Deus Necros

Chapter 833: Necropolitis

The first reaction to Ludwig’s spell was not relief.

It was horror.

Priests recoiled as if the black rain falling over the distant field had splashed across their own robes. Several of them raised holy symbols by instinct, fingers tightening around polished gold and silver until knuckles whitened. Paladins shifted their shields, not toward the horde, but toward Ludwig, as if some part of their training had judged the man casting dark magic to be the nearer danger. A bishop began shouting something about blasphemy, his voice cracking halfway through the word as another curtain of dark bullets tore into the servants of Sloth and made an entire section of the advancing tide collapse into twitching ruin.

The protest did not last long.

It could not.

The evidence was too large, too visible, and too immediate to ignore. The same monsters that had walked through the Red Tower Master’s destructive magic with only their outer ranks erased now slowed beneath Ludwig’s dark rain. Not stopped, but slowed. The bullets pierced into flesh, spread rot from within, and caused bodies to fold, rupture, and fall in ways ordinary mana had failed to produce. The priests could hate the sight as much as they wished, but hatred did not change the fact that the black magic was working.

The bishop who had raised his accusatory finger toward Ludwig earlier lowered it slowly, not out of shame, but because he no longer knew where to point.

The Red Tower Master watched the effect with narrowed eyes. His earlier amusement had been burned away by professional interest, the kind of attention only a master of magic could give when forced to admit that the battlefield had contradicted him. "How does that work?" he asked. "Why are they susceptible to dark magic?"

"Don’t know," Ludwig said, still keeping his left finger pointed toward the horde as the black canopy continued to pour death. "But if I were an enemy of an Empire that repressed and suppressed dark magic, I’d probably create enemies that are only killable by it."

The answer settled over the field in a silence far colder than the ice beneath their feet.

No one liked it.

That was the problem with a simple explanation. It did not need to be elegant to be believable. The law of the Empire was absolute. It had protected the realm for generations, shaped its institutions, restrained dangerous research, and prevented fools with ambition from turning cities into laboratories of corpses and curses. It had aided the Empire in surviving, growing, and holding itself together in a world where power regularly tempted people into monstrosity.

But now, that same law stood in front of them like a wall built in the wrong direction.

An enemy highly resistant to most forms of normal magic, yet weak to the very branch of power the Empire had banned, was not merely a battlefield problem. It was a political wound. A religious wound. A historical wound. Someone had designed or chosen this enemy with knowledge of the Empire’s restraint, and that meant the Empire’s virtue had been turned into a blindfold.

The White Tower Master did not hesitate.

He raised his hand, pointed two fingers toward the horde, and dark mana gathered around him.

The priests gasped again, but softer this time.

Several black bullets manifested in the air before the White Tower Master. They were far larger than Ludwig’s, denser, cleaner, each one shaped with a precision that made Ludwig’s own spell look like a hurried street fight by comparison. Then they flew forward. The bullets crossed the distance in streaks of compressed night and struck the enemy line with heavy, wet impacts. Wherever they landed, servants of Sloth decayed from the inside out. Bodies caved inward first, then erupted in bursts of dark residue that splashed across nearby monsters. The residue clung like plague, sinking into flesh, spreading rot through contact, making the infection leap from one creature to another.

The front of the horde buckled harder.

"You can use dark magic?" Ludwig asked, unable to stop himself.

"They’re all Tower Masters, Ludwig," Van Dijk said, sounding almost offended on their behalf. "They know all magic. They only specialize in their own. Dark Bullet is the most basic dark magic spell; they’d be ashamed if they couldn’t use that."

"You’re all madmen!" Hiro howled.

His voice tore across the field with the righteous fury of a man who had finally found something he could complain about louder than his own humiliation. He pointed his holy sword toward the Tower Masters, toward Ludwig, toward anyone whose hands were touched by black mana. "Why are you using dark magic?"

Little did he realize, or perhaps he simply refused to, that the greatest transgression on this field was not the spell being cast. It was his own worthlessness in the face of what stood before them. The Hero, manifested and cherished and defended by the Church, could only shout at the people slowing the army that would have swallowed Solania without them.

