Deus Necros

Chapter 458: Unexpected

Ludwig’s fingers tightened on Oathcarver’s hilt until his knuckles creaked audibly, the black steel trembling faintly with the pressure of his grip. Every fraction of him screamed that this had to be perfect. Not a single misstep. Not a wasted breath. Too slow, and the Wrathful Death would crawl fully into their world, dragging Celine with it into corruption. Too fast, and the rift would linger open, wide enough and long enough that thing to claw its way back in regardless. The plan needed to be perfect.

There was no chance to mess this up.

He inhaled, a useless, reflexive gesture that rattled in a chest with no lungs. Then he moved.

The cobblestones cracked under his first stride, dust bursting upward in small explosions as he pushed off with all the power in his undead muscles. His body was a streak across the battlefield, blurred steel and ragged cloak. Titania and the Shrike still dueled in the corner of his vision, steel flashing, holy light flaring like a second sun. He should not have dared to charge while that divine force was still bursting outward. It was the one thing that could end him with a glance.

But Ludwig had seen it.

He had lived this moment again and again until every detail was carved into his mind. The exact angle of Titania’s swing. The fraction of a heartbeat before her blade caught the Shrike’s iron sickles. The way light surged outward in a surging wave like fire reborn. He knew when it would happen, where it would strike, how to leap.

Titania’s sword came down. Sickles clashed. The world blazed white.

Ludwig’s body twisted mid-stride, his legs coiling like springs. He leapt upward, cloak snapping behind him. The wave of holy power tore across the ground beneath, a river of light that split rubble like paper. It grazed his side as he rose above it, and even that bare kiss was enough to send agony screaming through his body. His skin seared black, smoke rising from charred flesh that could not feel, but still remembered.

[-2,477]

The numbers etched themselves across his vision, and his jaw locked against a growl. He landed hard, rolling, the pain echoing through phantom nerves. But his momentum didn’t break. He forced his body upright in the same motion, boots pounding stone again, Oathcarver dragging a line of sparks as he sprinted toward the portal.

“Ah, you don’t know the despair that awaits you!” the werewolf laughed, his voice rising above the chaos. “This looks like your first time seeing this!” His laughter was wild, teeth bared, but Ludwig caught the faint edge of something else in his tone. Uncertainty. He didn’t know.

The beast couldn’t tell how many times Ludwig had died, how many loops he had clawed his way through. That blessing had long been stripped from him, after all. The werewolf’s lantern lay empty, his link to Necros severed. All he could do was guess.

Ludwig didn’t answer. His silence was answer enough. His left hand snapped forward, and the soul chains streaked through the air, serpentine and shrieking. The links glowed faintly red as they coiled, the weight of his will dragging them toward the rift.

“Too late!” the werewolf barked. His claws sank into his own chest, tearing flesh apart as though it were paper, and the heart came free again. Black vines and corrupt flowers wound around its surface, pulsing with the rhythm of something older than blood. He crushed it without hesitation.

Ludwig had seen it too many times. He knew he could never reach the Apostle in time. The werewolf was too quick, too brutal, his motions always certain. Ludwig could not stop the heart from being destroyed. He never could.

So he stopped trying.

The chains curved mid-flight. Instead of striking at the werewolf, they lashed sideways, coiling around a jagged boulder jutting from the ruined street. The links snapped taut with a hiss, pulling Ludwig’s body through the air in a perfect arc that brought him directly in front of the portal. He was airborne, both hands flung forward.

“EXPLOSIVE MINES!”

Dozens of crimson sparks scattered from his palms, glowing runes of destruction hanging in the air like embers.

“That’s it?” the werewolf laughed again, sharp and mocking. His body language was relaxed, as though enjoying a performance. “Third-circle magic? On this?” He gestured at the widening portal, the roiling void that pulsed with red light. “Pitiful tricks! A mantis trying to stop a cart!”

The Werewolf immediately jumped back and away from the portal, though not enemies with the Wrathful Death, that creature never considered anything an ally anyway.

The air around the portal screamed. The rift was birthing something vast, iron and shadow clawing its way forward. The faint silhouette of the mace was already there, that obscene slab of death dragging sparks across the void as it pushed.

And Ludwig wasn’t finished.

“[GRAVIOL]!” Newest update provided by novlfire.net

Purple orbs of mana flared from his hands, dozens of them, globes of condensed gravitational force. They surged forward like liquid fireflies, colliding with the mace as it emerged. The magic clung to the weapon’s black iron surface, each orb sticking fast as though glued.

The werewolf’s smirk faltered.

The mace fell. Its weight multiplied, amplified by every sphere, until the stone beneath cracked and cratered. The weapon slammed into the ground, pulling the arm of the Wrathful Death with it. Dust exploded outward, filling the air with choking grit. The ground shook as if a mountain had been dropped onto the city.

Even the Apostle took a step back in surprise. “What…?”

The Wrathful Death’s colossal fingers clenched around the haft of the mace, claws gouging furrows into its surface as if to remind the world that nothing, no enchantment, no trick, no spell, could deny its will. Muscles like cables bulged beneath jagged black plates, crimson light pulsing from every fissure in its armor as though its very rage had veins. With a sound like grinding mountains, the mace shuddered, lifted by inches, stone screaming as it was torn from the earth.

The werewolf exhaled a laugh, teeth glinting, the sound thick with scorn. “Pitiful tricks. You think something like that can stop him?” His golden eyes glimmered, yet for a fleeting instant, Ludwig caught the narrowing of his pupils, the twitch of his jaw. It wasn’t full confidence. There was an edge to it.

