Inside the underground cave, Ivan had long since completely devoured the suicidal crocodile Hollow.
He stretched his massive body out completely, wrapping his centipede tail around a nearby stone pillar.
Dark gold Reiatsu surged violently around him.
His aura skyrocketed, peaking in an instant.
A massive pillar of dark gold Reiatsu erupted from the underground cave, blasting straight through the sand and piercing the sky.
The sudden shockwave terrified Buddy, the little yellow dog who had stayed up on the surface to wait out Ivan’s breakthrough.
Roar!
As the dark gold pillar of light detonated, all the Newborn and Strong Hollows in the surrounding area felt a terrifying Reiatsu on par with a Menos Grande.
Panic swept through the dunes as they scattered and fled for their lives.
Not too far away, a massive Hollow roughly five meters tall with a wingspan exceeding thirty meters—resembling a bizarre cross between a giant moth and a bird, with four distinct wings on its back—stared toward Ivan’s position.
A look of wild excitement flashed across its face, and it immediately soared toward the pillar of light.
“That’s a Giant Hollow evolving into a Menos!
Why would a Menos Grande be spawning all the way out here in the Newborn Zone?
Ha!
The heavens are smiling upon me.
This is the absolute weakest moment for a newly born Menos.
If I devour it right now, I’ll definitely become a Menos Grande myself!” Thinking of the massive payoff, Cirucci Sanderwicci flapped her four wings, drastically accelerating her flight speed.
Clearly, she had mistaken Ivan’s evolution for the birth of a Gillian.
Woof, woof, woof!
The dark gold pillar of Reiatsu was slowly beginning to recede.
Waiting on the sandy perimeter, Buddy sensed the terrifying Reiatsu rapidly approaching from the sky and barked frantically, desperately trying to warn Ivan.
Screech!
In the next instant, the sky seemed to turn pitch-black.
Cirucci Sanderwicci had arrived.
Her massive wings spanned the sky like storm clouds, completely blotting out the sun.
Feeling the terrifying presence of the behemoth directly above, the yellow dog’s barking grew even more frantic.
Swish!
Swish!
Two steel-like feathers slashed down from the giant wings, aiming to easily execute the noisy, insignificant dog Hollow.
However, Buddy’s reflexes were incredibly sharp.
The pup hit the deck and rolled wildly, narrowly dodging the two lethal steel feathers by a hair’s breadth.
Woof, woof, woof!
Even after nearly being sniped, Buddy didn’t run.
It kept barking wildly to warn Ivan of the danger.
Seeing that the little dog was surprisingly slippery, Cirucci Sanderwicci couldn’t be bothered to waste any more time on such an insignificant insect.
Her eyes locked onto the fading pillar of Reiatsu, and she went into a steep dive.
She was going to devour this new Menos Grande while it was in its most vulnerable, weakened state.
“Iron Swallow Feather Kill!” Cirucci Sanderwicci violently snapped her wings again.
Dozens of razor-sharp steel feathers shot down like a volley of arrows, zeroing in directly on the center of the light pillar.
Relying on this signature killer move, she had slaughtered countless Giant Hollows in her own tier.
She was absolutely confident that it would make quick work of a newly spawned Gillian—after all, the vast majority of them were just oversized, mindless idiots.
But the scene she anticipated—the satisfying sound of steel feathers piercing flesh and the agonizing shrieks of a dying Gillian—never happened.
Instead, what echoed out was the harsh, ringing sound of metal clashing against metal.
The smoke and dust cleared, revealing a terrifying half-human, half-centipede Hollow.
It was over twenty meters long, its entire body covered in intricate gold tattoos.
Cirucci Sanderwicci’s eyes immediately froze.
“That’s not a Gillian!
It’s a Giant Hollow, just like me?
But that Reiatsu…
it’s definitely on the level of a Menos Grande!” She didn’t have time to overthink it, but she instinctively knew this bizarre Giant Hollow was not something she wanted to mess with.
Without hesitation, she fired off another volley of her Iron Swallow Feather Kill, aiming directly at the creature’s most vulnerable point—its eyes.
Watching the dozens of steel feathers hurtling toward his face, Ivan didn’t even bother trying to dodge.
It was as if the lethal projectiles were nothing more than a mild breeze.
Clang!
Clang!
Clang!
With a casual flick of his right arm, Ivan deflected every single one of the steel feathers.
Seeing that her proudly honed, tier-dominating attack hadn’t left so much as a single scratch on his arm, Cirucci Sanderwicci’s heart completely sank.
“Can we call a truce?” Cirucci Sanderwicci called out tentatively.
Everything she was seeing indicated that this half-human Hollow possessed high intelligence, just like her.
“First you attack my pet, then you try to interrupt my evolution, and now you want a truce?
Are you pulling my leg?!” Ivan stared up at the talking giant bird Hollow with utter coldness.
“We could team up and hunt the mindless Hollows together!
If we join forces, even a Gillian wouldn’t be a problem for us!” Refusing to give up, Cirucci Sanderwicci continued trying to tempt him with a partnership.
“More meaningless nonsense.
I guess it really is true—the higher the intelligence, the more terrified you are of dying.” Ivan let out a contemptuous sigh and shook his head.
Suddenly, his massive tail lashed out.
A whip of crackling lightning shot from his tail, lashing straight into the giant bird hovering in the sky.
