Deus Necros - Chapter 657: Authority

Chapter 657: Authority

A simple change, a simple repurposing of magic. A simple act of adjustment, a word for a different word… That is the level of Magic Ludwig was currently capable of.

And that change…that ’word’ allowed anything that walks into the circle to be used as a sacrifice.

The circle wasn’t ruined. It was corrected, into something worse.

“But… you were inside the circle,” she realized as her eyes widened.

For the first time, her voice climbed. The blindfold didn’t hide the tension in her face, the sudden lift of her brows, the tightening at the corners of her mouth. She understood the implication, and her mind raced to the same conclusion every trained ritualist would reach.

Ludwig smiled but didn’t answer.

He didn’t give her the satisfaction of confirmation. He didn’t give the knights a lecture they didn’t need to hear. And he didn’t give Sebas and Evan any additional clues they could cling to.

The answer would be too obvious, too risky. Especially for everyone around him. After all, Ludwig is neither dead, nor alive. An Undead wearing a Living Vessel.

Immediately, the circle lit up in bright red. It flared like a wound reopening. The red wasn’t candlelight, this was violent illumination, the kind that made shadows jump and twist along the walls. The blood grooves gleamed, and the air thickened with the sense of something paying attention from the other side.

“No!” she howled as she tried to run away from the circle’s range but slammed into an invisible wall.

She scrambled to her feet, movements suddenly frantic, the calm scholar-mask ripped away. Her hands struck something unseen, hard. The impact jolted through her arms. She pushed again, and again, palms flattening against the barrier like glass.

Ludwig’s foot had already pushed the final line to connect the circle, and was now a locked area. a dome of blood magic surrounded and trapped her inside.

The dome shimmered faintly, red light refracting in a way that made her silhouette look distorted, as if reality itself disagreed with letting her leave. The boundary hummed low, a vibration that prickled Ludwig’s skin even from outside it.

“Good luck getting your soul back from the clutches of a demon. Dumbass…”

His insult landed with the casual cruelty of someone tossing crumbs to a starving animal. It wasn’t shouted. It didn’t need to be. The circle did the shouting now.

“NO! STOP THIS! YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!”

Her fists pounded the blood ward. Each strike made the dome flicker, but it didn’t break. The light only pulsed, eager, as if pleased by the desperation.

“Well, its your own trap, you deal with it,” Ludwig smiled as he turned to Sebas.

He didn’t even grant her another look. That was the worst part, she was no longer the center of the room. She was a component, sealed in place, and the ritual had taken over her role.

“Now, how should I deal with you?” Ludwig tilted his head and ignored Teresia who was banging against the blood magic ward.

Sebas stood with the staff still raised, face pale and sweaty, eyes darting between the knights and the dome. Evan, bruised and furious, hovered farther back, trying to steady his breathing while pretending he wasn’t afraid.

“Me? I’ll show you what you call a shitty necromancer and what I’m capable of!” he cursed at Ludwig as he struck his staff onto the ground.

The staff’s skull clacked against stone. A shock of dark mana rippled outward in a thin ring, crawling low along the floor like spilled ink searching for cracks.

Several coffins popped out in front of him, six in total.

They didn’t rise gently. They forced themselves up, stone groaning as hidden compartments opened, the coffins thrusting into the chamber like teeth erupting from gums. Dust plumed around their bases. The smell that followed wasn’t earth, it was preservation resin, old spice, and something faintly sweet that made the stomach tighten.

“RISE UNDEAD!” he called.

The dark magic immediately seeped into the boxes.

It threaded into seams, into hinges, into the gaps where lids met wood. It pooled like water, thick and hungry, and Ludwig could feel the intent. He wanted to fight him with the ’shitty necromancy.’ A Servant of Necros, Ludwig the Undead…

“NECROMANCY!” one of the Royal Knights said as his aura covered his sword, “DESTROY THEM!”

His blade flared with a clean, bright pressure that made the shadows recoil slightly. The knight stepped forward, boots grinding, ready to strike before the first corpse could even twitch.

“Blasphemy!” another said as they were about to jump into the fight.

The knights’ outrage was immediate, visceral. These weren’t just enemies. This was sacrilege beneath their home.

“Stop, everyone,” Ludwig said as he raised his hand.

The command hit like a sudden wall. The knights froze, not because they lacked will, but because Ludwig’s authority in this moment was absolute. They were trained to obey chain of command. And right now, Ludwig was the sharpest weapon in the room.

“If you use Aura here, you’ll cause harm to the integrity of the palace…” he added.

His eyes flicked upward, as if he could see the marble halls above through layers of stone. Aura wasn’t gentle. Aura was force. It would crack old foundations, disrupt wards, bring the ceiling down. Killing enemies meant nothing if they buried the emperor’s palace with them.

“But Sir Ludwig!”

