Reincarnated As A Plant Life

Chapter 280: Minecrawlers [XX]

"Entertain you? I see, my children's lives are just a joke to you, huh?" Lucius replied. The shadows in the room began to twitch, coiling around each other as he spoke.

He grabbed onto the chains, his flesh searing upon contact. It felt like someone had ripped his skin open and poured salt all over it. This only made him angrier, seeing what she had to go through. He pulled back, trying to root them out of whatever dimension they had sprung forth from.

Several more pentagrams appeared around him, floating mid-air.

"I'll make you suffer for this," Lucius whispered, as the pentagrams unleashed bundles of chains at Ghost. They grabbed every one of her limbs, before tightening and pulling back.

They were going to rip his little girl apart.

Her screams became cries for help, and perhaps the only things as loud as that were her sizzling flesh and Eilphyr's laughter. Her eyes rolled back, and after one final struggle, she went limp.

"..."

The shadows in the tunnels came to life.

Like hungry snakes, they slithered from every corner, every crevice towards Lucius. They roared, and they cried, and they laughed like demons freed from hell.

[Requirements for system event have been met.]

[System event... {A Guardian's Wrath} has begun.]

[Punish the source of turmoil.]

[Title: Belladonna, has been activated.] - [Poisonous excretions gain 300% potency]

The notifications popped up in quick succession, however Lucius was not there to view them. He was someplace else, a place so clouded with power, that the outside world felt like a bad dream.

The shadows had wrapped around him, cowling him in an inky armour. He looked like a thing from some abyss, an eldritch being, something ancient, something foul.

Kumulipo emerged from that being, sending tidal waves of dark energy all around the room. Pagan and Ursa were thrown back, tumbling on the ground like ragdolls.

Kumulipo soared towards the chains, its energies coiling around them like tiny snakes, before hardening. An instant later, the chains shattered, and Ghost was set free. However, her body was riddled with streaks of crimson, and she still wasn't moving.

"You will scream as she did, and you will sing that song until she awakens," Lucius said.

He opened his mouth and black energy shot forth destroying the web of floating rocks above him. There stood Eilphyr, upside down like a bat on the ceiling.

"There it is. This is the power we were promised," Eilphyr said, a pentagram appearing right beside him.

"Solar beam," Lucius said, pointing his finger at Eilphyr.

A beam of shadows tore out of kumulipo and boomed through the air like a thunderclap.

A wall of chains emerged from the pentagram to defend Eilphyr, however in front of the beam they were more akin to a bread wall. It through them and gored a hole in the ceiling directly behind it.

However, Eilphyr was not there.

The shadows that cowled Lucius grew thin, he had used quite a bit of his energy in that one shot.

"You are slow," Eilphyr said from behind him.

A pentagram appeared on the ground directly beneath him, and chains emerged to drag him down. The shadows, slithered around them, absorbing their energy, and making them his. They continued down towards the pentagram, draining even that of all its energy.

The pentagram's crimson colour dimmed until it was pitch black.

Eilphyr stared at this in confusion.

"Solar pit," Lucius whispered. A dark vapour discharged from kumulipo, and slowly draped to the floor like a black veil.

As that was happening, several dozen pentagrams appeared all around Lucius.

"We have seen all we wanted to see. Your entertainment is no longer required," Eilphyr announced. The tunnel became a pit of crimson snakes, all striking at Lucius, and trying to coil around him.

His inky armour turned to a cacoon, which the chains slowly ate away at.

The dark vapour had now covered much of the floor, only a few spaces were left untouched, as if on purpose.

"Solar field," Lucius whispered from within the cacoon, and the vapour hardened in place, creating an obsidian-like barrier.

"Never-ending fear," he said next, and a thick purple cloud began to exude from the cacoon. It corroded everything it touched, including the furtong not covered by his solar field—a small price to pay for the safety of his children.

Eilphyr began laughing, a sick sort of twisted cackle. The poison reached it and began to eat away at its flesh, soon it was nothing but a laughing skeleton. "We underestimated you," it continued.

The pentagrams all around Lucius had turned pitch black, their energies completely drained. Lucius -or at least the Emperor's mantle- had used the poison cloud as a medium to drain the energy from them.

"But no more."

Eilphyr chanted something at an impossible rate, as if a dozen people were chanting several different things at once. Lucius barely had time to react before a pentagram appeared, spanning the entire floor.

It began to glow, brighter and brighter with each passing second.

The furtong that had fallen to the corroding poison, came to life, a crimson outline coating their skeletal remains.

Several of them began to circle around Eilphyr, some ran towards Lucius's cacoon, and others towards the solar field he had set up.

Despite their frail-looking bodies, the crimson coating empowered them a great deal. Their punches cracked the solar field, and despite Lucius's efforts, he could not absorb their energies.

"Bursting trace," he whispered.

With that, disks of black thrashed throughout the room, knocking all the skeletons back. He had to expand even more power, regenerating the damage done to the solar field.

He could feel his power slipping away, he was reaching his time limit. He had to end things now. However, it seemed like Eilphyr had other plans.

"We will show you what the other could not. We will show you what they have created," Eilphyr said, as the skeletons around him began to sing.

Lucius sent several beams at them, however they had lost most of their power by the time it reached Eilphyr. The pentagram on the floor glowed even brighter in that instant, the runes around its circumference shifting and morphing.

"Rise, Morrghul, child of the nether."