“Cough…
just one shot completely drained me?” Ivan looked weakly at the massive crater his Cero had blasted out ahead of him, a satisfied smile creeping across his face.
The power was about half of what that mutant Gillian’s Cero had packed.
Cero was the signature move of a Menos Grande, yet Ivan had somehow managed to learn it while still only a Strong Hollow.
“Am I a genius?” Ivan scratched his fully mask-covered head with a large, pale hand, sounding rather proud of himself.
“Looks like I lack stamina, though.
Plus, the charge time is a bit long.
At this stage, I can only use this move as a last resort.” Feeling his Reiatsu hitting rock bottom, Ivan spun his tail against the sand and drilled straight down, burying his entire body beneath the surface.
As everyone knew, all of Hueco Mundo was composed of highly concentrated Reishi.
Therefore, Ivan only needed to exist in this dimension to naturally regenerate his Reiatsu.
However, to prevent being ambushed while his tank was empty, he activated his Reiatsu Concealment and hid under the sand to wait out his recovery.
Several hours later, feeling his Reiatsu had recovered to about eighty or ninety percent, Ivan finally popped back out of the sand.
After half a month of exploration, he had a clear grasp of how the different tiers of Hollows were distributed across the sea of sand.
Going any deeper meant he would easily run into packs of Gillians or even Adjuchas.
So, Ivan decided to backtrack.
He planned to farm the outer perimeter, devouring a massive number of Newborn Hollows until he evolved into a Giant Hollow, before gradually exploring further inwards.
Ivan tunneled through the sand.
Despite now being nearly eight meters long, his Reiatsu Concealment made his movements completely undetectable.
Boom!
Boom!
Rumble!
While backtracking, Ivan suddenly noticed the sand around him vibrating violently.
A series of deafening explosions echoed from straight ahead.
“There’s a Hollow fight up ahead, and it’s a bloodbath!” Relying on his Reiatsu Concealment, Ivan boldly swam through the sand toward the source of the noise.
What he saw next left him utterly stunned.
“Is this…
a hundred Hollows devouring each other?!” This hundred-Hollow free-for-all was a phenomenon where over a hundred Giant Hollows, drawn together by specific conditions, became locked in a massive battle royale of mutual consumption.
The sole survivor of this massacre would evolve into a Gillian.
“Talk about an unexpected windfall!” Seeing this, Ivan immediately pushed his Reiatsu Concealment to its absolute limit, hiding just beneath the surface and waiting for an opportunity.
Every single Hollow in the chaotic brawl ahead was a Giant Hollow—an entire tier above him.
Yet, cloaked by his concealment, Ivan weaved freely through the battlefield without a single Giant Hollow noticing his presence.
“This concealment skill is completely overpowered!” Hiding in the shallow sand, Ivan kept his eyes glued to the warring Giant Hollows, looking to scavenge some easy loot.
Suddenly, he noticed a giant octopus-shaped Hollow to his front-left.
It was steadily losing ground under the combined assault of two identical, pitch-black, hyena-shaped Giant Hollows.
The two hyenas looked exactly the same, the only difference being the length of their fangs.
Based on their coordination, it seemed their intelligence wasn’t exactly low either—they knew how to gang up on prey.
The short-fanged hyena Hollow acted as the vanguard, drawing the octopus’s attention and tangling with its eight massive tentacles.
Meanwhile, the long-fanged hyena circled around to launch sneak attacks from the rear.
Squelch!
Two sharp fangs plunged into the back of the giant octopus Hollow’s head like steel blades.
The octopus Hollow shrieked in pain, its eight tentacles flailing wildly in the air.
At the same time, it spat countless bubbles from its massive beak.
The moment these bubbles touched the two hyena Hollows, they detonated violently, engulfing both the attackers and the octopus itself in a brutal explosion.
“Looks like the big octopus has some brains, but not much,” Ivan critiqued with amusement from the sand below.
“It actually chose to blow itself up just to shake off those hyenas.
In a massive free-for-all like this, even if it gets rid of those two dogs, crippling itself in the process guarantees it won’t make it out alive!” Awooo!
The long-fanged hyena caught in the rear of the blast was blown wide open, its body covered in deep gashes.
Crimson blood flowed freely from the hill-sized hyena Hollow like a series of bloody waterfalls.
After a furious howl, the long-fanged hyena raised its right claw.
The limb suddenly swelled to massive proportions, its four sharp, thick nails extending into razor-sharp steel swords as it slashed violently downward at the giant octopus Hollow.
Slash!
Four gruesome wounds were ripped open across the back of the giant octopus Hollow, dark green blood spraying out like a fountain.
Cleaved apart along with its flesh was the bone mask resting atop the octopus’s head.
A massive, half-shattered chunk of the mask plummeted down, crashing onto the dunes.
The short-fanged hyena Hollow, having finally escaped the tangle of tentacles, wore a look of wild excitement as it rushed toward the severed piece of mask.
But just as it was about to snatch up its prize…
The sand shuddered violently.
A Hollow with a humanoid upper body and a centipede’s lower half suddenly burst from the ground, snatched the broken piece of mask—which was roughly his own size—and instantly drilled back under the sand.
Awooo!
Seeing this, the short-fanged hyena Hollow froze for a split second before throwing its head back and letting out a furious, indignant howl.
It could no longer sense the Reiatsu of the little bug that had stolen its prey.
The long-fanged hyena Hollow, still tangling with the octopus, noticed what had happened as well.
However, due to the octopus’s desperate, last-ditch counterattack, the two hyenas had no time to chase after the thief.
They were forced to team up and finish off the half-crippled octopus first.
“Whew.
Fortune favors the bold!” Miles away from the hundred-Hollow battlefield, deep beneath the sand, Ivan looked at the massive, pale mask chunk—which was nearly half the size of his own body—and smiled with absolute satisfaction.
“Massive profit right here!” Not having time to admire his loot, and to prevent the two giant hyenas from tracking him down, Ivan kept tunneling in the opposite direction for another two hours before he finally relaxed.
Under his Reiatsu Concealment, the chances of those two low-intelligence hyenas tracking him were next to zero.
Still, better safe than sorry.
Ivan slowly surfaced, repeatedly confirming that there were no other Hollows within a several-kilometer radius.
Only then did he dive back down, stopping at a depth of roughly ten meters below the surface, and began to devour the octopus Hollow’s half-mask.
Crunch, crunch.
“Not bad at all.
Tastes a bit like seaweed-flavored soda crackers!” With just one bite, Ivan realized that this half-mask contained Reishi far exceeding what had been in the giant earthworm Hollow’s severed body.
Although both were materials from Giant Hollows, the Reishi concentration was on a completely different level.
After all, one was a core mask, and the other was just scrap meat tossed aside like garbage by a mutant Gillian.