In a rather bustling city, there was a corner unnoticed by anyone.
Here, the space seemed to emit intense ripples constantly, as if it could shatter at any moment.
Eventually, the space couldn't bear the pressure any longer. It cracked open, forming a black spatial rift.
From that black rift stepped out a somewhat disheveled figure.
"Seriously… I didn't expect the spatial rift to be this dangerous…"
The one who emerged was, of course, Natsuro. However, unlike when he arrived, he was now in his soul form. His physical body hadn't been able to withstand the forces inside the spatial rift.
In the end, he had chosen to abandon the physical body he had created for this journey.
Had it been his true body, it might have sustained some damage, but it would have been able to endure the rift's forces completely.
Of course, the key point was that this had been Natsuro's first time actively traversing a spatial rift, and he lacked experience. If he tried again, such an accident probably wouldn't happen.
"You okay?" Natsuro teased Umbreon perched on his shoulder with a finger.
"Gula~" Umbreon was in good condition. After all, Umbreon had one advantage even Natsuro didn't, it was a child of time and space. Even inside the spatial rift, it wasn't endangered at all.
"That's good."
Soon, Natsuro was strolling between skyscrapers, weaving through the crowd.
"So this world is a modern one?" Natsuro frowned. After walking around for a while, he hadn't sensed anyone with special powers.
If that were the case, then this journey was entirely pointless.
A world without any kind of power wasn't one he wanted to be in, even if its level of technology was somewhat close to that of his previous life, it still couldn't compare.
If anything, it seemed to be around late 20th-century level.
Even if it had surpassed his past life's tech, it was meaningless to him. The satisfaction that technology could bring was only temporary, and couldn't compare to his desire for power.
Natsuro couldn't help but sigh.
To make matters worse, he couldn't sense any natural energy or chakra in this world.
That meant his powers were significantly limited here.
With such limited power, trying to tear open space again to travel to another world would be quite difficult.
However, one thing puzzled him, he felt oddly comfortable in this world. It was a feeling that came from the depths of his soul.
Moreover, he could sense a strange type of power in this world, a power that felt incredibly close to the soul and constantly tried to burrow into his body.
However, he hadn't figured out what this power was, so he hadn't absorbed it.
Wandering aimlessly through the crowd, Natsuro noted that no one seemed to notice him. As a soul, he had tested it, normal humans couldn't perceive his presence.
Naturally, Umbreon had hidden itself by now, since it still had a physical form.
"Bang!!"
At that moment, a scream and the sound of a violent collision reached Natsuro's ears.
He didn't need to look to know it was a car accident. Although his sensory abilities were restricted, they remained incredibly sharp. But then...
Natsuro paused, his gaze turning toward the crash site. A person lay in a pool of blood, lifeless. From the corpse, a soul emerged.
The soul looked bewildered, and after seeing its own dead body, it was filled with fear.
That fear soon gave way to confusion, the soul had no idea what to do anymore. After all, he was already dead, and there was no job to rush to now...
Eventually, the aimless soul drifted away from its body.
"So... in this world, souls just float around unattended after death?" Natsuro muttered. But if that were true, another problem arose.
Over time, this world should be filled with countless souls. Yet in reality, he hadn't encountered many.
So do souls dissipate over time?
He was suspicious. Yet, he hadn't felt any power leaking from himself, nor any sense of imminent disappearance.
"A strange world indeed…"
Just then, he heard another collision, this time accompanied by a strange hissing sound and an unusual pressure.
Though faint, he could sense it clearly.
"Finally… I've found this world's special power." Natsuro's eyes lit up, and he quickly moved toward the source.
Soon, the scene unfolded before his eyes.
A female soul, dressed in a black kimono-like outfit, was fighting a white-masked monster with a long sword.
Their battle seemed to affect the physical world, disrupting the environment. Yet the surrounding humans were completely unaware of what was happening.
"A woman in black wielding a katana… and a monster wearing a white mask…" Natsuro rubbed his chin. A name from an anime quickly came to mind....
Bleach.
Natsuro watched the battle. The woman, who was likely a Shinigami, clearly had the upper hand. She'd probably defeat the creature, most likely a Hollow, soon.
Natsuro rubbed his head. His memory of Bleach was vague. After all, he had transmigrated into the Naruto world as a child and never expected to end up in the Bleach world.
To him, Bleach was something from over twenty years ago, and he hadn't engaged with any related content since.
As a result, he could only recall fragmented and incomplete concepts.
"But if this is Bleach, then I don't need to find a physical body to operate." Natsuro suddenly realized something useful.
Finding a suitable body was troublesome. He didn't want to forcibly possess someone. Taking over a body that died naturally? Pointless. If they're already dead, what's there to take?
The only option would've been a recently-deceased body that was still biologically functional…
But since this was Bleach, he remembered that Shinigami were spiritual beings, souls, just like him. So whether he had a body didn't matter.
"So the power trying to enter my body... is it spiritual energy?" Natsuro stared at the woman's sword, what should be called a Zanpakuto, and the unique power she emanated. It matched what he had sensed earlier.
"Soul, Shinigami, spiritual energy…" Natsuro murmured, then stopped resisting the spiritual energy.
In the next moment, a seemingly endless stream of spiritual energy began surging toward him.
"What?!" The woman battling the Hollow was shocked. She could sense spiritual energy in the living world rapidly being consumed.
Normally, the spiritual energy concentration in the living world was low. But now, Natsuro's surroundings had become densely saturated with it.
"A Hollow? Or…?" The woman was confused.
But the Hollow's eyes were gleaming. It could sense a soul nearby that was overwhelmingly attractive, lethally so.
It immediately charged toward Natsuro.
