Deus Necros

Chapter 711: Run

“What do we do, chief?” Akro asked.

Akro’s voice was tight, the kind of tight that came from seeing something so wrong your instincts stalled for a moment.

The scouts remained crouched behind sparse brush and broken stone, but the cover felt laughable now. Below them, the mountain’s stink thickened as the wind shifted, sulfur and smoke and something metallic, like blood left too long on hot rock.

Ludwig didn’t answer immediately. He kept his eyes locked onto the goblins that were changing to Orcs, watching bodies swell and twist under forced magic like dough being kneaded into a new shape.

The sound of it carried faintly even from here: wet cracking, strained breaths, pain muffled by clenched teeth and obedience.

“Let me think for a second,” Ludwig replied as he kept his eyes locked onto the goblins that were changing to Orcs.

This made sense, the reason why they’re this many, why they dared go on an assault.

And kill off their own kin to create these abominations. Not recruits. Not allies. Manufactured mass. Something that could be produced, replenished, expanded. The Red Tusks weren’t just waging war, they were building an army the way you built a weapon, by feeding it bodies.

Stronger, bigger, and bloodier abominations.

Sovereignty. No, that’s the wrong word.

“Dominion,” Ludwig muttered.

The word fit. Sovereignty was rule accepted by borders and tradition. Dominion was rule enforced by strength until resistance became a habit you forgot. What Ludwig was watching wasn’t conquest. It was conversion. A system meant to erase other tribes by turning them into Red Tusks one heart at a time.

“You also see it…” Gale said.

“I would be blind not to,” he said as he locked his eyes with the giant crowned Orc.

The palanquin looked even more obscene now that Ludwig had watched the slaughter at the cave mouth. Eight orcs carried it like priests carrying an altar, and the thing seated on it did not move with impatience.

It didn’t need to. The mountain was being fed to it. The tribe moved for it. The goblins were being remade for it. And the crown of bones on its head didn’t look ceremonial. It looked like a claim.

Ludwig knew how dangerous what he was about to do was, but did it anyway.

[Inspect]

***

Name: Grogamar The Bloodthirsty

Race: Orc – Epic –

Level: 200

Health: 600,000

Status Effect: {Gigantify} {Blood Incensed} {Pride Touched}

Abilities:

[War Cry] Rallies all orcs that are below it in strength to his command, and break any that oppose him in morals. +20% added damage to all allies -20% damage to all enemies afflicted for 10 minutes.

[Ten Tons of Muscle] Increased destructiveness at the cost of exhaustion. +50% damage. +20% stamina consumption.

[Flesh Feast] Instantly Regenerate 10µ Stamina, Mana, and Health from flesh consumed. And passively regenerate 5% more until hunger.

Lore:

A once timid Orc of the open planes of Tetra now became a tyrant once they met an entity that offered ’enlightenment.’

***

The notification gave Ludwig a lot to work with. And a lot to understand. Level 200. Health that made normal fights feel like jokes. A war cry that didn’t simply inspire, it broke opposition “in morals,” which meant obedience wasn’t just fear, it was enforced conviction. Ten tons of muscle. Flesh feast. It was a creature built to grind a battlefield into meat and then eat the battlefield to keep grinding. And the most important line was the one that made Ludwig’s stomach go colder than the river had.

The Grogamar was a creature that met Pride. That was obvious. Ludwig didn’t know how that happened or when it happened. But the status window clearly says it.

[Pride Touched.]

That single phrase rewrote the Tower in Ludwig’s head. This wasn’t a contained simulation full of simple NPCs acting out a scenario.

Pride had reached into it. Influenced it. Marked it. The entities in this tower were no longer the simple scenario ’NPCs’ that Ludwig thought them to be.

No, they had depth, greed for power and pride for owning it.

They were afflicted by Pride himself. And it caused them to be… this.

A timid orc turned tyrant by “enlightenment.” That wording stank worse than sulfur. Enlightenment was what people called corruption when they wanted it to sound righteous.

The part that Ludwig worried about happened immediately after.

The massive Grogamar snapped his head toward their location.

It was so sudden that for a heartbeat Ludwig thought the giant had truly seen them. But it couldn’t. Not through brush, not at this distance, not with the scouts lying low. Yet the head turned anyway with the surety of something responding to a sensation rather than sight.

