet. Moreover, I wholeheartedly agreed with him, so I did as he suggested.
[Results: Rarity — Unique 1,702 | Mental Resistance (Skill)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique 5,218 | Lifetime Fuinjutsu Supplies (Item)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique 8,559 | Nameless Blade (Item)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique (Locked) 1,500 | Continental Fast Travel Point (Consumable)]
[Results: Rarity — Legendary (Locked) 150,000 | Fast Travel Point: Ever After (Ability)]
“Ooh, tough luck, my man,” Katayoki laughed but I was too disheartened to care.
I’d gotten a bunch of extra potions, alchemy materials, and situationally useful things, but none of the Rare rolls I’d gotten were of any immediate use to my current Salem problem.
More Mental Resistance was always welcome, but I was hoping for more offensive abilities. The Lifetime Fuinjutsu Supplies had valuable Chakra-infused paper and ink that could be used for Alchemy, but that was probably not the intended use. As for the Fast Travel Points… They were alright, I guess.
I had no idea where this Ever After place was for it to be considered a Legendary Rarity spot, but just from the understanding I got getting the reward, I knew it was within Remnant’s universe but also in a different dimension. The Rarity determined how far it could be in relation to where I had earned it.
For example, the Unique Rarity Fast Travel Consumable I got allowed me to set up another spot where I could teleport to from anywhere, but the spot I chose had to be somewhere in the Continent of Sanus because that’s where I’d earned it. An Epic Fast Travel Point would allow me to set a location anywhere on the planet, while the Legendary variant extended to anywhere in the universe.
Now, the dilemma I faced was whether or not I risked using the Fast Travel Point to the Ever After, after setting up a return point in Vale. In theory, there was nothing inherently dangerous with going to a new location, but… Remnant was a world with Gods somewhere around and if they had abandoned the planet, there was a pretty good chance they might be in this alternate dimension.
These were beings that caused the first extinction of humanity, powerhouses who literally broke the moon upon leaving. As strong as I was right now, I did not want to get in their crosshairs which is exactly what would happen if it turned out that this Ever After place was their new domicile. And, since the location had a Legendary Rarity attached to it, it was more or less guaranteed.
“So which Scenario are you going to take first?” Katayoki asked.
“Hollow Hunt Gone Wrong. It’s the only one I can guess about the details of what’s to come,” I said.
Hollows were the Grimm-like Monsters of the world with Shinigamis and a spiritual power system. I was already familiar with what a Hollow was, so I might as well start with a Scenario that involves killing them.
I accepted the Scenario and found myself standing in a side street next to… Ichigo, I think his name was? The orange-haired loudmouth who was forced to get his Shinigami powers or turn Hollow alongside me in the Do or Die Scenario. Next to Ichigo — who was dressed in traditional or formal black robes for whatever reason — was a clone of him in a school uniform as well as another boy I did not recognize in the same uniform.
“Hmph,” the black-haired boy scoffed as he produced three tablets from his brown leather satchel and held them in between his fingers. “These are pieces of Hollow Bait, one for each of us. Once I crush them and spread their contents to the wind, Hollows will start to converge and descend on the town. The rules are simple, whoever manages to kill the most Hollows wins.”
“Are you crazy?! You’d put everyone in town at risk just to run this little game?” Ichigo asked.
The black-haired boy scoffed and crushed the tablets before responding, “No one will be at risk, because I will kill all the Hollows before they even get the chance.”
As the skies darkened and rifts began to appear with Hollows dropping down from them, Ichigo cursed before taking off in a mad sprint toward them.
“Go on,” the black-haired boy said to me as he materialized a bow of spiritual energies and began shooting down Hollows before they could even cross out of the rifts he targeted. “Even with two of you, there’s no chance I’d ever lose to Shinigami.”
“Ok,” I said before materializing Katayoki’s Knife. Context aside, if this was going to be another Zombie Store Invasion type of Scenario, I needed to get a move on and get as many Gacha Coins as possible before the time limit ran out.
To my surprise, once I started killing the Hollows that descend with unerringly accurate knife throws from upwards of a mile away, I found out that the common Hollow was worth a Rare Gacha Coin; the same as an Alpha Grimm.
