Make sure to check my Patre.on out if you want to support me and want to read advanced chapters: Patre.on.com/VQuintessence
[31 Chapters in Advance on Patre.on]
...........
Chapter 63: The Endless War II
...........
They never stopped lunging at him. Fear, they seemingly do not know. They were endless... Truly an Endless War.
The war continued.
The fourth arrived. A thing like a bird but hairless and blind, with a mask cracked down the center and wings made of bone shards.
Akashi flicked his fingers. Kurayami transformed into a bow. A black arrow formed; silent, small, but packed with compressed Reiryoku.
He fired.
The bird Hollow burst apart mid-flight, its shards raining down like glass.
Fifth and sixth came together; a pair of twin Hollows connected at the spine, their limbs swinging around in wild arcs.
He dashed forward, ducked beneath their scissoring limbs, and Kurayami became double bladed saver. A rising cross-slash, and the twins were bisected into four steaming heaps.
Seventh was on the ground; a limbless crawler, its body covered in childlike faces, each of them weeping, screaming, laughing.
He rammed a sword straight into its gaping mouth. The body imploded, the faces distorting into a wail of soul fragments before vanishing.
The eighth dropped from a nearby tree, a bloated humanoid mass with too many eyes and the stench of rot clinging to its breath.
He didn't dodge.
Instead, he transformed Kurayami into a glaive and cleaved the creature in half diagonally.
Its two halves slid apart like butter, and it screeched a deafening cry as it died.
The ninth. A massive crab-like Hollow with glowing eyes in every crevice of its exoskeleton, its limbs clacking against the trees.
Akashi jumped. He spun in midair, Kurayami forming into a war hammer. He brought it down with both hands, shattering the crab's shell into fragments.
It convulsed and melted into black sludge.
'Inefficient. Let's strike non-sharp weapons from Kurayami's vocabulary,' Akashi noted.
He was learning. He was here to progress and to master Kurayami's endless forms, but some are simply not suitable for him.
He doesn't like to rely on brute force when he could've cut down the hollow easily, even with its shell.
The tenth...
A Gillian.
It roared. The sound was enough to shake the nearby trees. It towered above, white mask expressionless, hands raised in a lazy gesture as if about to strike down.
At the same time, it opened its mouth wide... Cero.
Akashi's eyes sharpened.
He vanished, appearing at its neck.
Kurayami became a gigantic guillotine blade, cleaving in a single horizontal stroke.
The head fell. The body slumped. A crater of spiritual energy followed its death.
There is a reason the average Shinigami has trouble fighting Gillians. They are simply too big, and a swing of a sword may only be a scratch to such gigantic creatures.
The gigantic guillotine blade served him well here.
He landed again.
Silence… only for a moment.
He lifted his head.
A wave.
No; a sea.
The Hollows stretched endlessly into the dark, multiple of Gillians, hundreds of Hollows, all still charging, all still screaming.
It was as if his soul was more tempting than the forbidden fruit, promising them ascension.
He smiled, despite himself.
This is what he wanted... The Endless War.
The war raged on without end.
They came at him from every direction; Hollows, mindless and screaming, driven by instinct, teeth gnashing like chainsaws, claws rending the earth.
Their cries became a choir of hunger and chaos. They came in waves; dozens, then hundreds; each swarm crashing against Akashi like the tide against unyielding stone.
Yet even the ocean wears away the cliff in time.
The first wave fell easy enough. A single slash sent five small Hollows flying, their bodies bisected, their masked faces cracking into pieces before they faded into ash.
Akashi stepped on one of the falling corpses, leapt, spun mid-air, and brought Kurayami down in its axe form to cleave a wide, fanged serpent in half, ichor spraying like mist.
But the second wave surged with more pressure.
Yet not all leaped at him at the same time. Some were as if dying by hunger, and started munching on the hollows by their side.
It was chaos, hollows stepping on each other, the ones down then getting eaten by the less powerful hollows.
The chaos helped, but there were still too many.
He spun Kurayami into shield form just in time to block a red flash from above.
The Cero struck hard, a beam of spiritual plasma that rippled through the air like a molten lance.
The shield shook from the force as if about to break, but held.
Akashi used the blast's recoil to fling himself backward through the air, flipping over a horned Hollow that lunged at him.
While airborne, he spun his weapon into its bow form and loosed three arrows in quick succession; each one dark, silent, and glowing faintly.
The arrows pierced through three different Hollows mid-pounce. One shattered like glass.
The other screamed, half its face torn away. The third thrashed, its wings breaking apart in a spray of gore as it fell.
But still they came as if driven by madness. Instinct was supreme to these hollows, seemingly not having heard of fear.
Dozens of them. One from the left with a lance-like tongue; Akashi ducked, slashed upward with Kurayami in its longsword form.
The tongue split down the middle, and so did the Hollow.
Another from behind with a skeletal tail; he turned on his heel, flash-stepped once, then again, until he stood atop its spine and drove a black spear through the mask.
Then came the Gillians.
Majestic, horrifying towers of malice.
Their limbs were sluggish, hidden by a coat of black flesh, but each step cracked the ground. Each swing of their arms could flatten a building.
Their masks were emotionless, blank, monstrous; and difficult to break. Not because his sword lacked sharpness, but because wounds that would kill lesser Hollows barely slowed these behemoths.
This is why Kurayami's endless forms were a godsend.
One of them bent low, a crimson sphere blooming within its open mouth. Akashi twisted Kurayami into shield form again just in time.
BOOM!
The Cero struck.
It felt like being struck by a meteor. Akashi winced as the impact launched him backward again, through one tree, then another, his body flipping uncontrollably through the air.
He landed on a Gillian's shoulder, used it as a platform, flash-stepped mid-bounce, reappeared in the air, spun Kurayami into bow form again; and fired a point-blank shot into the next Cero mid-charge.
The arrow exploded, deflecting the charge just enough for him to dive past it and reform Kurayami into a lance.
He drove the lance straight through the Gillian's mask.
The creature roared as if it felt pain. Its body fell backward, landing with an earth-shattering thud.
Akashi didn't wait. He dashed across its massive form, using it like a road, launching off the side into the next fray.
Blood sprayed.
Bone cracked.
----------------------------------------------
[ 500 Power Stones For An Extra Chapter!]
----------------------------------------------