Deus Necros - Chapter 727: Right of Kingship.
Chapter 727: Right of Kingship.
“Hmm, no wonder the goblin king was oppressed… But this is an issue,” Ludwig said, “That means my right for kingship over orcs is inexistent.”
The words sat heavy in Ludwig’s mouth, bitter like cheap ale.
He could feel the settlement’s warmth behind him, the roast, the firelight, the false comfort, but his attention stayed on the ugly logic Damra had just handed him. If the Tower recognized the Red King, then Ludwig’s crown wasn’t merely contested. It was invalid. A rigged board, pieces arranged before he even arrived.
“You got the second-worst luck of the climbers,” Damra said.
Damra didn’t sound mocking. He sounded resigned, like he’d watched enough hopeful challengers walk in with straight backs and walk out with broken ones. His massive fingers tapped the rim of his horn once, a slow, thoughtful motion, as if counting cycles he didn’t want to remember.
“Second?” Ludwig asked.
“Yes, because although it’s very hard to become a king of orcs, it wasn’t the case before. If a climber becomes an Orc, he had a small chance to obtain kingship before the Red King was born, but since the cycles have changed so much now… it becomes very hard.”
Damra’s gaze drifted across the safe lands as he spoke, taking in faces that were suddenly less festive. Some still clutched their mugs like shields. Others had already set them down and leaned forward, hungry for whatever came next. Ludwig could feel the shift, the same crowd that had toasted death a moment ago now listening for a different kind of entertainment: danger.
“That didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m getting to that. The hardest is our race, an Ogre King hasn’t been born in this mountain for a very long time.”
The way Damra said “our race” carried something Ludwig didn’t like. Ownership. Territory. A line in the sand. The safe lands were mixed-race, but the mountain belonged to ogres in the way a throne room belonged to the family seated on it.
“The Two-Horned King?” Ludwig asked.
“Yes,”
Damra’s answer came clipped and careful now, as if even naming that title summoned consequences. Around them, a few ogres shifted. A few goblins stopped chewing. Even the bonfire’s crackle seemed to draw attention.
“Like these?” Ludwig said as he channeled the Wrathful Heart.
He didn’t do it dramatically. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t posture, didn’t make a speech. He simply reached inward and let the wrong engine inside him turn over. The change hit his body like a shockwave contained by skin.
Almost immediately, his muscles bulged, pumping red aura through orcish vines, his hair turned red like blood and his forehead grew two magnificent horns of rubies and crystalline.
The air around him tightened. Heat rolled off him in pulses, not furnace heat but something angrier, like the world itself was being pressured into responding. Veins stood out along his arms, and the orc’s body that had felt sluggish earlier suddenly felt too alive, too reactive, too eager to move. The horns grew fast, pushing through flesh with a sensation like splitting pressure rather than pain, forming into sharp, glittering curves that caught firelight and made it look like the bonfire had climbed onto his head.
The excess energy of the Wrathful Heart that couldn’t further express itself into one’s body became Ludwig’s horns.
His right of kingship.
He felt it immediately, how the shape wasn’t cosmetic, how it was a declaration made physical.
Not “I can be king.” More like “I will not fit anywhere else.”
The entire village turned silent.
No, not silent, in awe.
The sound didn’t die so much as it was swallowed. Mugs froze halfway to mouths. Hands stopped mid-gesture. Conversations collapsed into nothing. And then the reactions hit in layered waves, ugly, honest, divided.
Some, howled, “KING! The NEW KING!”
The howl came from deep ogre throats, heavy enough to vibrate in chests. A few slammed fists to their sternums as if saluting something sacred.
Some denied! “He is not an Ogre!”
That protest came sharper, defensive, like fear pretending to be principle. Ludwig saw tusks bared. He saw shoulders rise. He saw the start of faction lines.
Some prostrated on the ground, “Holy one! The Holy One is back!”
Bodies hit dirt. Foreheads pressed low. The words “Holy one” made Ludwig’s stomach twist in a way wrath didn’t cause. Holy titles were cages. They were expectations you could never meet and accusations you could never escape.
And some refused to even look at Ludwig.
They turned their heads, stared into mugs, stared into fire, stared anywhere but at the horns. Refusal as self-protection. If you don’t look, you don’t have to acknowledge. If you don’t acknowledge, you don’t have to choose.
“That…” Damra took a step back, “That is not right.”
The step wasn’t cowardice. It was instinct. Ludwig’s aura wasn’t simply loud. It was volatile, and Damra knew volatile things exploded without warning.
Ludwig was about to talk when his vision began turning red. “FINALLY YOU HEAR ME!” The words were not his; they echoed in his mind.
The voice hit like a hammer dropped inside his skull, too loud, too close, too intimate. Ludwig’s breath hitched for half a beat. The red edge in his vision thickened, turning the world’s colors into a palette of violence.
“Tsk,” Ludwig clicked his tongue.
He forced the small sound out like a pin driven into a rising swell. Annoyance as an anchor. It was ridiculous, but it worked better than panic.
“KILL! MURDER! DESTROY! RAVAGE AND RANSACK! BURN AND OBLITERATE! LET WRATH CONSUME THE WORLD! TAKE VENGEANCE! TAKE LIFE! TAKE ALL THAT YOU WANT AND MORE!” The words were so loud that one would think a god was yelling them.
The commands battered his thoughts in waves, trying to drown out everything else, reason, restraint, language itself. T
he orc body responded to it too, muscles twitching, fingers flexing, spine tightening as if it wanted to launch forward and turn the nearest face into a smear.
Ludwig could feel his jaw grinding, feel his teeth press hard enough to hurt.
Wrath was back.
