Lord of Annihilation

Upon having that conversation, the two of them quickly exited Lucius' mindspace and entered their respective bodies.

Opening his eyes after what veritably felt like a long time, Lucius could immediately feel the changes to his body. His [State of Devour] phase was canceled returning Lucius to his human form.

His body currently resembled a shriveled corpse being completely devoid of any void energy. Taking note of his body's state, Lucius noticed that the Void Eater's bloodline within him had gone into a sort of inactive state, with most of his Void abilities being in a 'locked' state.

'I guess staying in [State of Devour] for who knows how long of a time does have its drawbacks. Looks like I won't be able to use my Void abilities for a while.'

Thankfully, [Devour] and [Void Storage] seemed to work fine. To confirm this, Lucius opened the storage and brought out some monster meat to eat.

While the amount of meat was little and would have hardly been sufficient in his [State of Devour] state, in his current form, it would do just fine.

Devouring the chunks of meat, a meager amount of void power was produced and Lucius' shriveled body started to buff up. Eating everything he had, Lucius finally hit the minimum energy quota and the hunger pangs of this stomach lessened.

He then turned to face the floating crystal and asked.

"Are you going to start drawing the array?" 

Ka'lor'ah continued to float silently and stare at him. Feeling the weight of her gaze, Lucius grew a little annoyed and asked.

"What are you staring at me for?"

An exaggerated sigh escaped from Ka'lor'ah's mouth', followed by these words.

"Daaaaamnnn, son! I never knew you were so 'packing' down there. What's up, hehe, with the nude show? HAHAHA!!" She tried to speak as straight as possible but ended up laughing out loud during the second half of her sentence

Lucius' brain lagged for a moment before he managed to process her sentence. 

Right. He was completely naked.

The [State of Devour's] transformation optimized his body for battle, removing all sorts of extraneous organs. Also, due to the variety of creatures that he had devoured, his body has also been covered in a thick fur of sorts.

However, now that he had returned to his 'human' state, certain unnecessary additions followed. To further worsen the situation, Lucius currently did not possess any material to clothe his body.

A strange emotion, one that he could not name, filled Lucius' mind. Staring at the crystal with a peculiar look in his eyes, Lucius growled.

"Stop wasting time and get to work. This isn't the time to folly." The look within his eyes calmed and returned to indifference

Ka'lor'ah replied with an 'okay, okay' and got to work. Inwardly, however, she was a little surprised.

'Was that embarrassment that I saw within his eyes? Did he just, show an emotion? Strange. Very strange.'

Throwing this matter to the back of her head, Ka'lor'ah focused on her current task. Her earlier quip was to relieve some of their tension after the recent battle. And if her doubts were right, their immediate future will be far more stressful.

'Let's begin.' And with that, Ka'lor'ah started to draw an enormous runic array within the cave in which they fought the spectral soul.

Perhaps as a small measure of good luck, their current location was a laboratory, which meant…

…there would be plenty of material for the formation's construction.

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"Bring me that shiny-looking ore lying in that corner. Yeah, that dark blue one!"

"Not there! It's 5 units in the opposite direction!"

"Infuse your soul power, here, here, and here."

"Remember the array of concealment that I taught you? Draw 15 of those in the blank spaces between the array of observation and array of astral positioning."

With Ka'lor'ah focused efforts along with Lucius' occasional support, a massive runic formation, one that occupied almost the entirety of the underground chambers' floor, quickly took shape.

Before long the underground chamber was filled to the brim with hundreds of floating runic symbols and letter's each radiating with energy and power. The lighting within the room also began to strangely distort, as the Power of Rules within the room started to congregate.

Satisfied with her work, Ka'lor'ah declared.

"Now to finish it all we need is a Superior Grade item to act as the catalyst to start the formation." 

Lucius scanned around the room and asked.

"I don't see any Superior Grade item in here. What do we do now?"

The dark-gold crystal shook its body seemingly signifying a 'shake of her head'. Pointing at Lucius, she continued smugly.

"And that is why, Lucius, I'll forever be the master and you will forever be my student." 

"Now witness my miracle." 

Saying so, Ka'lor'ah used a small portion of her energy to perform a cut on Lucius' upper arm. Along with a small prickling of pain, dense, black blood started to flow from the cut.

Ka'lor'ah quickly gathered his blood and flicked it towards a specific spot in the massive runic array.

