Black mist slipped through the crack, and ghostly aura spread wildly through Zelos's body.
Zelos's body suddenly stiffened, his tiny scarlet eyes widening like bronze bells.
He felt something burrowing through his veins, crawling through his muscles, flowing through the gaps in his bones.
They were Vicks's clones—countless tiny shadows wreaking havoc inside his body.
They gnawed at the walls of his blood vessels, tore apart his muscle fibers, and burrowed into his marrow to feed.
Zelos's bone spikes swept out on instinct, tearing apart Vicks's main body of black mist. But he could not strike the shadows that had already entered him. He could only digest them with his own body.
Vicks's black mist was torn into several clumps, each floating in the air, struggling as it tried to gather itself again.
Flesh growths burst from the surface of Zelos's body like countless tentacles, frantically wrapping around the scattered shadows.
His body chewed those shadows, crushing Vicks's power bit by bit before swallowing it.
His stomach churned as the shadows struggled, screamed, and melted in his gastric acid.
Vicks split into countless shadow clones, trying to escape from Zelos's body, but Zelos's flesh was like a great net that caught them all.
New flesh buds grew across the surface of his body, intertwining into a web that ensnared every shadow clone trying to flee.
"Tear you apart!" Zelos forced out a hoarse, low growl from the depths of his throat.
His festering wounds had been frozen by ghostly aura. His flesh no longer grew or healed, but he did not care.
He used his own body as a cage and his flesh as chains, trapping Vicks within himself.
Vicks's shadow clones were devoured one by one. With every one he swallowed, the ghostly aura within Zelos grew denser, and