Deus Necros

[You have been elected King by the ogre tribe!]

[You have completed the required task on the first floor]

[You have been given a choice]

[You can complete the first floor right now and proceed to the second immediately.

Or you may choose to continue on with the first floor with a new quest.

Continuing the first-floor quest and completing it will allow you to skip the second-floor quest.]

The system window hung in front of Ludwig like a verdict carved into the air, crisp and indifferent to the heat still crawling under his skin. The bonfire popped somewhere behind him.

The crowd’s breathing was audible now that celebration had been choked into tense quiet. And for a heartbeat, Ludwig simply stared, because the last thing he expected was for kingship to be granted with a line of text after a handful of words and the brief display of horns.

Ludwig hesitated for a second. After all, even he didn’t expect the quest of becoming King to be done like this; it wasn’t easy, but it was far less tedious than he expected.

He’d braced for weeks of tribal conquest, rival challengers, symbolic trials, and a long crawl through politics in bodies that weren’t his. Instead, the tower had taken the shortest path possible: give them a sign they worshiped, let the elders make the choice, then stamp it with system authority. Efficient. Almost suspiciously so. Like the tower wanted him to hurry up and reach whatever it was hiding deeper.

Not to mention, the option to continue on this floor meant that there must be a reason for its existence.

Otherwise, the tower would have just sent him up then and there.

The Tower of Trials didn’t offer extra work out of kindness. If it offered a detour, it was because the detour paid in something valuable, information, advantage, leverage. Ludwig could feel the trap inside the generosity.

’I’ll continue,’ Ludwig thought, and the quest window disappeared.

He didn’t speak the choice aloud. He simply decided, and the system accepted it as if it had been waiting for that exact decision. The text blinked out, leaving the air momentarily empty, then the emptiness filled again, immediately, with something new. The tower never left a vacuum for long.

The reason was simple: he wanted to know more about the Red King, the one touched with pride, and if it meant anything to have Pride’s blessing.

Because whatever Pride had done to Grogamar, Pride Touched, it wasn’t just a buff. It was a corruption wrapped in empowerment. Ludwig needed to know what it cost, what it granted, and how it spread. “Blessing” was just a prettier word for “infection,” and Pride didn’t hand out gifts without taking something in return.

After all, Ludwig’s goal was never to clear the tower and leave, but to defeat Pride, who is somewhere in this tower.

Clearing floors was incidental. Pride was the objective. And if the tower itself was offering him a way to strip a king of his right and return the floor “to normal,” that meant Pride’s influence had become a structural problem. Ludwig didn’t ignore structural problems. Structural problems became knives later.

A new window appeared in front of him.

[By defeating the Red Tusk’s tribal king, you can remove its Right of Kingship. It will no longer retain its memories and will be rid of the curse that has befallen it. Returning the first floor to its normal state.]

[The Floor will also allow the denizen who first wandered in it, and those who also were born in it, to continue their climb.]

Ludwig read it once, then again. Remove its Right of Kingship. Not kill. Not erase. Remove.

Ludwig thought for a second about the second line.

This was not something he was very fond of, not that he didn’t want other races to be ’free’, but if these guys manage to climb and leave the tower… wouldn’t Necros be quite annoyed that several beings that ’died’ came back to life and were wandering about?

The thought wasn’t moral. It was logistical. Necros didn’t share. Necros didn’t like competition for souls. And now Ludwig had a fresh quest from Necros himself about treachery and rumors of life-and-death reversal. If denizens climbed, that rumor wasn’t a rumor anymore; it was proof.

He soon shook the idea away; he didn’t care what Necros felt or not right now. ’He’s a big boy, he’ll manage himself,’ he inwardly shrugged his shoulders.

Necros could be jealous all he wanted. Ludwig wasn’t here to babysit a god’s feelings. He was here to remove a different god’s rot from the tower’s bones. If freeing denizens created a problem later, that was a later problem.

Pride was current. Pride was now.

Looking around, some of the ogres were dissatisfied, some of them were glad, even Damra, who Ludwig thought might be the most unlikely to accept it, seemed to smile and cheer him on, “This is the first time that an Ogre King has been elected and wasn’t an Ogre,” he smiled. Then turned to his people, “This cycle, we have a king!” he howled.

Damra’s voice rolled over the settlement like a drumbeat. The declaration didn’t erase doubt, but it anchored it. Some faces tightened at the “wasn’t an Ogre” part, pride and tradition bristling. Others looked relieved, like a decision had finally been made for them, and they didn’t have to pretend ignorance anymore.

And the ogres that seemed willing to accept Ludwig cheered with him, but the rest simply watched.