I couldn’t gauge their strength all that well considering I one-shot all the ones I targeted, but I wouldn’t complain. I’d need all the Coins I could get and almost certainly, I wouldn’t be getting the thousands I got from the Zombie Store Invasion with there being competition afoot; not to mention the fact that I actually needed to wait for Hollows to appear instead of there being a surplus already existing.
Minutes turned to hours and soon the sun which had previously been at its zenith point on the sky was now lowering past the horizon. Ichigo and that other guy were probably feeling exhausted considering their drop off in the number of Hollows they killed off. That meant, more Coins for me, so I didn’t offer to prop them back up with Stamina or Soul Restoration Potions; whichever worked, I wouldn’t be able to tell until I tested it.
As the sun began to set, the Hollows quickly stopped spawning to the point it seemed like they would stop altogether. The Scenario hadn’t ended yet, so I kept my guard up and watched for any sudden changes.
I felt it sooner than I saw the massive tear form in the air above a communal park. It was like a light blanket had been cast on my body as I turned and watched a Hollow with a face the size of a small house begin to unravel the tear in space such that its massive body could cross into the world.
As it tore the rift apart with its hands, the massive Hollow opened its mouth and unleashed a high-pitched screech as red Hollow energies condensed into a single point directly in front of its face. Behind it, I could make out four other skyscraper-sized Hollows.
The situation had just gone from bad to dire, so I pulled out all the stops available to me and teleported myself up to the point where I was level with the Hollows’ faces. I used Hollowfication to raise my destructive potential to its maximum and threw my knife as hard as possible at the massive monster who had still been charging its energy attack.
[Congratulations! For killing two Menos Grande, you have earned two Locked Unique Gacha Coins!]
The “Menos Grande” Hollow I targeted was instantly killed by the attack along with one of the others directly behind it. The other three had been rocked by the explosion that resulted in the half-charged Hollow energies suddenly having nothing to contain it.
I teleported to my knife, threw it at another Menos Grande, recalled it with Katayoki’s original Shikai ability and repeated the process until all the Menos were dead.
I thought for sure that these Menos Grande things were the last obstacles to overcome before I was done with the Scenario, but nope. A pillar of light descended from the skies, entrapping me in a barrier that I could not break out of even with a full-powered swing from my knife. I couldn’t do anything as something akin to an absolute gravitational force began to pull me slowly up into the air and towards the rift that had yet to close from the appearance of the Menos Grande.
“Wasn’t this supposed to be a Rare Scenario?” Katayoki asked as I inevitably made it through the rift. “Getting pulled through dimensions and into the land of Hollows seems more like an Epic or Legendary Bad Scenario.”
“Who knows how these things actually work?” I countered as I watched a sixth Menos Grande cross through the rift and into the world I’d been summoned into by the Scenario before the rift closed. “Maybe some Scenarios work on a time limit while others only end after a certain set of requirements are completed or are impossible to resolve. If I’d only had Rare Gacha pulls to work with, I’d probably still be trying and struggling to fight against the five Menos Grande.”
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
Katayoki did not respond as I came through another rift that opened up before the pillar of light surrounding me faded. It had been connected to yet another Menos Grande who was one of several hundred in the middle of a cave system or similar subterranean environment I had been dragged to.
A fraction of a second after the light barrier faded, I was blasted by hundreds of red beams of Hollow Energies. It had been impossible to dodge, so I hadn’t and yet the actual damage done was negligible at worst. My hair was a little singed, my skin a little red and my clothes had been vaporized leaving me as bear as the day I was born, but that was about the worst of the damage.
I switched to the Odogaron Armor set before launching a counterattack and eradicated all the Menos Grade I could see in less than two minutes. Every throw of Katayoki’s Knife killed at least two Menos before I either teleported to it or recalled it to my hands and repeated the cycle until I was without any skyscraper-sized Hollows to deal with.
“So you’re not a complete waste of my time,” a voice drew my attention. It belonged to a man with blue hair and only part of a Hollow Mask covering the bottom left of his face. He had a Hollow Hole on his lower abdomen.
I sighed, “I take it you’re not a friend?” He couldn’t be with that sadistic smile and menacing presence he carried with his approach.