"Alright," Van Dijk said, clapping his hands once. "Since we’re already here, I hope not many of you dislike me after this."

The clap echoed strangely.

The icefield around him darkened.

At first, it looked like a shadow spreading beneath his boots. Then the substance thickened, turning glossy and black, tar-like in its weight and movement. It spilled outward from Van Dijk across the white ice, a slow, spreading stain that crawled forward like a tar pit poured over clean cloth. The magic did not rush. It did not need to. It advanced with dreadful certainty, coating cracks, swallowing frost, flowing between ridges of broken ice, and then surging toward the horde in a widening tide.

The Blue Tower Master smiled, eyes glinting. "Aren’t you using a bit too advanced dark magic?"

Van Dijk placed one hand over his chest with theatrical modesty. "I can’t be left out when you’re all showing off, now can I? I am the Black Tower Master, after all." His smile sharpened. "Though they banned us from using dark magic, I was a Tower Master before that law came to pass. I am simply using old knowledge."

The tar reached the first corpses.

Then the first living monsters.

It latched onto them like glue on a mouse trap. The servants of Sloth tried to pull free, but the black substance stretched, clung, and tightened around their legs, torsos, arms, and throats. Some fell face-first into it and sank without sound. Others were dragged down slowly, clawing at the air while the tar climbed them like a patient beast. Those that sank fully did not emerge again. The pool drank them, flesh, bone, mana, and all, leaving only ripples behind.

The rest of the Tower Masters began casting as well.

Not grand spells. Not forbidden arts from buried vaults or complicated rituals that needed time and circles. Basic dark bullets. Simple, direct, ugly, and effective. The sky ahead of Solania filled with black projectiles as the Tower Masters joined their power to Ludwig’s rain. In any other moment, the sight would have been enough to shake kingdoms. Dark magic, openly displayed by the greatest living mages in front of the holy city, while priests stood helpless and paladins watched in outrage they no longer had the courage to act on.

It was blasphemous.

It was horrifying.

It was the only thing keeping the enemy from reaching the walls.

And even then, it was only slowing them.

Not stopping them.

The servants of Sloth kept coming. More poured from the peaks, down the slopes, across the ice, through the steam and dark rain and tar fields. Hundreds of thousands remained. Perhaps more. Every time a line fell, another filled the gap. Every time Van Dijk’s tar swallowed a cluster, more stepped on the bodies of the sinking dead and pushed forward. The horde was too large to think of as an army. It was geography in motion.

"This won’t end well," Van Dijk said.

The Gray Tower Master’s face remained hard. "They’ll have to fight."

His gaze flicked toward the city, toward the priests, paladins, guards, and soldiers still waiting under the weight of impossible fear. The meaning was clear. Solania could no longer survive by watching Tower Masters cast from a distance. If the horde reached them, everyone would need to fight.

Ludwig looked at Mot and shook his head.

Mot understood immediately. "You really don’t want to wake him up."

"No," Ludwig said, looking up at the sky. "Not one bit."

The clouds above Solania moved in thick layers, gray and white and heavy enough to dim the sun. That had mattered. Ludwig had known it before the others did, but the memory he carried was not one he could explain honestly.

"They derive some of their power from the sun," Ludwig said. "But if you break the sky to weaken them..."

"What are you talking about?" the Gray Tower Master asked.

"They’re absorbing the sun’s power to move," Ludwig said. "Thanks to the clouds around Solania, they’re weaker. Once they’re in a spot with fewer clouds, they’ll grow far stronger."

The White Tower Master looked toward the sky, then back to the horde. "So darkness truly is their nemesis."

"Yeah," Ludwig said. "That’s what I found out five years ago."

The lie sat neatly in the open, dressed well enough to pass.

"They’re pushing harder," Van Dijk said.

His tar field strained beneath the pressure. The horde had begun piling bodies into the dark pool, forcing it to consume faster than even his spell seemed comfortable handling. Van Dijk’s smile vanished entirely. He poured more mana into the field, and the tar responded. Several arms shot out of the black surface, massive limbs large enough to be mistaken for ancient trees rising from a swamp. They came crashing down on the servants of Sloth with brutal force, splattering bodies across the ice before dragging the remains back into the pool to be absorbed.

