***
[You have successfully stopped the Wrathful Death from fully manifesting in the Capital of Tulmud.]
[Your Death Point has been updated to: Solania Peaks]
[Eternal Quest Update]
You are currently trapped within the sealed domain of Solania.
The domain itself is fully sealed for the sole goal of stopping the Wrathful Death from leaving it. A binding of the divine power to stop its madness from seeping into the land.
Escape the territory before your Souls run out.
***
The new quest burned across Ludwig’s vision, letters gleaming with cold inevitability, and his gut, or whatever faint echo of it his body still retained, sank. The wording was cruel in its simplicity: escape, before every last soul is drained. Nothing about fighting, nothing about victory. Just run. That was the grim truth.
His gaze dropped, and his undead throat tightened despite not needing breath. The peaks of Solania stretched beneath him like the edge of the world itself. This was no ordinary mountain range. These were titans of stone, reaching so far into the heavens that even the cloudbanks below them looked like drifting seas. There was no base in sight, no comforting ground, just endless white fog swallowing the horizon. Falling here felt like falling off the very skin of the world.
Wind howled past his ears, a banshee scream so sharp it felt like knives dragging along his bones. His hair whipped wildly, his tattered regalia snapping like banners of a fallen knight. And still he fell, weightless, spinning, plumting into a nowhere that promised only ruin. He wasn’t alone.
The Wrathful Death fell too. And unlike Ludwig, it had claws.
The monster was the first to halt its descent, iron fingers the size of ballistae tearing gouges into the mountain’s black stone. Sparks spat like shooting stars. The force of it rattled the cliff face itself, dust and shattered rocks tumbling like a second waterfall. Its helm tilted, crimson burning faintly within the visor, and those hate-filled eyes locked on Ludwig. That gaze, even across distance, felt like it peeled the marrow out of his bones.
[Your Soul Chains have been freed from external control.]
The notification blinked. His chains, stolen before, were his again. Too late.
The Wrathful Death raised its other arm and swung.
A mountain’s worth of tal blurred in a single motion. The jagged mace scread through the air, grinding against wind, a sound like a cathedral collapsing into itself. Ludwig had just enough ti to widen his eyes.
[You Died.]
***
"Shit!"
Vision returned, and again he was falling. The mountain peaks stretched beneath, the clouds waiting like a shroud.
The cycle had begun.
Once more, the Wrathful Death gripped stone, swung its mace, and Ludwig’s body split apart before he could think.
[You Died.]
It repeated. Again and again. Death, reset, fall. No rest between. No chance to breathe. Each return sharpened the dull ache of futility. Ludwig’s teeth ground until his jaw threatened to splinter. His lantern’s reserves weren’t infinite. The thought of them running dry, of waking no more, lood heavier than the mountain beneath.
"Fucking saved the whole damn city," he hissed into the wind, "just to be stuck here again!"
Once more, the arm rose. The mace cut across existence.
This ti, Ludwig twitched. The boulder chained to him yanked hard as he wrenched his body sideways, dragging himself toward it like a lifeline. The weapon scread by, close enough for its air-shear to strip the skin from his cheek.
"Yes!" Hope cracked a grin across his face.
The grin died.
The Wrathful Death hurled its weapon. The colossal mace detached, flung like a star-shard cast by a god. Its speed eclipsed all thought. Ludwig’s curse was the only sound he made.
[You Died.]
The reset no longer shocked him. His body dropped again, already calculating. Not despair this ti. Focus. Cold focus. If one dodge worked, another might too.
This ti, he twisted earlier, body coiling like a whip. The boulder snapped his montum, jerking him out of the mace’s arc. The first swing missed. Progress. He clenched his teeth, braced for the second. The throw ca, inevitable, relentless.
Steel and sky blurred.
[You Died.]
Cycle after cycle wore his temper raw, but slowly, a plan began forming in the chaos. His grin returned, bitter but alive. He didn’t need to beat it here. He only needed to unseat it, make the mountain betray it.
This ti, he moved before the Wrathful Death latched to the cliff. The instant its claws reached for stone, Ludwig twisted chains and hurled himself down. Explosive mines blood at the jagged outcrop its hand aid for. Fire belched, rock cracked.
The Wrathful Death’s fingers closed on shattering stone, grip finding nothing. Its colossal body lurched, arm scrabbling, armor grinding sparks as it plumted again.
For the first ti, it faltered.
[Your Death Point has been updated!]
The words filled Ludwig’s vision. Necros was watching. Necros was helping.
"Yes!" His joy was raw, teeth bared in manic relief. "That’s enough,"
A shadow rose through the clouds.
The mace.
[You Died.]
