67 Celestial Human

The first thing she experienced after the ecstasy was severe pain. Her head began to hurt as if it was being split with an axe. She did not have the mental capacity to withstand the knowledge that was flowing into her mind. The secrets of the universe were becoming known to her, but this is taboo for a mortal. Her consciousness was slowly blending with the Akashic records, and her existence was becoming thinner.

[Initiating Autonomous Control…]

[Sealing Akashic Records…]

[Stimulating Celestial Blood…]

[Species Evolution: Celestial Human…]

[Evolution Partially Completed, 1/3 Requirements achieved:

(X) Celestial Body

(_) Celestial Soul

(_) Celestial Mind]

Orihime was unable to listen as all of her bones were being broken and restored. The marrow in her body seemed to be completely replaced one bone at a time. The pain was unbearable at first, but the locations that were already modified were surging with power. Once half of her body was changed, her skin began ooze a black substance that quickly evaporated.

Although she was a hybrid human and soul before, she still had a mortal body. However, the process of replacing her marrow was changing her body to something more like an immortal. When the black smoke stopped seeping out of her body, her skin turned bright red. Heat waves were being emitted from the surface of her skin as her blood seemed to boil underneath.

This intense heat caused the outer layer of skin to burn off, leaving only the new, smooth, and flawless jade-like skin underneath. Her hair also began to grow twice as long, the new strands containing a luster and sheen unlike before. During the process and extreme pain, Orihime went blind and deaf. When her two senses returned, her spatial awareness improved several folds due to the enhancement of her senses.

Soul's in this world have a major limitation in terms of spiritual power and Reiatsu. They all share the same feature, vents on their wrist are the outlets for Reiatsu. This is easy to exploit, as even Urahara attempted to use this method to cause Aizen to implode once before. Such a thing never made sense to Orihime, and while she was going through these changes, she could sense several spots being unblocked around her body along with the recreation of her bone marrow and skin.

After calming down from the lessening pain, Orihime was struck with another wave. All of her muscles began tearing and reforming. However, along with that, pathways that weaved through and around the body within the muscular system seemed to be reformed and strengthened. She eventually realized that increased sense of pain was due to her nervous system being changed at the same time as her muscles. However, to her surprise, the change was a spiritual one.

The nerves in her body became vessels to carry Reiatsu. This not only vastly improved her reaction time, but also turned every nerve cluster into an outlet for Reiatsu, instead of just on her wrists. After the pain subsided and her whole body simply throbbed in soreness from the transformation, she realized that her Hakusui had moved. In fact, now she knew where it was located.

The Hakusui which contained a secondary dimension filled with a Soul's spiritual power was actually placed at the heart. This made a fair bit of sense considering the Soul Chain, which is intrinsically connected to the Hakusui, also typically formed at the location of the heart. The reason the wrists were the vents for Reiatsu was because of the connection of the pulse to the heart through the radial artery.

However, her Hakusui had moved to the region of her solar plexus, just below her ribs in the center of her torso. Instead of Reiatsu traveling through her blood vessels, it seemed to now run along her nervous system. Orihime cut her finger and wanted to see the outcome of the evolution on her physical state. Only a light cut appeared even though she was quite heavy handed, and a droplet of reddish-purple blood dripped onto the ground.

What happened next was simply remarkable. The ground around the droplet began to harden and a white sprout grew out from the center of the area. After a few minutes, a white fruit grew and ripened. Orihime picked it, and the plant turned to sand again, mixing in with the sand that had gotten soft. She inspected the fruit and realized it contained a very high concentration of spirit particles. It was as if her blood was able to draw in the spirit particles around it and condense them.

What really amazed her was that the fruit was brimming with life energy as well. She ate it out of curiosity and could feel her clothes on the brink of exploding from how delicious it was. Orihime didn't feel any change in her spiritual power, so she determined that since it originated from her, it wouldn't benefit her from eating it. Realizing the massive concentration of life force inside the fruit, she decided to look within her Hakusui.

The sight was completely beyond her imagination. Within the miniature world, an artificial sun had formed and some great turmoil had turned the plains into a hilly area. Large crags and peaks had formed in some corners. What surprised her was that a large ocean had formed which was her life's accumulation of spiritual energy. The sun seemed to be related to her evolution towards the so called 'Celestial Human.' The meaning of Celestial Body was quite literal—a star.

The next step was for her to create a Celestial Soul. Hogyoku had left the information on that for her after sealing everything else so that she could properly prepare herself for the next step. A Celestial Soul is a projection of her soul. The waters of her Hakusui are not calm. The waves and ripples obscure her true self and shroud the Celestial Soul. Once she is able to make the ocean completely still, the Celestial Soul will form from the reflection.

This is stepping into a new realm of self-awareness that creates an infant soul based on her experiences and powers. The infant soul is pure and without thoughts. The next step is to fuse the Celestial Body and the Celestial Soul. This will mature the infant to perfectly reflect Orihime's true self. Once she completes that stage, the final step will be to relive her life through the true self. This will put together all of the fragments of her mind and incorporate it into the true self. Then, when Mind, Body, and Soul are one, Orihime will complete her apotheosis into a Celestial Human. The benefits are near-immortality. As long as energy exists, she would exist, since the Celestial Human must shed away their flesh and become energy.

Although she wanted to avoid this outcome, Orihime could not have expected Yhwach to force her down this blind alley. His Reiatsu combined with the hogyoku's abrupt awakening forced this path. If she were stronger, the awakening of hogyoku would not have been an issue. However, since hogyoku had to intervene and push her limits, this was the result. The origin of the evolution was a mystery to Orihime, but she was fairly certain it was related to the Quincy blood. It did come from a 'god' after all.

The technique for calming the raging ocean in her Hakusui was quite boring. It was simply meditation and consolidation. The reason the ocean was raging was because the spiritual power was switching between a liquid and gaseous state, to put it simply. Although she had full control of the Reiatsu output before, she just opened sixty-two more channels of energy so the balance between the storage and output was broken.

However, that problem could be set aside for the moment. What Orihime was more interested with was discovering the method to create clones using Reiatsu and spirit particles. Orihime released her bankai and formed a blank doll with Kido. Then, she transformed into Gin Ichimaru and sliced his finger. Then he flicked his hand and the droplet of blood merged with the doll. A large amount of Reiatsu fused with the doll, and it took the form of Gin. Orihime then transformed back to herself, but the clone stayed the same. He was even able to form his Zanpakuto with ease.

Orihime took the liberty of creating a mask identical to hers. This was the plain white mask with simple features and no openings. She felt connected to the clone and could somewhat communicate telepathically. She wanted to test the limits so she had him go as far away as he could. After around ten-thousand kilometers, the telepathic link was cut off. When he returned, he seemed to be fine, however the Reiatsu reserves had dropped from the required maintenance of existing.

"Wonderful. Since Gin is the weakest Soul Reaper ego I have, perhaps I should go strip some memories from other Soul Reapers to add to my army. I don't need to kill them, just take a few decades. Soul Reapers are long lived anyway…"