“Zzt!” Lightning covered his entire body.
The lightning whip in his hand lashed out relentlessly, obliterating a Giant Hollow with every strike.
After evolving into a Giant Hollow himself, Ivan’s mastery over his Lightning Arc had reached a completely new level.
“Crack!” Carrying the devastating power of lightning and absolute brute force, the whip sliced a worm-like Giant Hollow cleanly in half.
Immediately after, Ivan’s massive tail shot forward, activating Soul Devour.
“I really love this Soul Devour!” Just like that, Ivan fought and fed simultaneously, devouring the defeated Giant Hollows on the spot.
With every kill, his Reiatsu ticked upward!
As a result, despite the intense chain of battles, Ivan showed absolutely no signs of exhaustion.
In fact, he was only growing stronger the longer he fought, acting like a tireless killing machine ruthlessly harvesting the lives of these Giant Hollows!
Every swing of his lightning whip claimed another life.
Ivan had just whipped a primate-like Giant Hollow to death when three more Giant Hollows lunged at his back, fully intending to tear him to shreds.
Unfortunately for them, the moment their claws were about to make contact, Ivan blurred.
He instantly teleported hundreds of feet away.
Sonído.
After fully digesting the primate Hollow’s Reiatsu, Ivan calmly turned his head to look at the Giant Hollows that had tried to ambush him, a cruel smile spreading across his face.
“Don’t rush.
Take your time, it’s your turn next!” The pack of Hollows that had previously been fighting each other had completely shifted their aggro, teaming up to siege Ivan.
But it was completely useless.
For Ivan right now, slaughtering Giant Hollows in his own tier was as easy as slaughtering chickens.
Before long, out of the twenty-something Giant Hollows that had been brawling, only a single indigo giant lizard Hollow remained.
Sensing the lizard Hollow’s incredibly weak Reiatsu, Ivan shook his head.
This thing must have just barely evolved into a Giant Hollow.
Its Reiatsu and size were completely underwhelming compared to the rest of the pack, which was exactly why Ivan had saved it for last.
At this moment, the lizard Hollow watched Ivan stand there like a god of death, having effortlessly wiped out over a dozen opponents of the same tier.
Even with its low intelligence, it was trembling violently.
This was a fear that stemmed from the very depths of its soul!
Ivan couldn’t even be bothered to look at it closely.
He just casually flicked his lightning whip.
“Crack!” With a sharp snapping sound, half of the lizard Hollow’s body was blown to bloody chunks by the whip.
Just as Ivan was about to activate Soul Devour and suck the lizard dry, he suddenly noticed something bizarre.
The blasted half of the lizard’s body was rapidly sprouting countless fleshy tendrils.
The flesh squirmed and knitted together at terrifying speed, perfectly reconstructing the lizard Hollow’s missing half.
The only difference was that after the reconstruction, the lizard’s physical size had shrunk slightly, and its Reiatsu had dropped.
Seeing this, Ivan’s previously bored eyes shot wide open.
Beneath his pale mask, his face twisted into an expression of absolute ecstasy.
“That’s…
High-Speed Regeneration!” “Hahahaha!!!” “I’ve been searching high and low, only to have it dropped right into my lap!” Ivan threw his head back and laughed maniacally.
His massive tail shot out, wrapping tightly around the lizard and pinning it in place.
He immediately activated Soul Devour.
But this time, he wasn’t just draining its Reiatsu.
He was activating the skill’s one-time use function: Ability Theft.
The moment he had unlocked Ability Theft, the very first thing Ivan thought of was High-Speed Regeneration—the ultimate, broken ability exclusive to Hollows.
Because High-Speed Regeneration was incredibly rare and usually only possessed by high-tier Hollows like Adjuchas and above, he had assumed it would be a long time before he could get his hands on it.
He never expected to run into a Giant Hollow with High-Speed Regeneration on his very first day in the Forest of Menos.
“The Forest of Menos really is my promised land!” Ivan squeezed the lizard Hollow tightly with his centipede tail and blasted it with a surge of Lightning Arc, charring it black and forcing its jaws wide open in agony.
Seizing the opening, Ivan shoved the tip of his tail directly down the lizard’s throat and triggered Soul Devour!
To be clear, Ivan wasn’t doing this out of some bizarre fetish.
This physical connection was a strict prerequisite for activating Ability Theft.
He obviously didn’t have any weird interests in a giant lizard.
“Whimper!
Whimper!” The lizard Hollow’s four claws twitched wildly as its body convulsed.
Its eyes went dead and hollow, as if it had just been robbed of the most important thing in its existence.
A flash of light erupted, and the lizard Hollow’s body rapidly shrank, regressing until it was only four or five meters long.
“Did it…
regress back into a Strong Hollow?” Ivan paused, staring at the lizard’s transformation.
Then, he gathered a spark of golden lightning on his right index finger and dragged it across the pale, hardened carapace of his left wrist.
His flesh parted instantly, and dark red blood began to flow.
But in the very next second, the flesh around the wound squirmed.
The deep cut knit itself back together, completely vanishing.
If it weren’t for the smear of wet blood still left on his arm, Ivan would have thought he had hallucinated the injury.
“High-Speed Regeneration.
I actually have High-Speed Regeneration!” Looking at his perfectly healed arm, Ivan burst into laughter once again.
In the Bleach universe, attack power scaled to absurd levels.
Fights between powerhouses were often decided in a single, fatal exchange.
Having High-Speed Regeneration meant that as long as the enemy couldn’t completely vaporize him in one shot, he could drag them into a brutal battle of attrition!
More importantly, when he eventually evolved into an Adjuchas, he wouldn’t have to worry about the curse.
Normally, if an Adjuchas lost even a small piece of their body in a fight, they permanently lost their ability to evolve.
But with High-Speed Regeneration, Ivan would never have to worry about that crippling weakness!
Thinking of this, the corners of Ivan’s mouth practically reached his ears.
Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced back at the little lizard that had lost its High-Speed Regeneration and regressed into a Strong Hollow.
Ivan unleashed Soul Devour on it once more—only this time, he wasn’t stealing an ability.
He was just eating it!
And just like that, the regressed Strong Hollow lizard was sucked completely dry.
“It’s not that I want to eat you.
It’s just that without your ability, and having regressed back to a Strong Hollow, there’s zero chance you’d survive down here in the Forest of Menos.
Instead of living a life of suffering, you might as well become my nourishment and let me carry you to eternity!
Don’t thank me.
You gave me an incredibly important ability like High-Speed Regeneration, so consider this my way of repaying you.” “Sigh, my heart is just too soft.
It’s a real flaw.” Just like that, upon arriving in the Forest of Menos, Ivan slaughtered nineteen Giant Hollows in a single battle.
Oh, wait—eighteen.
The lizard had regressed to a Strong Hollow at the end, so it didn’t count as a Giant Hollow kill.
Through this battle, Ivan had not only acquired High-Speed Regeneration, but his overall Reiatsu had also increased by over ten percent.
“Eighteen Giant Hollows, and my Reiatsu only went up by ten percent?
I wonder how I stack up against that mutant Gillian now.” Every time his strength took a leap, he couldn’t help but compare himself to that mutant Gillian.
That specific Menos had left an impossibly deep impression on him when he first arrived in Hueco Mundo.
In fact, it was precisely because he had seen it use Cero and Sonído that Ivan had been able to grasp those two overpowered techniques so early on.