“Friend? Ha! You’re nothing but prey to me. Cattle to be slaughtered and perhaps fit enough to be a small snack,” the man laughed as a horrifying pressure descended from him.
I had to take a knee as Katayoki complained about my Inner World suddenly shaking like a leaf in the middle of a hurricane. This was not someone I could fight as I was right now, so I only had two options. I could prematurely end the Scenario by going back to the Fast Travel Point I had to Vale or…
[Results: Rarity — Rare 100 (Locked) | Spiritual Enhancement x1,738 (Consumable)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique 1,000 (Locked) | Spiritual Enhancement x679 (Consumable)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique 2,000 (Locked) | Cero x10 (Skill)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique 3,000 (Locked) | Sonido x10 (Skill)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique 4,000 (Locked) | Hierro x10 (Skill)]
[Results: Rarity — Unique 5,000 (Locked) | Pesquisa x10 (Skill)]
The pressure was still there, but it was markedly more tolerable now. Instead of feeling like a normal person strapped down with hundreds of kilos spread all over my body, it felt more like I was in the middle of a heavy fog.
I raised my own Spiritual Power to its absolute max and felt the Hollow Mask on my face grow a horn that interfered with the Odogaron headpiece. After returning the headpiece to my Equipment Slot, I threw my knife at the blue-haired man and it managed to connect, but only dig a couple inches into the forearm he used to block the attack.
“What the—” he started to question, but never finished as I teleported over to my knife and dragged it out of him, leaving him with a terrible wound over halfway up his forearm down to his left wrist.
“Motherfucker!” He cursed as he aimed his right hand at me and fired a beam of energy. When I dodged it, it hit the ceiling thousands of feet away and exploded a massive chunk of it to reveal the night sky. “Sneaky son of bitch! I’ll make you regret that,” the man yelled as he retrieved his blade and vanished in a burst of speed towards me.
I recognized the technique as the Sonido Skill I had just gotten and maxed out. With my inherent understanding of its uses and weaknesses, I countered it by instinctively utilizing Pesquisa to perceive where he would move.
When he appeared already in position to launch an uppercut slash right in front of me, I blocked his blade with my knife. I tried to redirect his blade before launching a counterattack, but he used Sonido again to appear behind me and slash at my back. The shrill sound of metal grinding against metal resounded across the battleground as my use of Hierro raised the defensive capabilities of my armor to the point where it could resist him.
I used the principles of the Afterimage Technique and the Sonido to virtually teleport behind him and repay the favor. Instead of slashing at him, though, I thrust my knife in a stab with all my strength and though I didn’t manage to punch completely through, I did send him flying with a deep wound in his lower back.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this!” I heard him hatefully scream from a couple miles away; my senses were ridiculously amplified in my current Hollowfied state. “Grind, Pantera!”
My worries shot up as his Spiritual Pressure began to rise dramatically as the man quickly completed a transformation. Fortunately, his power did not reach the point where I felt the need to leave immediately, so I stuck around to see if I could pull off a win.
The blue-haired man re-engaged me in his new pather-like Hollow form. His blade was missing, but he compensated by having bladed legs and clawed hands as weapons instead. He came at me several times faster than before and it was a struggle trying to keep up especially since he was strong enough to overpower me.
If it was a matter of Spiritual Power, he would win ten out of ten times. Unfortunately for him, I had Ki, Aura, and even more cheats in the form of my various Abilities and Skills. It didn’t matter that he was faster and stronger than me when the Sharingan alone brought me back to his fighting level of competency.
Even when he broke out new techniques I had never seen before like the elbow-missle-bombs or extended claw swipes which would have crippled me if they had landed indirect hits, it was for naught when I could anticipate and dodge before he even committed to the attacks.
I kept to dodging and blocking when the former was impossible until I grew confident enough in my understanding of his fighting style to seize the next opportunity that came.
“Where’s all that aggression and power from before, coward? Fight back, damn it!” The panther-man screamed as I dodged yet another one of his kicks. Behind, where I would have been, a several-thousand-foot wide pillar of earth going all the way up to the ceiling exploded into a million fragments.
