Somewhere in the Forest of Menos.
Four towering crystalline trees intertwined, their massive branches hooking together to form a bizarre, elevated nest high above the forest floor.
Roar!
A strange, guttural howl erupted from the nest.
A Hollow standing roughly four or five meters tall, possessing a humanoid upper body and the lower half of a giant snake, shrieked at the dim sky.
It then looked down at a half-human, half-scorpion Hollow standing nearby and spoke with utter contempt.
“Ian Gray, you absolute piece of trash.
I gave you command of two hundred Gillians, and more than half of them have inexplicably vanished!
And you still dare to tell me you aren’t secretly eating them behind my back?!” With a vicious sweep of its snake tail, the Hollow struck the half-scorpion Ian Gray, sending him flying dozens of meters through the air and completely knocking him out of the nest.
Ian Gray scrambled back up.
Looking completely pathetic, he rushed back over and bowed subserviently to the half-snake Hollow.
“Great Lord Hubert Allen!
I swear, I am not the one devouring your troops.
I have already locked onto the Reiatsu signature of the sinner slaughtering your subordinates.
Please, allow me to lead a squad to execute him!” Looking down at the groveling Ian Gray, Hubert Allen seemed highly amused.
He clearly enjoyed the process of humiliating him.
“Fine.
I suppose a defeated, regressed failure like you wouldn’t have the guts to steal my troops anyway.
Go.
Hunt down that inferior wretch who dared to defy me, and bring me his head!” “As you command, my great Master!” A short while later, the half-scorpion Ian Gray left the massive tree nest, a dark, murderous expression on his face as he led a massive army of standard Gillians into the forest.
Halfway to their destination, Ian Gray suddenly snapped.
His massive scorpion tail whipped out, completely impaling the ordinary Gillian walking closest to him.
He tackled the giant beast to the ground and ruthlessly tore it to shreds.
“Hateful!
Hateful!
HATEFUL!” After a frantic, deranged venting of his rage, Ian’s emotions finally stabilized.
The massive horde of ordinary Gillians behind him had frozen in place, terrified out of their completely non-existent minds.
Ian Gray hadn’t always been a servant.
He used to be a lone Adjuchas roaming the Forest of Menos.
He kept to himself and absolutely despised the idea of commanding armies of mindless Gillians.
That was until the day he ran into Hubert Allen, a Hollow with roughly the exact same base combat power as him.
Though their individual strength was equal, Hubert Allen had amassed a massive horde of Gillians.
Crushed under the sheer weight of swarm tactics, Ian Gray was eventually defeated.
Hubert deliberately crippled him during the fight, permanently shattering his chance of ever evolving into a Vasto Lorde.
As if that wasn’t enough, Hubert imprisoned him.
By completely cutting him off from hunting other Hollows, Ian couldn’t consume enough Reishi to sustain his crippled body.
The starvation forced him to drop a class, regressing from a true Adjuchas down into a special Gillian.
To ensure his absolute obedience, Hubert planted a highly toxic snake venom inside Ian’s body, officially enslaving him and forcing him to act as the commander for the very Gillian army that had defeated him.
Right now, Ian Gray was leading over a hundred Gillians straight toward a specific coordinate in the Forest of Menos.
Meanwhile, Ivan was still happily farming lone Hollows.
Over the past few months, Ivan had relied heavily on his Reiatsu Concealment to completely mask his presence, slipping deep into Gillian herds and assassinating them one by one.
By his own rough estimate, he had slaughtered and devoured well over a hundred Menos Grande.
His internal Reiatsu pool was now more than ten times larger than it had been when he first dropped into the Forest of Menos.
His raw combat power had undergone a world-shattering transformation.
Yet, despite eating a mountain of Gillians, he didn’t feel the slightest urge or prerequisite spark required to evolve into a Menos Grande himself.
His physical size had stagnated at roughly twenty meters.
He hadn’t grown a single inch since the day he first arrived in the forest.
“Is just eating Gillians not enough to trigger my evolution into the Gillian class?
Don’t tell me the system requires me to actually hunt down and devour an Adjuchas just to rank up?” Ivan mentally calculated his progression path.
From what he knew of the canon lore, evolving into a Gillian was never supposed to be this difficult for a Hollow.
Then again, in the original story, there was never a Hollow that could slaughter Menos Grande like stray dogs while still stuck in the Giant Hollow phase.
Realizing he had completely broken the standard scaling system anyway, he let the frustration go.
Right in the middle of his daydreaming, Ivan spotted another lone Gillian.
He immediately drew his massive Zanpakuto and lunged forward.
With a single, devastating diagonal slash, the Menos Grande was cleanly split in two.
He extended his tail, conjuring a dark gold vortex at the stinger, and flawlessly absorbed the Gillian’s corpse with Soul Devour.
Just as he finished digesting his meal, he noticed another lone Gillian wandering aimlessly a short distance to his front-left.
“Heh.
Now isn’t that just a little too convenient?” Ivan’s instincts immediately caught the scent of a trap.
He didn’t care in the slightest.
With his current stats, even if he ran face-first into an actual Adjuchas, he was absolutely confident he could hold his ground.
As for running into a Vasto Lorde?
If a Vasto Lorde wanted him dead, they would just flash-step over and casually vaporize him in a single hit.
They wouldn’t bother setting up a breadcrumb trail of bait to lure him in.
Sure enough, immediately after slaughtering the second Gillian, he sensed the Reiatsu of a third lone Menos just a little further ahead.
“Interesting!” Ivan decided to play along.
Following the Reiatsu breadcrumbs, he walked right up and devoured the third Gillian too.
The moment the dark gold vortex finished absorbing the corpse, Ivan looked up to find himself completely surrounded by a massive wall of Gillians.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The sound of footsteps echoed through the trees.
A humanoid Hollow, roughly seven or eight meters long—less than half of Ivan’s size—walked out from behind the horde and stood directly in front of him.
The creature had a humanoid upper body but possessed two massive scorpion pincers for hands, and a thick, heavy scorpion tail dragged across the ground behind it.
The most eye-catching feature was the crimson mask covering its face; a chunk roughly the size of a human hand had been permanently shattered off.
“An Adjuchas?
No, wait…
this Reiatsu signature.
It’s a special Gillian that regressed from an Adjuchas.” Seeing the newcomer, Ivan’s battle intent instantly flared.
In the months since he had entered the Forest of Menos, he had only fought trash-tier Giant Hollows or completely mindless Gillians.
The last time he had faced a Hollow with actual human intelligence was Cirucci Sanderwicci, back in the white desert.
Finally finding a special Gillian with a functioning brain was an absolute treat.
On the other side, Ian Gray looked at Ivan’s bizarre centipede form, and more specifically, at the ten-meter-long katana gripped in his hand.
A look of deep confusion crossed his face.
“Unfamiliar Adjuchas.
Why are you so obsessed with hunting these lowly Gillians?
And that blade in your hand…
why does it look exactly like the weapons wielded by those invading Shinigami?” Hearing the half-scorpion’s words, Ivan gave a slight nod.
“He actually mistook me for an Adjuchas.
Doesn’t that mean my Reiatsu capacity has already hit the Adjuchas benchmark?” Ivan didn’t bother correcting Ian Gray.
He simply stared at the half-scorpion, his eyes burning with raw killing intent.
Ian Gray seemed to perfectly understand Ivan’s silence.
He raised a massive pincer and waved it backward, signaling the restless, roaring horde of Gillians to stand down and stay back.
He wanted a one-on-one duel.