Why was it that, in the heat of battle, I was still capable of coherent thought?

You’d imagine that being put in real danger would kill all thought, only allowing you to run off of instinct as your body desperately tried to preserve itself. Yet, even as my limbs were a flurry of blows against the horde of weak Hollows, I was able to think with a clarity beyond even that of my usual state.

It felt as if my mind were truly split, beyond Grayhom and myself existing separate from each other. On one hand, I could feel and almost see my mind calculating my next movements, the most efficient attacks coming to the forefront and being executed with an ease that I would have expected from someone that’d trained thousands of hours.

I almost felt that it was cheating, as I watched my body spin, kick, punch, and blast with the powerful spiritual energy that I possessed within me. But the ‘auto’ fighting that I was doing was certainly working against the weakest of the Hollows in the deep crimson dome I’d been trapped within.

My current situation was dire, to say the least. The interdiction field had been dropped almost instantly, a ploy to make everyone think that they all served the same purpose, hiding the Hollows within so that they could raid and pillage with ease, alluding our eyes for longer.

It was a terrible understanding that I’d come to, that I was being targeted.

Much of the information that led me to that conclusion was somewhat flawed, I’ll admit, but I couldn’t help but feel it was the truth. The conclusion relies on these Hollows knowing information that they couldn’t possibly know about me, like my spiritual sense and my ribbon sense. Both of which, while not massive secrets, had been told to only a scant few people other than Tessai and Kisuke, unless someone else has been disseminating information to Hollows, which is about as likely as Kisuke being humble.

First, there had been the flash of the interdiction field going down, before coming back only a moment later. No one else had sensed that, unless Kisuke or Tessai had, but because my ribbon sense was always on, and worked regardless of the target trying to exude spiritual pressure, I saw it immediately.

That then led us to find how the interdiction field worked, then what was inside. Despite the Hollows supposedly trying to take hostages, that specific Hollow encampment had none. It was the first decoy, with trash Hollows that were simply throwaway to their purpose.

After that, I was the only one that could accurately sense the interdiction fields, though Kisuke could tell vaguely what was going on with his own mockery of my level of spiritual senses. I located as many as I could, at least what I thought was all of them, and pointed everyone towards one to take on.

This seemed innocuous, and it really was. There was almost nothing to this particular action other than me doling out the locations and splitting up. Yet, in the back of my mind, I can remember knowing that this specific interdiction field was just a tiny bit larger than the rest. It wasn’t by much, just a few extra metres to the radius of the spherical dome, but it was enough to give myself that specific interdiction field.

It was a line of coincidences that added up to me being in a dark red dome along with some of the most powerful Hollow ribbons I’ve ever encountered, with two white ribbons that stood out to me.

Jinta and Uyu. They were here.

I growled savagely as I caved in a slightly stronger Hollow’s mask, a flare of anger and frustration entering even the more analytical side of my mind. The following blows were something that I’d usually use on a Hollow much hardier than the wispy things that I exploded with those punches, but the slight relief of frustration was worth it.

I hated this. Whether or not they were truly here for me was almost irrelevant at this point. The fact was that they had me. Hook, line, and sinker. I was trapped in the crimson dome, Uyu and Jinta were unconscious or immobilised, judging by the small tells of their ribbons, and the sheer number of powerful Hollows within the barrier made it impossible for me to stop fighting and retreat, even if I could.

Thankfully, though, the crimson dome didn’t block sight or much spiritual activity. If I made a big enough stink, Tessai and Kisuke would be able to feel it. With Tessai’s advanced understanding of Kidō, I could only hope that he can do something to get rid of the dome, or at least to find a way inside it.

I refocussed my mind on what was happening in the battle, the other parts of my mind easily dealing with the Hollow horde with barely a scratch ever reaching my spiritual shielding, but I knew that it wouldn’t last for long.

Just as it had been in the last interdiction field, there were more of the edited Hollows. Each of them felt slightly different to the rest of their brethren that surrounded them, giving me horrifying imagery of an almost Frankenstein’s monster situation. With living, orderly components being inserted into Hollows like a living organ into a rotting corpse.

My new ability to look deeper into the soul using the ribbon as a basis was somehow interfering with how I perceived them. It was more than just coldly and analytically viewing the soul; it also gave instinct and emotion to the soul itself.

It was as if I could feel, touch, smell, and taste the soul as well, more three-dimensional than the on-paper understanding that a man like Kisuke had. But it also told me when something was deeply wrong or unsettling, and the edited Hollows were just that.

One of them came at me, using the blades that covered its insect-like carapace to create a whirlwind of death, but I easily dodged out of the way. Of course, I had sensed the Cero that the other Hollows were generating, all of them at slightly different speeds and intensities. It seems that a Cero was something almost entirely personal to the Hollow, despite the fact that it was a staple of the Hollow’s attacks.

I danced between the quick succession of beams of dense spiritual energy, counting four in total. Five edited Hollows in one little squadron, all of them at least peak Hollow before editing.

Yet they weren’t anything before my blows. The bladed carapace shattered underneath the force of my attacks, playing my usual game of cat and mouse, dancing on the edge of the knife’s point. Even with all the pressure to perform, with lives of people I actually cared about on the line, I still found myself within that state of flow and excitement—the grin on my face ever widening into the savage thing that I was almost ashamed of.

Almost.

