“Kisuke,” my voice droned frustratedly, “for the last time, what are you doing?”

Kisuke stopped and looked back at me for a moment, turning away from the numerous cages of Hollows, all of which were railing against their seemingly indestructible prisons. I caught a sly grin on the man’s face, his had shadowing his eyes with a calculated precision.

“Oh, you know, nothing much. Just preparing the next leg of your training.” I squinted my eyes, as if I were looking into a bright light, the mental anguish Kisuke’s answers caused were something I’d almost consider on par with a kidō ability.

“And what, exactly, is this training?” Kisuke chuckled darkly as he turned back to the crates and started ticking things off in an invisible list that always seemed to be floating near the man. I waited, as patiently as you could be when dealing with Kisuke, and when the man finally returned his gaze to me, his words were laden with an answer.

“Nothing special or sophisticated. You’ll be fighting.” I recoiled a little, looking towards the array of cages and then back to the candy store owner.

“Didn’t you say literally a few days ago that fighting lots of strong Hollows messes with things?” He waved a dismissive hand at me, sneer sliding onto his face with a practiced ease.

“Of course I did! I’m gambling, young Grayson. Plus, if you succeed in the training, you’ll be the one who has to clean up the mess.” I just sighed, letting the man get on with his esoteric plans.

I had told all about the whole experience in my soul with Grayhom, which had been harder to explain than I thought it’d be. It was like when you had a dream and it all made sense when it was happening, but when you tried to vocalise the order of events, it all came out like a story you half remembered, and you had to fill the misremembered portions with saying ‘or something like that.’

Thankfully, Kisuke was good at this sort of thing, and this time there was a distinct lack of threats or intimidation. As odd as the sudden switch in position that Kisuke had seemed to undergo, it was strangely nice and reassuring to have the man be on my side—truly on my side, that is. Instead of feeling like he has a vague interest in what I am and is more interested in containing any potential damage that I may or may not be capable of in future. Though, if my little power boost was anything to go by, we’re starting to lean towards my being capable of quite a lot in future.

Looking back, I had lamented on my supposedly ‘strong’ soul not having any benefit, or those benefits being out of my reach for the moment, but little did I know how much that would change. Now, after Grayhom and I had spent our time doing some DIY soul work, my spiritual energy reserves had become immense.

Kisuke had given me a relatively quick rundown on how Soul Society classed spiritual energy, the non-scientific way of course. The tiers went as follows; Below Average-class, Average-class, Lieutenant-class, Captain-class, Advanced Captain-class, Beyond Capitan-class.

Kisuke made it clear that each class was more or less fluid in how they were understood and perceived, shifting with the power level of the era, rather than having any real concrete basis from which they sprouted. Other than Below Average-class and Average-class because they never changed all that significantly.

I sat at around Lieutenant-class, apparently, sitting right in the middle of that specific category. Kisuke went on briefly about how that might’ve been an insult to my spiritual energy reserves fifty years ago, but now Lieutenant-class beings were at least as strong as a mid-level Captain-class from back then.

I was comfortable with that, at the moment, mostly because I knew I was going to grow, and that there were certainly more fights out there to be had above this level. Ichigo Kurosaki, according to Kisuke, had reached Captain-class within only a handful of months, or even quicker than that if you’re going by exact timelines and technicalities.

I might not be quite that impressive, but if Kisuke was telling me that I had the strongest soul he’d ever recorded, I have a feeling it won’t stay that way for very long.

“Alright!” Kisuke exclaimed, clapping his hands together loudly in front of my face, waking me from my reverie. “We begin training in only a moment, Grayson. You might want to prepare for this one.”

The suspicion hit me immediately, but I tentatively began to cycle my spiritual energy through my body, easily filling out my spiritual shielding and bodily enhancement—a much easier task when you have a veritable tidal wave of spiritual energy to throw at the problem.

“How should I be preparing, exact–” Kisuke didn’t wait for me to complete my sentence, roughly grabbing me by the collar of my training shirt and pushing off from the ground with a blistering speed. I felt the g-forces pull at my skin, even with all the enhancement I had added to my body.

Suddenly, the amount of light that surrounded me had diminished severely, only coming from above me and then even that slowly left too, leaving only a light connected to where Kisuke was in relation to me. In only another moment, with the distinctive feeling of Kisuke’s nigh instant movement, the scruffy blonde man threw me down to the ground. The stone underneath my body was searingly hot in comparison to the usual climate of the conditioned Study Room, making me jump to my feet and use the sandals to protect myself from the hotplate-like surface.

“Here we are! Your new little training area.” Kisuke looked around the circular space with mock cheer, then looking upwards towards the oppressive height of the walls around me, even as they disappeared into darkness before they even reached hundreds of metres. Que the realisation that Kisuke had thrown me into a massively deep hole.

“Are you seriously putting me in a hole right now?” I said, tone disbelieving as I tried to fathom if I’d be able to get out of this hole with my physical abilities. By sheer virtue of the fact that I couldn’t even see the top of the hole, or even sense any light shining down from the surface, I suspected that I couldn’t, probably not even close.

“Only a little one, a few kilometres or so at most.” I stared at the grinning man dumbly. My sight had improved due to fixing up my soul, just like it had the first time I’d done so, but my eyesight was nothing in comparison to his hole unless I spontaneously developed the ability to see in complete lack of light.

“Please tell me that you’re leaving me down here with a light.” I stated stonily, but the man didn’t even seem to notice, turning around the wide area, tapping his finger to his chin almost mockingly.

