Deus Necros

Ludwig laid down on the stairs, with his hands behind his head supporting him. The stone beneath his spine was cold enough to bite through cloth, hard enough to remind him that comfort was one of those luxuries apparently reserved for people who still had a functioning life, a functioning body, or at least a functioning relationship with death.

He stared at the ceiling of that impossible place, or whatever passed for a ceiling in the Tower of Trials, listening to the quiet hum of the palace ahead and the distant, metallic stillness that pressed against everything like a held breath.

He couldn’t go up right now, after all going in will basically mean he’ll just die. The thought wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t some grand declaration of despair or a hero doubting himself before the final charge. It was arithmetic, ugly and simple.

Door plus Pride plus Ludwig walking in blind equaled death.

Maybe instant death if Pride was feeling generous. Maybe a slower one if the bastard wanted to make a point, and from what Ludwig had already seen, Pride was exactly the kind of creature that would make a point even if nobody asked for a lecture.

The palace above him waited without moving, tall and silent, its entrance sitting at the top of the stairs like a mouth pretending it wasn’t hungry.

After all, he returned several times over, about twenty or so times. Enough times that he began breaking his soul crystals since he was getting tapped out, his main soul reserves were all exhausted.

Each return had left something behind, even if his body came back, even if the system dragged him out of the consequence and threw him back into the problem like a bad joke with commitment issues.

Without having a proper understanding of what’s going on, he’ll just be wasting souls. And learn nothing, and achieve nothing. That was the worst part. Dying could be useful. He had learned that much in the most disgusting way possible. Death, when properly abused, was information.

A failed attempt could become a lesson. A fatal trap could become a map. But blind repetition was not strategy. It was just feeding a grinder and pretending the minced pieces meant progress.

Ludwig’s fingers tightened behind his head, the joints pressing together as he forced himself not to look back up immediately. Running face-first into Pride again without a working theory would only make him poorer, weaker, and probably much more frustrated.

“But, at least now I know a few things,” Ludwig sighed as he remembered after the umpteenth time he returned to Pride, he tried to use [Living Vessel] and just as he pulled Nightbreaker, Pride said something different.

The memory came back with irritating clarity, the way painful details always did when they wanted to be useful and annoying at the same time. He had stepped in, drawn the weapon, felt the change of weight and presence in his grip, and there it was. A shift. A deviation. Pride, who had been running through the same motions with the same suffocating superiority, had reacted differently. In a place where death itself was being tampered with, even a single different sentence was not flavor. It was a crack in the wall.

’My brother’s soul is unbefitting of someone such as you…’

The words had lingered longer than the death that followed.

Ludwig remembered the tone more than he wanted to, that smooth certainty, that arrogance polished so much it had probably mistaken itself for divine law.

Pride had spoken as if Ludwig holding Nightbreaker was an insult to the order of creation, as if the weapon itself had been offended by being associated with him.

Quite arrogant, Ludwig thought. Which, fine, the name Pride wasn’t exactly subtle.

Still, there was arrogance, and then there was whatever that thing was doing. It was like watching someone smell their own corpse and call it perfume.

But, that wasn’t what was important, Ludwig sat up straight. His hands left the back of his skull, and his elbows rested briefly on his knees as his gaze sharpened toward the palace.

He replayed the sequence again. Not the pain. Not the impact. Not the way Pride moved, though that was useful too.

He focused on the words, on when they appeared, on when they vanished from the pattern. He had died enough times that the repetition had become a miserable sort of data set, and if the Tower wanted to turn him into an experiment, then he could at least have the decency to steal the results.

“The fact he remembered it when I walked in again, and said, Where is my brother’s weapon… and when I turned to undeath and died, he never mentioned Nightbreaker again…”

Ludwig spoke slowly, not because anyone was there to hear him, but because saying it aloud forced the thought into shape.

He could almost see the branching lines in his mind, the ugly logic forming piece by piece. Living Vessel death.

Undead death. Memory retained. Memory lost. Souls spent. Souls preserved.

The difference was too clean to be coincidence, and coincidence in a death tower was usually just someone else’s trap wearing cheap makeup.

“I could make a rough estimate,” Ludwig turned only his head toward the palace, “That bastard only remembers when I die in Living Vessel, and when I die in Undead form, he forgets everything. The death in Living Vessel doesn’t cost souls, dying as an Undead does burn through them.”

Pride remembered the version of him that died outside the normal cost. The Tower, or Pride, or something wearing the Tower’s authority like stolen robes, treated the two deaths differently.

Living Vessel created continuity.

Undeath burned resources and reset Pride’s awareness.

That meant there were rules. Twisted rules, unfair rules, possibly suicidal rules, but rules all the same.

And rules could be bent, broken, or used to stab the owner if one had enough spite and very little concern for personal comfort.

Ludwig stood up, “Someone is interfering with Return by death…” The words left his mouth as his weight shifted fully onto his feet, and the atmosphere changed almost immediately.

It was not a dramatic rumble at first, not some grand declaration from the heavens. It was more like the air noticed he had said something important and tightened around him.

The palace seemed to loom a little closer, its gate-like presence above the stairs suddenly heavier in his vision.

Then the system answered.

[Quest Update!]

[Treachery]

Necros as has realized through you, his proxy, that the Tower of Trials is interfering in matters regarding Death.

Destroy the Tower of Trails!

Reward: Shard of Darkness.

***

“Huh? Destroy,” Ludwig looked up, “Are you mad? How the fuck can I destroy this? Didn’t hear that the last guys that tried to take control of this tower were obliterated? Ninth level mages mind you!”

His head tilted back toward the enormous structure, and the sheer scale of it made the quest feel less like an objective and more like someone had handed him a spoon and told him to empty the ocean before lunch.

Ludwig could not even begin to understand what Necros was asking him to do. Nor the enormity of such a task. Or the impossibility of it.