The bladed Hollow went down first, with it being the easiest to reach in between the Cero blasts, then I moved close into the other edited Hollows. The thing about a Cero, or at least one being used by something as technically ‘weak’ as these specific Hollows, was that it left them almost completely immobilised. So, with almost no effort at all, two more Hollows fell to my attacks, their masks crumbling.

The last two were trickier. One was speedy, and the other had powerful clawed attacks that forced me on the defensive in a loop of dodging at the cost of using any attacks.

However, that wasn’t to last very long. The fight was stuck in a state of equilibrium, with them attacking and me dodging; so whatever instinct that lived inside of them told them that they needed to take a risk to bring me down.

A bad idea against someone that played with another’s risks, like myself.

The speedy Hollow, finding a moment where I was tied up with the other Hollow’s barrage of attacks, moved just out of the way to begin formation of a Cero. It wasn’t going to be an absurdly powerful one, but it seemed that its speediness extended past just its physical movement.

I let the Cero form, faithfully doing as I always had and continuing to dodge the clawed Hollow. But I was doing more than just that, obviously. Kiting the Hollow towards a wall, I waited for the Cero in the speedy Hollow’s mouth to form to just the right point, and then I jumped at the wall and kicked off of it with explosive speed, breaking from the clawed Hollow’s attacks.

The moment slowed as I rocketed towards the other Hollow, hoping that I’d timed all my actions correctly so that I could catch it in the moment of absolute paralysation just before it fired a Cero blast.

And I did. I reached out my arms towards the Hollow’s pronounced jaw and the top if its mask as I came within grabbing distance. If the Hollow had eyes and eyelids, I’d bet I could see its eyes widen when it realised what I was doing.

As soon as my hands touched the Hollow’s mask, I clamped its jaw closed around its own Cero.

The explosion of spiritual energy sent me flying, though leaving me completely unharmed due to the excellent resistance to explosive force that my spiritual shielding gave me. I didn’t look at the speedy Hollow’s corps until after I’d pummelled the clawed one to bits, but once I did, it was quite the gruesome sight.

The entire top of its body was gone, completely, with the rest of it effectively torn to shreds, covered in some sort of wound. It was as dead as dead could be, for a Hollow. At least until a Soul Reaper came and actually sent it away to wherever they go.

The small victory was nice, but in moments I was in the thick of battle once again. The inside of the dome was absolutely littered with weak Hollows, no doubt used to just slow someone down, rather than to actually win any fights. But what had seemed like an almost infinite quantity was now dwindling faster than ever. My body was energised after the successful fight, my mind having hit yet another small improvement in the preciseness of my attacks, the agility of my movement.

I was crushing the small fries with my spiritual pressure alone, now. The spiritual energy I covered my body with now produced enough spiritual pressure as a by-product to give the weaker Hollows a hard time doing much more than move at a jogging pace.

As I slowly reached towards the fourth layer in my physical enhancement, slowly compressing the other three to accommodate, I was able to blaze past the weaklings and move to where I was really needed.

Towards the bone-white ribbon that sat in the back of the dome, only metres away from those that I needed to rescue. The ribbon itself wasn’t the most powerful one I’d ever sensed, but there was another beside it that almost equalled it as well. Neither of which were Phantom.

Where was Phantom? Even if this really was a ploy to get at me, surely Phantom was supposed to be involved, somewhere?

I would have loved to ruminate on all the possibilities, but this time I didn’t have the mental energy to spare for idle thought. This time, I was up against some seriously dangerous Hollows, and they were likely just as edited as the rest of them.

However, this time I was in a bad way, disadvantaged to a worrying degree.

The two Hollows I sensed, as well as a fair grouping of puny Hollows, were all collected in the middle of a football pitch. There were no walls, no verticality to abuse, no tricky corners to hide behind. My fighting style benefited from all of those, and they were nowhere in sight.

In any normal situation I would have tried to bait them out of the field, but that was clearly something they wouldn’t follow along with so easily. The ringleader, a much smaller and almost human sized Hollow, stood next to a gargantuan Hollow, basically a wall of pure muscle and spiritual energy with a mask that was almost rectangular, being vertically taller than I was.

The ringleader was obvious as soon as I’d come in range of it, its spiritual pressure being present almost everywhere inside the little dome, filling it with its enormous reserves. Its reserves, while maybe not as completely absurd as my own, were the least part of its power. The rest were in just how much control it had, with the power swirling around it and connecting to its allies with tendrils that likely controlled they actions.

This was bad, really bad. Even being this close to the two Hollows were the closest I’ve been to death in my life.

Yet I couldn’t stop myself from moving forwards, my eyes fixated on the two white ribbons of Uyu and Jinta, leading towards to bodies covered over with what looked like spider’s silk laying within a small enclosure.

The smaller Hollow turned towards me, instantly realising my presence, twisting its mask ever so lightly to the side. The mask was disturbing, the eyeholes being narrow and long, extending horizontally, only broken by a split down the centre that widened as if its mask had a zipper, revealing something beneath that confused my senses for just a moment.

A yellowed skull. A real skull, aged by time and wear throughout the ages. This was more than just an Adjuchas, it made that much clear as a bone-chilling wave of spiritual energy washed over my body.

It was edited from the remains of something else.

I looked towards it ribbon, analysing it as deep as I could before the fight began, and it was with the faintest flicker of a Soul Reaper’s red that the fight began with a spear of spiritual energy lancing through my gut.