Deus Necros

Chapter 450: Two Minutes

The Moonflayed King’s flesh rippled beneath Ludwig’s boots as he sprinted up the length of its massive arm, each step pounding against bone and sinew that strained to crush him. The giant shuddered, a guttural roar rising from its hollow throat, wings stretching wide in defiance. Those wings, though ragged and stripped of many feathers, still carried enough death to blot out the sky. With a convulsive jerk, it unleashed a storm, feathers loosed like barbed javelins, their edges keen enough to carve through stone.

Ludwig saw the storm descend. Without Oathcarver in his hand, parrying was suicide. Instead he reached to his left arm’s bracelet, summoning his Soul Shackles, and then pouring loads of souls into them for what is next to come. With a snap of his arm, the links coiled around him, whirling into a circular bulwark that spun faster and faster, clashing against themselves until the sound became a constant metallic shriek.

The first feather struck. The impact was like being hit by a siege hammer, the chain bulwark buckling but holding. Then came another, and another, until it was a relentless hail, every blow rattling Ludwig’s teeth, every strike threatening to break the half-mended bones in his arm anew. His freshly reset joints creaked audibly under the strain. Sparks sprayed off the whirling links as the storm of feathers pressed harder, the force of them threatening to shove him back down the arm.

He snarled low, baring his teeth, and pushed forward step by step. The chain bulwark groaned as each feather punched through the outer rings, only to be caught by the next coil before piercing his flesh. Every movement forward was a contest between his will and the storm’s fury. He stomped hard with each step, howling not for spell craft, not for theatrics, but because the world was collapsing around him and he needed to give voice to the strain just to move.

At last, the barrage ceased. The wings pulled back, feathers spent, leaving the King’s scarred bulk towering before him. Smoke from burnt feathers hung in the air, acrid and stinging the lungs of every adventurer below. Ludwig’s chains clattered and fell slack, their strength spent. He stood panting not from exhaustion, for breath was not his to lose, but from the sensation of strain echoing through his frame.

The King’s head loomed above him now, its face a grotesque ruin of mangled flesh, with one eye socket still pierced by Oathcarver’s jagged hilt. It bellowed, and as its chest heaved, the bones along its ribs cracked outward like the growth of trees, sharpened points surging to impale the pest clinging to its frame.

Ludwig’s lips peeled back into a feral grin. Both soles of his boots flared as spheres of condensed mana formed, humming with unstable energy. He bent his knees, bracing himself against the rising bones.

“HERE COMES JHONNY!” he howled, and the spheres detonated.

The twin explosions tore the air apart beneath him, hurling him upward with bone-rattling force. His health bar dropped from the backlash, red notifications flashing at the edge of his vision -1,002 hp, -898 hp but it didn’t matter. The blast shot him forward past the surge of impaling bones, driving him headlong toward the ruined face.

He slammed against the King’s cheek, his body a mere splinter against the bulk of the titan, but his fingers dug in with unnatural strength, piercing decaying skin to anchor himself. The stench was unbearable rot, blood, the faint reek of burned marrow but Ludwig barely noticed. His gaze locked on Oathcarver’s hilt protruding from the eye socket. He hurled himself forward, body taut with all the momentum his unnatural muscles could conjure, and wrapped both hands around the weapon.

The King howled as Ludwig wrenched. Muscles in his arms strained, his shoulders screamed with phantom pain, and still he pulled, tearing himself backward with the weapon lodged in the eye. The socket resisted, flesh clinging to steel, until at last Oathcarver ripped free in a spray of thick, dark ichor. Ludwig staggered back on the King’s face, weapon finally in hand once more.

“That’s better,” he muttered, his tone edged with grim satisfaction. He planted Oathcarver in the ruined socket, channeled mana through his fingertips, and whispered, “Explosive Mines.”

One after another, dozens of small crimson spheres flickered into existence within the empty cavity. They sunk into the wet, rotting tissues lining the eye, nestling deep inside as the King thrashed and clawed at its own skull.

Ludwig didn’t wait to watch. He hurled himself backward off the King’s face, twisting midair. The ground rushed up to meet him, but before he struck, a heavy arm braced his back, halting his fall.

The Guildmaster stood there, bracing him with one good arm. His battered frame was still wrapped in bloody bandages, but his grip was steady. His eyes glinted as he stared at the weapon Ludwig had reclaimed.

“That’s a lot of acrobatics for something you could’ve retrieved with your chains,” the Guildmaster said, his voice hoarse but wry.

“Maybe,” Ludwig answered, raising two fingers. “But the chains wouldn’t let me do this.”

He snapped.

The battlefield lit in crimson as the eye socket of the Moonflayed King erupted. Explosions ripped through bone and marrow in rapid succession, each blast louder than the last. Fire and gore sprayed outward from its sewed mouth, nose, and remaining eye socket. The giant’s head jerked, body wobbling as the chain of detonations devoured the cavity from within. Flames jetted through the cracks in its skull like torches, turning the titanic form into a bonfire.