The moment, Lucius' blood came into contact with the array, it responded with a sizzling noise followed by dense black smoke. Ten seconds passed before the sizzling sound came to a stop, after which followed…

The formation of an enormous hurricane of spiritual energy.

The ground, the walls, the roof, the very space itself started to rumble and shake under the dense gathering of natural spiritual energy. 

"Hahahaha!!" The sound of Ka'lor'ah's laughter was drowned out by the furious gales of wind and energy. 

The shaking within the room increased in its intensity as the scale of the hurricane grew larger and larger. As the height of the hurricane reached the ceiling limit, the previously silent runes started to give off a faint, mysterious radiance. 

With the spiritual energy has reached a critical point, the runic formation finally started to function.

The winds within the room continued to furiously blow and lash. Feeling annoyed by the sound of the wind, Lucius channeled his newly-produced Stage 2 soul power and formed a barrier surrounding himself and Ka'lor'ah.

"The Void Eater is a Grade 7 species at the minimum. Ergo, you are equivalent to a walking Superior Grade material. You should learn to treasure yourself more." Ka'lor'ah 'kindly' explained.

"So what now?" Ignoring her explanation, Lucius questioned.

"We wait. The results of that runic formation will tell us if our doubts are true."

Lucius nodded his head and remained silent. Ka'lor'ah continued to look at him for a few seconds before asking.

"Do you not have anything to cover yourself within that storage of yours?" 

"No." Lucius curtly replied. 

Ka'lor'ah simply nodded her head and turned silent.

While others might consider being nude as shameful or as a stain on their reputation, this was only in the eyes of 'inferior beings'. As a pair of ex-Stage 7 beings, the matters of the flesh were hardly of any importance to them.

While Lucius was initially 'embarrassed', it was due to him being caught off-guard. Once he recovered, he simply threw the matter to one corner of his mind. Ka'lor'ah was also not interested in this matter and stopped making fun of Lucius.

While the atmosphere between the two seemed calm, it was actually not so. The two of them were in fact very worried, so much so, that even the eternally indifferent Lucius and the ever jovial Ka'lor'ah, were waiting for the result in silence.

Minutes continued to trickle by and Ka'lor'ah found the silence and invisible tension to be suffocating. While looking at the formation doing its thing, she asked calmly.

"Anyway, how did you kill that bastard?"

"He was very eager to look into my memories, that I simply allowed him to do so. The only difference being that, I showed him a Stage 7 memory fragment."

Lucius' tone held a bit of contempt and mockery as he continued.

"Curiosity killed the cat. He was unable to handle the repercussions of viewing that memory and was destroyed by it in turn."

Ka'lor'ah laughed lightly in scorn and spoke.

"That was too light of a sentence, If only my main body were here. So, which memory was it, anyway?"

"The day I added the [Thousand Seas of Blood] into my Domain."

Ka'lor'ah nodded her head in acknowledgment and silence returned.

Minutes continued to pass and the tension continued to rise. The scene outside the barrier continued to rise in intensity, as the formation worked at full power. The runes flashed, appearing at times and disappearing at others, following a mysterious pattern. 

With the Rules having been invoked, threads of multi-colored, multi-dimensional energy appeared within the underground chamber. It was a spectacular, yet terrifying sight.

Time passes and this time, it was Lucius, who surprisingly broke the silence.

"That voice. Do you think it might be someone like us? Someone from the 'future'?" He hesitantly asked.

"Impossible." To which Ka'lor'ah almost surely replied and explained.

"While I might not be the most knowledgeable one in the Universe, I am confident that I am at least in the top three. The method that we used to return is something that multiple generations of my race have worked on to complete. I doubt there is anyone else with enough time and resources to do such a thing."

"Resetting 'Cause' is not something that can be causally done. Just the sacrifices needed to do so are unimaginable. You personally should know so."

Lucius nodded his head in understanding. As Ka'lor'ah had stated, he knew better than anyone about the sacrifices that had to be made.

'90% of all life in the Universe must be killed.' Lucius absentmindedly thought about the condition. Or at least it was one of the conditions that were required.

"Rest assured, I'm confident that it isn't a 'returner' like us. In fact, I have a basic understanding of who it might be." Ka'lor'ah concluded, to which Lucius sighed and replied, "Indeed."

"Oh, looks like the formation's done." Ka'lor'ah noticed the hurricane gradually disappearing. Lucius immediately removed the barrier and the duo walked towards the center of the formation.

It was time to see, whether their guess had hit its mark.