Barely.

I heard nothing after that, the only noise down in the pit was the munching of the awakened chains consuming themselves. It was really annoying, but not exactly terrifying to me. ‘Well I won’t be able to run up the wall. Seems like I will have to turn inwards for an answer.’

I closed my eyes and meditated. Soon the munching became muffled and ceased to exist to my ears altogether. When I next opened my eyes I looked at the castle that represented my soul. It lay in ruin.

Banners and flags were tattered, walls broken. The mighty wooden door lied on the ground, useless. Merc was nowhere to be seen. I stepped into the castle and into the courtyard where I had fought the knight last time. Thinking of it there were so many rooms here I had never stepped into. With no other clues I stepped through a broken door and further inside.

What followed was me walking through an ever deteriorating castle for about an hour before I found something interesting. Inside a tent that was build inside a kitchen for some reason I found metal glove. It was the right hand of Merc. After I touched it, it came to live and imposed itself on me.

It was pretty clear what I had to do it. I managed to find piece after piece of Merc’s armour, even the Zweihänder he had been using on me and after an hour only the helm was missing.

But I was also missing time. I ran, which the armour didn’t make particularly easy to do, searching franticly. The floor started to crumble and break away behind me as the castle started to fall apart completely. If I hadn’t been preoccupied with surviving I would have taken the time to mourn about the state of this proud piece of history.

I stumbled into the throne hall and was relieved to see Merc’s helmet above the thronw. What I was less relieved about was the fact that it was stuck in some kind of white goo that had arranged itself in a web all throughout the room. It looked like the stuff hollow masks were made off and seeing Urahara’s earlier remark I expected that to be the exact case.

Thankfully I had taken the sword with me. I cut through the stuff with haste but it grew rapidly and by the time I reached the helm I was enveloped by the goo. Almost unable to move I stretched out my hand towards the helmet, it was so close but I just couldn’t reach it. “Common you useless chunk of metal.” I growled. “You are always so quick on getting on my nerves, could you help me this one time?”

A weak light appeared in the empty slit of the helmet. “Master?” the metallic voice asked. “Call me the hell you want, now tilt over like 10 centimetres before I drown in my own demise.” I had expected a sudden rush of energy or some other kind of Deus Ex Machina but instead he took my request very literally and tilted towards me.

My hand finally connected. Time turned backwards and I was thrown out of my own soul to the sound of a woman’s laughter. Back in the real world I felt my original powers, maybe even more than that, surging through me. I jumped out of the pit and landed on my feet.

Urahara looked like somebody whose science project worked out 100% how he wanted it too and had just gotten an A. But my concern laid with the thing that was currently on my face. I had to forcefully pull it off before I could look at it. “What is that?” I asked in terror as I looked down at the hollow mask.

It was a weird one, at the top part numerous thin black lines meet at the middle of a long slit one could see through, under that it was completely white and smooth. Except for the two rows of teeth of course.

“The reason why you had to go through that mess in the first place, my compliments you are now officially hollowfied. More information on that later – For now I present you this.” He gave his assistant, a giant man with dark skin and sunglasses, a signal who then in turn got an oddly shaped white dummy.

“Ram your sword into that and your Bankai training can begin.”