"Damn it!" the woman's face changed. She quickly gave chase. Whether it was a Hollow or not, she couldn't let the one before her reach that location. Spiritual energy benefited Hollows more than Shinigami.
Just then, something on the woman's body began beeping.
"Of all times…" she muttered, frowning. While chasing the Hollow, she pulled out a phone.
Her expression darkened.
The phone screen wasn't a typical interface, but something resembling a radar.
Right now, the radar showed many glowing dots quickly converging on a single point—
Where Natsuro stood.
He could also sense the growing number of Hollow-like energy signatures rushing toward him.
Scratching his cheek, he thought Looks like I messed up. But no one had warned him that lifting his internal resistance would trigger such a massive spiritual reaction.
In truth, it was easy to understand: imagine a lake connected to a massive hollow cavity beneath it. So long as the cavity was sealed, the lake remained calm.
The moment the seal was lifted, the lake water would surge down in a torrent.
Natsuro was that hollow cavity. Though he hadn't trained his soul specifically, after becoming the strongest of the Six Paths, his soul had far surpassed any ordinary soul.
His soul was key to his survival and power in the Naruto world, where souls weren't even a major focus. So in a world like Bleach, which revolved around souls...
Now, both the Hollow and the Shinigami woman had locked onto Natsuro, the cause of this spiritual maelstrom.
The Hollow let out an excited roar and lunged at Natsuro even faster.
The woman shouted urgently, "Dodge!"
Although she didn't know why this soul could cause such a spiritual disturbance, as a Shinigami, she could sense he was just a "normal" soul. Even if he had tons of spiritual energy, he likely didn't know how to use it.
Facing her cry, he watched as the Hollow lunged at him, jaws open wide.
Natsuro threw a punch, a textbook forward lunge punch, delivered at high speed landing squarely on the Hollow's white mask.
He didn't know how to use spiritual energy to attack properly, but since it was already flowing inside his soul form, he could manipulate it freely.
Even if he didn't know specific techniques, simply concentrating spiritual energy in his arm should make his strike strong enough.
And he wasn't wrong.
Because that Hollow had been charging at Natsuro at incredible speed, only to be sent flying back even faster.
The difference in speed nearly caught the Shinigami woman off guard. She barely managed to twist her body in time to dodge it, and afterward, she stared at Natsuro with an expression of disbelief. She couldn't understand how a soul that seemed to have only just been born could accomplish such a thing.
Natsuro, on the other hand, was shaking out his fist. To be honest, the punch was a bit weaker than he expected. He had thought he would be able to blow the Hollow apart entirely, not just knock it away in one piece.
Still, he began to consciously slow his absorption of spiritual energy, and soon, the storm-like influx of spiritual power subsided.
"Hello? Can you explain what's going on right now?" Natsuro waved a hand in front of the stunned woman, trying to get her attention.
After a brief silence, the woman spoke. "I should be the one asking you that. Who exactly are you? And why do you have that kind of power?"
"Huh? I'm just an ordinary person. It's just that when I saw you and that monster fighting, I felt like I could absorb the same kind of power you were using, and then… this happened." Natsuro shrugged.
The woman looked at Natsuro suspiciously, but couldn't see anything unusual. From her professional perspective as a Shinigami, he really did appear to be a newly-formed soul from a recent death.
In the end, unable to find anything out of place, she could only explain, "You do realize that you're already dead, right?"
Natsuro nodded. Sure, let's go with "dead."
The woman nodded too and said, "That makes things easier. The monster from earlier was a Hollow, creatures that devour souls with high spiritual power, like yours. I'm a Shinigami. My job is to purify Hollows and guide souls like you to the Soul Society."
"Soul Society?" Natsuro repeated, recognizing the name.
"Yes, the Soul Society. It's the place where human souls are meant to go after death." The woman nodded again. Technically she didn't have to explain so much, usually, a simple soul burial would suffice to send a new soul on its way.
But Natsuro's unusual case compelled her to offer more detail.
"I see. So I'm supposed to go to this 'Soul Society' next? There's no Heaven or anything like that?" Natsuro asked.
"There's no Heaven. But there is… Hell." she answered patiently. That question wasn't unusual, Natsuro wasn't the first to ask it.
"Oh. So are you going to guide me into the Soul Society now?" Natsuro asked curiously.
"That's right," she replied with a nod, drawing her sword.
"Could you wait a moment?" Natsuro suddenly said.
"Do you have any lingering wishes left in the living world?" she asked.
"Not really," Natsuro replied. "But I can sense more of those things, you called them Hollows, are being drawn here because of what I did earlier. So I'd like to clean up the mess I caused before accepting your soul burial."
He smiled as he spoke.
The woman had initially intended to refuse, after all, it was her duty. But then she remembered all the Hollows converging on the area, and the strength Natsuro had just displayed… She couldn't say no.
Soon, the Hollows began appearing in their field of view.
But even more quickly, they began falling.
Every Hollow was knocked down with a single punch, no wasted effort.
The woman stood dumbfounded, watching Natsuro. She had a strong hunch that once she guided this soul into the Soul Society, he would not remain ordinary…
"When you get to the Soul Society, you should apply to the Shin'ō Academy. The new term is just about to start," she couldn't help but suggest.
"Okay. I'll remember that. Thanks."
"Well then, I'll begin," the woman said, drawing her Zanpakutō and gently tapping Natsuro on the forehead with the hilt.
In that moment, Natsuro felt a strange power surround him, he could sense traces of space-time energy within it.
"By the way, what's your name?" the woman suddenly asked. She was one of the rare few who ever asked a soul's name before burial, they usually never crossed paths again.
But this time, she decided that after her shift, she'd look into whether anyone named this showed up at the Shin'ō Academy.
"Natsuro Shindōkawa. And you?"
"Miyako Shiba."
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