Deus Necros

Chapter 452: The Treacherous Fanged Apostle

For an instant, silence fell in his head, the failure ringing louder than the beast’s roar. He needed more weight, more force. And he knew precisely where to find it.

Without hesitation, without fear of being seen, Ludwig’s hand flickered to his other weapon. Durandal.

He was thankfully hidden from view thanks to the giant’s size, and its hair, so not many would be able to see the weapon that could link Davon to Ludwig. After all, it was crafted by the most famous blacksmith of the Empire. If spotted by an unwanted eye, it could spill trouble.

The world seemed to grow heavier the moment Durandal appeared in his grasp. His hand clenched around the grip, and the word flared inside his mind like a commandment.

[Weight of the World!]

The blade’s form shifted, a distortion of steel and gravity itself. The weapon became almost unbearably heavy, dragging at his muscles as though all of existence pressed down through its edge. He lifted it with a growl, teeth grinding against bloodied shards of glass still embedded in his gums.

He drove the blade into the base of the King’s skull, a blow like driving a nail into iron with the force of a smith’s hammer. Durandal sank with a thunderous crack. The monster’s body lurched forward, its knees buckling under the sudden spike of weight anchoring into its flesh.

Ludwig released the hilt, letting the weapon remain half buried. The motion was not retreat, it was part of the plan. He backflipped away, kicking at the pummel of his sword and at the same time, he summoned [Explosive Mine] at the tip of his toe, exploding it immediately to finally drive the sword deeper into the skull until only the hilt was left.

As he fell, fire trailing across his back, he unsummoned and resummoned his chains with a flick of thought. Removing it from the base of the wing it was attached to and called it for another purpose. The links snapped into existence once more, hissing like arrows. He thrust his left hand forward, the chain streaking through the air to latch against the bottom of Durandal’s blade.

The weapon became an anchor buried inside the beast’s skull. The chain became the tether. And Ludwig, plummeting toward the earth, became the executioner who would drag it down.

He struck the ground hard, knees biting into the blood-soaked soil. He could feel every undead nerve in his body rattling, but there was no time to hesitate. He wrenched hard in order to drag the creature down, however, despite how hard he pulled the King was unmovable.

His eyes found Mot immediately, the one ally whose timing could shape victory.

For a moment their gazes met. Ludwig did not need to speak. Mot understood. The saint’s expression barely changed, only a tightening of his brow. He pressed his staff into the earth with a soft murmur, voice dry as bone.

“Only once.”

The ground split. From beneath the surface a tentacle writhed upward, not translucent as the half-formed shadows Mot could only summon now due to how much it was drawing from the sleeping Azathoth, but dense, tangible, dripping with otherworldly weight. Its skin shone with an oily gleam, as though pulled from the depths of an ancient sea.

The tendril coiled around Ludwig’s chain with terrifying strength, the earth trembling beneath the strain. Then it yanked the sword free but not before it staggered the beast to fall down.

The sound was indescribable, a thunderous crack of flesh and stone. The Moon Flayed King, titan of stitched flesh and bone, lurched forward, balance ripped from it as though by the hand of a god. The mighty giant crashed to the ground in a violent shudder, the impact splitting the soil and sending clouds of dust and gore into the air.

Ludwig rose, Oathcarver glowing dimly in his grip. His voice cut through the chaos, harsh and commanding.

“It’s down! Go crazy, everyone!”

His own body barely held together, yet he was the first to move. He launched himself forward again, sword angled low, flames still gnawing at his shoulders. The adventurers, wide-eyed and stunned, surged behind him, cries of battle joining his lead. The ground shook not just from the fall of a titan but from the thunder of mortal feet rushing toward it, blades ready to carve into what remained.

The adventurers answered Ludwig’s call with a ragged chorus of battle cries. Steel scraped against steel as weapons were drawn, the air trembling with the sound of armored boots pounding across shattered ground. They descended upon the fallen King like wolves on a wounded stag. Some struck with axes that cracked against its hide, others with spears that dug shallowly into its massive form, while mages chanted incantations that painted the battlefield in bursts of fire, ice, and lightning.

But Ludwig did not wait for their strength to carry the fight. He was already there, his body arcing in a blur of blue afterimage as he sprang atop the beast’s massive ribs. Each step on the stitched flesh sent fresh bursts of muted pain through his burned legs, but he pushed through, ignoring the sting of undead nerves searing under the pressure of movement. His sword still gleamed faintly, though its earlier brilliance had waned, its sheen fractured by the punishment it had endured. Even diminished, it was still a weapon of terrible promise.

He struck again, blade carving into the giant’s exposed throat where his earlier cuts had nearly severed the neck. The edge ground against bone, sparks trailing as if the creature itself resisted release from its prison of stitched limbs. Ludwig snarled, forcing his weight behind the blow. Blood sprayed upward, hot and metallic against his cheek, mingling with the acrid taste of shattered glass still lodged in his gums.

Around him the chorus of war rose higher. Arrows whistled past his shoulder, embedding themselves into the creature’s shoulder joints. Lightning crackled along its spine as a mage’s staff discharged a bolt that seared flesh black. The air grew so heavy with the mingled smells of blood, ozone, and smoke that it became difficult to breathe.

Ludwig realized that he exhausted too much of his health in this fight and it was still dropping, so he jumped back out from the soon to be dead King and snuffed the flames, standing right next to mot, after all he couldn’t waste more time on the Moon Flayed King since there were more fearsome foes in the battle.

He watched as the adventurers who were struggling before have had their hope ignited that the monster could be felled.

For the briefest instant it felt as though they might succeed, that the fall of the Moon Flayed King was within their grasp.

Then a voice cut through the din.

“You’re getting on my nerves.”

The words were not shouted, yet they carried across the battlefield with the weight of thunder. A howl followed, long and guttural, splitting the air like the wail of a beast that had never been meant to speak with human tongue.

Ludwig’s head snapped toward the source.

The werewolf stood apart from the chaos, its form already shifting in ways that unsettled the senses. Fur lengthened and thickened, rippling outward like shadows unfurling from its flesh. The beast’s frame swelled grotesquely, shoulders bulging wider, torso stretching with grotesque growth. Muscles swelled and warped, fur laced with threads of smoke as though it was no longer bound to mortal substance.

Bones popped and cracked with each expansion. Its hands, already claws, elongated further until they resembled spears of onyx, dripping with an aura so dense it shimmered like heated iron.

And then its face changed. The snout lengthened, teeth spilling past its lips like daggers. Fangs gleamed slick with saliva as its jaw widened into a grin that was less animal and more nightmare.

Ludwig’s stomach tightened at the sight. The shift was not simply physical, it carried a presence that pressed against the lungs, suffocating the battlefield. It was a power so raw and hateful that even the adventurers faltered mid-strike, their blades hesitating as the air grew heavy with dread.

He remembered Van Dijk’s diaries, half-dismissed as the exaggerations of a madman, he thought to be an inflation of a mortal man’s vision of the beast he saw that killed his family. But here, now, the nightmare described in ink had torn itself into flesh, and it looked like Van Dijk had heavily understated how terrifying the Treacherous Fanged Apostle was.

“I should end this now…” the werewolf muttered, almost lazily. Its tone was bored, cynical, as though the carnage around it were little more than an inconvenience. Yet the shift in the air made it clear. This was not laziness. This was lethality, restrained only by choice.

And with that choice revoked, the battlefield’s balance was shattered.

The duel between Titania and the werewolf, once a contest of equals, became a one sided beatdown.