Deus Necros - Chapter 778: Rewind

Pride, for the first time, lifted his hand and went for a grab. It was slow, awfully and painfully slow. Ludwig didn’t even have the instinct to react, as this was something that even a child could avoid; all he needed was to dodge.

The motion was almost insulting in its laziness. No flare of mana. No pressure spike. No grand gesture that announced power. Just fingers extending through the amber light like Pride was reaching for an object on a shelf. The air didn’t even ripple the way it did when spells formed. The dome’s glow stayed steady, the mirrors stayed silent, and the heaps of gold didn’t so much as clink.

Ludwig saw it, registered it, even judged the angle, neck-high, straight line, no deception. His feet were planted on the marble and he knew he could step aside, half a stride and the hand would cut nothing but heat.

But he didn’t.

It wasn’t bravado. It wasn’t even defiance. For a heartbeat, Ludwig’s body simply refused to treat the movement as real danger because it wasn’t threatening. It was too slow to be threatening. His instincts, honed on faster deaths, lagged behind the absurdity of the situation.

The grab immediately went to his neck.

The fingers were not hot. Not cold. Not even solid in a way he could describe. They were certainty given a shape, and once they closed, Ludwig felt the world decide he was done. His spine locked. His vision went thin at the edges. He didn’t feel choking. He felt invalidated.

[You Died!]

Ludwig gasped as he found himself at the stairs leading to the domed palace again.

Cold slammed into him like a bucket. The mountain’s thin air bit at his lungs and made the next breath feel like it had teeth. Stone under his boots, cloud cover in front of him, and the long spiral of steps curling upward like a dare. The gate loomed ahead, too calm for what it led to.

“What the fuck was that?” he cursed.

The words came out harsher than he intended, fogging in front of his face. He flexed his fingers once, checking sensation. Neck fine. Spine fine. Heart beating Living Vessel still wrapped around him like a disguise that refused to admit how fragile it was in there.

Looking at his lantern, there was a difference this time.

The lantern’s glass wasn’t just glass. It looked… thinner, like something had been siphoned through it. The glow inside was dimmer, and the soul-mist that usually swirled with stubborn density had been cut cleanly, like someone took a blade to it and didn’t bother hiding the theft.

His lantern lost half the souls it had.

Ludwig thought for a second.

’Huh, this time it actually took the souls, I wonder why…’ he muttered as he walked up the stairs and opened the gate, again.

The climb felt shorter than it should have, because his mind refused to stop chewing on the difference. Pride’s first kill had been effortless and… free.

No lantern bite. No soul tax. This one? This one cost him. That meant something. It meant there were rules here, even if they weren’t written in any window he could read.

He pressed the gate and the metal groaned open, that heavy tectonic sound vibrating through the soles of his boots. Heat rolled out again, stale and suffocating, like a room that had been sealed for centuries with arrogance as its only air.

Once inside, he saw pride standing in the middle again.

Like before, only this time, he wasn’t closer. He was still in the middle this time.

The gold scattered across the marble looked unchanged, still tossed like trash around a perfect arena. The mirrors still watched like judges that never blinked. The trophies still hung like a list of names Pride had erased and kept for decoration.

Ludwig’s brow furrowed a bit, but he didn’t care. He forced himself to treat the repetition as data, not as an insult.

“You have returned,” the being said, its voice carrying the same distant, detached tone as before.

This made Ludwig feel like a sense of Déjà vu just happened.

It wasn’t only the words. It was the cadence. The exact same pause between syllables. The exact same weight behind them, like the sentence was a stamp and Ludwig was paper being marked again and again.

“Didn’t you say that before, motherfucker.”

Pride’s golden eyes didn’t narrow. Didn’t sharpen. They simply stayed the same, fixed with that hollow certainty that everything in this place belonged to him by default.

“Before? You jest. Mortal, I’m above jests and jokes.”

“I told you, don’t call me mortal, I am not.”

He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t posture. He simply corrected Pride the way you corrected someone misreading your name. But even that felt like defiance in this room.

“Then perish, incomplete being.”

The words hit the air like a verdict. Ludwig felt the pressure begin to rise again, subtle at first, then heavier, like the dome above was sinking inch by inch to squeeze him out of existence.

The moment he words echoed, Ludwig immediately cast, [Termination]

He didn’t wait to see the “attack.” He didn’t wait to see a hand. He didn’t even wait for instinct. He just pulled the lever himself, forcing the state change the way he’d done earlier because earlier, it worked.

[You lost Living Vessel. Before Living Vessel can activate again, you entered [Undeath] if you die during Undeath, you will be sent to your last Death Point.

The shift was immediate and wrong in the way it always was. The warmth of flesh vanished. His breath became pointless. The pounding heartbeat that had been his anchor turned into silence. And with it, the pressure that had been building… slid off him, as if the domain’s grip found nothing living to crush.

His undead form immediately pushed aside the rising pressure, refusing to bend to Pride’s will.

“Hmm, you have altered your state…” it said.

Ludwig frowned. “Don’t you have something new to say, you said that last time…”

Pride didn’t look offended. It looked… faintly intrigued, like an artist watching a smear of paint behave differently than expected.

“Last time?” Pride almost tilted his head, but he was too proud to do so.

He continued, “Rejecting me, achieves nothing, either living or undead, all bow down. All kneel.”

He said as once again, his hand rose up, slow, careless almost.

It was the same hand. The same motion. The same insulting pace. But this time Ludwig’s body wanted to move. Undead muscles didn’t care about intimidation. They didn’t tremble from pressure. They didn’t flinch from the idea of death.

But again… he simply couldn’t.

It wasn’t paralysis. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t a spell rooting him to the marble. It was like his intent was being denied. His body knew what he wanted, step back, twist left, anything, but the command never reached the world.

He was grabbed by the neck, a tightening and a twist.

Even undead, even hollow, even stripped of pulse, the fingers closed and the result was the same. Not choking. Not crushing. Just ending.

[You Died.]