Deus Necros

Chapter 712: Bad News

“They’re falling back,” Gale said as he looked behind him.

His voice carried no relief, only confirmation. Ludwig risked a glance over his shoulder while still moving, and saw it clearly: the bounding red orcs had slowed, their pursuit breaking apart into staggered clusters rather than a tight, hungry line.

The first sprint had been a violent burst of power, mass thrown forward with brute intent, but brute intent was expensive. Their hulking bodies were built to crush, not to maintain long distance.

Some of them had already stopped to brace hands on knees, chests heaving, heads lifting to glare after Ludwig with frustrated hunger rather than certainty. Even at a distance, Ludwig could feel their irritation like heat.

The bounding orcs seemed to have exhausted themselves in that short sprint. If they had caught up, Ludwig might have found himself back at the entrance of the tower. But their hulking bodies, their mass of muscle was burning too much energy for them to keep a steady long sprint.

“Good, let’s keep going, let’s not give them the chance to think they can catch up,” Ludwig said and ran forward.

He didn’t slow even as his lungs burned. Orc lungs weren’t undead lungs. They complained. They demanded. His throat felt dry from sulfur-tainted air, and each breath scraped like sand.

He ignored it and pushed his legs harder, letting momentum stay his shield. Stopping too early meant giving the Red Tusks time to regroup, to send fresher runners, to start thinking like hunters instead of angry boulders.

The night felt chilly as they continued moving, and once Ludwig felt that they had made enough distance, “We stop here!” he ordered, and Gale stopped.

Cold had crept in while they ran, dawn’s warmth replaced by that late-evening bite that made wet skin miserable. Ludwig chose a spot where the river bent and the bank rose into a shallow slope, enough cover that they wouldn’t be silhouetted. Gale halted first, breathing steady despite the sprint, then turned like a guard tower scanning all directions. A heartbeat later, ripples broke in the river and the lizardmen surfaced, slick and quiet, hauling themselves onto mud with practiced ease. They shook water off in quick motions, claws digging into soil, tails slapping lightly as they settled into crouches.

“They won’t catch up to us, I hope,” one of the smaller lizardmen said.

His voice had that thin tremor of someone who had just outrun death and wasn’t sure whether to trust the distance yet. His eyes kept flicking toward the dark line of trees behind them, expecting red silhouettes to burst through at any second.

“Not this far. Still,” Ludwig sighed as he sloped down.

He lowered himself to the ground carefully, letting his weight settle, forcing his body to stop shaking with leftover sprint adrenaline. The sigh wasn’t exhaustion; it was irritation at the problem’s scale. He could feel it pressing at the edge of his mind like a dull blade. They had come to scout Yellow Mountain and had instead found a monster factory.

“It’s not good, is it?” Akro replied.

Akro’s tone wasn’t fear. It was the pragmatic dread of a veteran who recognized when the battlefield had changed categories, from “difficult” to “unreasonable.” His chest brand caught faint moonlight when he shifted, and Ludwig hated how quickly the mark was becoming normal to look at.

“No, not even close. The enemy outnumbers and overpowers us. We can’t fend off those mutated orcs. We’ll need a different plan.”

Ludwig kept his voice low and controlled because panic spread faster than disease. He let the truth be harsh but organized.

Outnumbered. Overpowered. Mutated. Different plan.

A list, not a lament. That was how you stopped minds from spiraling.

“Are we not going to consolidate forces anymore?” Gale asked.

Gale’s question wasn’t disagreement. It was process. Consolidating forces was the obvious next step in most wars: gather troops, unite tribes, and build an army. But Ludwig had just seen what a thousand red orcs looked like. An army didn’t guarantee anything if the enemy’s army could be manufactured and replenished by feeding hearts to goblins.

Ludwig shook his head, “No, we’ll still do that. However, we need a way to overcome those challenges. We need Kaiser for this. These orcs are just too strong to fight in melee…” Ludwig sighed as he relaxed on the ground with his back against the dirt.

The dirt was cool against his spine, grounding, but it also reminded him he was in a living body that could cramp and ache. He let his head tilt back for a second, eyes half-closed, and then forced them open again. Resting too long felt dangerous. Thinking was the only real weapon he had left in this scenario.

“They’ll completely demolish us… Akro…” Ludwig asked as he rapidly sat up straight.

The sudden movement made the lizardmen flinch slightly. Ludwig’s mind had caught a hook of possibility and yanked it hard.

“Yes?”

“Where is the Ogre tribe?”

The question hung for a bit. The ogres were strong, too strong for any other race to try to confront. And here, they only had six people. The lizardmen looked at each other as if Ludwig had just suggested walking into a storm to ask it for directions. Even Gale’s posture shifted, subtle interest, but also caution.

“Up north from our position, we’ll cross the river and head deeper. There is a mountain where they live. But, not many know where the ogres are anymore; they withdrew from the world and secluded themselves in their mountain.” Akro replied.