[Catastrophic Blow!]

-15,788,877 HP!

The number seared across his vision in bold scarlet text. Ludwig allowed himself a grin, the echo of triumph cold but satisfying.

“That’s a number,” he murmured.

The King staggered, reeling, but it did not fall. Its health bar dipped just below a third, the flesh knitting even as smoke poured from its sockets. The sheer weight of its existence would not allow it to die so easily.

The Guildmaster released Ludwig from his grip, letting him land steady on his own two feet. His battered frame straightened, though pain flickered behind his eyes. He wiped blood from his lips and stared up at the wobbling giant as it steadied itself, flames still seeping from the seams of its skull.

“Why haven’t you been using Aura all this time?” the Guildmaster asked, his voice low, the words barely carrying over the cacophony of battle. He had seen Ludwig fight, seen the explosive spells, the fury, the unnatural resilience. Yet never once had he seen the flare of aura, something that should have been more than easy to do for someone so young and so brave.

Ludwig glanced down at Oathcarver, still dripping with ichor from the eye socket, then back up at the Knight King’s shade perched silently on his shoulder. His lips tightened. “Simply put… I can’t,” he said. “Never learned. Or maybe… I just haven’t found my Heart.”

It was the truth, at least as much as he dared speak. He could say it without betraying what he was. The Guildmaster studied him, eyes narrowing, then exhaled as if the answer disappointed but did not surprise him.

“Quite a shame,” the older man muttered. He flexed his one good arm, bandaged muscles twitching. His gaze turned toward Titania, still locked in a storm of strikes and parries with the Treacherous Fanged Apostle. Sparks and shards of broken stone littered the field around them. “She won’t be able to spare a hand. And I’m not fast enough anymore to do what you’re doing, boy.” His eyes returned to Ludwig. “But I can still lend something.”

Ludwig tilted his head, wary, as the Guildmaster extended his hand. “Give me your sword.”

Oathcarver pulsed faintly in his grasp, as though it resisted the idea of leaving his hand. Ludwig frowned, weighing the danger of placing his weapon into another’s care, even for a moment. But then the Knight King’s spectral voice rumbled close to his ear.

“Do it. Let him. This is an experience you need.”

Ludwig hesitated only a second longer, then turned the weapon in his hand and laid the hilt across the Guildmaster’s palms. The older man grunted immediately, his knees bending under the sudden weight.

“This…” he breathed, shoulders straining. “This thing is heavier than any sword I’ve ever touched. I’m surprised you can swing it at all.” His arms shook visibly, tendons and veins rising beneath his skin. Still, he steadied himself, planting his feet, and then closed his eyes.

For a moment nothing happened. Then a low hum rose from deep within his chest, reverberating like a drumbeat through his bones. The air thickened, charged, as if a storm gathered inside the chamber. Blue light began to seep from the Guildmaster’s frame, spilling from the cracks in his battered body and burned flesh, luminous and pure. It coiled around his hands, then around Oathcarver itself, flowing into the blade like water into thirsty soil.

Oathcarver vibrated violently, the weapon resonating with the infusion. Aura wrapped around it in a sheath of azure flame, washing across the steel’s pitch-black surface until it seemed carved from night itself, rimmed in ocean light.

The Guildmaster grimaced, the effort tearing at him. His aura poured into the weapon in a torrent, sweat beading along his temple, his face pale and lips pressed tight as though forcing his very life into the steel. His frame quivered as though every bone threatened to snap under the strain.

“This…” he groaned, voice shaking, “is only temporary. At best… two minutes. Make them count.”

He pressed the weapon back into Ludwig’s waiting hands. The shift was immediate. The impossible weight Ludwig had grown used to was suddenly lighter, almost nimble, though it thrummed with raw, dangerous energy. For the first time, Oathcarver did not feel like a burden of iron and shadow, it felt alive.

Ludwig held the blade before him, eyes reflecting the cold blue fire spilling from its edge. His reflection warped across the metal, his face bathed in a glow he had never known. The sensation in his arm was alien, electric, as though something had ignited in the hollow space where his heart should be.

“Thanks, pops,” Ludwig said, his tone dry but carrying a flicker of something warmer beneath. His gaze shifted upward toward the reeling Moonflayed King. “I’ll make use of those two minutes.”

He raised the blade high, the aura crackling along its edge like lightning across storm clouds. The battlefield stilled for a breath, every adventurer turning toward the glow. Even Titania, mid-clash with the Apostle, cast a brief glance. Celine froze for half a heartbeat, the Wrath in her eye burning brighter as it reflected the blade’s azure light.

Ludwig tightened his grip, shoulders squared. “Let’s see how that hope of yours fares,” he whispered, and then launched forward, aura blazing, toward the King once more.