Deus Necros

The system’s indifference was almost comforting in its cruelty. It didn’t care that this was a noble villa. It didn’t care that it belonged to House Drak. It labeled it what it was. A Dungeon. And dungeons need to be cleared.

“Shit,” Ludwig said. “Looks like we don’t have much time.”

The word wasn’t panic. It was annoyance at being forced to sprint the moment he arrived, at being put on a leash labeled twenty minutes.

His eyes flicked once to the drooling guards. Their faces didn’t change. The system window had shown more life than they had.

“Are you going to break in,” The Knight King Gale asked.

“Yes, don’t have much of a choice in the matter,” Ludwig said as he pulled out [Nightbreaker]

Nightbreaker settled into his grip with a familiar certainty, the kind that made the air feel sharper around the mace. Ludwig kept it low and ready, not raised for display. He measured the gate, the wall thickness, the space beyond, because villas didn’t become dungeons without traps that punished impatience.

The timer forced speed, but speed without judgment was how people died twice.

“It’s been a long time since I was able to let loose, how about you let me try?” Gale asked.

There was hunger under the politeness, restrained impatience, like a man who had been locked away and could finally stretch his limbs.

Thinking for a second, “Yeah, Andre did in fact upgrade Oathcarver. Can you use it? Not even the Emperor could?”

Ludwig’s mind ran the risk quickly. If Gale couldn’t use the weapon that denied even the emperor then it would be a shame. But at the same time, he remembered what Gale said before. That Oathcarver had two masters.

“I can. It is mine before it came to your hands,” the Gale replied with pride.

“Then so be it,” Ludwig said as he placed his hand on his side.

His hand met resistance that wasn’t physical, a brief invisible friction as darkness manifested and a black book arrived with the wrong kind of presence, like the world grew quieter to make room for it.

The Obscura Malvolume Codex Necros. The book where the Knight King’s body was hidden.

The book upon being tapped opened up, and revealed itself to the world. The pages snapped like wings in a storm, ink and shadow chasing each other in shapes that made the eye want to look away. When it stopped, it stopped with intent, landing on Gale’s depiction like the page had been waiting for a command.

The ink began bleeding out from the pages of the book and manifested in the world, pouring in thick ribbons that knitted into a four meter tall giant of a man armored to the teeth with ebony and abyss.

Plate locked over plate, helm sealing last, the cape dropping behind him like a battered ledger of wars, torn and scarred in places that would have ended anyone else. A tower shield formed into his left hand with the weight of a fort gate, and his right remained empty, fingers flexing as if they still remembered the shape of a blade.

The space around him felt smaller the moment he finished taking form, and the drooling guards by the gate looked less like sentries and more like props that had forgotten they were supposed to react.

Ludwig, without hesitation called Oathcarver. The newly repaired weapon answered with obscene weight, a gigantic slab of metal that felt less like a sword and more like a verdict, built to crush and break rather than cut. The handle bit into his grip as he brought it forward, arm tensing only enough to control it, not to show off, because this was not a courtyard demonstration and the villa’s timer did not care about pride.

He threw it to the Knight King who caught it with one hand, unlike Ludwig’s Durandal, this one fit nicely and snuggly in the Knight King’s hand. The change Andre had made finally made sense in motion; the lengthened, thickened handle stopped feeling like a modification and started feeling like a correction, built to sit in a hand that could actually command the blade instead of simply swinging it and hoping for the best. In Gale’s grip, Durandal would have looked like a joke, and Oathcarver looked exactly like what it was meant to be: a weapon that didn’t bargain. A weapon fit for a giant, to slay, break, trample and subjugate.

The Knight King finally fully equipped. A Death Knight finally given purpose.

He struck the side of Oathcarver against his tower shield twice. And on the third strike, the weapon charged up with a blue ghostly energy. Aura, not the lively flare of the breathing, but something calm and pale that carried no warmth at all, only control. Blue, ghastly, and calm.

Unlike the Aura of the living which was flamboyant, or Ludwig’s Aura of Wrath which was destructive and exhibitive.

This one was the opposite. It didn’t bloom outward to impress anyone, it settled into the steel with practiced restraint, the kind that hinted at mastery because it wasted nothing.

The two guards, thought had a Death Knight summoned right in front of them didn’t even move. Their faces stayed slack, their posture still hunched, one still drooling like the world had not changed. Only when Gale advanced did their bodies remember to react, spears lifting late and awkward, mouths pushing out slurred sounds that might have been words once. Gale didn’t answer. He didn’t slow.

A single swing forward, the guards, the gate, the walls… everything was obliterated and sent flying. The blow didn’t just break the entrance, it removed it, ripping metal apart, turning stone into shards, flinging bodies and debris outward in a violent burst that swallowed the garden path in dust.

“Let us warm these old bones.” Gale flicked the sword to his side stopping an inch away from the ground, and the displaced air rolled out like a command, sweeping the dust aside to reveal what the villa had been holding back: an incoming horde of mindless people pouring through the breach, too many feet, too many empty faces, the dungeon answering the intrusion with numbers.