“Roar!” “Roar!” “Roar!” Hundreds of Gillians roared in unison, following Hubert Allen’s lead.
With the overlapping shockwaves of their deafening cries, Ivan felt the flow of his own Reiatsu stagnate slightly inside his body.
A combo skill?
To think this Adjuchas could command so many mindless Gillians to execute a synchronized suppression technique.
Ivan felt a headache coming on.
“You reek of Ian Gray.
Good riddance to that fool,” a sinister voice echoed.
“But to think he actually leaked my Reiatsu signature to lure you here.
A Menos Grande wielding a Shinigami’s Zanpakutō?
Fascinating.” A half-man, half-snake Hollow, measuring only four or five meters tall, slithered out from the giant tree nest.
He hovered above a massive branch, looking down at Ivan with arrogant disdain.
“Did you really think you could kill me alone?
You’re throwing your life away.
The moment you killed Ian Gray, the sliver of Reiatsu I left inside his core alerted me.
I’ve had my entire army on standby, waiting for you.” Ivan looked up at the half-snake perched on the branch.
Compared to Ivan’s massive twenty-meter frame, Hubert was quite small, yet the tyrannical Reiatsu radiating from his body proved beyond a doubt that he was the absolute ruler of this herd.
It was exactly the same foreign Reiatsu Ivan had sensed inside the special Gillian earlier.
Truth be told, this was Ivan’s first time encountering a legitimate, full-fledged Adjuchas, so he studied his opponent with genuine curiosity.
“I will give you one chance to swear fealty to me,” the Adjuchas named Hubert Allen declared.
Like the half-scorpion before him, Hubert clearly mistook Ivan for a fellow Adjuchas.
“Mutilate your own body, allow me to implant my snake venom into your core, and pledge your undying loyalty to me.
Do that, and I will spare your life today.
Well?” His demand for self-mutilation was an obvious ploy to force Ivan’s physical form to regress below the Adjuchas stage.
What Hubert couldn’t possibly know was that Ivan wasn’t an Adjuchas, nor even a Gillian.
He was, technically speaking, just an exceptionally powerful Giant Hollow.
Snap!
Hubert Allen snapped his fingers.
Instantly, the hundreds of Gillians surrounding Ivan began charging Ceros, locking a sea of glowing crimson beams dead onto his position.
Seeing this, Ivan’s headache worsened.
After a brief, heavy silence, Ivan raised his right hand, the one holding his massive Zanpakutō, and brought it down in a vicious arc, cleanly severing his own left arm.
Crimson blood erupted from the stump like a geyser.
“I pledge…
my loyalty…
to Lord Hubert Allen.” Ivan dropped the Zanpakutō to the ground.
Using his right hand, he picked up his severed left arm and raised it high overhead, offering it humbly toward the half-snake.
Stunned by this sudden, brutal display of absolute submission, Hubert paused for a moment before bursting into roaring laughter.
“Hahaha!
Excellent!
I like a decisive subordinate!” He snapped his fingers again, and the hundreds of Gillians instantly aborted their Cero charges.
Using Sonído, Hubert appeared right in front of Ivan, reaching out to claim the severed arm for a quick snack.
Suddenly, he noticed flesh and sinew rapidly knitting together at Ivan’s bleeding stump.
In the blink of an eye, a brand-new left arm regenerated.
That same newly formed arm instantly manifested a dark-gold Lightning Whip and lashed out directly at Hubert Allen’s face.
“This is…
High-Speed…” Swish!
Snapping out of his shock, Hubert retreated at blinding speed, but the Lightning Whip followed him like a shadow clinging to bone.
As fast as Hubert was, Ivan’s whip was faster.
It struck the snake Hollow dead center in the face.
“Roar!” Taking the blast point-blank, the half-snake let out an earth-shattering howl of agony.
When the smoke cleared, a jagged chunk of his white mask had been blasted completely away!