He couldn’t see Ludwig, couldn’t see the lizardmen. But he felt it. The pervasive feeling of having your stats laid bare for others to see. To have sight that can go beyond armor and clothes and look deep into one’s essence and being.

Ludwig felt it too, the thin aftertaste of [Inspect], that faint spiritual scrape like a hand had brushed something forbidden. It wasn’t just information. It was an intrusion. A divine power that rips and strips and lays all bare for one to witness. That’s what the Orc felt, and for a second, it felt fear.

Only a second.

It didn’t fear Ludwig, no, it feared whatever granted Ludwig the ability to see one’s essence.

Then that fear became rage.

Grogamar howled, and his tribe replied. It pointed toward the general location where Ludwig and the scout team were, and roared out; it didn’t even say a word.

The sound rolled down the mountain like an avalanche made of lungs, deep enough to vibrate in bones, violent enough to make lesser creatures flinch.

It wasn’t a command in language. It was a command in instinct, and the Red Tusks moved as if their bodies had been waiting for permission to become weapons.

But that was all the rest of the Red Tusks needed to hear to understand what to do.

’Enemy there, go kill it.’

“Let’s book it,” Ludwig said.

“Book? What is that? Edible?” Akro asked.

Ludwig rose up, “That means, let’s fucking run,” he said as he turned tail and ran away.

He didn’t waste time staying crouched. Staying low was useless once an army had been pointed in their direction. Ludwig wasn’t afraid of confrontation, nor the fight. Especially not something level 200. But that was before Tower Ludwig, the Ludwig that could use Noctivex and Nightbreaker. Current Ludwig needed planning. And fighting a whole thousand orc battalion was anything but a plan.

The lizardmen followed immediately after Ludwig and Gale, who said, “It is good to know when to retreat, even when death means you get to return.”

“Even if I return by Death,” Ludwig said, “It’ll only reduce a life. Not gain me anything, and we’re clearly outmatched and outnumbered.” He said as he turned his head while sprinting.

The ground under their feet shifted from scrub and loose rock into uneven grassy slopes, and Ludwig’s orc body hated every dip and snag the moment he pushed into full speed.

His lungs pulled hard, burning in a way undead lungs never did, and each breath tasted faintly of sulfur now that they were closer to the mountain’s stink.

Behind them, the sound of pursuit began to build, heavy impacts, not footfalls so much as ground being punished repeatedly.

Several orcs were bounding toward them, not running, more like hulking forward.

They didn’t sprint like men. They surged like boulders that had learned to chase. Each bound covered too much distance, muscles launching mass forward with ugly efficiency. Ludwig could hear their breath and the scrape of armor and the occasional barked grunt that sounded more like excitement than exertion.

They’ll catch them in no time if they keep up the pace.

The problem wasn’t Ludwig nor Gale. Respectively, they matched the speed of the Orcs chasing after them; it was the Lizardmen.

Their forms weren’t that helpful when it came to sprinting; their tails were too big, swaying them left to right, while their legs were slightly too short, which didn’t help in keeping a long stride. Ludwig heard it in their breathing, saw it in their cadence, fast at first, then faltering as the body remembered it had limits. One lizardman stumbled on a root and recovered, but the stumble cost precious distance.

“Akro! Are you faster on land or water?” Ludwig asked.

“Water!”

“Then jump with the rest of the Lizardmen into the water, go downstream, run away,” Ludwig said as he outpaced the lizardmen.

He didn’t slow down to shepherd them gently. He gave a clean instruction and trusted Akro to execute.

That was what leadership was in motion, delegating survival.

Akro barked something to his kin in a sharp hiss, and the scouts veered hard toward the river line, bodies angling away from the open slope where the Red Tusks would catch them first.

The group of lizardmen followed the champion and dove in, disappearing from sight.

Water swallowed them fast, splashes, then nothing but ripples and tails vanishing beneath the surface. The river carried them, and their amphibious bodies suddenly made sense again. They became sleek. Efficient. Harder targets. Ludwig felt a small measure of relief, not because he cared about them sentimentally, but because losing them here would be losing information and potential bodies to wage ware against these Pride Touched entities.

A Waste.

On the other hand, Ludwig and Gale simply sprinted forward, as their lives depended on it.

Courage could wait when courage could be used. Fighting now is only a fool’s errand.

And Ludwig was anything but a fool.