Deus Necros

Chapter 659: Negotiation

Ludwig was standing in the center line of the chamber, where the light was brightest and everyone could see him clearly, which was precisely the point. This was not a private audience. This was a public weighing. And he needed to answer.

“Mere words, Emperor. They used to work for Van Dijk, assistants. The two of them. And when I was discovered by master, he chose me to be his disciple for the fact that I was able to mimic his Black Flame without ever having learned magic. They on the other hand worked for him for years and never were able to do as much… I suppose their inferiority, and their lack of self discipline is what caused them to go astray.” Ludwig said.

The words left Ludwig’s mouth with the same measured cadence he used when negotiating contracts and condemning monsters: calm, exact, and stripped of anything that could be used against him later.

He kept his posture immovable, hands clasped behind his back, shoulders set as if he could brace the entire room. He could feel eyes crawling across his skin: nobles doing their quiet arithmetic, knights watching for signs of threat, clerks waiting for the Emperor’s verdict so they could write the “correct” truth later.

Ludwig knew that even his breathing rhythm would be interpreted as either guilt or insolence at this point in time.

The Emperor’s stare was not theatrical. It was functional, the gaze of a man who had survived enough coups and conspiracies to treat every face as a possible blade.

He did not lean forward with curiosity or sit back in comfort; he remained perfectly balanced on the throne, a symbol that had learned to be a weapon. Judging, weighing and understanding the man in front of him.

Ludwig watched him in return without staring, letting his attention rest where it needed to without challenging the hierarchy.

After all, it was dark magic that was used in these halls. Magic that was banned and is treated the same as high treason. A onetime visit to the gallows without return.

The words that the two Necromancers sent toward Ludwig wasn’t merely accusation, it felt like an execution waiting to happen.

Ludwig couldn’t help but think of how back in his world people used to burn women for simply being accused of being a witch. He was feeling it right now, and it was far too real.

This was a cultural reflex, an execution already half-written in the minds of half the people present.

Ludwig could see it in their eyes, some didn’t look at him directly anymore, as if proximity to the accusation might splash onto them.

The irony was almost amusing if he allowed himself to taste it: the people of the empire feared dark magic more than it feared incompetence, greed, or cowardice, even though those were the things that actually killed empires.

Dark magic was neat, simple, and hated; it made a convenient enemy. Ludwig had learned long ago that convenient enemies were rarely innocent.

“Went astray… they used Dark Magic…” The Emperor didn’t raise his voice, but the words landed with weight.

Not anger, precision. He repeated Ludwig’s framing, testing it like a blade edge, checking if it held. The hall’s temperature didn’t change, but Ludwig felt the attention tighten. This was the moment where a stutter, a flinch, a poorly chosen word could transform suspicion into certainty.

“Indeed, they did.” Ludwig answered without dressing it up.

He did not give the nobles the satisfaction of seeing him squirm, and he did not give the Emperor the inconvenience of untangling a long speech.

“You don’t sound like a man with pity to his former colleagues.” The accusation was disguised as observation, which made it sharper.

Pity would suggest humanity; lack of pity could be painted as cruelty, and cruelty could be painted as motive.

Ludwig noted how the Emperor phrased it, he wasn’t condemning Ludwig, he was inviting Ludwig to explain himself in a way that could be judged. A trap that looked like a courtesy.

“They treated me like dirt, bullied me when I was weak, and tried to take many of my opportunities. Blaming me for being a dark user isn’t their first time, it was done before when I was forced away from the academy, and had to run to master’s old estate… where I cleared it of monsters and the fiends that infested it.” Ludwig said.

Ludwig didn’t allow himself to linger on memory, but the Bastos Estate rose behind his eyes anyway: corridors that smelled of rot, wet stone and horrid monsters of Moon and Nightmares. Far too vivid to forget, and far too disgusting to remember.

That part of his past didn’t make him sympathetic; it made him forged. Sympathy was wasted here. He spoke instead like a man describing an unpleasant but solved problem.

“I see. We’ll be doing some of our own investigation on the matters though. Merely blaming someone in this empire is enough to cause suspicion,” the Emperor said.

A ruler who didn’t investigate was a ruler waiting to be replaced. Ludwig accepted the statement as inevitable, but he also catalogued the phrasing.

The Emperor wasn’t saying Ludwig was guilty; he was reminding the room that accusation alone had weight, and that weight could crush people whether deserved or not. It was a warning to Ludwig and an instruction to the nobles around: do not decide before the throne does.

“I understand the saying, your majesty, that there is no fire without smoke. Please do as you wish, you will find me innocent of all they blame me of. But if that does happen eventually, I wish to be compensated for the doubt.” The request was the real strike.

Not the content, compensation was reasonable in principle, but the audacity of asking for it out loud in front of witnesses. Ludwig didn’t do it for greed. He did it for precedent.

If the Emperor investigated him publicly, Ludwig needed the Emperor to restore him publicly as well, and restoration that carried a tangible cost forced people to remember which direction the verdict went.