Trickles of dark crimson blood seeped from the cracked edge of the mask, running down his pale cheek.
“You dare damage my true form!!!” Hubert Allen shrieked in absolute madness.
His body was damaged.
Worse, it was his mask, the most vital component of a Hollow’s existence.
This meant his path forward was forever severed; he would never have the chance to evolve into a supreme Vasto Lorde.
From this day on, he would have to continuously devour Gillians just to stave off regression and cling to his Adjuchas status.
This treacherous rat in front of him not only possessed High-Speed Regeneration, the ultimate, most coveted ability among all Menos, but had also just destroyed Hubert’s entire evolutionary future.
“I’ll tear you apart alive!
I’ll rip you to shreds!” Driven entirely mad, Hubert moved to command his Gillian army into a tactical formation to bombard Ivan to dust.
But Ivan wasn’t about to give him the chance.
With a swift motion of his hand, the Zanpakutō on the ground flew back into his grip on its own.
He immediately followed up with Sonído, appearing right in Hubert’s face to deliver a flurry of savage slashes.
Forced on the defensive, the half-snake repeatedly used Sonído to retreat.
At the same time, the nails on his hands instantly elongated.
Fueled by black-red Reiatsu, the ten razor-sharp nails shot out like ballistic missiles, clashing violently against Ivan’s flurry of sword strikes.
The impacts kicked up a massive cloud of dust and debris.
“Despicable!
You lowly, backstabbing rat!” Ivan’s shameless combo of a fake surrender directly into a point-blank ambush had completely overwhelmed Hubert’s rhythm.
“Shut up.” Ignoring Hubert’s curses, Ivan slightly raised his left hand.
In a fraction of a second, he charged a black-red Cero and fired it straight at Hubert’s face.
Simultaneously, Reiatsu gathered at the tip of Hubert’s snake tail, firing off a black-red Cero of his own to intercept.
Boom!
The two Ceros collided mid-air, causing a massive explosion that further blanketed the battlefield in smoke.
But Hubert’s Cero, despite being fired later, overpowered Ivan’s.
The beam pierced straight through the clash and blasted a bloody hole right through Ivan’s abdomen.
Ivan coughed up blood.
“Figures.
Challenging a true Adjuchas while two tiers down is still pushing it.” While Ivan’s raw Reiatsu was greater than the regressed special Gillian, Ian Gray, there was still a tangible gap between him and a genuine, peak-condition Adjuchas.
He had only managed to wound Hubert initially through a dirty, point-blank ambush.
Even though Ivan’s sneak attack had successfully shattered a piece of Hubert’s mask and permanently damaged his form, the subsequent loss of power and regression was a slow, gradual process.
Right here and now, Hubert Allen was still a bona fide, full-strength Adjuchas.
In a life-and-death struggle like this, showing weakness meant death.
Granulations of flesh writhed violently around Ivan’s stomach as his High-Speed Regeneration kicked in, perfectly repairing the massive gaping wound in seconds.
However, healing such catastrophic damage put a heavy tax on his Reiatsu reserves.
Knowing he couldn’t win a battle of attrition, Ivan decided to put everything on the line to end the fight instantly.
Catching his breath, Hubert watched in horror as the devastating wound he had just inflicted was flawlessly knit back together.
“Damn it all!
If only I had High-Speed Regeneration, I could repair my form…” Pure, unadulterated jealousy consumed Hubert Allen’s mind.
Enraged, he commanded his bewildered Gillian legion to immediately bombard Ivan with Ceros.
At the exact same time, Ivan knew he couldn’t delay any longer.
If he got bogged down in a prolonged siege against an entire army, he would die.
Channeling every last drop of Reiatsu in his body into his blade, Ivan prepared the strongest strike he could possibly unleash.
“Thunderclap Slash!” This ultimate technique was the perfect fusion of the Zanjutsu he had inherited from Umi Ito’s memories and his own innate lightning manipulation.
It was Ivan’s absolute trump card!