Deus Necros

Chapter 437: True Monsters

His undead obeyed without hesitation. The first corpse in the front line stiffened, and then ruptured, spraying shards of bone and wet decay in all directions. The explosion was not fire nor light but a burst of pure, concussive force, snapping timber and rattling the teeth of the living. The chain reaction spread instantly, one detonation feeding the next. Bodies became weapons, their destruction tearing through the black-armored ranks, toppling walls already weakened by the earlier clash.

The street vanished into a choking cloud of dust and pulverized stone. Ludwig shielded his face with an arm, stepping back as pieces of masonry clattered around him. The ground underfoot shifted with the impact, cobblestones splitting along new cracks.

When the haze began to thin, he clicked his tongue.

The Lich’s army stood almost intact. A few staggered, their black armor dimmer, shadows thinning along their edges, but most had weathered the blast with unnerving resilience. Their movements were still crisp, their weapons still ready.

“Oh… advanced necromancy,” the Lich mused, as though examining a specimen under glass. “Detonate Dead is no simple trick. A rare skill indeed.” His tone dipped almost to praise, before turning cool again. “But it cannot pierce Dark Tide. You have learned nothing of true necromantic war.”

He tilted his skull toward his troops, the pale-blue flames in his sockets flaring. “Bring me his corpse.”

The armored dead surged forward.

“Maybe you’re right,” Ludwig said, his lips curling, “compared to a boomer like you who’s been rotting too long.”

He raised his arm in the same sweeping motion as before, palm open.

The Lich’s sockets seemed to narrow. “You can’t detonate what’s already been destroyed.”

“Then let me teach you something,” Ludwig said, the air around his hand tightening with an unseen pull. “Death’s Echo.”

The Lich’s composure faltered for the first time. The blue flames in his sockets swelled, flaring as if with sudden alarm. “How do you,”

“Detonate Death!”

The street erupted again, not from the intact corpses, but from the remnants already scattered across the battlefield. Shattered limbs, ribcages torn in half, skulls with jaws missing, all of it became the seed of new blasts. Each explosion struck with more force than the original, the concussive waves rolling over one another in layered succession.

The black armor cracked. Shadow-forged shields splintered. When the final blast faded, Ludwig could see their pale, unprotected forms beneath, stripped of the magic that had clad them.

He did not waste the opening. “Detonate Dead!”

This time, the explosions tore through without resistance. The street became a field of fire and bone, the shockwaves strong enough to rattle the facades of the buildings above and rip banners from their poles. Screams, inhuman, ragged, echoed through the air before being swallowed by the roar of destruction.

Two-thirds of the Lich’s army was reduced to dust and fragments that skittered along the street with the settling wind.

Ludwig stood in the aftermath, chest rising and falling more from the drag on his mana than from breath. His reserves had been bled nearly dry, the last threads of magic clinging to him like the aftertaste of burnt air.

The Lich regarded the ruin of his troops, the blue flames in his sockets dimming and then flaring again. “Not bad,” he said. “Given more time, you might have destroyed them all. Perhaps you are more useful alive than as a corpse.”

“That sounds more like torture,” Ludwig answered, shifting his stance and bringing his weapon up between them.

The Lich’s gaze swept over him with something like mild disappointment. “You do not know how to wield Aura, do you?”

Ludwig tilted his head, trying to mask the tell. “How would you know I’m not saving my strength?”

“Because any self-respecting swordsman,” the Lich said, stepping forward slowly, “knows Aura severs the bond between corpse and dark magic. If you had it, you would have used it to cut down my soldiers first.” His tone was flat, factual, and all the more cutting for it.

He stopped, the end of his staff tapping lightly against the stone. “It would be a waste to kill you and turn you into something mindless. Be my student. I could teach you more than you can imagine.”

For another, the offer might have been tempting, but this was a Lich who had turned his back on Necros. Ludwig did not have to imagine what that path would lead to if the truth of his own nature came to light. And with the werewolf’s knowledge, it was only a matter of time before such a truth would spread.

