Deus Necros

The collapse was ugly. A giant body didn’t “fall” neatly; it crashed, and that crash became a hazard for everyone behind. Red orcs tripped over dying comrades. Knees slammed into rock.

Ankles twisted in mud. Momentum turned into injury. Goblins didn’t need to kill them; they only needed to ruin their stride.

The goblin’s darts were pretty effective in rendering heaps of flesh useless. Especially with the fact that some of the orcs fell so suddenly and made more who were running behind them trip on their corpses.

A giant orc tripping wasn’t solved with a simple roll and dust off; that much meat moving and suddenly being forced to stop can break bones and twist flesh.

Ludwig saw it happen in real time, one red orc pitching forward, shoulder first, and not getting back up properly. The way his arm bent wrong told Ludwig enough. Even if the poison didn’t finish him, the fall had.

War didn’t always need blades. Gravity was generous.

“They’re coming, brace!” Ludwig said, but he was the only one among his troops who wasn’t bracing for an impact; instead, he placed both hands on the ground.

The line tightened. Orcs lifted shields and axes. Ogres planted feet like posts. Trolls in the rear leaned forward, eager. Ludwig did none of that.

He knelt, palms pressing into damp soil, feeling the earth’s coolness bite into his skin. The tremors of incoming mass traveled through the ground straight into his arms. He could taste the shape of the charge through vibration alone. Fifty meters. Closing.

The orcs that went through the grinder and lived long enough to reach the base of the mountain weren’t a small number. They were reduced by quite a decent amount, which also made Dedal feel that Ludwig’s thought of not using the Trolls as meat shields to stop the incoming orcs was a mistake.

But he couldn’t disagree with him right now. He braced for the incoming impact.

Ludwig could feel the ground trembling from the touch of his hand on the soil; he could see them approaching until the orcs were clear to his eyes, not even fifty meters away.

He didn’t wait for them to close further. If he let the wave hit the line with full momentum, bodies would break before strategy could matter. He inhaled once, slowly, and pushed mana down through thick orc arms that hated finesse but obeyed force.

“Now!” Ludwig pushed on the ground, both physically and in mana.

His palms pressed prints on the soft soil as it was charged up with all of his mana instantly.

The earth answered like it had been holding its breath. Ludwig felt the drain immediately, third circle limitations biting hard, mana ripping out of him in a brutal surge. It wasn’t elegant casting. It was dumping everything you had into one ugly solution because you didn’t have time for a pretty one.

Massive shaved off pieces of stone and boulders shot up from the ground, pointed at the tip and sharp around the edges, rose like spears all around the small army of Ludwig.

Hundreds of them at once, that was all Ludwig’s mana could afford in his current form, and due to his current limitation. Third circle, but the third circle was enough for this.

The ground erupted. Jagged pillars burst upward in a ring and staggered rows, forming a broken maze of stone teeth. Some spears rose clean. Others tore up clumps of mud and root with them, spraying dirt. The sudden wall wasn’t a castle, but it didn’t need to be. It was a disruption, an emergency terrain rewrite.

The sudden rise of the massive boulders shot up several orcs, spearing some in half, and catching others’ arms or legs by ambush.

Yet, that wasn’t the main goal of these massive boulders.

They met the troops of orcs hard, some collided against them and were sent to meet needed sleep. While those that were able to stop earlier enough were unable to continue their bounding charge.

Stone didn’t care about pride. Red orcs slammed into rock at full speed and folded. Others tried to weave and clipped shoulders, cracked ribs, lost weapons. The charge broke into pieces. The wave became streams. That was the point.

The orcs were left with two options: weave through the small maze of jagged stone, or curve around it and hit them from the back.

They chose both options.

Ludwig saw the split instantly, some forcing themselves between stone teeth where their mass made maneuvering slow and messy, others peeling wide, looking for flanks. Good. Predictable. Predictable meant controllable.

“Good, as expected, Boys! They’re spread, disoriented, and very poisoned from the river water. Exhaust them first! Bleed them, then crush them! don’t meet their force head-on! Good luck to all! Ludwig said as he snapped standing up and flicked Durandal open into its sword form.

His voice carried across his line like a whip, steadying nerves. The plan was simple now: pick off the isolated ones, deny them regrouping, force them to waste strength on stone and mud and confusion. Let poison and panic do their work. Then, when they slowed enough to be manageable, then you hit them properly.

Durandal clicked into sword form in his grip, the familiar balance settling him. Ludwig’s arms felt heavy from the casting, mana reserves screaming at the emptiness, but he didn’t allow himself to dwell on it. If he thought about what he’d spent, he’d hesitate. Hesitation killed.

“Let’s get killing!”

And then he moved, into the broken maze, toward the first red orc forced to crawl around stone teeth like an animal denied its charge.

There was no bravado in his advance, nor was there pride in it. Simply the will to survive and eliminate the one stopping him from climbing.

To Ludwig, this was but a setback, a small hurdle, one that he had to climb, compared to the hurdle called Wrath, and Envy, this was but child’s play. With swords, and red giants, but still, child’s play.