The Red Tower Master’s expression had lost all amusement. "We’re really in way over our heads."

He glanced toward Van Dijk.

"Van Dijk, you sure you don’t have a lich somewhere hidden in that tower of yours?"

"A lich?" Van Dijk said. "I’d have called it here the moment I understood what was going on."

Ludwig frowned slightly. "Why a lich?"

Kaiser, who had been standing quietly behind them with his sleeves hiding his burned hands, spoke before Van Dijk could answer. "Because liches can conjure a territory."

Several eyes turned toward him.

Kaiser sighed faintly, as if he regretted speaking before he even finished. "A Necropolitis."

"Oh," Van Dijk said, smiling just enough to make the moment seem smoother than it was. "You know your stuff."

Of course he did.

Van Dijk already knew what Kaiser was. He had known for some time, because there were very few things in the world that could hide undeath from the Black Tower Master forever. But knowing was not the same as announcing, and announcing in front of priests, paladins, Tower Masters, and a holy city was rarely a delicate matter. So he let the boy-shaped lich speak for himself, and pretended the knowledge was simply impressive.

Kaiser closed his eyes.

"I’m going to regret this, aren’t I?"

Ludwig did not answer quickly enough.

Kaiser sighed harder. "Wonderful."

He stepped forward.

The Red Tower Master looked down at him with disbelief. "Kid, where are you going?"

"To save the day," Kaiser said, tone flat. "I guess."

He moved past the Tower Masters and stopped at the edge of Van Dijk’s black tar field. For a moment, his youthful appearance made the scene absurd. A refined-looking noble boy, coat dusted with ash, hands hidden, standing before a horde large enough to drown a nation. Then the air around him changed.

The illusion of harmlessness did not break.

It simply became irrelevant.

"Can’t believe I’m trying to help the Empire that caused my misery," Kaiser muttered. He glanced back once at Ludwig. "You owe me, Ludwig. Big time."

"I’m aware," Ludwig said.

"No, you aren’t. But you will be."

Kaiser lifted one hand, and his staff appeared in his grip.

The moment he held it, the temperature dropped. Not the natural cold of Solania’s icefields, but the stillness of mausoleums, crypts, and rooms where no living breath had passed for centuries. The priests felt it first and began stepping back. Paladins raised weapons again, but no one dared interrupt. Even Hiro, for once, hesitated. Perhaps some instinct told him that shouting at this spell would be like insulting a grave and expecting the dead to forgive poor manners.

Kaiser slammed the staff into the ice.

The sound was not loud.

It was final.

Dark lines spread from the point of impact, thin at first, then widening into a vast sigil that crawled beneath the snow, through Van Dijk’s tar, under Ludwig’s feet, and outward toward the battlefield. The lines did not overwrite the other dark magic. They organized it. They gave the black field shape, borders, architecture. The air above the ice thickened, and for a heartbeat, everyone present heard something that was not sound.

A city breathing without lungs.

Kaiser began to chant.

"By bone unbroken, by breath undone,

By ash beneath the blackened sun,

Necros, Lord of final night,

Open the grave and grant me might.

From deathless stone and hollow halls,

Where silence feeds and shadow calls,

Rise, Necropolitis, crown of the dead,

Awaken now where blood was shed.

No heart shall beat, no soul shall flee,

All ends return through Necros’ decree."

The last word struck the field like a bell.

The ice split.

Not downward.

Upward.

Black stone rose from beneath the frozen plain in jagged slabs, arranging itself into broken walls, archways, tomb markers, cracked towers, and streets that had no business existing there. Grave soil spilled across the snow. Skeletal hands pushed through the dark earth, not attacking, not yet, but forming the foundations of something greater. The battlefield between Solania and the horde began transforming into the outer district of a dead city, a necropolis born in seconds from dark mana, old death, and the will of a lich no longer pretending to be a boy.

The priests stared in mute horror.

The Tower Masters stared in something far more complicated.

Ludwig watched the territory rise and felt Necros’s silence settle across the field like a cloak.

Kaiser’s staff remained planted in the ice, his eyes colder than the grave around him.

The Necropolitis answered.