The knight’s protest sounded torn between duty and instinct. He wanted permission to cut.

“Don’t call me Sir, I’m not a noble,” Ludwig said.

“But you are though…you just became a viscount” one of them commented.

There was a beat of silence after that, the kind where even Teresia’s pounding on the ward seemed slightly more distant.

“Ah… I forgot about that,” Ludwig cringed at his own reaction and looked at Sebas.

The cringe wasn’t theatrical. It was genuine annoyance at the absurdity of the situation. He wasn’t used to being called a Sir after all.

“So, is that your trump card?” he said as the six coffins had their doors fall revealing well preserved bodies.

The lids dropped with a synchronized thump. Not dramatic. Not slow. Just done. As if the dead were being unveiled like merchandise.

“That’s… Ugo. And Stein…” one of the royal knights said as he seemed to recognize a couple of the bodies.

The recognition was instant and sickening. These weren’t random corpses. Their faces, too intact, too familiar, belonged in memorial halls, not in coffins dragged into forbidden circles.

“These are royal knights… these are servants of the empire! WHERE DID YOU GET THIS! YOU BLASTED BASTARD! THEY WERE HONORABLY BURIED!” another howled with enough force that you could feel the pillars shake.

The knight’s voice cracked with fury and grief, and it carried enough aura-adjacent pressure, raw emotion, barely restrained, that dust fell from somewhere in the dark corners of the ceiling.

But this wasn’t what Ludwig was worried or cared bout.

Ludwig felt a bit of anguish looking at the bodies. Not because they were former empire soldiers. No.

Because they were far more ’preserved’ and complete.

It hit him like a sour taste. Like remembering the first time Sebas had touched his body with a knife. Not to honor. Not to preserve. To strip. To reduce. To make an asset.

This bastard who killed him when he first came to Ikos had carved the very flesh and organs out of Ludwig’s entire body and created a skeleton. But now, he’s able to use a better necromantic ritual.

What a shame. If the body of Ludwig was never fully carved out, maybe he’d have lived differently, well ’Undeaded’ differently…

The thought didn’t soften him. It sharpened him. It made the room feel smaller.

“The hell is happening?” Sebas said as he noticed that the coffins didn’t move.

His confidence faltered. The spell should’ve taken. The corpses were intact. The magic was poured in. Yet nothing twitched. No fingers flexed. No eyes opened. Six perfect puppets refusing to dance.

The corpses all felt far too powerful for someone like Sebas, Ludwig knew that. But not even moving when using all that dark magic?

Something was wrong.

“RISE UNDEAD!” he howled again.

He shoved more mana into the command, his veins standing out in his neck, staff vibrating in his grip. The skull’s jaw seemed to chatter from the force. Still, nothing. The bodies lay there like statues, heavy and inert, as if they were rejecting the very idea of obedience.

Even after using all his mana, the corpses didn’t move. Didn’t come to life.

Only then did Ludwig realize what happened.

The answer wasn’t technique. It wasn’t power. It wasn’t even a ward placed by the knights. It was older than all of that. It was authority.

“Quite the shame isn’t it?” Ludwig said.

His voice was quiet, but it carried, because everyone in the room had begun listening for the same thing: why isn’t it working?

This wasn’t him using [Evil Eye] nor was it because of Sebas’s incompetence even if he truly was incompetent. Nor was it because these people were high end corpses with a lot of experience and the possibility to become Death Knights.

No, it was for a simple fact, and that fact was clear in front of his eyes.

[Necros Refused the Contract of Undeath.]

The system line appeared like a verdict stamped into the air.

Sebas panicked, unable to understand why his spell didn’t work. Evan’s breath hitched, and even the knights, trained to face monsters without flinching, shifted uneasily. Because how could necromancers fail in rising the dead with so much mana poured into it. And how did Ludwig know that they wouldn’t rise no matter the effort put in?

“WHAT IS GOING ON SEBAS! CALL THEM FORWARD!”

Evan’s shout was raw, panicked anger. Not at Ludwig, at Sebas, at the failure, at the sudden collapse of their plan. The kind of anger that came from realizing they weren’t in control anymore.

“I’M TRYING! Its not working!” he said as he channeled more magic. Even Evan supported him from afar.

Evan lifted his wand again, forcing mana through trembling fingers, trying to brute-force reality into cooperating. Sebas’s staff slammed into stone once more, the dark wave surging, the coffins rattling… and still the corpses did not obey.

“You can try for eternity, and you’ll never succeed,” Ludwig said.

He didn’t step forward. He didn’t need to. His certainty was the blade now.

Both Sebas and Evan looked at him with terror in their eyes.

Not the fear of being killed, worse. The fear of being judged by something they couldn’t threaten, couldn’t bargain with, couldn’t stab in the back.

“You’ve been weighed…measured…and found wanting. Necros has revoked your contract. You are…Unworthy.”