The palms that Ichibei continued to grow in size and intensity but when he saw Kisuke's pink, star-like eyes shine in a strange glint, he suddenly felt his spine shuddering as a foreboding premonition alarmed his instincts.
He didn't know what suddenly changed but one thing is certain. He has to kill Kisuke at this very moment.
Ichibei stopped gathering power and clasped his hands once again with even greater force than the first one.
Without any air resistance, the palms traveled multiple times faster than the speed of sound and they silently and almost instantaneously slammed into Kisuke.
The next instant, a huge and blinding explosion lit up the spot where Kisuke was as if numerous high-yield nuclear bombs were detonated at the same time.
The heat from it was enough to completely scorch a country and the shockwave it produced was enough to wipe an entire continent's worth of lives. Despite this, Ichibei made sure that all of the impact and energy was concentrated on his target and it was enough to create several instances of nanoscopic black holes for several microseconds.
Ichibei was at ease. Although his eyes are essentially blocked, his other senses were working extremely fine. The moment that Kisuke was crushed into nothing, his presence also ceased to exist.
Before, he could easily feel his presence through the Reiatsu, Magic Power, and Ki he was emitting. This time, however, there's nothing. Ichibei couldn't feel even a strand of any string of energy from him anymore. Not with Holy Power, not with Demonic Power, and not even a strange form of other energies like Ophis' Infinity. Absolutely nothing.
So imagine his surprise when the light subsided, and he saw the monster, still in its mangled state as if the previous attack hadn't done anything to him. Only this time, there's a thin, uneven, glass-like bubble full of cracks surrounding him.
"!? I... I didn't hurt him?"
'Stealth.' It was the first thing that went inside Ichibei's head but he instantly discarded that notion because aside from the feasibility of Kisuke hiding from his senses was very much nil, there was no point in doing this specially when trying to defend against an attack, which he clearly did.
'Was it the bubble?' He asked next. But immediately after, the bubble surrounding Kisuke collapsed into nothing but he still couldn't feel anything from him.
It was as if he didn't exist at all and the one in front of Ichibei was just a visual representation.
So next to his train of thought was the question, 'Am I somehow caught in an illusion?'
Ichibei didn't know whether to accept or deny this theory because one, he still didn't have any idea what Kisuke prepared for him, and two, his guts were telling him that this was reality.
And while Ichibei was contemplating, Kisuke's mangled parts actually stopped regenerating. Instead, the majority of his body started turning into dust before rearranging itself into immaculate body parts that soon connected with Kisuke seamlessly.
"...What?" From Ichibei's perspective, it looked like Kisuke's injured parts just blurred out of existence before returning to their normal, healthy counterparts, "...Regeneration?"
Ichibei didn't wait anymore and raised one of his arms before bringing it down in a swinging motion towards Kisuke. In an instant, a golden light manifested and divided Kisuke into two.
The light disappeared as soon as it appeared and while Ichibei was only able to scratch Kisuke's head, from chest down to his crotch, a clear cut that spilled blood and innards became obvious.
But just like before, the injured parts would turn into dust before returning to their normal state.
Losing his patience, another pair of arms suddenly appeared behind Ichibei. He then pointed all of his open hands toward Kisuke before clenching them with considerable force. At once, twenty walls of golden lights bisected Kisuke from differing angles, separating him into hundreds of pieces.
While Kisuke's head remained relatively unharmed, it was still just a head.
Ichibei thought that he finally was able to deal substantial damage to him and was thinking of further pulverizing his body. But to his astonishment, those chopped parts turned into dust before reassembling themselves back into their pristine condition.
It was then that Ichibei understood that this is not regeneration, '...This is more akin to reconstruction. How did he suddenly have these new abilities?'
Ichibei also understood that if this is really indeed reconstruction that he was doing, then he needed to destroy where Kisuke stored the information of his 'healthy' state and it's quite evident where that is, 'His head. Now it makes sense why it's strangely sturdy.'
Ichibei unfortunately won't be able to take the next action when Kisuke, lacking the previous madness, suddenly starts imitating Ichibei's posture. It was the former's mistake once again for him to not grasp that Kisuke had calmed down. Although his eyes still lacked clarity, some finesse returned to Kisuke's movement and it was already too late when Ichibei noticed that.
Continuing the imitation, Kisuke also clapped his hands.
Ichibei wondered what he was trying to do when all of a sudden, a sensation of pain abruptly erupted from his right shoulder.
Before he could realize it, something he couldn't perceive expanded from within his shoulder and severed his right arm, "!?"
Ichibei's mind lagged behind due to the sheer ridiculousness of the event that he failed to stop the severed arm from flying towards Kisuke.
With an arm that was almost as big as him, Kisuke caught it and before he started chewing at it, Ichibei was further stunned when Kisuke suddenly turned to his direction and gave him a mocking smile.
Kisuke then became busy with eating and ignored what was happening. Alarmed and infuriated, Ichibei raised his three remaining arms and made a circular motion with them before a ball of darkness surrounded Kisuke.
Ichibei knew Kisuke's biggest weakness right now and he decided to capitalize on it.
Because Kisuke became a myriad of possibilities in his eyes, Ichibei thought that sealing him in another dimension wasn't a waste of time anymore. He decided to take the 'coward's' route and wait for Kisuke to lose all of his reserved energy and rot into nothing, 'I can't directly confront him anymore. He has too much uncertainty and I might just feed him more.'