Deus Necros - Chapter 586: Divine Intervention

Chapter 586: Divine Intervention

Ludwig calmly placed his hand on the chest plate of the body and let the fingers settle until metal and palm learned each other’s temperature. The armor held a night-cold bite at first, then accepted a little of his warmth, a quiet proof that the world still followed simple laws inside the violet hush of the dome. He began infusing it with mana. According to the Advanced Necrotic Rituals, the body must be attuned first and the attunement must be intimate, the mana of the one who would bind it feeding the empty channels until they remembered how to carry a current.

The first threads of mana went in thin and obedient. They ran beneath the breastplate like water seeking old riverbeds, then fanned along the ribs and down the spine. He followed with more, neither hurried nor slow, keeping his breath steady despite the habit he had long since lost. The dome took the strain of the power without a tremor, its color deepening where his aura pressed against the corpse, violet shading toward the rich purple of bruised fruit. Runes he could not see but could feel like dust motes against skin slid and reformed along its curve, sealing every leak the way a skilled sailor seals a hull with pitch.

He fed the vessel until the emptiness in him widened and then widened again. Once Ludwig’s entire mana pool was tapped out, which, after having leveled up had greatly increased and reached the four thousand mark, the hollow sang in his bones. He took another needlessly deep breath. It did nothing for the body that had no need of air, but old habits sometimes fit better than new wisdom. He let the breath go and began.

He marked the body with sigils of undeath, the basic ones that were used whenever he called the spell Rise Undead, but he placed them with a care that belonged to a finer craft than the crude version. Lines of charcoal and old blood made tight angles over metal, then curled along the seams where armor met ruined mail. He set a knot at the throat, a wheel over the heart, a stair of three strokes at the hip, a circle that was not a circle around the left knee. Each mark answered by faintly warming the plate beneath it, as if the rune breathed in tiny sips.

The body began harmonizing immediately. There is a moment in any ritual where the balancing pans agree to share their weight, and he felt that agreement pass through all the dead rings and rivets. Scars and damages began healing, if that could even be called healing. It looked more like stitching and fusing, as if an invisible needle drew torn edges together and persuaded them to shake hands. Gashes closed along remembered lines, not erasing the story but binding it. The great rent across the abdomen did not vanish; it drew itself into a thick seam that would always speak of failure and endurance at once.

The energy he released would have been felt by any gifted nose for power from the palace towers to the outer gardens, and beyond, to where the city thinned into barley and date groves. But thanks to the purple dome, everything was hidden from sight and sense. Sound softened to a cloth-folded murmur. The smell of oil from the hinges and the lingering mead sweetness crouched close to the floor and did not dare to spread. He felt as if he stood inside a bell and the bell had been struck once and then commanded to hold the note without letting it escape.

A purple smoke-like aura began to permeate from the corpse, not a scent but a color that moved like breath. It rose through the seams and pooled along plates, gathered in the hollows of the pauldron, then lifted in thin banners toward the ceiling. The smoke did not dissipate; it folded itself back into the skin of the armor and left a faint shine like frost before dawn. It was the signal he had been told to look for, the mark of readiness for the next step.

The Advanced Rituals themselves were merely instructions on how to restore a body to a condition it could remember. They taught the hands where to press and the words where to lay their weight. They did not change the rule that a corpse is a vessel in want of a tide. He still needed supplements. Besides his own mana he needed something else, something heavier than mana, something that did not flow but gripped. That was soul power.

“Everything’s ready,” Ludwig said. His voice sounded careful inside the dome, as if it did not want to disturb the dust.

“I can feel that my body’s calling me to it…” The Knight King’s presence hovered close, a pressure that was not weight, an outline that could not be seen, and yet the eyes made space for it.

“That’s the next step. Could you try to get inside your body for now?” Ludwig asked the Knight King. He flattened his hand again on the breastplate, fingers spread, anchoring the invitation.

The spirit form of the Knight King flew down and dropped upon the corpse’s chest as a hawk drops on a post it owned long before. The meeting made no sound and made every sound. The air touched back. Once the spirit disappeared inside, Ludwig pulled Durandal and cut his hand. The blade opened the skin without resistance, as if it knew its work and regretted nothing. He let his blood seep into the corpse’s chest and did not flinch at the sting. Blood traveled along the rune lines in narrow rivers, climbed the slope of the plate as if uphill did not exist, and sank between half-sealed seams.

A clean, cold series of notices struck the space between thought and eye.

[You have achieved all needed elements to cast the Advanced Revival of Undeath.]

[Conduit: User’s Mana]

[The Vessel: Knight King of Tibari’s Corpse]

[The Animating Force: The Original Soul of the Knight King]

[The Anchor: User’s Blood]

However, nothing seemed to happen afterward. The corpse did not move or change. The silence thickened. The violet dome held. Even the candle flame at his left burned without the small dance that soothed the eye. He could almost hear his own patience counting.

He set his mouth to utter Rise Undead. It was the last step. The word sat at the back of his tongue like a bead of iron. Yet something stopped him. It was not doubt. It was a hand on the shoulder that did not bruise and would not be pushed away.

A notification had long since appeared before him, waiting like a messenger told to stand and say nothing until the name was called. A notification he hadn’t seen since his battle with the Wrathful Death.

[Necros’s Blessing is activating]

Ludwig’s body shuddered, and his palm pressed tighter on the corpse. He had the sense of a door he could not see opening right beneath his feet, and the cool air from that door washed over his face and under his armor.

His mouth moved, but the words weren’t his. They did not come from memory. They were old enough to wear their own dust.

“By Mana Drawn, The Black Road Opens!

“A living Will, to graves Unbroken!”

The dome answered by gathering its light closer around the two of them, as if it feared the lines might crack if they were not wrapped tight.

“By corpse made Vessel, Named and Known

“I claim this Flesh, This shattered Throne!”

Energy like nothing Ludwig had yet felt pushed through him first, then into the body. It did not burn. It pressed. It had the patience of millstones and the certainty of tides. His empty mana pool refilled for a breath not with mana but with a current that ignored the walls he knew, then emptied into the armor, then returned, then emptied again, faster and then faster, until he felt a cycle established that he could not have started and could not stop.

“By Knightly Vow, Of Blade and Soul

“Return to serve the final Toll.

His limbs trembled. If he had lungs for breath, he would have lost it and then found it on the floor. He stayed where he was because there was nowhere else to go. The currents of all that is magic had taken him for a wheel and set him to turning, and he could either turn or break.

“By Blood of Mine, The Anchor is Set!

“By Necros’s Gaze, The Dead is Claimed!

“To me you shall serve, To me you shall be Led!

“By Necros’s Will, RISEUNDEAD!”