The cheers weren’t uniform. They were patchy, clustered. Some roared with genuine hunger for leadership. Some clapped and shouted because Damra shouted, and that was what you did when a strong voice gave you permission. And some stayed silent, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, as if refusing sound was the last protest they could afford without openly defying the elder’s decision.

None of them argued.

Arguing would have meant challenging the elders. Challenging the elders in a place like this wasn’t political; it was spiritual. And most people didn’t gamble their souls on principle when a thousand red orcs were marching somewhere outside the tree line.

Ludwig nodded his head and turned to the elder. “Now what?” Ludwig asked.

He asked it like a man accepting the title but not the illusion. Being called King wasn’t the end. It was the start of every ugly expectation that came with the crown.

“Now, you either lead or oppress, realize your own kingship.” She said.

The elder’s voice didn’t carry admiration or fear. It carried a requirement. She wasn’t congratulating him. She was measuring whether he understood the trap of authority: how easily “leadership” became “oppression” the moment you got impatient.

Ludwig took a deep breath, then calmed his aura down. The Wrathful heart’s noise and howling quieted rapidly, and so did the horns and the suffocating aura around Ludwig. It all disappeared as if it was never there.

The reduction wasn’t gentle. It was controlled violence turned inward. Ludwig didn’t “relax.” He forced the power to coil back into him, pressed it down, caged it behind his ribs. The ruby horns shrank and faded until his forehead was bare again, and the crowd exhaled like they hadn’t realized they’d been holding breath. The bonfire’s warmth returned to being just warmth instead of fuel for something explosive.

“We need to start planning,” Ludwig said.

He didn’t say it loudly, but the words carried. The people nearest leaned in automatically, because even those who didn’t want him as king still wanted someone to tell them what to do about the Red King.

“I have you covered in that department,” Ludwig heard from his chest pocket.

The crystal’s voice cut clean through the murmur like a knife through cloth. Ludwig didn’t need to lift it; he recognized Kaiser’s cadence immediately, the kind of calm that came from being comfortable with worse horrors than this.

The crystal was still connected to Kaiser who added, “I’ve sent several undead to scout the terrain around the ogre mountain, and I’ve also sent delegations to the rest of the tribes around the planes. We’ll need all the help we can get after all.”

Even through projection, Ludwig could picture it: skeletons slipping through grass, dead eyes unblinking in the dark, moving without fatigue, without fear. Delegations too, messengers carrying authority backed by threat. Kaiser didn’t waste time, and he didn’t waste opportunities. While Ludwig was earning a crown, Kaiser was already building an army’s scaffolding.

“That’s impressive thinking, if we have the other races join our cause, we’ll have a good shot at fighting against the Red Tusks tribe. But, it won’t be easy…” Ludwig said.

The sentence tasted like an understatement. “Not easy” meant convincing proud tribes to kneel. It meant forcing cowards out of comfort. It meant dragging this “Good place” into reality whether it wanted it or not.

“Yes, it will not, it’ll take a lot of persuading to get other races to help us, but they won’t have much choice in the matter. After all, I’m sure that the Red Tusks have visited them in the last few cycles… they know what awaits them.”

Kaiser’s certainty wasn’t optimism. It was a calculation. Fear was the strongest persuader in a world like this. If the Red Tusks had already knocked on doors that used to be safe, then “choice” was already a lie people told themselves to sleep better.

“Let’s just hope they follow us willingly,” Ludwig said as he turned to the rest of the creatures that seemed too fond of this place, refused his right of kingship, or refrained from admitting it.

He could see it in body language: the ogres who kept one foot angled toward the food tables as if ready to retreat back into feasting the moment talk became uncomfortable. The ones who stared at Ludwig’s face but avoided his eyes. The ones who watched Damra rather than him, waiting to see which direction loyalty would be safest.

He couldn’t fault them; some may be cowardly, some may be uninterested, and some might just want to spend their days idling about here, waiting for the inevitable, or acting like it would never happen.

Comfort was addictive. Even in a tower. Especially in a tower. The safe lands had trained them to survive by not thinking, by drinking and eating until the cycle reset and the fear went back outside the torchline. Ludwig understood the pattern. He hated it because it worked.

’I need to get them to follow.’

He didn’t mean through threats. Not first. Threats created obedience, but obedience cracked the moment the threat wasn’t present. He needed something sturdier than fear, something that could hold when the Red King’s War Cry hit the walls.

He looked at the elder, who seemed to be ’expectant’ of what he was going to do.

She didn’t smile. She didn’t nod. She simply waited, and in that waiting Ludwig felt the real test begin. Becoming king had been a checkbox. Being king was this: what came after, when the system stopped instructing, and the people started resisting.

It was obvious, this was his turn to show how he was going to ’rule without oppression.’

A quest-less task.

But a difficult one at that, too.