“Remember, you’re the one who asked for this,” I tried my best to taunt him as I made a Shadow Clone and gave it a Flashbang and ten Firebombs — from the batches I made the one night I started working on Alchemy.
The blue-haired panther-man screamed in even more outrage as he flickered around me, swiping his claws and any other bladed part of his body in hopes of eviscerating me. He must not have seen the Shadow Clone as he made no effort to go after it. That was a mistake he would pay dearly for when he next overextended one of his insanely destructive attacks and left a massive dust cloud covering everything around us.
The Shadow Clone had been created with only Ki Energy and thus had absolutely no Spiritual Power to be traced with Pesquisa. That is what allowed it to make a suicidal attack with the Flashbang and Firebombs and not be detected by my enemy while I managed to find the timing to escape.
Alas, even ten Firebombs did very little against a Hollow of the pather-man’s strength. I guess it would have been too good to be true for the man to have an inherent weakness to fire or explosions. Regardless, the Flashbang made up for the Firebombs failures tenfold as it left the man vulnerable and flailing around helplessly for long enough to allow me to channel absolutely everything I could into a single final resort style of attack.
Katayoki’s Knife glowed a dangerous black and red as my Aura and Spiritual Energies were raised as much as I could handle after further boosting them with transmuted Ki and Magicka. I even went as far as to drink Magic and Soul Restoration Potions to be at my absolute peak of possible strength before I threw the knife with everything I had at the man.
The knife must have been going a few hundred times the speed of sound as it looked like it teleported even with my enhanced reaction time and perception. It landed on the man’s forehead, breaking through the extended Hollow Armor of his transformed state, but I couldn’t see much more than that before all the energy in the knife transferred over and detonated in an explosion that left the ground shaking with the strength of a magnitude eight earthquake.
I had to shield my face from the massive column of black and red light that shot to the sky before dissipating and revealing that the man was downed, but somehow not completely out for the count even after tanking the attack in his vulnerable state.
“So… This is how it ends for me? Heh,” He spat out what looked like too much blood as he made to stand up; I wouldn’t have believed a person could hold that much in their body if I didn’t see it literally spill out of him like this. The only reason I didn’t get out of dodge as soon as possible was because I could sense his Spiritual Power rapidly lowering as the right side of his body began to dissipate.
“You want to maybe tell me why you decided to pick this fight in the first place? I would have just left you alone if you hadn’t threatened me,” I said.
“You’re an anomaly… Someone who showed up out of nowhere… stronger than anyone in that pathetic little town was supposed to be.” As he lost his strength his voice became lower and lower as he said, “You’re not someone on the list that is off-limits… So I decided to deal with you before you could rise in strength… To the point where you threatened us. Ha!” He laughed self-deprecatingly, “I didn’t expect you to be… A wolf in sheep's clothing…”
[Congratulations! For killing the Sixth Espada, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, you have earned a Locked Legendary Gacha Coin!]
Great! Amazing even, but… I was still lost in a separate dimension. What the hell was I supposed to do now? I looked around and saw nothing but the desolate underground environment I’d been stranded on by that one Menos who had brought me here.
“There’s a good idea in that thought somewhere,” Katayoki mused.
Ah, that’s right. Wherever this place was, there were probably more Menos or greater variants of the Hollows. I should probably put my Pesquisa technique and newfound Spiritual Strength to the limit and see if I can hunt enough strong Hollows to get that dimensional transportation technique.
But first, it might help to see what that Locked Legendary Gacha Coin offered me.
[Results: Rarity — Legendary 666,666 (Locked) | Vasto Lorde Form (Ability)]
Wow, an upgraded transformation beyond that of the standard Hollowfication. That would be useful right now in bringing up my Spiritual Power to even greater heights and raising my sensing range with Pesquisa.
I initiated the transformation and was instantly overwhelmed with Hollow Energies that had sparked to life from the deepest recesses of my Soul. My Armor started vibrating with stress and I knew that if I didn’t store it away immediately it would likely be destroyed in the process of my new transformation.
I didn’t remain naked for long as a set of bone-white armor covered my body before my Spiritual Power leveled out and I regained control. Looking down at myself, I had got the impression that my armor was stylized after a “cyber-ninja” as it was very form-fitting and sleek. The parts of my body that hadn’t been covered with bone armor were bleached a sickly white and in some parts like my shoulders, I could see black tattoos.