“So, the plan is that you have to fight your way out of here. See those little holds on the wall?” Kisuke pointed to tiny little footholds that extended out from the wall by only a few centimetres, though they weren’t made from the dark rock that the walls were made of, instead looking more like a metal peg than anything.

“You’ll be making your way up those to larger platforms that have a Hollow on them. You’ll have to fight and win against them to progress up the hole. The higher you go, the more difficult the Hollows will be to deal with. If you get pushed off, you’ll fall to the bottom of the hole, so you might not want to be pushing the Hollows of their own platforms, unless you’re confident you can do the whole thing in one go.”

Kisuke hummed to himself in thought after the long explanation, looking to me for any other questions briefly.

“Are you going to leave me a ligh–” Kisuke’s eyes widened with remembrance, clapping his hands together loudly.

“Oh! That reminds me, I’m going to be covering you in spiritual pressure, so you actually have a hard time with all this. Otherwise, it’d probably be a bit of a cakewalk, I’m afraid.” Kisuke nodded finally, before his body disappeared, leaving be to be battered by a gentle wave of displaced air while I spontaneously had an aneurism.

Because I was left in complete darkness, given no light to see by.

“Could have left me with a light, asshole!” I yelled, my rage echoing up the length of the hole, the sound becoming more distant as it travelled before it was nothing more than a garbled mess of muttering sound.

I rubbed at my face furiously, desperate to try and figure out what I was supposed to be doing. I was left with absolutely no sight, something that I’d always had at least a little of except in the darkest environments. My increase in sight, one of the things that I was excited about with fixing my soul, was now rendered completely useless as a result. All I had was my other senses and vague instructions on what I was meant to be doing.

I quickly decided that I needed to orient myself. I walked to the nearest part of the wall and placed a hand against the surface, immediately I was taught just how bad an idea that was. Without significant protections to my hands, I was left with a strong searing sensation. Though my enhancement was enough to withstand a large amount of the heat, this was vastly different than the sort of heat I might deal with on the surface, aside from sticking my hand in a frying pan or a vat of fry oil.

It took me a few minutes to redirect some of the enhancement to my hand, allowing me the chance to actually touch the walls without feeling like I was cooking my own flesh. I circled around the wall in a clockwise motion, sticking as close to it as I could bear, trying to feel out where the first metal peg had been.

The area was way bigger than I had initially given it credit for, most of the space had been totally subsumed by the overpowering height of the walls dwarfing the space. But when my waist finally bumped into what I could only assume was the metal peg, I instantly reached my hand down to touch it.

A massive mistake.

Really, I should have been able to put two and two together, but apparently, I was off my game today. Despite my hand being enhanced much further than normal, the metal peg was acting like the equivalent to a curling iron as my skin literally sizzled at the touch. I didn’t scream, but the pain was enough to force me to stand completely still for a few seconds, just clenching my jaw against it.

I wouldn’t give Urahara the satisfaction of hearing the echo of my scream, the dog.

So, it was clearly made this way to force me to step on them, however the fuck I was supposed to do that in complete darkness. I stood before the task with a trepidation that I hadn’t felt in a long while, not since the beginning of training at least.

I had always been good at getting a move on, even if it was a self-destructive cycle, yet this was scary to me. It was like standing at the foot of a mountain… Ah. Well, that was a little on the nose don’t you think, Kisuke?

I took a deep breath in and opened my mind, letting a pseudo meditative state take over and clear my senses and mind of how overwhelmed I was. It was easier said than done, but the calming effect allowed for my other, weaker senses to slowly make an appearance.

Spiritual senses had been something I’d worked on idly, though I’d lost a lot of the use for the technique since my eyesight had begun to return as I tinkered with my soul. Now, they seemed extremely appealing once again, the sheer utility of not needing to see to be able to see was a massive upside, dwarfing my ribbon sense in everyday utility.

It was starting to become obvious that all these points of design were likely intentional by Kisuke, the man might not have given me much in the way of hints, but everything had some reasonable point to it.

The pure darkness he’d plunged me in was a direct counterargument to me getting complacent with my biggest advantage, my versatile and powerful senses. The Hollows going up the hole were probably just to show me how unending fighting the way I wanted to was, the suppressive spiritual energy that I’m sure I would start to encounter further up only increasing the difficulty as I got tired and slowly waned in power. The pegs… I wasn’t sure of what their purpose was just yet, but they probably had a reason, if nothing more than to just make life harder and to show me just how painful each step up the ladder could be.

But it was with all that in mind that I made my first leap, my mind opening up my spiritual senses and sending out a ping. The peg resonated strongly, the metal shining a bright blue in my vision, allowing me to place my sandal onto the metal body of it, balancing precariously on its small surface area while desperately staying separate from the burning wall of stone.

I had taken the first step, and it glowed with an intentional power—a clear sign that I had understood correctly what Kisuke wanted from me. I breathed a sigh of relief as I balanced on the peg, only to spit out another ping of spiritual energy. I located the next peg instantly, and quickly made for a jump as I felt myself slipping from the first.

As soon as my foot touched the second peg. My foot immediately rolled off the side of the peg, unsalvageably throwing off my stance and forcing me to fall down only a few metres to the bottom of the pit. I sprang from the ground quickly, afraid of the searing pain. I could only sigh as my mind turned to focus on the first peg once again, a glimmering blue in the black of my surroundings.

This was going to suck.