NOVGO.NET Chapter 469: Experience
Chapter 469: Experience
“Incoming,” Thomas muttered. The whisper came like a frost-thread on the ear; Ludwig didn’t need eyes to feel the pressure thicken, as if the sky decided to lean.
“I know,” Ludwig said without even looking up, his hand flicked up with Durandal this time, the sound of impact was enough to blast snow and ice apart as the Undead Ludwig was capable of contending strength with the two arms holding the mace that could tear down mountains. Durandal rang like struck wire, a clean, taut note buried in thunder. The shock tore a clean tunnel through the drifting flakes, a white cylinder punched open by force alone. Cold rushed in and the smell of iron surged up, a foundry in the clouds.
The two weapons, one that looks like a needle, and the other that was the size of a building clashed but neither gave way. The absurdity of it would have been funny if not for the stakes: a pin against a cathedral, a sewing awl against a siege engine.
The ground at Ludwig’s boots quivered, but he did not sink; he hadn’t sunk in a very long time. He rode the recoil like a tide and let it waste itself on the crusted snow.
The sight was almost comical, as Ludwig who was like an ant was contending with the Elephant wrath. only Wrath was in a desperately terrible shape.
His body had cracks all over, these ones were from sword marks and not the ones that were originally on his armor. The splits glowed and dimmed as though breath lived inside the iron, each exhale a ruddy leak of hate.
His shoulder pads were broken and torn, one of his horns was broken. Two fingers completely gone. A knee torn apart. He limped, not greatly, but enough that the stride mapped a crooked line. When the wind blew through the open plates at his side, it made a low, animal moan. Ludwig found he preferred that to the silence.
Ludwig on the other hand looked exactly the same as he did the first day he walked into this whole mess. The power of Necros brought him back each and every time, he always could only survive one hit from the Wrathful Death, that’s why he wasn’t so worn.
But the Wrathful Death needed a hell of a beating to have its health drop to what looked like a sliver of its former selft. That, too, had become a rhythm: his flesh a page wiped clean between Chapters; Wrath’s armor the only ledger that remembered. He had learned to read that ledger, the gouge across the breast, the nick along the visor’s edge, the starburst at the hip, and to love what it promised. The promise was simple: work accumulates.
All Ludwig needed was one or two more hits. After five years of consecutive battle, he was at the point where he just needs to finish the beast off. And he felt that today would be the day that the Wrathful Death will mess up. The air had that hollow brightness it sometimes held before snow, and the mountain groaned in long bones under the ice.
He rolled his neck and listened to the ligaments creak, a habit with no purpose for one like him, and set his sight on the small hesitation he’d been courting for a month. Close now. Close enough to taste like cold metal on the back of the tongue.
For a second, more than two dozen exchanges of sword and mace happened while Ludwig’s eyes flickered, left, right, up down, with his sword tracing every trajectory. Blast after consecutive blast of raw power without Ludwig even bending the snow under his feet, then finally the two weapons collided for the last time, forcing the Wrathful Death’s entire frame to shake and be pushed back.
The world narrowed to lines: one coming, one answering. He felt the tug along his wrists like a fisherman feels the run of a hooked leviathan, the steady give and the fine, fatal pull. Then there, weight shifted wrong, the knee’s old fault speaking up, a tiny falter hidden in thunder. He stepped through it.
Finally, after three weeks of fighting since the last time Ludwig injured the Wrathful Death, it happened!
“Opening!” Ludwig howled as he surged forward diving Durandal right into the Wrathful Death’s chest. The point kissed the split between plates he had worried thin across seasons; the sound was not metal breaking but candle-wax giving way to a pin. The push after that was all arm, all shoulder, all the ugly will of someone too tired to stop.
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Torrents of raw power surged out of the wound as the wrathful Death staggered back. Its body let loose an incredible torrent of mana and energy that could burn a volcano to ash. The light washed him in a red that felt hot though it could not burn him, a heat that lived in the idea of fire rather than its fact. The snow around the wound steamed into a dirty rain; frost ferns at the base of shattered boulders recoiled and curled black.
Ludwig withdrew a bit, this was always the result of each and every injury he landed on it. Step back, let the jet flare out, count the heartbeats it took to ebb. He let the hilt rest against his thigh, not relaxing, merely easing the muscle’s constant bite, listening to the hiss of the wound. He knew it would not scream; Wrath did not grant itself the relief of sound for long.
The Wrathful Death wasn’t an entity, wasn’t a being that lives nor an undead. It was a culmination of pure hatred and energy hiding behind a coating of steel and iron. Though he harbors incredible power and might, among all the Deaths, he might be the weakest.
Not in terms of raw power, because not even the Glutenous Death was this strong, the confirmation of this fact came from the Knight King, who actually physically fought the Glutenous Death in Tibari. But simply because wrath had consumed its mind.
It is simply uncontrolled power, which makes it fileable. He’d come to think of it as a storm in a suit of armor: every blow he landed was a lightning rod jammed into a cloud, every feint a way to coax thunder to the wrong hill. Mindless rage is brave until a pin holds it to a board.
“Now, one last hit…” Ludwig said as he aimed his weapon at the Recovering Wrathful Death. One last hit, he has to land it, and this whole ordeal will be over. It could take a moment, an hour, or even a month for another opening in the Wrathful Death’s onslaught of attacks, but Ludwig had time… as much as he needed.
He let the tip of Durandal draw a thin line in the crusted snow, an absent-minded mark like a hunter’s tally, then lifted it again. Wind stroked the battered plates of his opponent and set them whispering. He centered himself on that whisper, patient as ice. He had learned the mountain’s lesson well: endurance is a kind of sharpness. And he was very, very sharp.