Deus Necros-Chapter 717: A fun Challenge

Ludwig tightened his grip on Durandal.

The leather around the hilt creaked softly under the pressure of his gauntlet, fingers curling just a little tighter than necessary. The weight of the blade grounded him, familiar and reassuring, but it didn’t dull the prickle crawling up the back of his neck. Something was wrong. Not loud wrong. Not obvious. The kind that crept in quietly and sat just behind your spine.

"I don’t like it when things creep up on me" he muttered as he, against Gale’s advice, turned.

There was a brief hesitation, just a fraction of a second where instinct told him not to. Gale’s earlier warning echoed faintly in his mind. Don’t turn. Don’t react. Don’t give it attention.

Ludwig ignored it anyway.

Only to see a monstrosity of a creature behind him.

The world seemed to narrow for a moment, sound dulling, breath catching in his throat. It hadn’t been there a second ago, or if it had, then something was very wrong with how perception worked on this mountain.

It was serpentenian in shape. A great snake-like creature that had no scales, instead a body of flesh and skin.

The surface of it looked wrong. Not smooth like a serpent, not rough like a beast...just... skin. Pale, stretched, almost translucent in places where veins faintly pulsed beneath. It glistened faintly under the dim light, like something that had never known the sun.

Pale as ash with a head covered in so much hair you couldn’t see the face.

The hair hung in thick, matted clumps, damp-looking, clinging together as if soaked in something that wasn’t quite water. It obscured everything, eyes, nose, mouth, if those things even existed beneath. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺

It had the upper body of a woman, obvious from the saggy breasts on it.

They swayed slightly with each subtle movement of its body, unnatural in the way they didn’t quite follow the rhythm of its motion. Too delayed. Too loose. Like they belonged to something else stitched onto it.

And the rest was like that of a worm more than snake.

Thick. Heavy. The body didn’t coil so much as shift, compressing and expanding in slow, grotesque ripples. Where it touched the ground, the dirt seemed to darken, as if absorbing something it shouldn’t.

Yet the sounds of children came out from its... mouth... maybe.

High-pitched. Broken. Overlapping.

Laughter that cut off too quickly. Crying that didn’t sound like distress, more like imitation. Words that almost formed, then twisted into something wet and wrong. It echoed around them, bouncing off the stone and trees, impossible to pin down.

"The hell is that?" Akro exclaimed as he backed away pulling out his spear.

His boots scraped against the ground as he retreated, stance widening instinctively. The spear tip wavered for just a second before steadying, though his grip tightened hard enough that his knuckles paled.

Ludwig wasn’t a fan of what he saw and immediately drew Durandal.

The blade slid free with a sharp, clean ring that cut through the layered noise of the creature. The sound felt solid. Real. Something human in the middle of all this.

"We fight!" he hollered.

His voice carried, firm and commanding, pushing against the creeping unease. Better to act. Always better to act.

But the fight never came to be.

As immediately a long whistle blew out through the mountain.

It wasn’t loud in the traditional sense. It didn’t deafen. It pierced. A thin, drawn-out note that seemed to slip into the skull rather than the ears. It stretched across the landscape, echoing unnaturally, lingering longer than it should.

The bound corpses that were looking at Ludwig and his companions immediately turned their heads back to their normal location.

The motion was abrupt. Too synchronized. Neck joints creaked as they snapped back into place, eyes going dull again, fixed on nothing.

While the creature howled once, no longer mimicking children’s voices.

The sound changed completely, deep, guttural, almost offended. The childish tones vanished, replaced by something ancient and irritated.

It turned its tail and dove into the ground disappearing from sight.

The flesh-body folded into itself as it burrowed, dirt parting unnaturally easily. Within seconds, it was gone, leaving only disturbed earth and the faint echo of that distorted howl.

Soon, the sound of loud footsteps echoed at the top of the mountain.

Heavy. Measured. Not frantic like beasts. Intentional. Each step sent small vibrations through the ground beneath their feet.

Looking up, Ludwig couldn’t help but frown.

