Deus Necros

The scene felt like something torn out of a madman’s subconscious, not so much a place as a revelation that had decided to wear the shape of one. The ground did not change its nature so much as its skin. The desert that had run smooth and dry as sifted flour arrived here and flinched. It recoiled the way a horse balks at a scent it knows is wrong, as if denying, with a kind of terrified dignity, any blood tie to what lay ahead. The very grains seemed to press their faces away from the threshold, and the wind that had dragged thin songs over dune-crests arrived and fell silent as if it had remembered the name of the dead.

Inside the path the sand turned clammy. It darkened and clumped in wet fists. When Ludwig’s boot sank he felt it give like mud and then cling with something too warm to be water. The surface shone with a gloss that was not moisture but something that had learned to pretend to be. A sluggish yellow brown flow wound through the gut of the place. It moved the way a dream moves when you are too tired to run. It had the slow, patient arrogance of rot that knows time is an ally. Everything in it seemed heavy and unhurried and content to be devoured by itself.

It was a place where even flies would have refused to land. A place where night had found a way to persist in daylight and where sound arrived and lay down at the edge like a dog that has been beaten too long.

[You have walked into a side branch of the Yellow River.]

The text floated before Ludwig’s sight and felt cool along the bones of his skull. He did not blink it away. He read it with the care a man uses to listen for a trap in the next sentence.

[Your Death Point has been saved to. Yellow River Branch 22488844]

The small pull settled behind his breastbone again, a new knot in the cord that tied his path to Necros’s ledger.

[Sudden Quest! Existence Quest II has been activated!]

The lines continued, each one dragging a colder air through his lungs.

{Necros is the Ruler of all that is dead. And the Yellow River is a highway for souls, used to move through it, cleansed from their mortal thoughts and events. Wiped of memory and feeling, to be reborn anew as a living being after they come in contact with Necros.}

However, this branch seems to be contaminated. It has lost its purpose and goal, and instead of syphoning the souls to the main river, it is harvesting them, and keeping them inside.

Unable to leave to the main river, the Souls would further immerse in vile and evil thoughts that they should have been cleansed of, creating something that shouldn’t walk the lands.

Do note, touching the Yellow River as a mortal will immediately syphon one’s soul away.

Only a few entities can walk through and live in the territory of the Yellow River. Among them are Demons and entities that do not own or have souls.

You will not gain any souls upon killing anyone within the land of the Yellow River.

Your mission is as follows.

Find the source of corruption. Eliminate it and allow the yellow rivulet that has been blocked to once again pass toward the greater Yellow River.

Reward for Successfully clearing Existence Quest II

Fully unleashing your current sealed status, allowing you to level up to level 300

Additional Rewards: ?

Upon Quest completion obtain the Usurper’s Skill: The Unwanted Mirror.

Quest difficulty: ☠☠☠☠☠

“Shit,” Ludwig muttered. The word left him like breath on glass. One more skull than Wrath. A small symbol, but he felt the weight of it along his spine. It was not even a joke how this arrived now. Wrath had taken him five years to break. Five years of learning how to die correctly. If he were to hunt the others the same way, one by one, he would spend decades paying out his time to them like copper coins. By the time he made himself free, anyone who knew his original name might be ground into the dirt of a graveyard path.

He took a deep breath and tasted copper and old water that had forgotten it was ever rain. Then he stepped in.

The ground sighed under the leather. The thin skin that covered the sludge parted and healed itself behind his heel, as if unwilling to remember that he had passed.

“What is this damn place?” Tull asked. He did not speak loudly. He did not have to. Everything around delivered quiet back to the speaker. The prince’s guard held himself the way men do near a cliff when a wind chooses to swirl rather than blow. One hand near the hilt not for show but because habit had taught him that time can change its mind without warning.

“This is a branch of the Yellow River,” Ludwig said. He did not make ceremony of it. He walked into the slime and smudge and let it take his weight so the others would see that the path existed because someone chose to give it a first step.

The river itself did not look like water. It looked like dirty molasses that had learned the language of grief. It dragged itself along its own bed. It clung to what it touched. He watched it fold over some snag under the surface and the fold did not break. It simply pulled and pulled until the shape dissolved.

“It is a small rivulet connected to the main Yellow River. We are at an edge,” he said. He did not share the exact phrasing of his screen. He did not need to. There was enough truth in what he spoke to keep them alive. And from the looks of things… Staying alive would not be easy here. Not like anything had ever been easy for Ludwig.