Boom!
The slash erupted with the deafening roar of spring thunder, which was exactly why Ivan had named the technique Thunderclap Slash.
With this single swing, roughly seventy percent of Ivan’s Reiatsu was instantly drained.
A massive, dark-gold thunderbolt, carried by an unstoppable wave of sword pressure, tore straight toward Hubert Allen!
“Too fast!” Feeling the earth-shattering power of Ivan’s strike, Hubert Allen immediately unleashed his own innate ability.
He opened his jaws and spewed out a massive cloud of black, toxic mist.
The venomous fog rapidly intertwined, forming a gigantic serpent of pure poison that lunged to intercept the Thunderclap Slash.
At the exact same moment, the horde of Gillians under Hubert’s command finished charging their Ceros.
Hundreds of black-purple beams fired in perfect unison, all locked dead onto Ivan.
Kaboom!
The dragon-like Thunderclap Slash collided with the venomous serpent in a deafening explosion.
The thunderous slash cleaved the poison construct cleanly in two, ripping right through to Hubert Allen who was hiding directly behind it.
But simultaneously, those hundreds of Ceros rained down on Ivan’s position!
For a moment, dirt, rocks, and blinding dust swallowed the entire battlefield.
“This…
is impossible!
I refuse to accept this!!!” With one final, terrified shriek, Hubert Allen’s body violently split down the middle and burst apart.
“Tch!” As the dust slowly settled, Ivan stood in the center of a massive crater, spitting out a mouthful of bloody phlegm.
His entire shoulder had been blown off, vanishing without a trace.
“Good thing I ducked fast, or I would’ve been blasted to meat paste!” Ivan muttered, lingering dread washing over him as he surveyed the devastated surroundings.
In that critical split-second after unleashing his ultimate strike, facing the synchronized bombardment of hundreds of Ceros, Ivan had fired a Cero into the ground to blast open a makeshift bunker, diving in to evade the brunt of the destructive volley.
Even so, his entire shoulder had been vaporized.
Fortunately, he had shielded his head and vital organs.
Granulations of flesh soon began to wriggle and weave around the gruesome wound.
In just a few moments, the heavily injured Ivan was completely restored.
But while his body was healed, his aura had plummeted to rock bottom.
The Reiatsu reserves within him were nearly bone-dry.
Ivan knew this was no time to relax.
Forcing himself to stay conscious, he stumbled over to the shredded remains of Hubert Allen using a sluggish Sonido and activated Soul Devour, swallowing the Adjuchas whole.
Without waiting to properly digest the massive influx of energy, he hoisted his blade and charged at the hundreds of surrounding Gillians.
These Gillians possessed no sapience, and sluggish from the lingering effects of the snake venom controlling them, they were now even clumsier than ordinary Menos without their commander.
Because of this, even in his severely weakened state, Ivan was able to go on an absolute slaughter, butchering and devouring them one by one.
Halfway through his killing spree, before he could even digest his previous meals, an overwhelming sensation of absolute fullness hit him.
Ivan could only forcefully suppress the urge to evolve, continuing his bloody harvest.
It wasn’t until he had exterminated every last Gillian present that Ivan ascended into the massive canopy nest that had once belonged to Hubert.
Only then did he stop suppressing the violent evolutionary urge surging through him, focusing entirely on digesting the staggering amount of Reishi he had absorbed via Soul Devour.
Ivan’s massive body curled into a tight ball.
Pulses of dark-gold Reiatsu erupted from him like tidal waves, crashing out one after another.
Suddenly, a colossal pillar of dark-gold light blasted upward, piercing the bleak heavens and grounding into the depths of Hueco Mundo like a cosmic tether.
Every entity within a radius of hundreds of miles felt the oppressive, majestic aura radiating from Ivan’s position.
A hundred miles to the north, a solitary centaur-shaped Adjuchas suddenly stopped, snapping its head toward Ivan’s direction with eyes wide in sheer terror.
“Is…
is an Adjuchas evolving into a Vasto Lorde?!” “What a glorious feeling.
