"It’s complicated, right? You probably don’t understand it."

Askin’s voice carried a teasing lilt, almost playful. Across from him, Ulquiorra stared blankly, the faint confusion in his emerald eyes enough to make the quincy chuckle.

"Don’t look at me like that." Askin continued, resting a hand on his hip. "I didn’t understand it at first either. It took me a long time to figure out the essence of my ability."

He gave a smug grin, as if lecturing a student. "Since you seem curious, I’ll explain it to you."

Maybe it was confidence. Maybe arrogance. Or maybe it was because he thought Ulquiorra was already as good as dead. Whatever the reason, Askin didn’t mind explaining his power in full. The Espada before him was, after all, a rare opponent — one worthy of understanding the method of his demise.

"To make it simple," Askin said, tapping his temple, "think about this. When more than half the blood in the human body is lost, the body dies. That’s the natural lethal dose. My ability lets me redefine that — I can reset what ’lethal’ means."

His smirk widened. "For instance, I can set a condition where, if my enemy’s blood level is too high, they die. The only way to avoid that death would be to lose enough blood. But..." He raised a finger dramatically. "If you lose too much blood, you’ll fall into the natural lethal condition again."

He spread his hands wide, satisfied. "In other words — left or right, up or down, it doesn’t matter. Either way, you die."

Ulquiorra’s expression didn’t change, but his silence made Askin’s grin deepen.

’Heh. He’s processing it.’ Askin thought smugly.

It sounded invincible — a perfect, paradoxical trap. But like all things, it wasn’t as absolute as Askin made it sound.

First of all, his ability couldn’t activate instantly. It needed the target to enter a defined area — his "death zone". Only then could he manipulate the conditions of lethality.

Secondly, once activated, it affected him too. To counteract that, he had to ingest a large amount of substances beforehand — controlling his internal balance to stay alive while others perished.

And the "death" he inflicted wasn’t instant, either. It didn’t kill outright. Instead, it crushed the target’s biological functions — halving their cellular activity, draining vitality, paralyzing movement, and inducing unbearable pain.

Even if they weren’t technically dead, Askin could easily finish the job himself afterward.

Before this battle began, his plan had been simple — control the blood inside Ulquiorra’s body and make him collapse through overload. But that plan failed the moment he realized something crucial.

Ulquiorra possessed High-Speed Regeneration.

That changed everything.

Among all the arrancar recorded by the Wandenreich, almost none possessed that ability any longer. Most who appeared in Karakura Town lacked it entirely. But Ulquiorra... he was different.

High-Speed Regeneration allowed him to instantly restore lost limbs and heal severe wounds — a monstrous gift, but one that came at a steep cost.

Blood loss was meaningless to someone who could rebuild flesh in seconds. So Askin had to rethink the game.

He grinned. "So, I made a new rule."

For shinigami and hollows alike, reiatsu was their lifeline. When their internal reiatsu dropped too low, their bodies weakened — their forms collapsing, their very souls destabilizing.

Quincies were different. They were human. They drew power from external reishi, manipulating it through will and technique. Even if their internal reserves ran low, their physical bodies could still function.

But shinigami and hollows were beings made of reishi. Once their inner energy faltered, their existence unraveled.

Askin raised a finger and pointed at Ulquiorra.

"The lethal dose I’ve set for you," he said calmly, "is when your reiatsu falls below a certain threshold — you die."

His smirk widened. "And you know what burns reiatsu faster than anything?"

Ulquiorra’s eyes narrowed. "...High-Speed Regeneration."

"Exactly."

Every ability had a cost. High-Speed Regeneration was powerful — almost godlike — but its consumption rate was brutal. Each time it reassembled his shattered flesh, it consumed spiritual energy to rebuild the missing parts.

The more he used it, the faster his reiatsu declined. And once that dropped below Askin’s set threshold... death.

"So," Askin continued, walking closer through the dust, "those times you traded wound for wound... it wasn’t strategy, was it? You were just desperate."

Ulquiorra lay on one knee, one hand pressed to the sand. His chest rose and fell slowly, blood spilling from the corner of his mouth. His blank eyes met Askin’s as he spoke.

"You’ve observed well." he said quietly. "But your conclusion is only half correct."

Askin chuckled. "Oh? Care to enlighten me before you collapse?"

He gestured toward Ulquiorra’s ragged body. "Your Resurrección is already active. You’re in your strongest form, right? That’s the upper limit. I’ve already fixed your death condition at that level. The moment your reiatsu dips, you die. Simple math."

He raised a hand and pointed his finger like a gun. "And it’s dipping right now. You’ve already used High-Speed Regeneration several times. You’re done."

A bead of sweat rolled down Ulquiorra’s cheek, but his face remained unreadable.

"This battle," Askin declared, "is mine."

Ulquiorra’s lips moved faintly. "But I’m not dead yet."

"Huh?" Askin tilted his head, amused.

Ulquiorra slowly looked up, meeting his eyes. "You said this was my strongest form," he murmured, "but you are wrong."

"What?"

"Segunda Etapa."

Askin froze.

Ulquiorra’s reiatsu — which had been plummeting seconds ago — suddenly surged upward like a tsunami. The spiritual pressure exploded outward, crushing the air, tearing cracks across the sand. The desert trembled beneath the overwhelming flood of energy.

*BOOM!*

The death condition Askin had set disintegrated in an instant.

The force of it knocked him backward, sand blasting across the battlefield. His eyes widened in disbelief. "That’s—impossible!"

Ulquiorra rose slowly from the ground. The wind whipped violently around him.

His body began to change.

His upper garments were torn away, revealing skin marked with black streaks that crept up his neck and down his torso. Black liquid poured from his eyes, splitting the previous tear marks into twin rivers. His sclera turned deep yellow, glowing faintly in the dark.

From his back, two vast, pitch-black wings unfolded — not feathered, but leathery, like those of a bat. His lower garments split apart into two ragged halves, fluttering in the storm of his own power.

Long, sharpened horns extended upward from his helmet, curving like blades. His tail lengthened, tipped with a skeletal blade. Even his feet morphed into clawed appendages.

Every detail screamed of something far beyond the first Resurrección — a higher evolution, darker and far more dreadful.

Askin stood frozen. His breath caught in his throat. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

But it wasn’t the transformation that shook him — it was the reiatsu.

It was suffocating. Heavy. Endless.

This was not just spiritual pressure. It was despair given form.

Ulquiorra’s voice was calm, but the air trembled with it.

"You said I was bound by your conditions of death..." he said. "Then watch as I erase them."

The sands of Hueco Mundo quivered beneath his words.

*****

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I am working on the following projects:

✓ Killed For 100 Years in Hueco Mundo, Aizen Invited Me To Soul Society!

✓ Naruto: Senmei Asahi

✓ Naruto: Uchiha’s Intelligence Dealer

✓ Naruto: The Fifth Hokage Is Naruto’s Uncle

✓ Naruto: Who Made Him a Ninja?

✓ Bleach: In My Second Reincarnation, I Became The Ninth Kenpachi

✓ To Love-Ru: Spoiler Route [R-18]

✓ Naruto: The Accidental Incubus [R-18]

✓ The Academy’s Saint Is Too Popular, But He’s Not the Protagonist [R-18]