Deus Necros

Chapter 600: Chapter 600 WOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOO!!!

Chapter title [Ablaze]

[Inspect]

Name: Mirebound Coveter

Type: [Yellow River Warden- Corrupted]

Level: 200

Tier: Rare

HP: 200,000

Danger Rating: ☠

Status Effects

• [Yellow River Bound] Attached to the Yellow River. Cannot leave its perimeter.

• [Envy Saturation] Touched by the corruption of envy, the Warden has Increased resistance to damage overtime.

Abilities

• [Covetous Grasp]

Liquefied limbs extend unnaturally. On hit, reduces movement speed and induces mental and emotional imbalance to the target.

• [Borrowed Reflection] Uses abilities of enemies it had slain. Current abilities… [None]

Passive

• [Mireform Body]

Immune to bleeding, poison, and fatigue. Physical damage is partially mitigated unless delivered with decisive force.

Lore

“When souls refuse to let go, the river remembers.”

Formed from envious remnants that failed to be cleansed, the Mirebound Coveter is a warden of stagnation. It exists to harvest longing, anchoring souls that should have flowed onward. It does not pursue victory…only possession.

***

The notice hung in the air like a cold verdict. Letters that looked damp to the eye floated before Ludwig, each line beading with a slick sheen as if the river’s own sweat had seeped into the script. He did not blink it away. He let the information sit and sink, as heavy as the smells rolling out of the rivulet: old metal, wet cloth, a sweetness turned sour by rot. The sand around them had already forgotten how to be sand. It clumped and breathed with the slow patience of a bog.

“That doesn’t look too good…” Redd was the first to speak. His nose wrinkled. The red of his hair looked darker against the jaundiced gleam of the current, like a flame trying to burn under a layer of oil.

“That’s a creature of the river, don’t get too close,” Ludwig said. The warning left his mouth calm and measured. He did not bother to name what he knew that they did not. He was not about to explain why his eyes could weigh a thing’s innards at a glance. Especially the fact that only he and the Hero could use [Inspect].

The Coveter changed before it moved. A ripple passed through it, not along the surface but from the inside out, the way a bad thought will show itself behind a polite face. Its outline quivered and steadied. Then its limbs shot first, thin pillars of liquorice-black throwing themselves forward with the speed of archers who had forgotten they were arms. They cracked the air as they came, glossy, wet, too eager.

Durandal was already in Ludwig’s hand, the grip warm from use even though he had not used it here. He did not think about weight or edge. He thought about closing space. He rushed into the danger, dipped, sliding on both knees, the mud sucking at the leather of his clothes as if the ground envied motion and wanted to keep it. His shoulder tilted, his hips turned, and the blade rose as he went by, a clean crescent through reeking air. Both reaching limbs parted neatly at the joints.

[-11,775 HP]

[-11,775 HP]

The stumps recoiled like eels thrown onto hot iron. Dark fluid splashed and fizzed where it hit the bank. The sound it made was not quite a hiss; it was more like breath dragged through teeth.

Tull moved on the same breath. He had not waited for a word from anyone but his prince in years; he was not going to start now. One of his brass rings clicked under his thumb. Metal answered the call. A blade longer than sense and not at all polite to wrists flowed into his hand- A Claymore-, its length balanced by the certainty of the one who held it. It was not beautiful. It did not need to be. The green light that rose along its edge made it look like a reed stalk sharpened into a promise.

He ran as if the distance had offended him. The bog did not take him; the bog did not dare. The claymore swung, a low hum turning hungry as it swept. He was already behind the creature when its head realized it was leaving. The cut finished with the quiet satisfaction of a door closing.

The warden’s head fell, a pale, dribbling lantern. It struck the mud and sank halfway with a soft, obscene kiss.

Ludwig rose from his slide, boots digging a halt. He saw Tull’s posture before he saw the headless stump still laboring to knead itself back into shape. The emerald glare on the big sword was breathy, fading, replaced by a more ordinary shine of steel and arrogance.

“I told you to stay put,” Ludwig said. He did not raise his voice. He did not need to.

“I don’t listen to orders from you, also I killed it anyway. You’re too slow,” Tull said. He looked like a man who would be happier if the entire river stood up so he could knock it back down.

“Is that so?” Ludwig’s other hand had never been idle. Mana gathered there the way heat gathers under a lid. A sphere coalesced, pale at first, then fattening, the light inside it folding and folding until it found a color and a purpose. It did not hum. It breathed. The surface wrinkled once, as if a black thread had been woven through it.

The creature answered before the spell did. The head twitched and smiled where it lay, then fell apart like a trick. The trunk bulged. Spines erupted at Tull’s back height, slick shafts stiff as stakes, fanning out with a butcher’s confidence.

Tull felt rather than saw. He moved the only way you move when something you cannot see wants you. He dropped the aura-wet blade, let it tug his arm down as if that were its idea, and sprang. The spikes harrowed the after-image, punched three neat holes in the place where his ribs had been half a heartbeat earlier, then met no meat at all. They thudded into the air and shivered there, confused.

“The fuck was that?” Tull asked from a crouch. There was mud on the hem of his coat and murder in his eyes.

“That’s something that won’t die by cutting off its head or limbs,” Ludwig said. He did not look away. It was not scolding. It was a fact offered like a clean blade.

“Is it a slime?” The Prince asked. His voice was even, curious. He did not let his heel slide closer to the bank though the ground wanted to invite him.

