Lord of Annihilation

Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!

"Seeing you eat all that meat really makes me wonder how your body works. Like, where does all that meat go?"

Sitting crouched atop a mound of Wild Beast Corpses with her chin resting on her knees, Ka'lor'ah asked while shooting strange glances at Lucius.

The person, or at least what looked like a person, before her was enthusiastically digging into a mountain-pile of Wild Beast corpses, chomping on their meat and munching on their bones.

"Could you at least eat like a person? Honestly, the way your digging into those bodies would make even the filthiest of Wild Beasts feel embarrassed," Ka'lor'ah continued, not hiding the snarky tone.

In reality, this wasn't her first time watching Lucius eat. However, with each subsequent meal, Lucius' eating habits and table manners seemed to be getting more and more worse.

As such, she wasn't exaggerating the slightest with her earlier insult. In fact, some might even say that she was being kind in her words.

As usual, however, Lucius ignored Ka'lor'ah's words in their entirety and resume what he was doing. Feasting on the corpses of a Stage 4 entities brought him satisfaction like none other.

Not to mention, the taste that he felt on his taste buds when he bit into those springy, succulent, near-impenetrable meat with his teeth was simply…divine. Faced with such divine temptation, few could likely resist.

And it wasn't like Lucius was trying to resist it anyway.

Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Gulp!

Munching down on the last few pieces of femur stuck between his teeth, Lucius gulped down the remnants of the latest Wild Beast that he had eaten. Lifting himself out of the pit that he had created, he slowly walked down the mountain of corpses towards a clearing in the side.

Sitting down with his legs crossed, he closed his eyes and entered a meditative state to aid his body with processing the contents of his stomach faster.

Lucius' shadow formed a three-meter wide pool underneath his body. When he entered his meditative state, the pool-like shadow started to rapidly bubble and sputter, making sizzling acid-like noises.

Soon, black smoke rose from the bubbling shadow, twisting the air which they passed through in the process. This black smoke, which could be recognized as the Void Eater's Void Energy, hung in the air for a few seconds before entering Lucius' body and suffusing with it.

This process continued for a whole fifteen minutes after which it suddenly came to a halt. The bubbling shadow underneath Lucius' body also came to a still before being suddenly retracted into his body.

For a moment, Lucius' body and the space surrounding it came to an absolute still. Just as this moment seemed to last forever, a change occurred.

An ancient beastly aura erupted from within Lucius' body, startling the spectating Ka'lor'ah and sending her into hiding. The aura, reminiscent of a starving, apex predator seeking food, continued to intensify without pause going from intangible and illusory into tangible and physical.

The space within a five-meter radius of Lucius' body suddenly froze and slowly crystallized under the effects of the ancient aura. Similar to vaporous gas suddenly turning into a solid chunk of ice, the space around Lucius solidified into a spherical ball and encapsulated Lucius within it.

The transparent surface of this spherical crystal gradually darkened and before long, reached a state where even light was unable to pierce into it. Silence returned and not a trace of energy leaked from the black sphere.

Ka'lor'ah, who was watching this from her place of hiding afar, absent-mindedly muttered.

"A black body sphere…this crazy guy actually succeeded. He forcibly evolved his physical body into the next Stage without relying on the ascension to do it."

"Void Eaters…what a terrifying species!!" 

Fear was apparent in the depths of Ka'lor'ah's golden eyes as she recalled the feeling of the beastly aura surrounding his body. It wasn't the starving hunger that scared her but something more profound and far more ancient.

When Lucius first awakened to be a Void Eater, Ka'lor'ah hadn't attached much importance to it, only remembering some vague texts written by her predecessors from many Eras ago describing his kind as the 'Bane of their Species'. 

However, at this moment, when she felt that primordial aura radiate from his body something deep within her was startled awake. This 'something', better called as an instinct, gravely warned her.

This person, nay, this monster before her would be the source of her demise.

'What am I thinking?' Ka'lor'ah shook her head and suppressed the horror within her heart. 'I've known Lucius longer and closer than anyone. Sure, he's a bit unstable and almost trusts no one but he is not the kind to renege on his promises.'

Calmness returned to Ka'lor'ah shaken eyes and her thoughts continued. 

'For as long as our plan remains incomplete he would never kill me.' 

Yet as she comforted herself with such thoughts, the seed of fear and doubt that had long been planted in her heart, sprouted a little.

----------

With Olivia encapsulated inside a crystal violet egg and Lucius encased inside a black body sphere, the interior hall of the coliseum turned silent as each underwent their respective breakthrough.

Ka'lor'ah did not remain idle either as she focused her attention on maintaining the [Isolation Barrier] that she had cast around Lucius to hide the terrifying fluctuations of Rules that he occasionally emitted as his physical body evolved into an 'Incomplete-Body of Rules'.

While his Body of Rules might be incomplete due to the fact that he had yet to undergo his fourth ascendence or the first transcendence, it was still exponentially better than his Stage 3 physical body. 

More than anything, having an 'Incomplete-Body of Rules' would increase his chances of successfully completing the transcendence.

In this manner, time continued to pass and before long two months had passed.

The violet-colored crystallized egg which contained Olivia had nearly turned transparent, exposing the naked, divine-looking young woman inside. 

Outwardly, the young lady's appearance hadn't seemed to have undergone any distinct changes. Apart from her skin turning a lot smoother and paler, her hair growing longer and more violet, and her mature assets becoming fuller, she looked virtually unchanged.

The pool of chaotic energy underneath the crystallized egg had disappeared two weeks ago and the lines of Rules above it had also disappeared three days ago. 

What this meant was that not only had Olivia successfully completed her ascension into Stage 3, but had also successfully constructed her Domain, whatever it may be. 

As such, it was only a matter of time before she woke up and exited the crystallized egg, finally becoming a full-fledged Low-Level Stage 3 being. 

On the other side, Lucius' evolution also seemed to be coming to an end as currently, cracks started to appear on the surface of the black body sphere.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

The tiny cracks rapidly expanded on the surface of the sphere, fracturing it into millions of individual portions. Through these fracturing cracks, wisps of smoke-like, black-colored void energy exited and tainted the fabric of space on the outside.

An evil, repulsive, oppressive aura radiated from this smoke-like void energy as it continued to rapidly fester and expand into the space surrounding the sphere. In mere seconds since the appearance of that energy, fifty cubic meters of space had already been tainted.

Intently observing this phenomenon from a safe distance, Ka'lor'ah internally yelled.

'This is bad!'

'This is REALLY bad…!'