Chapter 379 - 379: The First Espada
[Available Draws: 100]
The glowing, translucent holographic text floated quietly in the center of Ren's vision. One hundred pulls. These were the chances he had painstakingly accumulated during this recent period of relative peace.
Ren used to be the kind of person who lacked the self-control to hold back, instantly spending a 10-pull the second he earned it. His gacha addiction had been a genuine problem in his early days. But this time, he had resisted the temptation, saving up a massive stockpile of one hundred consecutive draws.
It hadn't even taken him that long to hoard them; this was simply the culmination of rewards he had naturally accumulated by completing recent, high-level System tasks.
Sure enough, the stronger a mage became in Earth Land, the easier it was to complete those once-daunting missions. Quests that would have pushed him to the absolute brink of death a year ago were now trivial errands, making it incredibly simple to farm for draws.
"Now, let's see how my luck is holding up tonight," Ren muttered to himself, rubbing his hands together in the dimly lit room. "I wonder if these one hundred pulls can finally land me another absolute top-tier powerhouse!"
Although he had already acquired countless legendary figures, Ren still felt an undeniable, electric surge of excitement every single time he opened the gacha interface. It was the thrill of the unknown. In reality, with his current roster of Character Cards, his combat capabilities were already sufficient to handle almost any threat in this world.
Using Escanor's template at high noon, he possessed the raw, overwhelming solar energy to potentially take on the apocalyptic Dragon King, Acnologia, in a direct, one-on-one fistfight.
Even when the sun wasn't at its peak, he could seamlessly swap to Minato Namikaze. With the absolute spatial dominance of the Flying Thunder God, fighting Acnologia wouldn't leave him at a disadvantage; he could simply run rings around the beast.
But realistically, who would ever complain about having too many world-ending trump cards hidden up their sleeve? Besides, many of the absolute apex powerhouses from across the multiverse hadn't even graced his collection yet.
Ren's eyes gleamed with ambition. He still desperately wanted Captain Commander Genryusai Shigekuni Yamamoto from Bleach, whose Bankai burned hot enough to incinerate the very moisture in the atmosphere. He wanted the Quincy progenitor, Yhwach, with his logic-defying 'The Almighty'. He wanted the God of Shinobi, Senju Hashirama, and the legendary Uchiha Madara, a man who casually dropped meteors on entire armies just to test their strength.
Those were the truly transcendent, top-tier monsters. To stand completely unopposed in Earth Land, he needed that level of overwhelming, conceptual power.
Ding, ding, ding!
The midnight bell chimed softly from the clock tower outside his window. Gamers always had their superstitions, and midnight was prime time for resetting the luck algorithms.
Taking a deep breath, Ren pressed the glowing `[10x Draw]` button on the System interface.
The long-awaited gacha animation instantly materialized before his eyes. Ren felt a familiar, faint surge of adrenaline rush through his veins as reality seemed to melt away.
A digital universe opened up within his vision. Swirling nebulae converged in a breathtaking display of cosmic light, and distant stars gathered together before plummeting toward the earth one after another. As they descended through the atmospheric projection, they ignited, emitting a variety of radiant colors.
These different colors represented the strict Ranks of the Character Cards.
White, Green, Blue, Purple, and the highly coveted Gold.
Soon, ten burning meteors crashed into the virtual ground before him. As the smoke cleared, Ren's shoulders slumped slightly. There was no blinding gold light—only a single, vibrant purple aura radiating from the center.
Ren was no longer particularly interested in purple cards. No matter how incredibly skilled or uniquely talented a purple Character Card was, its raw power had a harsh, unyielding limit. A top-tier purple might surpass some of the weaker low-level Gold cards through sheer technique, but it could never realistically bridge the gap against an Intermediate Gold card's raw destructive output.
As for the Intermediate Gold Legendaries he already possessed, whether Ren would actually actively use them usually depended on whether they offered any unique, rule-breaking advantages. Characters like Gojo Satoru and Ulquiorra Cifer were prime examples.
Gojo Satoru provided a near-absolute spatial defense and the instant-win condition of the Unlimited Void Domain. Meanwhile, Ulquiorra possessed abilities that could effortlessly tear through spatial barriers, alongside a set of skills that essentially granted him infinite, devastating ultimate moves.
With a casual wave of his hand, Ren commanded the System to flip all ten cards over.
"Huh?"
Ren was genuinely surprised when he saw the vividly detailed portrait on the glowing purple Character Card.