So this is the true leap of life!” Standing directly in the center of the light pillar, Ivan let out a groan of pure comfort.
He felt as if he were being wrapped in countless warm hands, a sensation as soothing as a spring breeze and utterly indescribable.
Soon after, the pillar of light dissipated, revealing Ivan’s newly reformed body, now towering at a staggering one hundred meters tall.
Upon advancing to the Gillian stage, Ivan did not morph into the generic, conical black-cloaked form like ninety-nine percent of all Menos Grande.
Instead, his appearance had become far more humanoid.
His skin was pitch black, traced all over with intricate, dark-gold lightning patterns.
His previous centipede-like lower body had transformed into a tough, armor-like carapace that fused seamlessly with his helmet-style mask, wrapping protectively down his spine.
The Hollow hole that had previously been situated at the junction of his torso and tail had moved upward, now resting squarely over his heart.
Feeling the vast, oceanic depths of the Reiatsu now surging through his veins, Ivan had zero doubt in his mind: the very same Adjuchas that had nearly pushed him to the brink of death earlier wouldn’t even be able to block a casual, basic sword swing from him now!
Thud!
Thud!
Thud!
Staring down at his skeletal, humanoid feet, the hundred-meter-tall Ivan hopped in excitement, causing the very earth beneath him to quake violently with every bounce.
Inspecting his new form, those bony feet were the only part of him that actually resembled a traditional Gillian.
But Ivan was more than satisfied.
After spending his entire Hollow life slithering around on a centipede tail, regaining a pair of functional legs was a joy in itself.
“You grew too, huh?” Ivan chuckled, looking at the Zanpakuto in his hand.
The Asauchi had scaled up perfectly with him, now extending into a colossal forty-meter-long blade.
“Heh.
But still…” With a mischievous chuckle, Ivan’s massive frame began to shrink rapidly.
Down from a hundred meters, he compressed until he stood roughly two meters tall, bearing an uncanny resemblance to a normal human.
The oversized Asauchi simultaneously shrank down alongside his compacted Reiatsu, returning to the size of a standard katana.
This was the new innate ability Ivan had awakened upon reaching the Gillian stage: Morph.
Morph served only one function: it allowed him to scale his physical size up or down within a certain limit.
By pushing Morph to its absolute minimum limit, Ivan had achieved this perfectly humanoid compression.
Standing there with a distinctly humanoid build, coupled with an impossibly dense, suffocating Reiatsu, anyone who laid eyes on him now would scream “Vasto Lorde!” without a second thought.
Ivan decided to adopt this compressed state as his default form going forward.
A Gillian’s true body was simply too massive.
Even with Reiatsu Concealment masking his spiritual signature, he couldn’t exactly hide a body the size of a mountain.
Ivan casually swung his sword.
A tyrannical wave of sword pressure erupted from the blade, effortlessly chopping down over a dozen towering quartz trees in the distance.
“Not bad, not bad at all!
This output is easily ten times stronger than before.” Ivan’s eyes lit up.
“I wonder if I could beat Umi Ito right now?” Fresh off his evolution, his will to fight was at an all-time high.
Though he had technically only just reached the lowest tier of Menos Grande, the Gillian stage, he clearly couldn’t be judged by common sense.
After all, nowhere in canon had a Gillian slaughtered an Adjuchas like a dog.
And while Umi Ito was only titled the 3rd Seat of the 11th Squad, his actual combat prowess ranked near the very top even among Lieutenants.
That made his memory-ghost the perfect sparring partner to test out Ivan’s new strength.
Without hesitating, Ivan replicated his previous method.
He began injecting his Reiatsu directly into the Zanpakuto while simultaneously synchronizing his consciousness with the inner world hidden within the blade.
After a familiar bout of intense vertigo, his surroundings began to blur.
The towering quartz trees of the Forest of Menos faded away, replaced by rows of low-slung earthen shacks.
It was the Rukongai, ripped straight from Umi Ito’s memories.
“It actually worked!”