Deus Necros

“Rain down.”

The hall responded before the echo of his voice faded.

Weapons stirred along the walls. Golden fixtures trembled. Space itself seemed to open in thin, shining seams above and around the arena. Pride had reached for overwhelming force again, but earlier this time, faster, with less patience for the exchange.

Ludwig noticed it immediately, and the realization made the blood loss, the shattered hand, and the oncoming storm feel almost worthwhile.

Ludwig smiled.

It was not a pleasant expression. It stretched across his face with the crooked satisfaction of a man who had just confirmed that stepping into a meat grinder had, in fact, taught him where one of the gears was.

He was about to die. Probably badly. But there was a difference this time.

’It changed, again. He’s using an Ultimate Skill already. He’s being pressured.”

That was all Ludwig wanted from this attempt. Survival had never been the goal. Reaction was. And Pride, for all his superiority, had reacted.

Not to damage. Not to danger. To humiliation.

Swords slid from golden displays. Spears emerged from distortions overhead. Axes, halberds, chains, lances, bows, and shields formed in layers above the arena, each one restored to pristine sharpness by Pride’s authority.

It won’t even be an issue to Kill Ludwig now that he’s not in Noctivex form. He was smaller, slower, bleeding, and already missing proper use of one hand. Against this kind of assault, Noctivex had been pierced.

His current body was going to be butchered. Ludwig understood that clearly. It did not make his legs stop moving. The attempt still had seconds left, and seconds were enough to steal more information.

“Perish Once more” Pride muttered and the weapons came down like the decree of a wrathful god.

The first wave descended in a screaming curtain of metal, blades cutting through the air from every angle. The gold and mirror hall vanished behind motion, every reflection replaced by falling edges and sharpened points.

Ludwig could hear the weapons before they landed, a layered shriek that made instinct beg him to curl up and protect something vital. Unfortunately, everything was vital when the sky was made of swords.

“Black mirror!” Ludwig called and stomped a foot in front of him right before the treasures fell down on him.

A dark surface erupted from the marble, black glass spreading upward like a wound opening in space. Its reflection was wrong, swallowing light instead of returning it, and the first wave of weapons vanished into it the moment they struck.

Ludwig felt the spell strain through his body, felt the impact of each swallowed weapon as pressure against his bones. His shattered hand screamed when he braced, but he held the spell long enough.

Any weapon that entered the mirror was transported to another mirror. Behind Pride, a matching black mirror opened, and the redirected arsenal burst toward his back. For a heartbeat, the image was perfect: Pride, untouched and unaware, with his own golden weapons flying toward him from behind. Then they froze just short of him, hovering inches away as if an invisible wall had denied the possibility of contact.

Still it bought Ludwig time, time to avoid the incoming rain, and prepare another countermeasure. He threw himself aside as another wave crashed down where he had been standing, marble exploding into white shards. A spear cut past his ribs close enough to tear fabric and skin. A broken sword spun away from the floor and sliced across his calf. Ludwig staggered, regained his footing, and kept moving.

Another nick in Pride’s walls, another attempt at his immaculate façade. The mirror had failed to wound him, but it had forced the room to show another rule. Pride’s body could not be touched by those weapons even when redirected.

His authority refused consequence near him, or the Golden Vault refused to betray its master.

The exact mechanism could wait. The important part was the response. Pride’s defenses had shape. Anything with shape had edges.

The rain of treasures continued crashing against the marble as Ludwig moved between them with increasingly desperate footwork. Spears embedded where his head had been moments prior. Swords ricocheted violently off stone. Axes large enough to split horses buried themselves deep into the floor. Ludwig slid beneath one descending halberd and narrowly avoided another weapon that clipped his shoulder hard enough to tear through flesh. Blood sprayed warm across his arm, and the hit spun him half off balance, but he turned the stumble into a roll before a lance could pin him down.

He caught himself against one knee and laughed.

The sound came out rough, wet, and almost absurd under the thunder of falling weapons. It was not because he was winning. Objectively, he was being overwhelmed even harder than before.

He used no armor, no Noctivex, no Wrathful amplification, and no real way to survive. Every exchange ended the same way it always did: Ludwig pushed forward, learned something, and paid for that knowledge with his life.

He chose dying as tuition, and for anyone else, that fee was frankly unreasonable.

And yet, something about this death already felt different.

Ludwig rose back to his feet as another rain of weapons descended around him, forcing him to pivot sharply aside while Black Mirror redirected another volley uselessly behind Pride. The mirror spat blades into the space behind the golden being, only for them to halt again inches away.

Ludwig’s grin widened through the blood on his lips. That was it. He had been measuring the fight wrong.