The man on the card had long, wildly unkempt yellow hair with striking red edges, thick black sword-like eyebrows, and incredibly bright, piercing eyes that seemed to burn with an unyielding inner fire. He wore the standard, dark brown uniform of the Demon Slayer Corps, draped in a distinctive white haori with vibrant flame patterns licking the bottom edges.
"Kyojuro Rengoku!" Ren said aloud, a nostalgic smile tugging at the corners of his lips.
[Akarin's Note: Kyojuro Rengoku is the Flame Hashira from 'Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba'. Known for his unyielding optimism and overwhelming sense of duty, he is affectionately referred to as 'Aniki' (Big Brother) by fans.]
Ren recognized this character at a single glance. Although his actual screen time in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba was relatively short, the man had left an incredibly deep, searing impression on everyone who witnessed his final stand.
Ren had also liked this character very much in his past life. His sheer charisma, unwavering morality, and blazing fighting spirit had earned him the universal, affectionate title of 'Big Brother' among fans.
After looking at the proud, smiling face on the card for a few quiet moments, Ren let out a soft sigh. He chose to recycle it along with the other nine useless low-tier Character Cards.
[Do you wish to recycle the selected Character Cards?]
"Yes," Ren confirmed softly.
[Recycle successful! System Points refunded.]
At his current level of power, if a card wasn't strictly necessary for a strategic advantage, Ren wouldn't choose to integrate it. He would instead recycle it directly back into System currency.
The reason was simple, yet profoundly psychological. When absorbing a Character Card, Ren didn't just gain the physical abilities of that individual; he was forced to experience a highly compressed influx of their lifetime of memories.
These vividly emotional memories would always have a lingering, sometimes heavy impact on Ren's psyche. Taking in the memories of purely tragic, self-sacrificing characters like 'Big Brother' Rengoku meant feeling the searing pain of his death, the despair of leaving his younger brother behind, and the physical agony of his final battle. Ren would feel incredibly depressed and emotionally exhausted after absorbing all of that.
It was better to just leave those heroes in peace and not watch their final moments play out in his own mind.
[Do you wish to perform a 10-pull?!]
"Yes!"
Ren pushed the lingering melancholy aside and immediately started another 10-pull. The familiar, cosmic gacha animation played out across his vision once again.
This time, another lone purple star streaked across the artificial sky, crashing into the digital earth. Once again, there was no sign of a golden glow, leaving Ren feeling a bit disappointed.
Statistically speaking, the probability of a 10-pull yielding at least one purple card was nearly fifty percent, while the probability of pulling a gold was a stingy ten percent. Added together, it was a sixty percent chance of getting something marginally decent. So, seeing only a purple wasn't much of a surprise; it was just the harsh reality of the gacha grind.
Soon, the ten new Character Cards were flipped over.
"Huh? Well, isn't that incredibly ironic."
The face staring back at him from the lone purple card was also a familiar one. In fact, this character had a direct, fatal connection to the 'Big Brother' he had just recycled.
It was none other than the Upper Rank Three of the Twelve Kizuki, Akaza—the very demon who had murdered Rengoku.
[Akarin's Note: Akaza is the Upper Rank 3 of the Twelve Kizuki in 'Demon Slayer'. Unlike typical demons, he retained a twisted sense of his human martial honor, strictly refusing to fight or consume women.]
Although Akaza was undeniably a ruthless villain, his popularity among fans was surprisingly high. On one hand, it was because of his incredibly heartbreaking, tragic past as the human martial artist Hakuji. On the other hand, it was because he had inexplicably maintained a twisted sense of restraint and honor even after becoming a bloodthirsty demon.
Whether it was ordinary, defenseless human women or female combatants of the Demon Slayer Corps, Akaza absolutely would not harm or kill them. To achieve his singular goal of becoming the strongest, Akaza spent the vast majority of his immortal life in brutal, solitary training. Whenever he wasn't receiving strict eradication orders from Muzan, Akaza focused entirely on honing his martial arts to perfection.
His hand-to-hand fighting style was direct, brutal, and bizarrely honorable for a creature of the night.
A villain was a villain, but he wasn't despicable or cowardly in the slightest. That inherent respect for strength was exactly why he was such a compelling antagonist.
[Do you wish to recycle the selected Character Cards?]
"Yes," Ren said firmly.
[Recycle successful! System Points refunded.]
