Just as Ludwig was beginning to weigh his options, his gaze drifting absently between the crumbled stone and the looming corpse of the fallen angel, a low, guttural sound rolled out beside him. At first, it didn’t register. It was a growl an honest growl but for a mont, his mind didn’t quite process it. Cats didn’t growl. They hissed, yowled, maybe let out an irritated chuff when displeased. But this? This was a sound more suited to a canine, or sothing far more ancient.
He turned, and there was Salem.
The shadowy feline crouched low, muscles taut beneath his ink-like hide, tail flicking once in a slow, serpentine motion. His ears pressed back against his skull, and his luminous yellow eyes narrowed into slits, fixed on the still body ahead. He took a step forward, then another, shoulders rolling in precise predatory grace as he stalked toward the fallen angel’s ruined form. His form barely made a sound as he moved, no clink of claws on stone, no shuffle of fur or paw. Only the subtle shift of displaced shadow as he crept forward with unblinking intent.
"Calm down, buddy," Ludwig murmured, voice pitched low, almost soothing, though even he wasn’t sure who the words were for. His hand moved slightly as if to reach for the creature, but he thought better of it. "You’re acting like you sll sothing we don’t."
But the advice fell upon deaf, uninterested ears. Salem didn’t even glance back. Whatever strange instinct had overtaken him drowned out everything else. The cat was far too focused on sothing, sothing neither Ludwig nor Celine could yet see.
Then, without warning, the body twitched.
No, not the angel’s, but sothing underneath it. A ripple in the dust-laden earth, a faint tremor that shivered through the ground just enough to rouse a prickle along Ludwig’s spine. His eyes narrowed, jaw tightening. Celine stepped slightly to the side, one hand flexing unconsciously near her sword hilt.
And then it erged.
Sothing black and moist wriggled free from beneath the fallen corpse, slithering through a crack in the debris like a maggot from rotted fruit. The surface of its flesh glistened with a wet sheen, globs of fluid clinging to its body like afterbirth. Its form twisted and shuddered into vague humanoid shape, indistinct and fluid. The scent that rose from it was sharp and acrid, like iron and bile and sothing far fouler.
An Umbrite. Small, barely ford, but unmistakable.
It had been born from the corpse, Ludwig realized with a jolt of unease. Not rely lurking beneath it, not scavenging, it had grown out of the angel’s remnants, like a blight fed by divine decay.
Salem was already there.
The mont the thing’s head lifted, mouth opening in a silent screech it hadn’t yet learned to voice, Salem struck. There was no prelude, no hesitation. His body lunged in a blur, blacker than the thing he was attacking. His jaws opened, far wider than any ordinary feline’s should, unhinging with unnatural fluidity, and clamped down on the creature’s face with a sickening crack.
There was a wet, pulpy crunch. Then silence.
The Umbrite was gone.
Swallowed whole before it had even truly lived.
Salem sat back down with quiet dignity, licking at his chops with slow, deliberate care, the sa way a bored housecat might clean itself after batting a beetle into a wall. Not a trace of the Umbrite remained.
Celine gave Ludwig a sideways look, her brow arched, expression caught between bemusent and vague concern. "I... don’t even know what to say. Like where did you find this guy and how is he doing that?"
Ludwig held up his hands in mock surrender, his voice dry. "What? I’m as confused as you. Honestly, I first t this guy back in Tibari. Long story. There was a Gluttonous Death. ssy thing. And Salem here...well I guess he picked up the habit...Gluttony I an" He trailed off as Salem gave him a slow, deliberate glance, one that carried the unmistakable weight of mild offense.
The cat’s ears flicked once, and he proceeded to pointedly ignore Ludwig, resuming his grooming without comnt.
"...Right," Ludwig said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Seems like the Gluttonous Death really wasted your potential, huh?"
No response ca. Only the soft sound of a tongue passing over fur, slow and indifferent.