“Nah,” Ludwig said, gripping Durandal with both hands. “Not a fan.” His thoughts flickered coldly behind the words. Even if he died here, he had learned enough about this enemy to make the next meeting different.

The Lich’s sockets dimmed slightly. “What a shame.” He raised a bony finger toward Ludwig. “Then die, and be my puppet.”

“Oi, not so fast.”

The interruption was bright, too young in tone to fit the place. A child’s voice.

Ludwig’s gut, or what passed for it, sank like a stone. He turned his head.

Mot sat atop a mound of rubble as if it were a garden wall, an apple in hand, casually biting into it. Juice caught the corner of his mouth. His eyes, ancient, alien, regarded them both without hurry.

The Lich’s arm froze mid-gesture, the pale-blue flames in his sockets wavering. “Ah,” he said, the sound drawn out as though tasting a flavor he had expected but not so soon. “I thought my clones could have stalled you a while longer.”

“They did,” Mot replied around another bite of apple, his small jaw working slowly. He swallowed before continuing, as if the matter were unhurried. “Took me twenty minutes to kill all seven of them.”

The Lich’s flames narrowed. “What a monster,” he murmured, though the tone carried a grudging acknowledgment rather than fear.

Mot tilted his head, eyes half-lidded, and pointed lazily. “Don’t try me,” Two slick, glistening tentacles erupted from the cobblestones with a wet, tearing sound, their barbs catching the dim light. They coiled around what seemed to be empty air, until the writhing revealed the shapes of two dark-cloaked undead hidden in some illusion or concealment. The tentacles tightened in a slow, deliberate crush. Bones splintered with an audible snap, the sound sharp against the ruined street. In moments, the figures sagged into unrecognizable pulp, dropping in limp heaps before crumbling entirely to a fine, grey ash.

“You there,” Mot said, his gaze sliding to Ludwig with the casualness of a cat addressing a moth. “You should probably run. A swordsman isn’t built for this.”

For a moment, Ludwig hesitated. The words were not taunting; they carried the same flat inevitability as a weather report. But there was something more, a question buried in them.

Did he really not see?

Before Ludwig could reply, the ground around him shifted again. More skeletal arms surged up from the cracks between stones, grasping at his boots and calves, cold fingers digging into fabric and fleshless bone alike.

“I told you… don’t try my patience,” Mot’s voice had not changed in pitch, but it was heavier now, carrying a depth that seemed too vast for the frame of a child.

A fresh tentacle burst not from the ground but from Ludwig himself, sliding wetly from the center of his chest as though passing through his ribcage without breaking it. The sensation was wrong in a way Ludwig could not put into words, a mix of chill and heat, of pressure without pain. It whipped down in a fluid motion, smashing the skeletal arms to fragments before retreating inside him as if it had never been there.

He was left standing in its absence, the place it had passed through feeling both empty and full at once.

The disgust came first, a cold, crawling awareness that something had invaded him without resistance. Terror followed, not the shallow fear of injury, but the deeper understanding of helplessness: the knowledge that Mot could end him in less than a heartbeat, without warning, without even the formality of a strike.

Only then did the scope of it settle in his mind. The raw, quiet power that had been walking beside him all along, veiled behind the frame of a child.

The Knight King’s voice broke the silence, carrying a weight of certainty. “You realize it now? How small your world has been.”

Ludwig’s reply came low. “Yeah. Frog in a well.”

His own words echoed in his mind, stripped of defiance. Today was not the day for heroism. Not with these things, these monsters, moving in the open. He could admit it here and now, even to himself. No matter how far he had come, no matter how many times he had clawed past death, he was still weak. Stronger than the average man, enough to stand above the gifted, but still a thing of limits, while the world above him held beings without any.

And in their presence, he was not a predator. He was prey that had simply been allowed to walk away.