Screech!
The lightning whip struck with blinding speed.
Cirucci Sanderwicci took the full force of the blast and plummeted from the sky, crashing violently into the sand.
Whoosh!
In the very next instant, Ivan blurred.
Using Sonído, he instantly teleported right in front of the downed Cirucci.
He slammed his right hand directly onto the bird’s head and fired a point-blank Cero.
Boom!
A deafening explosion rocked the desert, kicking up a massive storm of dust and debris.
A split second later, a hurricane-force gale swept the ground.
Cirucci Sanderwicci, now sporting a massive, bloody crater on her head, frantically flapped her wings, rapidly backpedaling to put as much distance between herself and Ivan as possible.
But it was completely useless.
Against Ivan, who had already mastered Sonído, her heavily relied-upon flight speed was nothing more than a joke.
“Impossible!
You’re not even a Menos Grande!
How can you use Sonído and Cero?!” Seeing Ivan casually execute high-tier Menos techniques back-to-back completely shattered Cirucci Sanderwicci’s will to fight.
“Cirucci Sanderwicci is willing to submit to you!
Please, take me as your servant, my powerful Master!” Ivan, who had been fully prepared to execute her, froze the moment he heard the bird Hollow’s words.
“Your name is Cirucci Sanderwicci?” “Yes!
Exactly, my future Master!” Getting direct confirmation from the bird Hollow, Ivan couldn’t hide the sudden wave of intense excitement sweeping over his face.
But that didn’t mean he was going to let the giant bird live.
His centipede tail snapped out again, firing another thick, crackling whip of lightning.
Seeing this, Cirucci Sanderwicci made a desperate, ruthless decision.
The four massive wings on her back abruptly detached and fell away.
She permanently sacrificed her most vital organs to gain a momentary, explosive burst of speed, barely managing to dodge Ivan’s lightning whip.
Ivan paused, looking at the now-bizarre, wingless form of Cirucci Sanderwicci with deep interest.
“Well, aren’t you decisive.” Her ruthless sacrifice had indeed bought her an out from the first lightning whip, but what about the second?
Ivan chased her down with another Sonído and fired a second lightning whip.
Driven into a corner, Cirucci Sanderwicci refused to cower.
Gritting her teeth, she swung her long tail like a steel cable, clashing directly with the lightning.
Sizzle!
The lightning whip tore through the air like a peerless divine blade, cleanly slicing Cirucci Sanderwicci’s tail right off.
Ivan immediately moved in for the kill.
He grabbed the giant bird’s head with both hands, gave a brutal twist, and cleanly ripped her head off her body.
Holding the severed head, he closely inspected the giant bird’s features.
It perfectly matched the canon appearance of Cirucci Sanderwicci’s Hollow form.
In the canon storyline, Cirucci Sanderwicci was a former Espada, ranked Privaron Espada No.
105, meaning she was a powerful Arrancar born from an Adjuchas-class Menos.
Yet right here, right now, she wasn’t even a Gillian.
This confirmed exactly what Ivan needed to know: he was currently sitting way, way at the beginning of the timeline, long before the main plot kicked off.
He had an absolute mountain of time to grind his stats and grow.
With this kind of head start, he’d have the capital to siphon off massive benefits once the main plot actually started, ultimately achieving true transcendence.
In the original story, Cirucci had a decent amount of screen time.
She debuted in the Arrancar arc, got defeated by Uryū Ishida, and was eventually resurrected as a zombie by Mayuri Kurotsuchi to fight the Quincies during the Thousand-Year Blood War.
Now, however, she had been ruthlessly executed by Ivan before she could even reach her full potential.
Killing her this early was absolutely going to cause some butterfly effects to the canon plotline, but Ivan couldn’t care less.
It was her own fault for picking a fight with him.
Ivan drove his centipede tail directly into Cirucci Sanderwicci’s corpse.
Instantly, the massive bird’s body dissolved into nothingness.
This was one of the brand-new abilities Ivan had acquired upon evolving into a Giant Hollow: Soul Devour.
He could now directly absorb an opponent’s Reishi through the mouthparts on his tail.
He no longer needed to manually tear apart and swallow corpses—a crude method that always resulted in a massive loss of the stored Reishi.
Soul Devour allowed him to perfectly absorb an opponent’s energy with zero waste.
More importantly, Soul Devour allowed Ivan to permanently steal one ability from a consumed opponent.
However, this ability-stealing function could only be activated once, meaning Ivan had to be incredibly careful when deciding which ability to permanently lock in.
In addition to that, he had gained a second new ability: Clone.
By tearing off a piece of his own flesh, he could create a physical clone that shared his consciousness.
The massive drawback was that creating a clone permanently burned a portion of his Reiatsu reserves.
Since he had just broken through, using the skill recklessly right now ran the massive risk of dropping him back down a tier.
He shelved the ability for the time being.
His old skills, Reiatsu Concealment and Lightning Arc, had both received substantial buffs.
His Lightning Arc could now be shaped and fired as a ranged whip attack.
And, of course, he had managed to unlock Sonído way ahead of schedule!
Overall, evolving into a Giant Hollow had fundamentally transformed Ivan’s combat power.
He estimated that right now, even if he ran straight into a standard Gillian, he would be the one walking away with the win.