This entire time Ludwig had been viewing the battle through conventional terms.

Damage dealt. Damage received. Position. Timing. Survival.

Those measures belonged to normal fights. But none of those metrics actually mattered here.

Not against Pride. Pride was still stronger, faster, and overwhelmingly more dangerous.

But Pride was no ordinary opponent. His victory condition was not Ludwig’s death.

Ludwig understood that now with uncomfortable clarity. Death was incidental. Killing Ludwig was easy.

Pride had done it again and again.

Pride needed Ludwig to remain lesser. Not weaker. Lesser. Incomplete. Predictable. Categorized.

Ludwig could be strong, even troublesome, as long as he remained properly beneath Pride. A lesser thing could struggle.

A lesser thing could be crushed. But a lesser thing was not supposed to define the exchange, force adjustments, create discomfort, or make Pride explain himself.

’I never liked philosophy, but man, does it solve many issues.’

Another weapon descended from above, forcing Ludwig to roll across shattered marble as a massive lance impaled the floor where he had been standing. Stone dust blasted into his face, and he came out of the roll with fresh cuts across his shoulder and thigh. Blood dripped from a dozen wounds now, his breathing heavier, his legs slower, his broken hand throbbing like a second heart full of knives.

Still, he laughed again.

Because, despite everything, Pride had already failed. Not physically. Conceptually. Every time Pride altered his sequence, every time he escalated sooner, every time he corrected Ludwig or responded to a meaningless provocation, he was spending something more valuable than mana or stamina.

He was spending certainty. That was the true battlefield. Certainty. And Pride was bleeding it dry through action, through correction, through the simple fact that the perfect being had to keep changing because Ludwig would not remain where Pride placed him.

A sword pierced clean through Ludwig’s side before he could fully evade, forcing a grunt from him as the impact drove him several steps backward.

He coughed, blood staining his lips, but his eyes remained fixed entirely on Pride. The blade burned cold inside him, the pain deep and nauseating as the weapon held him for one brutal second before he tore himself sideways.

His knees almost buckled. The hall tilted at the edges of his vision. But even through that, he could see Pride watching him more carefully than before.

Then Ludwig began smiling so broadly it almost looked deranged.

“Oh,” he muttered, as if finally hearing the punchline to a joke only he understood.

The sound was small under the storm, but it carried enough amusement that Pride’s expression did not change, but his gaze sharpened.

Ludwig lifted his bloodied hand, or what was still functional enough to point, and aimed one stained finger toward him.

“You’re winning,” Ludwig admitted, his voice hoarse but amused. “Actually, no. Let me rephrase that.”

He ripped the sword from his side with an ugly spray of blood and let it clatter uselessly to the ground.

“You’re absolutely kicking my ass.”

The weapons above continued materializing. The pressure never weakened. The authority still dominated the arena.

By every visible metric, Ludwig was seconds away from another death. And yet his grin only widened. There was a difference between losing and being made lesser, and Ludwig had finally found the narrow crack between them.

Pride could kill him. Pride could dominate the room. Pride could flood the air with enough weapons to blot out the ceiling. But every time Ludwig forced him to react, Pride’s perfect certainty lost another piece of itself.

“Which is what makes this so funny,” Ludwig continued, tightening his grip around nothing now that both weapons had been discarded or displaced.

“Because I think I finally figured it out.”

His empty hand flexed, pain lancing through the shattered bones. He had no weapon, no armor, and no realistic method of surviving the next wave. Still, his posture shifted forward instead of back. The hall could have all its golden weapons. Pride could have all the authority he wanted.

Ludwig had found the thing beneath it.

For the first time in several exchanges, Pride did not immediately speak. It was brief. Almost microscopic.

Pride’s gaze remained fixed on him, but the delay was there.

And the confirmation made him laugh outright. The sound tore through his injured body and made the wound in his side flare, but he laughed anyway.

“You’ve killed me how many times now?” Ludwig asked, stepping forward through the storm of descending weapons as though his own mortality had stopped mattering several dozen deaths ago.

A spear dropped in front of him and he shifted around it by inches. A sword grazed his shoulder. Another blade cut across his thigh. He kept walking.

“Enough times for me to know one thing for sure.”

His eyes narrowed. The blood on his face, the broken hand, the open wound in his side, all of it should have made him look defeated.

Maybe it did. But his gaze was fixed, sharp, and horribly certain now. Pride’s certainty had been the weapon dominating this hall since the beginning.

Ludwig’s certainty was smaller, bloodier, and far uglier. It did not shine. It did not command the world. It simply refused to die without stealing the answer first.

“You’re getting worse at this.”