The reason for recycling the demon was exactly the same as with Rengoku. One could easily argue that Akaza's past as Hakuji—losing his ailing father, his beloved fiancée, and his master in a series of agonizing tragedies—was even more suffocatingly tragic than Rengoku's fate. Absorbing centuries of a demon's self-loathing and martial obsession was a migraine Ren simply didn't want to deal with. It was better to just recycle him directly.
"Two whole 10-pulls and still no gold," Ren muttered, leaning back in his chair. "Is my luck just utterly terrible lately?"
Ren legitimately suspected he might have used up a significant portion of his cosmic luck during his last major crisis. After all, it used to be fairly easy for him to snag a gold card. There were even miraculous times when he had pulled two golds in a single, blessed multi-draw.
[Do you wish to perform a 10-pull?!]
"Yes! Keep them coming!"
Regardless, he still had eighty pulls left in the bank, and the System's rigid algorithms guaranteed a pity mechanic at exactly one hundred pulls. He would get a gold eventually.
The third 10-pull, however, proved to be absolutely abysmal. It wasn't just unlucky; it was insulting. He hit that dreadful forty percent probability bracket of getting absolute garbage. When the meteors crashed, there wasn't a single purple hue among them. Just a sea of useless white, green, and blue fodder.
Ren didn't even bother looking at the names. He recycled the entire batch instantly.
[Do you wish to perform a 10-pull?!]
"Yes!" Ren practically growled, directly initiating the fourth 10-pull.
Swish!
As the digital universe fractured, a blinding, dazzling pillar of golden light erupted from the center of the meteor shower, illuminating the entire room with its majestic brilliance.
"Finally! It's a gold!" Ren exhaled, a triumphant grin spreading across his face.
After several frustrating pulls without a single glimmer of gold, a creeping anxiety had begun to settle in his chest. But now, that tension instantly evaporated as the majestic, high-tier card materialized before him.
The holographic cards arranged themselves in a neat row. With a swift mental command, the golden Character Card was dramatically flipped over.
"Huh? Wait... it's him?!"
Ren couldn't help but furrow his brows in a mixture of surprise and slight skepticism when he clearly saw the person lounging on the Character Card.
The man on the card was definitely a familiar face from his memories. He had messy, shoulder-length brown hair, a perpetually lazy expression, a prominent goatee, and wore a white, jacket-like uniform over a black sash. A fragmented jawbone rested like a macabre necklace around his throat.
In the Bleach universe, this lethargic man was known as the Primera Espada, Coyote Starrk.
To be completely honest, Ren's initial reaction was deeply conflicted. Although Starrk was officially ranked as the undisputed Number One among the Espada, his actual combat performance in the anime's Karakura Town arc was notoriously poor. He simply didn't seem to live up to the terrifying, suffocating prestige that the title of First Espada demanded. In fact, Ulquiorra's overwhelmingly brutal performance in Hueco Mundo had far exceeded Starrk's showing in every conceivable metric.
But Ren quickly shook his head, correcting his own bias. In the official, underlying lore of the universe, Coyote Starrk was established as an unfathomably powerful anomaly. He was one of only two natural Vasto Lorde who had managed to evolve into an Arrancar entirely on their own, completely bypassing the need for the Hogyoku—just like Ulquiorra.
[Akarin's Note: A 'Vasto Lorde' is the absolute highest, rarest, and most powerful class of Menos (amalgamated Hollows) in the 'Bleach' universe. They are roughly human-sized and possess power that effortlessly eclipses standard Soul Reaper Captains.]
Starrk's spiritual pressure was so catastrophically dense that merely standing near him passively crushed lesser Hollows into dust. He was so impossibly strong that he was forced to split his own soul in half, creating his partner Lilynette, just so he wouldn't be completely alone in the endless white desert of Hueco Mundo.
Of course, as the Primera Espada, he possessed some truly terrifying martial skills. The ability that left the absolute deepest impression on Ren wasn't Starrk's swordsmanship, but his utterly broken mastery over the Cero.
Compared to every other Espada in existence, Starrk's Cero required absolutely no chanting, no specific combat stances, and almost zero preparation time to fire. Its velocity and raw destructive power effortlessly surpassed any other Arrancar's output. For instance, while other elite Arrancars needed several vital seconds to compress their spiritual pressure to fire a lethal Cero, Starrk could simply point a finger and casually blast a hole through a skyscraper.
And that was just in his base form.
After releasing his Resurrección, 'Los Lobos', Starrk gained access to a pair of ornate dual pistols. With those weapons, he could instantly execute his signature technique: Cero Metralleta.
[Akarin's Note:
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