Deus Necros - Chapter 781: Unleashed

Suddenly a new quest showed up.

The screen did not apologize. It did not soften the command or acknowledge that its first suggestion had been functionally insane. It simply appeared again, crisp and indifferent, hovering before him with the same calm cruelty all system windows seemed to possess.

Ludwig’s jaw tightened as the blue glow washed across the black stone of the stairs and reflected faintly in his eyes.

Quest Update.

[Agreement]

Necros and the administrators of the Tower of Trials have come to an agreement.

[Pride] is hijacking the tower of trials. The tower is unable to rid itself of this high wall that stops the Tower from manifesting in other worlds instead of the World of Ikos.

Destroy Pride. And the Tower of Trials will withdraw itself from Ikos permanently.

Reward:

Shard of Darkness.

Ring of Vanitas.

“Huh, I never thought that Necros could make deals…” Ludwig sighed still, he was still in a pinch. Though he does understand a little bit more about the tower and its reasons for transgressing on Necros’s domain of death.

The first absurdity had been revised into a slightly more focused absurdity, which was apparently what counted as mercy when gods and ancient trial towers negotiated. Destroying the entire tower had been madness.

Destroying Pride was only suicide with a narrower address. Still, the information mattered. Pride was not merely part of the trial.

Pride was obstructing the Tower, hijacking it, becoming a wall so high that even the Tower itself could not move past him. That meant Pride was not just an enemy inside the Tower. He was an error that had become powerful enough to make the Tower bargain with Death.

The thought left a bitter taste in Ludwig’s mouth, or it would have if his current state had bothered with small biological conveniences like taste.

Necros was involved. The Tower administrators were involved. Pride was interfering with death. And Ludwig, because apparently existence had developed a personal grudge against him, was the piece being asked to resolve it.

He looked up the stairs again, following the lines of the palace gate, the metallic surfaces, the oppressive symmetry that had become all too familiar after too many failed attempts.

“Fine,” Ludwig looked up, “If we do this, gotta do it the right way. But man I don’t wanna use it,” He sighed as he pulled something from his lantern’s inventory space.

The lantern answered by opening that strange pocket of stored impossibilities, and his hand closed around cold metal. It was compact, smooth in places and sharp in others, dense enough that its weight felt wrong for its size. The thing did not simply rest in his grasp. It waited there, quiet with the patience of a chained animal that had never forgotten the taste of freedom.

A metallic cube. Its surfaces caught the dim light and returned it in muted, oily reflections. The cube looked harmless only if one had never seen what it could become.

It fit in his hand, but there was pressure inside it, a coiled violence that seemed to vibrate against his bones.

“I let you wreak havoc back then on the seventh floor we even got the tower to ban your use for the next floors. I hope you enjoyed it.” Ludwig said as he looked at the metallic gate, “Because this time, we’ll need your power.”

The cube in his hand vibrated. Not much at first. Just a low tremor against his palm, a tiny mechanical shudder that passed through his fingers and into his wrist. Then the vibration deepened, growing eager, almost pleased.

Ludwig could feel it recognizing the permission before he fully gave it, like a beast hearing the first link of its chain unlock. The metal surface warmed, then pulsed, and the air around his hand seemed to distort with a faint red-black shimmer.

He pulled out Nightbreaker. The weapon emerged from storage with a familiar weight that settled over his shoulder and into his stance. Its presence was different from Noctivex’s hunger, older and heavier, like a grudge given shape and handle. The mace did not hum with impatience. It waited with brutal certainty, the kind of weapon that did not need to threaten anything because its entire existence was a threat.

Ludwig balanced the cube in his left hand and the mace in his right, feeling the contrast between them. Living metal and dead weight. Hunger and judgment. A wonderfully healthy combination, if the goal was to make everything in the room worse for someone.

“Time to pull out the big guns, I just hope he cannot affect us in this form,”

If Pride could still interfere with him through this form, then Ludwig would learn that lesson quickly and probably painfully. But if Pride could not, then for the first time in this miserable sequence, Ludwig might have something resembling leverage.

“Noctivex… unleash.” The command left him like a key turning inside a lock. The cube answered, too quickly, as if it had been waiting not for permission but for an excuse.

It twisted and split apart in Ludwig’s hand, its surface peeling open like a living thing finally allowed to breathe. Blackened metal burst outward in jagged streams and latched onto his arm, shards snapping into place over his fingers, wrist, and forearm with violent precision.

The hateful metal did not stop there.

It climbed higher, swallowing his elbow and shoulder before spreading across his chest in overlapping plates of dark steel. Spikes erupted from the forming armor as Noctivex greedily claimed more of him, wrapping itself around his torso like a parasite that had waited far too long to feed.

Ludwig gritted his teeth as his body began accommodating the transformation.

His frame thickened first.

Muscle and bone expanded beneath the armor, shoulders broadening until the metal had more surface to spread across. His chest widened. His arms swelled with mass. His legs grew denser and heavier, forcing cracks through the stone beneath his boots.

Then came the growth.

Ludwig’s body surged upward with terrifying speed, his perspective rising higher and higher as the palace entrance shrank beneath him. In seconds, he stood level with the metallic gate itself, his height now rivaling its full four-meter frame.

Nightbreaker responded alongside him.

The mace trembled in his grip before enlarging, its shaft lengthening and head expanding until it matched Ludwig’s monstrous new proportions. What had once looked like a heavy weapon now resembled a siege instrument fit only for giants.

More armor manifested.

Layer after layer locked into place over Ludwig’s enlarged body, thick plating sealing over his abdomen, thighs, and greaves while his gauntlets expanded into brutal clawed metal hands. His silhouette vanished beneath the mass of Noctivex entirely.

Only a towering war construct stood before the gate now.

His form resembled a dark sovereign of war, plated head to toe in baleful metal. Jagged protrusions crowned his shoulders and back, while his helm formed over his face in angular layers, leaving only narrow slits of hostile light where eyes should have been.

Though for a moment, one would mistake him for the Wrathful Death’s reincarnation. The only difference was, well, the size. Ludwig was still smaller in comparison to the titan that broke mountains.

Noctivex pulsed once. And a red baleful aura spread out, a connection was made between the Heart and the Living Metal.

Between the cracks of the metal a red sheen erupted out, blinding at first, then calmer, like molten rivulet across armor. That was Wrath.

The metal settled along his body and he was ready for the next fight.

Ludwig rolled his shoulders, the sound of grinding steel echoing through the chamber like tectonic plates shifting against one another.

He tightened his grip around the now-colossal Nightbreaker and stared at the gate.

“Alright then,” his voice rumbled from beneath the helm, deeper now, distorted by layers of living metal. “Let’s see if there is any Hope, in here.”