Ludwig didn’t answer. His lips curled instead into a smile, small, sharp, deliberate. The kind of smile that wasn’t born of confidence but of certainty. He could already see the threads of cause and effect tying themselves together.

The Wrathful Death heaved, pulling harder, its massive form straining, and the mace began to rise faster now. Each second it shook free of the earth, the purple orbs still clinging to it flickering faintly. Ludwig’s chain-arm twitched with the impulse to summon more, but he didn’t. He simply watched.

“Damn monster,” he muttered, not as an insult, not even with bitterness, but as a statement of fact. Then his smile widened.

“Sorry to disappoint,” he said, his voice carrying across the broken stones, “but I don’t like when people are looking down on me.”

And with that, he cut the flow of mana.

The [Graviol] spheres did not vanish, they peeled away, weightless now, hovering like bubbles in the air. The mace, freed from their burden, became suddenly, absurdly lighter. Too light for the force that had been straining against it.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the physics struck.

The Wrathful Death’s colossal pull, applied with the strength of something meant to unmake worlds, had no resistance left to fight. The mace shot upward with explosive force, like a catapult unbound. The juggernaut’s own body followed, ripped off balance, its bulk lurching violently as though the entire abyssal frame had been yanked upward by invisible hands.

The portal tore wider with the motion, space warping, screaming as the edges of reality stretched beyond what they could bear. Through the rift, for the briefest moment, Ludwig glimpsed snow-sheathed peaks, the mountains of Solania, sharp and indifferent against a crimson sky.

The Wrathful Death stumbled, its immense torso pitching backward, one massive leg lifting as it tried to correct its balance. But even that beast could not fight momentum. It staggered, and the sudden exposure of its midsection, its armor cracked open, the crimson glow in its chest flaring, made Ludwig’s dead heart jolt with savage satisfaction.

Then he whispered, “Was good seeing you. Please don’t come back.”

He thrust both palms forward.

The [Graviol] orbs, still hanging in the air, obeyed his will. Their purple sheen warped, twisting into volatile red. The hum of magic deepened into a roar. After all, these were part of the main spell [Explosive Mines] and they still had another function.

They detonated.

The explosions weren’t fire, they were raw force, compressed kinetic bursts that tore the ground apart. Shards of cobblestone launched skyward like shrapnel, rubble reduced to powder, buildings groaned and collapsed under the shockwaves. The energy converged, forced by Ludwig’s intent, all of it hammering into the unbalanced titan.

The Wrathful Death staggered further, the combined concussive force slamming into its chest, tipping its colossal frame backward like a toppled tower. For the first time since its descent began, the juggernaut lost its footing. The sheer absurdity of it struck Ludwig with grim amusement, he had just shoved back a god’s killing machine with nothing but a third-circle trick, physics, and spite.

The werewolf’s laughter died mid-breath.

His grin faltered, teeth snapping shut as his ears flicked back in disbelief. His body stiffened, golden eyes widening as the impossible played out before him. The Wrathful Death, the very thing he had promised to unleash, was falling, backward, into the Solanian mountains revealed by the rift.

“NOOOOO!” His howl split the battlefield, filled with more fury than mockery this time. The air shuddered with the force of it, a primal sound that clawed into marrow. He lunged, muscles and fur surging, his claws outstretched as though he could physically pull fate back into his hands. His target was clear, Ludwig.

But Ludwig was already turning, already shifting his weight, Oathcarver raised in one hand. His stance wasn’t desperate. It was steady, almost calm, as though the exhaustion of countless deaths had distilled into this one poised defiance.

The Wrathful Death crashed back into the mountains within the rift, its armored bulk sliding, sparks and stone cascading as the portal strained to contain the chaos. Each second its enormous form tumbled down the peaks was another second closer to the rift snapping shut.

The werewolf’s fury grew sharper with every heartbeat, his snarls shaking stone. He wanted to tear Ludwig apart before the rift sealed, how could this weakling stop his plans!

His claws glinted like curved swords as they swung downward,

And then the dome shattered.

The air rang like breaking crystal as the barrier of the Sacrosanctum finally ruptured. A new wave of power stormed across the battlefield, sweeping aside smoke and rubble.

Van Dijk had arrived.

He descended like a shadowed storm, his presence cutting through the chaos, his rage no longer wild but sharpened into killing precision. For the first time since this nightmare began, Ludwig felt a flicker of something that might have been hope.

Things were looking better. His master was here, he’ll solve the shitfest that’s happening in the capital. All is well…

Until he heard it.

Chains.

The sound was subtle at first, metallic links sliding across stone, but it was wrong. It wasn’t his doing. It wasn’t his command. His Soul Shackles, the faithful extensions of his will, were moving without him. They snaked across the battlefield, pulled taut toward the rift as if gripped by unseen hands.

Ludwig’s head snapped around. And there he saw it.

Kneeling beside the closing rift was a figure. Masked. Its porcelain face eerily smooth, painted with faint, mocking lines. The shape was familiar, the Piper. But not the same. This one bore a violin strapped to his back instead of a flute.

The figure tilted his head slightly, as though amused, and his voice carried through the chaos, smooth and contemptuous.

“Shouldn’t have taken what isn’t yours,” he said. “Enjoy your trip.”

The chains jerked.

Ludwig’s body was ripped forward, his heels scraping against the stone as his own weapons betrayed him. The rift screamed as it pulled him in, its edges collapsing in on themselves. His hands shot out, clawing at the ground, but the force was absolute.

The last thing he saw was Van Dijk’s eyes widening as the werewolf bared his teeth, and then the world folded into blackness.