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Chapter 43: The Truth Of The World I
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It was all part of the plan.
Even the four nobles charging him with blades raised high; no, three. One still stood back, trembling, sweat running down his temple like a broken dam.
His Reiatsu fluctuated uncontrollably, terror digging into his soul. That one, at least, made the right decision.
The rest… were too late.
From Akashi's shadow exploded a mass of blackness, a deluge of inky fluid that slithered and writhed like a living curse.
The cobblestones beneath his feet cracked, unable to contain the vast, unnatural pressure leaking from the crevice between dimensions.
And then it came.
Cthulhu emerged.
A titanic monstrosity forced its way through the veil of shadow, ascending into the night with a slow, almost painful stretch of limbs and wings.
His vaguely humanoid silhouette was utterly perverse in form, defined by unnatural symmetry, endless deformity, and eldritch mass.
A squid-like face dominated its head, tentacles writhing in a rhythm that hurt to witness; like watching sound made flesh.
Though still an infant in the language of Akashi's horrors, Cthulhu towered above all present, larger than a Gillian.
His folded wings rippled behind him like liquid sails made of abyssal flesh.
Even in his underdeveloped state, his regenerative properties made him a foe to fear.
A noble had no time to react.
One opened his mouth to curse in fright, but he never finished.
Cthulhu's mouth, lined with layers of interlocking teeth and void, expanded and closed over the unsuspecting noble.
A faint scream echoed, then silence.
The others halted mid-strike, wide-eyed.
A single roar followed; a sound not just loud but profound, as if it echoed through both the world and the soul.
It tore through the battlefield like an earthquake of agony and madness.
Cthulhu's massive torso pulsed.
Countless tentacles burst from his chest and abdomen, crashing into the ground and creating a wall of writhing horror that separated Akashi from the others.
It was too late to reach him.
Within the monster's back, near where the devoured noble now struggled in disbelief, Akashi stood.
His body trembled from exhaustion, legs shaking beneath his weight.
Still, his hand remained firm as he slowly lifted Kurayami.
He knew where the noble was. The creature was his. Its body and soul were still linked to him.
With no hesitation, Akashi drove his sword into Cthulhu's upper back.
A scream echoed not from the beast but from within.
The noble tried to escape, but the moment the tentacles took him, his fate was sealed.
He had been paralyzed in fear, dragged into the mouth of a nightmare without the composure to resist.
That moment of hesitation, that slight error in judgment; it was the reason Akashi won.
It wasn't power. It was surprise. Deception.
That was how three of them had died. Surprise from the Shikai. Surprise from Kurayami's endless transformation. Surprise from the infection. And now, surprise from Cthulhu.
They had suffered from a single fatal disease: lack of information.
Akashi panted, his chest heaving as he backed away from Cthulhu. He was done.
His Reiatsu pool, already poor as it had once been, had reached its bottom.
What remained of it had been pumped into Cthulhu, the only way the creature could persist on the battlefield.
That was the rule.
His horrors had no spiritual energy of their own. They were empty vessels; insatiable engines of destruction powered by Akashi's soul.
Of them all, only the First Eldritch held power of its own, too special and distinct from all other horrors.
Cthulhu, while incomplete, still fought with terrifying resilience.
The remaining two nobles, faced with the impossible wall of tentacles, roared in fury and charged.
Cthulhu met them.
One was fast, incredibly so, blinking between appendages, slashing limbs left and right.
The other was stronger, his blade coated in a burning crimson Reiatsu that carved chunks of flesh and shadow alike.
Yet for every wound they inflicted, Cthulhu regenerated.
Tentacles would split open, showering black ichor, then reseal as if time bent backward for the creature.
His wings battered the ground with hurricane-force winds. His limbs twisted into blades and clubs and spears, reforming at will.
Cthulhu was more than a creature. He was more like a living concept; fear given body, horror given shape.
And they were afraid.
They had seen many monsters in their time. Hollows, the most horrific of them, even Shinigami gone mad.
But this thing; this abomination; felt like a curse etched into the world itself.
And for some cursed reason, they realized that the more they looked at it, the weirder the world seemed to them.
From the corner of their eyes, they saw things that didn't exist, shadows. When they looked, nothing was there.
They heard things from their past, the howling of those they killed, getting louder and louder the more they looked at the dreadful entity.
Even in its 'infancy', Cthulhu was already showing one of its defining traits, madness, the ability to drive those who dare look at it insane.
The Great Old Ones are cosmic entities that are too abstract to be accurately described by human perception.
And as a Great Old One, Cthulhu's true form also remains indescribable and indefinitely controversial.
In stories, all of his most popular and remotely consistent appearances have been merely what little his witnesses have been able to comprehend before going insane.
They went insane at the sight of something beyond human
comprehension.
That's why their coordination started to slip.
One misstep.
One glance too long at that mouth.
One accidental eye contact with a writhing eye that shouldn't exist. All it took for fear to eat away at their sanity.
Meanwhile, the last noble; the hesitant one; stood frozen.
The screams of his comrades, the inhuman roars, the sight of Akashi sitting unharmed beside the monster... It was too much.
The calculations ran wild in his head. Even if they killed the beast, what next? They'd failed. Tokinada would kill them for this disgrace.
So, he made a choice.
Without a word, he turned and ran.
He was noticed. The noble has already seen his hesitation and his escape was the final straw.
Their eyes dilated, and their expression ever more fearsome.
"Coward!" One of the remaining nobles screamed, "You'll die for this!"
But his shout only echoed into the night, unanswered. Their comrade had vanished into the shadows, never looking back.
They turned back toward the fight; and realized just how much time they'd wasted.
Cthulhu was still there, the same as it ever was... No, it was growing.
Only slightly, but they could feel it. Not in power, but in methods.
It was as if the entity was slowly but surely getting used to its own body, learning and improving.
Akashi understands why. It's not as if he can create the horrors with all their memories in his stories.
That may be possible in the future, but it still sounds like an impossibility for something like Cthulhu to be born with its memories.
Only god knows for how long that thing lived, and to create it with memories or grant it its memories seems too costly.
No doubt. The two nobles noticed the oddity, and they realized something.
They had to finish it now.
They doubled down, attacking with renewed desperation.
Tentacles were hacked off by the dozens. A wing was cleaved. A shoulder exploded in gore.
And slowly, they began to overwhelm it. They were stronger than it. Just barely, but it was enough.
Cthulhu writhed violently, smashing the ground and tossing rubble like a child in a tantrum.
The nobles were forced to dodge the chaos, but they pressed forward. Closer. Closer.
And then; one slipped through.
A single noble bypassed the beast's front defenses, using a burst of Reiatsu to launch himself into the air and land past the chaos.
He flashed toward Akashi.
There he was; sitting on the bloodstained ground hidden behind the monster, legs crossed in a posture too regal for someone so broken.
His spine rested against the beast's writhing flesh that was guarding him so dearly, and his arms hung limp.
Blood ran down his mouth. One eye had gone half-lidded, pitch-black as if darkness from the depths of the abyss was sipping through.
Yet his expression was calm.
The noble raised his blade, breath ragged, voice hoarse, "You... die here, Monster!!" The man's voice reeked of terror.
Akashi's eyes slowly lifted. The moon reflected in their depths. His lips moved; slowly, cracked, and soft.
"…Captain Aizen… I truly cannot do much more... So, will you show up, please?"
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