<h4>Chapter 238 Eikthyrnir Compound [Mini-Arc] (8)</h4>


    The shadows in the room came to life, twisting and snaking their way in between the chaos of the shing guards, before slithering past Eiknyr, whispering ancient nothings as they made their way to Lucius.


    Eiknyr froze in shock for a moment, before abruptly standing up.


    He stood at 2.6 meters tall, 3.2 with the length of his horns. His muscles rippled under the silk-ck robes he was wearing, which fluttered unnaturally as the streams of shadows, rushed past him towards Lucius.


    "Mystic Mantle?" Eiknyr asked, his once musing tone now one of utter seriousness.


    Still, Lucius did not reply and the influx of shadows did not stop.


    ck ink seemed to ooze from the walls, before joining the river of shadows. At this point, Lucius''s body was nowpletely encased, only a small section where his eyes peered through could be seen.


    "You break into my den, and you make all my friends start killing each other? Do you have any idea how hard it is to get new friends?" Eiknyr asked, taking a step back, before pulling out a sceptre from his robes.


    Just then, one of the crazed guards behind him tried to gore through him with its horns. However, one gesture from him was all it took to stop the attack in its tracks.


    The guard, still in its crazed state, stopped for a moment before streams of red mist gushed from its orifices. At the same time, its skin greyed, and its once muscr body reduced to shrivels.


    With that, Eiknyr grew slightly in size, and his eyes glowed a deeper darker crimson.


    A split secondter, he shot a bolt of red energy towards the shadows that cowled Lucius, vaporizing them, and creating a gaping hole within the inky armour.


    However, nothing was there.


    Although he could still see Lucius''s eyes peering from the shadow cacoon, there was no body.


    "Sumb to your fears" Lucius whispered in a hoarse voice, and a small patch of the shadows surrounding him zipped towards Eiknyr.


    Eiknyr waved his sceptre in a circr motion, creating a red force field around himself. And the shadows turned to nothing, upon contact.


    However, his eyes shined a little less, and he decreased in size that much more.


    "Abhorrent creature," Eiknyr spat, an annoyed expression on his face.


    With another wave of his sceptre, red mist began to seep out of his body, before coalescing into more than a dozen orbs at random points around him.


    With a pushing gesture, the balls all zipped forward, flying around in seemingly random trajectories, making them nearly impossible to track.


    They spread around the room, beforeing at him Lucius from all directions.


    From the depths of the inky cacoon, came [Kumulipo] swiftly moving to the top.


    "Sr field," Lucius whispered, and streams of dark energy erupted from [Kumulipo] before spreading in all directions to create a force field.


    However, this was a wasted effort.


    The crimson balls vaporized their way through the force field in a matter of milliseconds, before continuing towards their target.


    The cacoon managed to dodge a good portion of the attacks, however, at least several holes had now appeared in its casing.


    And with that, the density of shadows covering Lucius''s body visibly lessened.


    Eiknyr smiled, realizing that Lucius''s shadows were finite, as even the shadows that were streaming to cover up the vaporized areas were beginning to slow down.


    "Sr beam," Lucius whispered hoarsely, his body still nowhere to be seen.


    With that, a massive beam of dark energy erupted from [Kumulipo], thrashing through the air before smashing against the red force field that protected Eiknyr.


    For a moment, the force field held up, but like acid on flesh, it slowly seared through, before piercing Eiknyr right at the centre of his forehead.


    Blood and fleshy paste sttered to the floor.


    Still...even without a head, Eiknyr''s body stood upright.


    "Sumb to your fears," Lucius whispered, and again a shroud of shadows, moved to infiltrate Eiknyr''s seemingly lifeless body.


    The shadows invaded the corpse, and awork of pitch-ck veins appeared.


    Within the corpse, the shadows searched for Eiknyr''s core, before wrapping around it and tightening. Shattering it into a thousand pieces, and iming the escaping energy as their own.


    As the shadows came back towards Lucius, carrying his prize within their tendrils, he realized something was off.


    Right as they were about to rejoin his cacoon, he cast a sr beam on them, incinerating them into a fine mist.


    And for the next few seconds, his eyes simply peered from the cacoon... waiting.


    Soon, the blood and grey matter that had sttered on the floor began squirming around, before turning to red mist, which entered the dead bodies of those guards who had fallen in the earlier skirmish.


    "That was a favourite vessel of mine," several voices called out in unison, as the once dead bodies rose into the air.


    Quickly, Lucius''s eyes moved towards the sceptre, as it spun into the air as well, before moving straight into the hands of one of the reanimated guards.


    "Abhorrent creature," the voices said in unison.


    "You wreak of the life force of -"


    "Bursting trace," Lucius interrupted.


    And with that, several high energy pulses strobed out of [Kumulipo], slicing through the air towards the now floating corpses.


    Three of the corpses quickly moved behind the others, using them as meat shields.


    The energy from the pulses shed into the shield corpses, invading their internals, and turning their cores to dust. This happened simultaneously for all the corpses, a feat that Lucius never would''ve been able to aplish in any normal circumstance.


    In the instant that their cores had been shattered, the remaining corpses waved their hands, and crimson runes began to appear on the walls.


    With that, fettered chains erupted from the runes, before wrapping around the cacoon, and dragging it to the floor. They vaporized the shadows as they held onto the cacoon, continuously lowering its integrity.


    "Sr pit," Lucius whispered, and fumes of dark energy began to exude from [kumulipo], eating away at the chains, whilst cloaking the cacoon in a ck cloud.


    Lucius''s eyes locked onto the sceptre in one of the corpse''s hands, before dozens of tiny hands formed from the shadows of the cacoon.


    In fact, even more hands began forming from the tunics of the guards, and whatever other nt-based materials were present in that room.


    The army of hands all stretched out, in an attempt to grab the sceptre, however, with a wave of the corpses'' hands their bodies disappeared into a crimson dust.


    They reappeared all around Lucius, their hands outstretched as they murmured something under their breath.


    The army of hands changed trajectory to catch them, whilst Lucius began mouthing another spell.


    In the moments before the hands reached the sceptre, and he was mouthing his spell-


    A red pentagram appeared on the ceiling above him, glowing in crimson magnificence. Arge concentration of energy appeared with it, sending shockwaves throughout the room.


    A nanosecondter, the pentagram began bubbling, and from it, something began to arise.