Again. But this ti he didn’t curse. His eyes narrowed as the world bent back to the mont of descent. He understood. He couldn’t let it fall alone. He couldn’t just dodge and hope.
If he wanted out, he’d have to fall with it.
And fight.
The decision was made in the span of a heartbeat. Or rather, in the echo of one, for Ludwig had none left of his own. His chains writhed, yanking him forward like serpents hungry for blood. He pitched himself over the edge, body plunging into the abyss.
The clouds swallowed him whole. They weren’t soft curtains of white, not here. They were cold, wet walls, dense enough to choke vision and smother sound. The world beca a blind fall, every breathless second heavy with the knowledge that the Wrathful Death was falling beside him.
Heat seared through the fog. A furnace had joined him in the descent, so vast and foul it boiled vapor into rain. Droplets hissed against his undead skin, sharp as acid. Ludwig turned his head, and the red glow behind the visor pierced the mist like the gaze of a devil.
He snapped his wrist. The soul chains lashed outward, glowing faintly with their necrotic hue. The links bit around a leg plated in jagged black steel. The weight nearly tore his arm from its socket, but Ludwig clung fast, yanking himself against the armored limb until his body slamd onto its surface.
The Wrathful Death roared, not a sound, but a quake that shook the marrow of the mountains themselves. Its other arm swung wide, mace poised like the executioner’s blade.
For a second, the world slowed. Ludwig could almost hear the sigh of inevitability, the whisper of death as the massive weapon blurred toward him. His jaw clenched.
He let go.
Body twisting under the beast’s leg, Ludwig hurled himself into the abyss beneath its bulk. The mace shrieked through the space he had just occupied, close enough to rake his cloak into tatters. Sparks ignited as steel t steel and split clouds apart with the force of a hurricane.
Wind howled, the abyss opened, and at last the mist thinned. Beneath them stretched the rest of Solania’s peaks. Endless ridges, one stacked after another, each one a stairway descending into eternity. The fall was not nearing its end.
The Wrathful Death twisted in air, clawed gauntlets catching the wind like wings of iron. Its helm tilted down at Ludwig, crimson eyes flaring, and the mace rose again.
"Not this ti." Ludwig whispered, words lost to the storm. His fingers curled, and mana shivered along his bones. "[Graviol]."
The purple orb struck, not the monster, but himself. Weight crushed him like a mountain. His body plumted faster, dragging him past the arc of the weapon just as it cut through where he had been. The pressure nearly tore his arms from their sockets, nearly split his spine, but he was alive.
A howl erupted from the Wrathful Death. It wasn’t a sound of rage. It was the sound of the world cracking, the cry of a star dying.
[As an Undead you’re immune to all ntal effects.]
The system’s ssage flared across his vision, and Ludwig laughed, voice raw and fierce. "I know that feeling! When the pesky fly keeps dodging your sandal? Quite annoying, isn’t it!"
The Wrathful Death raised its mace again. But Ludwig had learned, its next move was always the throw.
His palm thrust outward. Mana bled from his body, burning his veins like fire. "Explosive Mine!"
The detonation blasted sideways, ripping a hole through the air itself. It didn’t matter that he took the burn himself; the force shoved his body out of the mace’s path. Below, the weapon shrieked downward, spinning like a falling star, carving through clouds and leaving a trail of molten sparks in its wake.
[Your Death Point has been saved.]
Relief staggered through Ludwig’s chest. Necros had granted him the checkpoint. He wouldn’t be sent back to the start.
The Wrathful Death’s weapon was gone, hurled down into the depths. Its hands clawed at empty air, body flailing like a titan dragged from its throne.
The base of the mountain was still impossibly far, but a chance glimred in the chaos. A chance to fight. A chance to prove that even here, at the edge of despair, he was not prey.
He drew Oathcarver. The blade humd with hunger, its weight steady in his grip even as the winds tore at him. Though it further accelerated his descent, he still had a plan.
Ludwig bared his teeth in a grin. The fury in his chest wasn’t fear, it was exhilaration. After all, this very scene reminded him of sothing he saw back ho. The wizard who fought a demon. Only that was fantasy, and this is reality which makes it all the more exciting.
"FROM THE HIGHEST PEAK," he roared into the storm, "TO THE LOWEST POINT OF THE EARTH!"
He thrust his palm down. Another mine blood, fire and smoke spitting against the void. The explosion hurled him upward for a fraction of a second, just enough to twist his body, to set his boots upon the falling gale.
The Wrathful Death was right there, crimson gaze burning, armor splitting the air.
Ludwig grinned wide, Oathcarver blazing in his hands.
"Let’s dance."
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