An Arcanist in Karakura Town 54 (Patreon)

An Arcanist in Karakura Town

Chapter 54

-VB-

Alan Marris

I noticed the first probe to my defense in the middle of the night. At first, I thought it was a regular Hollow that knew no better because of how weak the attack had been. The attack became a little stronger but it did nothing against the defenses. Oh, and only I and my Servant heard it.

After a pause, the next attack came with a silent bang that threatened to … do nothing.

My Servant’s Great Wall was a conceptual defense. You might be able to slip in like the Gotei 13 would-be assassins, but there was not a chance in hell for anyone to brute force their way through. This was on top of all other defenses I have prepared, including Mr. Wiggles. My grey goo-ish pet was the ultimate anti-spirit weapon, whether they knew it or not.

… But what irked me was how persistent the attacker was.

They kept pounding away ineffectually at the Great Wall without stop throughout the night, and by 3 a.m., I was pissed enough to get out of bed to give the fuckers as a piece of my mind.

I threw a jacket on and walked out of the living quarters and into the main warehouse floor.

The pounding continued at a higher rate now, and it was pissing me off.

I walked over to my main workshop area and to my main desk, pressed a soundproof button, and waited for the soundproof reiatsu array to activate. The array quickly encapsulated the living quarters.

With the preparations set, I turned and walked over to the surveillance table, where there were multiple screens and a microphone waiting for me.

I looked at the screens, trying to see where the ruckus was originating from. I didn’t see anything on the ground from any of the cardinal directions. So I looked at the skies… and I found what I was looking for.

My eyes widened.

“Holy shit, is it already time?” I asked myself because what I saw on the screen of my external cameras was none other than the neo-inquisitorial, Nazi-wannabe edgelords that were the Wandenreich soldiers in their Schutzstaffel-inspired uniforms.

Fascism looks cool, they say, but to me, it looked like just another form of compensation. Hey, if you can’t make money, then you gotta at least look good, right? Or something similar like that.

Currently, there were three Wandenreich soldiers blasting away at the exterior of my warehouse, and I called them soldiers because, of the three, only one was a quincy and the other two were arrancars.

Hmm.

Arrancars and a quincy.

You know, I never got to have either one as test subjects. Oh, sure, I had plenty of Hollows to test it on, but arrancars? They had to be different in some form on a fundamental level to give them that kind of spiritual density, right? And quincies! They were the third force that came and went in this world. Their ability to utterly disintegrate a spiritual being to their elementary particles, while not that big of a deal for someone who made a bomb version of it, was still intriguing.

I wanted them on my testing table as soon as possible.

As much as I wanted to gear up immediately and grab them, I knew better than to overestimate people. Wandenreich was the one faction and people that I knew the least about, and their idea of attacks were often the most anti-spirit in their base form but becoming far more esoteric and similar to the shinigamis and Hollows as they grew stronger and took on more personalizations.

Instead of heading out immediately, I turned on half a dozen sensors and took in all of the information the fools were delivering straight to me.

I sat there as they continued to rain down attacks on my almost invulnerable warehouse and began to compile their information.

The arrancars … were letdowns. They must not have been even adjuchas before they were forced to evolve.

However, Aizen was still around. Why would he let his arrancars out and about? If the Gotei 13 saw this, then they might see this as a breach of the current peace and may engage him when they both need to focus on Wandenreich.

“What is that bastard playing this time…?” I hummed to myself.

Now that I thought about this, this could be a trap. While my sensors were good, it couldn’t detect everything. They might be out there in hiding for all I know. And the quincy up there? He seemed pretty strong, according to the sensors.

What did this mean for me?

Did I go out there, risking myself for test subjects?

Hmm….

For now, I waited.

I had patience. I could wait.

-VB-

“... He’s not coming out.”

Quilege didn’t even bother to look at the disgusting creature standing next to him. The dumb fuck couldn’t even draw out the enemy properly.

“Keep attacking,” he ordered. “This is an enemy of the Wandenreich, a man who predicted our arrival even before we did. He must be either subjugated or killed.”

The two Hollows continued their attacks but their attacks did nothing against the mortal building.

This was the mission that had been given to him. To eliminate the threat posed by this anomaly that should not exist.

The Wandenreich could not act when the threat of those bombs remained.