“No,” Redd answered. The word came with a low roll in his throat. The skin along his forearms shivered and thinned, scales teasing through like a memory threatening to surface. His fingers lengthened and curved. “It has no core. Slimes usually have a core that they assimilate around, this thing is… simply being held together by sheer spite and vile thoughts.”

“You got that right,” Ludwig said. The fireball in his palm darkened. It looked less like fire and more like a bruise learning to glow. A narrow seam of shadow stitched itself through the light. The seam was not visible so much as undeniable. He let it finish its work, then pointed.

The spell leapt, a hungry comet with a ragged edge. The air popped where it passed, the smell of iron and something sweet burned wrong lancing the nose. It struck the Coveter and did not blossom; it dug.

[-22,447 HP]

Black-purple flame took. It took as if it had been made for this very thing, as if the river had been a wick and the warden the hand that finally struck the match. The creature did not scream like anything that breathed. The sound came out as a pressure on the ears, a pain under the tongue. Its flesh bubbled and collapsed and re-stitched in frantic loops that never completed. Wherever it healed, the dark flame remembered and returned, chewing the same mouthful over and over with better teeth.

“Why are you using fire against a slime like entity, they don’t burn!” Tull said. His claymore came up again. He did not rush this time; he was a man who could learn even while offended.

“I know that much, you don’t have to tell me,” Ludwig said. He did not bother to explain the rest. The flame was not a bonfire; it was a debt. It ate the target as much as it ate the caster. He felt it now, the tug at the bottom of himself, the way the world seemed to lean toward the wound it had opened.

The Coveter’s mind, if it had one, chose the river the way a man chooses a door when the room starts to burn. It flung itself sideways, a collapsing heap of wet intent, and splashed into the Yellow River.

“Oh, that’s not good,” Alex said. His gaze did not leave the water. His shoulders tilted as if he meant to lean back without giving ground.

Ludwig only smiled. It did not reach his eyes. “No, I also wanted to see what would happen if it came in contact with water.”

The answer came quickly. The flame did not choke. It breathed deeper. The purple went richer, a wine gone black, and the surface of the river caught it like an old cloth takes dye. Heat pushed outward in a slow dome, not explosive, inexorable. The fire skated the skin of the current and then sank an inch, two, as if tasting. It kept tasting.

Souls nearer the surface brightened like insects flying into a lantern. They flared and went thin. Their faces, if you could call them that, twisted not in fear, but in that stuck surprise of a pain that had no right to be there. Their howls did not use sound, but every rib in every living chest along the bank listened anyway. The river heaved as if in insult. The Coveter thrashed inside it, a lump under a sheet, and where it moved the darkness fed all the more.

The cost came for Ludwig in the same breath. The tether that he had let Dark Flame throw through him tightened. He felt the draw as a cold hand closing around a tendon in his chest and pulling. Mana did not drain so much as evacuate. It left in clean lines, straight as orders. His vision edged white, then steadied, then went white again. He set his feet, let the weight of Durandal tell his arm it was still his.

Unlike the pain immune Undead form of his, the current [Living Vessel] was a gift and a nuisance. Pain came through muted, wrapped in wool, but it came. A hammer inside the skull, a long, patient hammer. He rode it without theatrics. This was not new. This was a bill being presented.

The burn might have run the whole branch if he had been a different man with a different ocean to pour into it. He was himself. His pool bottomed. The flame faltered like an argument that had used all its cleverness. It clung in tatters, then in threads, then in a few sparks that wanted to live and did not.

The river lay there steaming and pleased with itself. For a breath and a breath again, where the fire had been, the water was clear enough to see shapes beneath it with edges that were not made of regret. Those souls were clean for a blink, pale and simple, as if someone had finally remembered to close a window in winter. Then the rest of the river leaned in. Stain rolled back over them. Filth washing filth… The respite gone far too soon.

Ludwig swore under his breath. No theatrics there either. For a heartbeat he let himself imagine the line of flame racing to the horizon, the entire branch turned into a cautery line, a thing boiled clean, the taste of Envy burned out of it. For a heartbeat it had felt almost possible. The world declined. Necros was never one to give easy quests. Nor would today be an exception.

[You have slain Mirebound Coveter]

“Seems like that slime is gone, we’ll keep moving,” he said. His lungs drew two deep breaths and kept them. The tightness in his chest eased a degree as his mana ticked up the way a miser stacks coins again, one by one, making sure each is real before he lets his fingers leave it.

Redd’s shoulders uncoiled by inches. He was still looking at the water as if it were a mouth about to ask a question he did not want to answer. Tull rolled his wrist once, tested the weight of his blade, then slid it back in his ring.

“Was that… Dark magic?” Alex was the first to ask.

The words sat in the air between them like a drawn cord. There was no judgment in the tone, only accuracy, which was not better. Ludwig did not let his face do any work. The question had the weight of an entire empire’s bad mood tied to its tail. He let the river make the only noise for a long heartbeat. Then he turned his head by a small degree, enough to show that he had heard, enough to delay an answer without looking like he was hiding from it. The ground breathed. The souls under the surface went by like drowned leaves. The smell of the burned patch was fading, though not fast enough to stop it from getting into the back of the throat.

He did not look away from the path ahead. He did not reach for more words than necessary. He did not blink… but he still had to answer.