A single whistle was enough to scare even that creature, that’s enough to make a man wonder what type of horror was awaiting them.

His grip on Durandal shifted slightly, not loosening, but adjusting. Preparing.

Three entities came rushing down.

They moved fast, descending the slope with practiced ease, kicking up small clouds of dust and loose gravel. Their silhouettes grew larger with each step.

All of them slightly larger than a human, almost the size of an orc but not much.

Big, but not unwieldy. Proportioned. Built for movement, not just strength.

Buffed, agile and extremely athletic of build.

Muscles coiled under their skin with each step, movements efficient, controlled. No wasted motion.

Two male and one female from how she had a piece of cloth covering her chest.

The cloth was rough, functional, tied tightly. Everything about them screamed practicality over decoration.

They all had weapons on them, cold weapons. Sharp looking weapons. Steel made, human made.

Not crude. Not improvised. Forged. Maintained. Edges that caught the light just enough to show they were cared for.

The creatures all shared one thing.

They all had a single protrusion from the middle of their foreheads.

A horn.

It curved slightly forward, not overly long but unmistakable. Bone or something harder. Natural.

Once they arrived to the perimeter of the group they pointed their weapons.

The movement was immediate and unified, points leveled, distance maintained. Not reckless. Defensive.

"fools who don’t know what they are doing! What brought you here?" One of the males spoke.

His voice was rough, edged with irritation rather than panic. He didn’t step closer.

"I suppose these are the Ogre tribe."

The words echoed from the crystal in Ludwig’s chest pocket.

The faint vibration against his chest was a reminder that they weren’t alone in this. Not entirely.

"Why don’t you ever learn that you cannot simply invade the Holy Mountain! Back away now, while the path is still open, before the lord of the mountain takes note of you." he added

The warning wasn’t empty. There was urgency there, buried under frustration.

The female Ogre sniffed the air twice,

Her nose wrinkled slightly as she inhaled deeply, once... then again. Her gaze sharpened.

"Damra, those two orcs, they are strong,"

The ogre named Damra said, "I can see that but they are not smart enough to avoid the Soothsayers."

"Soothsayers? What is that?" Ludwig asked.

His tone was controlled, but his eyes flicked briefly toward where the creature had disappeared.

"There is no time to be wasted talking to you. Leave or die trying like these corpses."

"Yeah, about that," one of the lizardmen said as he was the only one looking at the way the group came from.

His head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing.

"Do you know where else we can leave? The place we came from seemed to have just closed."

A pause followed. Small...but heavy.

"That’s not possible, the trees should remain opened for at least an hour after they allowed you in."

Akro looked also in the direction of the treeline.

He shifted position slightly, squinting.

"He is right, I can see it from here, the path we took to get here just closed. Is there another way out?"

The three ogres looked at each other,

A silent exchange passed between them, brief, but meaningful.

"Unfortunately, there is none, you will die here..." Damra said.

There was no cruelty in his tone. Just certainty.

"That’s rather grim..." Kaiser’s voice echoed from the crystal.

Ludwig understood that he was being ironic.

"He is right, I don’t think we should lose all hope and start despairing yet. After all, you are still alive. So how come you get to live, while we will die."

Ludwig’s gaze stayed fixed on Damra, watching for any flicker of reaction.

"No trespasser ever managed to make it to the tribe. Only ogres know the way, and everyone simply dies wandering these places. Once a soothsayer has their eyes on you, that will mean you have been marked for burial."

The female Ogre said.

Her words settled heavily in the air.

"I’ll be the judge of that, but..." Ludwig stalled a bit.

He exhaled slowly, weighing the gamble.

"From your words, does it mean that you won’t chase us out if we make it to your town?"

"Chase you out? If you make it there, we’ll host you a banquet." Damra snorted.

The sound was almost amused, brief, dismissive.

"Now that sounds like my kind of challenge," Gale laughed out loud.

The Knight King had long since had a proper difficult task and this one seemed fun enough that it piqued his interest.

His laughter cut through the tension, sharp and alive, as if the threat of death was just another invitation.