The way he said withdrew carried weight. Not “were killed.” Not “were conquered.” Withdrew. A choice. That meant fear, or strategy, or something forcing them into hiding. Strong tribes didn’t hide unless they had learned something the others hadn’t.

“We need information. We can’t act without it; there must be a reason why these ogres withdrew, although they’re this strong.”

Ludwig spoke like he was putting pieces on a board. The ogres weren’t just potential allies. They were a clue. If they had vanished, it meant they knew something about the Tower’s deeper structure, something that made even strength feel insufficient.

“Would that really help us, in this case?” another lizardman asked.

The question wasn’t insolence. It was exhaustion. They had just been branded, forced into service, marched, sprinted from a thousand red orcs, and now their new chieftain wanted to go poke the scariest unseen race in the plains. Fear was logical.

“It’s better than just returning empty-handed. We need to find out more about this world at least,” Ludwig said as he pulled his communication crystal.

The crystal was cool in his hand, smooth and familiar, and that familiarity was oddly comforting. At least this part behaved like his world: ask, receive, plan. Ludwig activated it with a thumb press, feeling the faint vibration as the connection opened.

“Kaiser, do you copy?” Ludwig asked.

“Copy? Copy what?” the words echoed from the crystal.

Ludwig’s lips twitched, but only for a heartbeat. This wasn’t the time to get annoyed at Kaiser’s ignorance of slang.

“Never mind that, anyway, we got news.”

“Same here, tell us what you know first, it seems important,” Kaiser said.

Kaiser’s tone had shifted. Less casual, more alert. Ludwig could hear it immediately: Kaiser had found something, and it wasn’t small.

“Okay, so here’s what happened…”

Ludwig spoke fast but clean, recounting the Yellow Mountain slaughter, the thousand red orcs, the crowned giant, the goblin king, the hearts, the transformation. He left nothing out that mattered.

Gale stayed silent while Ludwig spoke, listening like a soldier taking battlefield notes. The lizardmen listened too, faces tightening as their world grew bigger and uglier with each sentence.

After Ludwig finished recounting what happened at the Yellow Mountain, Kaiser remained quiet for a bit, eerily so.

The silence stretched just long enough to feel wrong. Ludwig’s grip tightened slightly on the crystal. Silence from Kaiser meant either deep thinking or very bad news.

“That’s interesting,” he replied.

“How come? I thought you’d have better words than ’interesting.’”

“No, it’s because he’s using Fleshmancy.”

“The what now?”

“One of King Ashkar’s main tools of magic. Remember, I have his finger…” Kaiser said.

“Ah. That lich or whatever.”

“First Lich. But yes. He used magic to change one’s body and form, to grant them power beyond what their bodies could offer. But it ultimately consumed him. Not even after he discarded his mortal coil was he able to go beyond the clutches of such dark magic.” Kaiser said.

Kaiser’s explanation carried that scholarly disgust only a lich could manage, fascination mixed with contempt.

Ludwig could hear the implication in it: this kind of magic was a shortcut that always came with a hook. It made you stronger, and then it ate you. That meant the Red Tusks might be building their army by burning through it, turning bodies into weapons that would eventually collapse. ’Eventually’ didn’t help Ludwig today, but it was a crack worth remembering.

“How is that helpful?” Ludwig asked.

“Not at all helpful, it just means we understand a bit more what we’re fighting. That also means we can’t win with our numbers. Not unless we manage to recruit every other tribe under us.”

“Being King is no longer just an objective.”

“It’s a way of survival,” Kaiser replied.

Ludwig felt that truth settle into his chest like a stone. The Tower wasn’t asking him to play politics for fun. It was forcing him into the only shape that could survive the scenario: a ruler with manpower, leverage, and might.

Pride wasn’t waiting politely at the end. Pride had already reached in and twisted the world into a grinder.

“Tell me then, what did you find on your end?”

“Oh, yeah, I used Necromancy to get more forces to help us rebuild, and I discovered something interesting,” Kaiser said.

“Necromancy… I should have thought of that,” Ludwig muttered.

He wasn’t praising Kaiser. He was annoyed at himself. In his own world, necromancy was a hammer he used constantly. In this Tower scenario, the restrictions and the orc’s body had made him think sideways and forget the obvious.

“It’s fine even if you did, they’re worthless if it came to combat…”

“How come? The undead are pretty strong when there are many of them.”

“That’s the thing, there aren’t many corpses in these planes. Even the lizardmen that died in the raid were not ’corpses’ technically.”

“What do you mean?” Ludwig asked.

“Something is preventing them from returning to Undeath, the normal corpses, I mean; however, I brought back a few.”

“And how did you do that?” Ludwig asked, his confusion growing more.

“Simple, I brought back other climbers who tried to get to higher floors. The people that tried this same scenario and died… and they have much to say, and much to tell…”