Deus Necros

Ludwig could feel the Heart pushing, whispering that the next target was always available if you looked hard enough.

Ludwig took a deep breath, “Sorry about that, yeah, he’s still trying to get me to kill, I’ll be able to calm it down soon.”

He forced the breath all the way down, not shallow chest breathing that fed panic, but the kind of breath that forced the body to obey. It didn’t remove Wrath, but it gave Ludwig a thin strip of space between impulse and action.

Enough to speak like himself again, instead of like a blade.

“So, what’s the plan?” Kaiser asked.

“We’ll go to the next floor… in this case, the fifth floor apparently…”

Ludwig kept his eyes on the system space in front of him as if staring hard enough could make the tower stop being smug. The tower never stopped being smug. Even now, after a king had fallen and a battlefield had been rewritten, it offered progress like a clerk stamping papers.

“Fifth? Not second.”

“Not from what this notification is telling me…”

He let the system answer in his place, because arguing with Kaiser about tower logic would be pointless, and because his patience was thin enough that pointless things felt dangerous.

[You have succeeded in completing many additional and optional objectives of the Tower of Trials. You can proceed to the fifth floor by heading to the top of the Ogre Mountain.]

The words hung there, neat and indifferent, as if “optional objectives” were something like collecting herbs instead of killing a Pride-touched tyrant and dragging his consequences behind you.

“I guess we did too much…”

It came out with a humorless edge. Ludwig wasn’t proud of “doing too much.” He was annoyed that competence had consequences in places that liked to punish it.

“Are we going to remain orcs? I hate this body.” Kaiser said.

Kaiser flexed his fingers like he expected the skin to peel off and reveal something better underneath. Ludwig understood the feeling. This body had needs. Hunger. Sleep. Pain that didn’t politely turn off just because the situation demanded otherwise.

“I hope not,” Ludwig said, “But we’ll have to deal with it regardless.” He looked around, “Let’s move.”

The battlefield was already shifting into aftermath: wounded being carried, ropes tightening, undead standing in their unnerving stillness as if they were waiting for the next command. Ludwig didn’t want to stay here long enough for Wrath to start suggesting “cleanup” in its own way.

“What about the rest?” Gale asked.

“They cannot leave now…” Ludwig sighed.

He glanced toward the safe lands, toward faces that watched him with a mixture of awe and fear and fragile hope. They’d fought because he promised them a path forward. Ludwig hated promises he couldn’t immediately fulfill.

“I thought they’ll also be able to climb, with us.”

“Well, I thought the same, but…”

The system answered again, and Ludwig felt the irritation spike because it always did when a window clarified a rule you’d already paid for in blood.

[You can only take tower dwellers outside the tower if you succeed in leaving it first.]

“But, we need to get out of the tower first,” Ludwig explained.

He kept it blunt. No sugar. The truth was still better than letting hope rot into betrayal later. Even so, he could feel the disappointment ripple through the nearby listeners like a draft passing through a crowded room.

Damra got closer, “I knew it won’t be that easy. But, I believe you guys can leave this place. So far, this is the fastest anyone had become a king, from those who climb this tower. You can definitely make it to the top.”

Damra’s confidence wasn’t naïve. It was the kind of belief someone clung to when the alternative was despair. His posture was upright despite exhaustion, like he was trying to remind the rest that courage was still the local currency. Ludwig respected it. He also knew belief didn’t stop blades.

Ludwig looked up at the sky and sighed.

The sky here didn’t feel like a sky. It felt like a ceiling painted to resemble one. He didn’t like being inside structures that pretended to be worlds.

“We’ll just have to hope.”

“Worried about Pride?” Kaiser asked.

“Not worried, just thinking… if pride is as great as Lust or Wrath, or god forbid, Gluttony, it’ll be a nightmare and a half. It’ll probably take years too…”

Ludwig didn’t say it to dramatize.

Wrath had been a war. Lust had been a lesson in limits. Gluttony had been a reminder of scale. Pride, if Pride was truly embedded in this place, could be the kind of fight that didn’t end cleanly.

“That’s the thing, what are years to one of us? Merely a blink. It shouldn’t affect us.”

Kaiser tried to sound casual, but Ludwig heard the defensive note under it. Kaiser wanted to believe time didn’t matter because time was the one resource they could pretend was infinite. Pretending time was infinite made suffering easier to justify.

“No, but I just have this feeling…” Ludwig sighed, “That something is going on outside the tower… and I just don’t like it.”

It wasn’t paranoia. It was instinct. The same instinct that had kept Ludwig alive through five years of dying, and through palace halls of emperors and queens and even the yellow river’s dangers. The tower had “rumors” that bothered Necros. The cycles were changing. Pride’s touch was accelerating things. It all felt too coordinated to be coincidence.

“A lot is going on outside this place; we can’t be worrying about things we cannot change, Ludwig.”

“You’re right, Gale, you’re right,” Ludwig sighed, “Now let’s leave. And see what this fifth floor has for us.”

He rolled his shoulders, testing what still worked, then started moving, because standing still made his body remember everything it wanted him to feel, and he couldn’t afford that right now.

Not when the mountain waited above, not when the tower had already decided he’d skipped ahead, and not when Wrath, quiet for the moment, was still there in the background, breathing like it was waiting for the next excuse.