Ludwig turned his attention back to the enormous corpse. It was still, the silvered flesh already starting to dull where the blood had drained, but it lood larger now, sohow more ominous in the quiet aftermath of that unnatural birth. He approached slowly, boots scraping against the dust-covered stone.
With a thought, he activated his inspection ability.
Na: ?
Level: ???
Race: Fallen Angel
Status Effects: [Dead]
"That’s... shorter than I expected," Ludwig muttered under his breath. Usually, the Inspect spell granted him paragraphs, data, lore fragnts, tags of status and alignnt, hints at buried stories. But this ti, it offered only silence. A void of detail.
The lack of information itself was unsettling.
Just as that thought took form, a ripple passed across his vision, and a notification flickered in the corner of his sight.
[The Inspect Ability cannot fully display the nature of a servant of another Deity.]
[Only partial inspection is possible.]
Ludwig exhaled quietly. "Of course."
Even Necros, it seed, knew better than to ddle too deeply in another god’s domain. There were limits, even for the undead.
"That explains that, I suppose," Ludwig couldn’t help but feel a bit dissatisfied, but he wasn’t about to complain. [Inspect] was already far too powerful as is.
From behind him, Celine stepped closer, arms folded loosely but with a slight frown creasing her brow. Her voice echoed faintly in the stone chamber, colored with curiosity and caution. "What are you going to do with all that blood?" she asked, nodding subtly toward the still-lustrous black liquid that pooled beneath the angel’s chest, refusing to seep into the floor as if it belonged to so other plane.
Ludwig glanced down, then slowly turned his wrist, letting mana flow up his fingers in delicate threads that shimred faintly in the air. "I need it," he said, voice flat but tinged with thought. "To reinforce my circuits. Master Van Dijk carved them into my body, rember? It’s what’s keeping together. Heart or no heart, I still need a way to channel spells, and the Nephilium acts as... a sort of substitute. Mana vessels, if you like, only they work like a circulatory system for magic." He crouched slightly, watching the pool of Nephilium pulse faintly. It seed to move with its own rhythm, like sothing breathing.
Celine’s gaze did not leave the substance. Her nose wrinkled faintly, as though so part of her still flinched from its scent bitter, acrid, unnatural. "But this is a lot," she said. "A bit too much, don’t you think? It looks like it could drown you in the stuff." Her tone was not mocking, not truly. It was edged with sothing else, concern she had not yet realized she was feeling.
The sheer size of this creature was enough to compare it to a titan, even the blood in one of its fingers is more than enough to subrge Ludwig from head to toe in it.
Ludwig nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "I believed that too at first," he said, "But this stuff is... different. It’s dense, condensed in a way I don’t fully understand yet. It doesn’t expand with quantity, but compresses, like folding cloth over and over again. The more you add, the tighter it becos. But..." He paused, studying it with narrowed eyes. The shine of the Nephilium now seed slightly off, as if the color had shifted by half a shade toward sothing more ominous.
"There’s sothing wrong," he added, more to himself than to her. "It doesn’t look like what’s in now. It’s more raw. Unrefined." His eyes darkened slightly as the suspicion took root. "I think Van Dijk must have purified mine first. I don’t know how, but... this looks cruder, more volatile. Still, maybe I can figure it out."
He stepped forward, hand raised. The air around his palm shimred with preparatory mana as he began to focus on how to collect the blood. He hadn’t yet devised the exact thod when, without warning, the lantern at his belt jolted free from its hook. It floated up into the air, rotating with growing speed, its faintly glowing core flickering like a waking star. Before Ludwig could say anything, the lantern flared, and a great sucking force pulled the Nephilium in.
Ribbons of black light whipped toward it, drawn up from the pool like liquid threads being stitched into the seams of reality. The entire room dimd for a mont as the Nephilium vanished, pulled away with a soft hissing that almost sounded like sothing whispering a final breath. And within seconds, every last drop of it was gone.
Ludwig stared. "Well," he muttered, "That works."
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