"Boom!"
The single strike was like a spring thunderclap, which was why Ronan named this move Thunderclap Slash.
As this strike was unleashed, Ronan's spiritual pressure instantly depleted by about seventy percent. A thick, dark golden lightning, carrying an unstoppable blade aura, slashed towards Hubert Allen!
"What a fast blade!"
Feeling Ronan's earth-shattering strike, Hubert Allen immediately used his innate ability, opening his mouth to spew out a large amount of black mist poison. These black mist poisons then intertwined to form a giant poisonous snake, which collided with Ronan's Thunderclap Slash.
At the same time, the Cero from the mouths of many of Hubert Allen's Gillian had finished charging. Hundreds of black-purple beams aimed at Ronan and fired simultaneously.
"Bang!"
The dragon-like Thunderclap Slash and the giant poisonous snake collided, producing an earth-shattering roar.
The Thunderclap Slash split the giant snake in two, including Hubert Allen who was hiding behind the giant snake.
However, at the same moment, hundreds of Cero also simultaneously blasted towards Ronan!
Immediately, sand and stones flew, and dust filled the sky.
"This... impossible, I'm not willing!!!"
With a final terrified scream, Hubert Allen's body exploded from the middle.
"Ptooey!"
As the dust slowly dissipated, Ronan stood in the giant crater, slowly spitting out a mouthful of blood. At the same time, his entire shoulder had been blasted out of existence.
"Fortunately, I dodged quickly, otherwise I would have been completely blown apart!"
Looking at the messy surroundings, Ronan said with lingering fear.
After unleashing his strongest strike, Ronan, facing the critical moment of being blasted by hundreds of Cero, used Cero to blast a hole in the ground and hid inside to avoid a large amount of damage from the Cero.
Even so, his entire shoulder was still blown off.
However, he fortunately protected his head and internal organs tightly, and soon, the flesh at his grotesque wound began to squirm. In a short while, Ronan, who was originally severely injured and on the verge of death, recovered completely.
Although he recovered, Ronan's aura was extremely weak. His spiritual pressure was almost completely depleted.
But Ronan knew it was not yet time to relax. So, he forced himself to raise his spirits, used Sonido, and stumbled to Hubert Allen's remains, activating Soul Eater to devour him.
Without time to digest it carefully, he raised his blade and charged towards the hundreds of Gillian around him.
These Gillian had no intelligence and were slow-moving due to being controlled by snake venom. Without a leader, they were even dumber than ordinary Gillian, which allowed Ronan to go on a rampage in such a weakened state, devouring each and every one of them.
When Ronan had killed half of them and had not yet carefully digested, a feeling of fullness came over him. Ronan could only temporarily suppress it and continue the slaughter.
Only after killing all the Gillian present, Ronan flew up to what was originally Hubert Allen's lair. Only then did he stop suppressing his impending promotion and carefully digested the spiritual particles he had previously devoured with Soul Eater.
Ronan's entire body curled up, and waves of dark golden spiritual pressure surged out from his body like a tide, one after another.
Immediately, a dark golden pillar of light, like a sky-reaching pillar, extended upwards to the heavens and downwards to the netherworld.
At this moment, within several hundred miles centered on Ronan, everyone sensed this vast aura.
A hundred miles north of Ronan, a lone Centaur-shaped Adjuchas suddenly looked towards Ronan's direction with a feeling of dread, his eyes filled with terror.
"Is an Adjuchas evolving into a Vasto Lord?"
"What a wonderful feeling, is this the leap of life?!"
At this moment, right in the center of the light pillar, Ronan cried out in comfort. He felt as if he was being enveloped by warm hands, a feeling as pleasant as a spring breeze, beyond words.
Immediately after, the pillar of light dissipated, revealing Ronan's hundred-meter-tall figure.
After advancing to Gillian, Ronan did not transform into the common body shape like ninety-nine percent of other Hollows. Instead, he became more human-like.
His entire body was as black as ink, covered in dark golden lightning patterns. His original centipede tail had transformed into an armor-like existence and grown together with his helmet-like mask, wrapping around Ronan's back.
The Hollow hole, originally located at his waist and the center of his tail, had moved to the position of his heart.
Feeling the surging spiritual pressure within him, Ronan had no doubt that the Adjuchas who had previously given him a tough fight would now probably not even be able to withstand his ordinary strike!
"Thump, thump, thump!"
Ronan, over a hundred meters tall, looked at his skeleton-like feet and excitedly jumped, causing the ground to shake three times!
Ronan surveyed himself. Of his entire body, only his feet most resembled a Gillian. However, Ronan was already very satisfied with this, as he could previously only move around by his tail. Now, having regrown his feet, he was very happy.
"You've gotten bigger too?"
Ronan looked at the Asauchi in his hand, which had transformed into a forty-meter-long blade, and smiled knowingly. This blade had scaled up proportionally with Ronan.
"Hehe, but then again…"
With a strange laugh from Ronan, his body rapidly shrunk, surprisingly transforming from a hundred-meter size to only about two meters tall, extremely similar to a normal human. The giant Asauchi also shrunk back to the size of a normal sword as Ronan condensed his spiritual pressure.
This was a new ability Ronan awakened after advancing to Gillian—As You Wish.
The only function of As You Wish was to control the enlargement and reduction of his body within a certain proportion. After Ronan used As You Wish and shrunk his body to its smallest, he became his current appearance.
With Ronan's current humanoid appearance and human-like physique, combined with his immense spiritual pressure, anyone who saw him would probably shout "Vasto Lord!"
Ronan decided that he would use this smallest form as his regular state from now on. After all, the Gillian's true body was too large; even with Camo, he could only hide his spiritual pressure, not his mountain-like physique.
Ronan casually swung his blade, and a powerful blade light surged out, causing more than a dozen towering trees to fall.
"Not bad, not bad! The power is more than ten times stronger than before my advancement."
Ronan's eyes immediately lit up.
"I wonder if I can defeat Ito Kai now?"
Currently, having just advanced, he was full of fighting spirit. Although he had only advanced to a lower-level Hollow, a Gillian, his Gillian was clearly not to be judged by common sense. After all, in the original work, no Gillian was seen slaughtering Adjuchas like dogs.
And while Ito Kai was known as the former Third Seat of the Eleventh Division, his actual combat ability was among the best of all Vice-Captains, making him perfectly suited to test his current strength.
Therefore, Ronan no longer hesitated and immediately mimicked his previous method, injecting his spiritual pressure into his Zanpakuto, and at the same time, communicating with the inner world hidden within the blade with his consciousness.
With a familiar sensation of the world spinning, the scenery around Ronan began to blur. Then, the towering trees of the Great Hollow Forest surprisingly transformed into low, earthen houses. It was the Rukongai from Ito Kai's memories.
"It really works!"