Overall, I could live with the appearance even if it showed off more skin than I was normally comfortable with. All the important bits were safely defended by bone armor, but I’m just saying that if a woman was wearing a version of my current coverings, it’d be dangerously close to skimpy.
What I looked like didn’t really matter as long as I wasn’t totally naked, so I moved on to more important things; like using Pesquisa and— Holy fuck, my range was hundreds of miles in radius.
I used Sonido to make my way toward the nearest source of Spirtual Power and only needed three steps to cross seven miles. With a flick of my finger, I erased a Menos Grande from existence before moving on to the twelve others in the group.
It was now distressingly easy to rack up hundreds of Unique Gachas as I cleared out everything in my way until I finally found what I was looking for. Along with a couple hundred more Spiritual Enhancements, which started giving me diminishing returns instead of linear increases in power, I found and maxed out the Kumon, Negacion and Garganta Skills.
Kumon would let me make interdimensional portals, but only to other dimensions I knew my way toward. Negacion was that indestructible pillar of light that the Menos had used to bring me to wherever it was that I was. Garganta, for whatever reason, was like a more advanced Kumon with an inbuilt direction toward various places, The Human World, Soul Society, Hueco Mundo, and Hell.
The Human World was almost undoubtedly where I wanted to go, so that’s where I opened up a rift in between dimensions and walked my way back. Why it wasn’t just an end-to-end portal, I couldn’t tell, but at least the walk was short enough to pass by in the blink of an eye with my current speed as a Vasto Lorde.
Actually… I dropped the transformation as well as my Hollowfication. With just the Hollowfication Mask, my presence posed a threat to regular people. I didn’t want to suddenly cause spontaneous mass death upon my return, so I would keep that particular power-up on lockdown until I absolutely needed it or I got the control to not haphazardly kill every weak Soul for several dozen miles with just my presence.
When I popped out the other side of the Garganta, the town was in chaos as there were a bunch of battles still raging on. Some of the people from the Do or Die Scenario had shown up like the little girl who restrained me, the tan man with cornrows, and their striped-hat leader. It looked like they were all spread out trying to contain the rapidly descending normal Hollows before they destroyed more of the town than they already had.
Meanwhile, Ichigo and the idiot who started this whole mess by using more bait than he probably intended were fighting off against three Menos Grande — and who knows how many more they might have already killed off.
Having surveyed the scene, I decided to get rid of the Menos Grande first by flying up in the air and casting a Cero beam that cut through all three skyscraper-sized monsters with the ease of a hot knife through butter. I was this powerful in my base state after having reached a sort of soft cap from Unique Rarity Spiritual Enhancements.
Next, I used Sonido to go from Hollow to Hollow and instantly kill any I came across with a halfhearted stab or swipe from Katayoki’s Knife. It made for a loud and disorienting time as every use of the movement technique followed with a distorted sonic boom, but that was a small price to pay to resolve this issue and finally be done with the Scenario.
As expected, once the last Hollow in my sensing range died, I was brought back to my apartment in Remnant. I had a couple hundred more Spiritual Enhancements, but they did very little with how strong my Spiritual Power had gotten in the alternate dimension where I’d killed Grimmjow.
Checking the time was for nothing as I already knew no time would have passed. I still did it anyway while considering taking on another Scenario. I still had three to go and while the one I’d just gotten through had raised my combat abilities several times over, I still didn’t have a solution to Salem’s immortality.
Physically, I was fine as can be after a bit of Healing Magic and some Stamina and Soul Restoration Potions. But, coming out on top of a fight against someone objectively more powerful than me, who could have killed me had he managed to land even a single solid hit, all of that was emotionally and mentally draining.
Good thing my Mental Resistance was enough to power through the amount that weighted down on my mind. I accepted the Scav Raid Scenario and found myself unpleasantly covered by ice water. Also, there was the naked corpse of a woman, who was missing all her limbs propped up right on top of me. I couldn’t help but shiver at the sight of her gouged-out eyes.
I don’t know where the hell I was, but I would be happy to get rid of whatever sick fuck did this to their victims.