"What?"
The question hung there, heavy with disbelief. Confusion made audible.
"They were all kicked out, every one of them. Do you know what’s Necros’s goal?" Ludwig asked.
He did not elaborate imdiately. He let the silence stretch just long enough for the weight of the statent to settle. Kicked out. Apostles removed. Abandoned by the very god they claid to serve.
"How would I know what an evil god’s goal is?" Tull said.
There was bitterness there, and fear, and the echo of indoctrination that had been repeated too many tis to easily discard.
Ludwig’s lips twitched, "I wouldn’t say that if I were you, you’ll eventually et him after all."
The remark was delivered lightly, but the implication was absolute. Death was not a threat. It was a certainty.
"What do you an?"
"Everyone eventually dies, they’ll all go to his embrace. No one can escape the passage of ti... so I’d treat him with more respect, he is the god of death for a reason."
There was no nace in his explanation. No attempt to convert or intimidate. Only inevitability. Ludwig spoke of death the way others spoke of gravity, an unarguable constant that shaped everything else whether one acknowledged it or not.
Tull didn’t argue the point, he was angry with Ludwig but knew well that Necros didn’t truly represent evil.
The silence that followed was heavy, but not hostile. Tull’s jaw tightened as he swallowed words he knew would go nowhere. He had seen enough battlefields, enough corpses, to understand that death did not discriminate based on morality.
"Necros is Neutrality at its finest. He doesn’t care what you do, or how you do it, how you live or how you live it, he only cares when you die. And the Usurpers are the first to defy him in that regard. Entities that defied death for a very long ti, able to use their powers to usurp death and remain in the world of the living for as long as they wanted. The apostles have a mission, and that mission is to bring them back to Necros. So far I’m the only one who’s succeeding in it."
Ludwig spoke at length now, not rushed, not dramatic. This was not a confession. It was a statent of function. The words frad everything that had happened so far, every catastrophe, every impossible survival. The Usurpers were not monsters because they were cruel. They were monsters because they refused to end.
"What about those maniacs? The ’forr’ apostles." Tull even use the air quotes for that question.
"They couldn’t handle the power of Necros..." Ludwig shook his head.
Ludwig let the rest remain unspoken. The truth was ugly. Dying over and over again broke people. It twisted them. Those apostles had fled from death’s embrace and sought immortality by other ans, committing the very sin they had been sent to eradicate.
"And you can?" Alex asked.
"Yes." Ludwig said, "As you saw earlier, I’m not fully... human."
"An undead serving as an apostle of Necros, quite the irony for sothing that refuses to die."
"It wasn’t by choice," Ludwig said. "I was summoned here, sa like the hero. I’m not a person of this world."
"What are you blabbering about?" Tull asked.
"Wait, when did you get summoned exactly?" Alex asked interjecting interest clear in his eyes.
"Your majesty, you’re not believing him are you?"
Redd spoke cutting Tull off, "Just hold on for a second,"
"About six years ago. At the heart of the academy, I was called to this world... but was imdiately killed upon arrival..."
The words landed like a dropped blade. Summoned. Killed. Imdiately.
"This... makes a bit more sense," The prince said.
"What do you an, your highness?" Tull asked.
"This is only known to a small number of people. But the prophecy foretold the arrival of a hero six years ago, only for it to ntion that the hero died shortly after. Then after a few more months another summoning occurred... and we have that... what’s his na? Hiro guy?"
The pieces aligned uncomfortably well.
"So you’re telling to try and believe that this guy is a summoned hero? You don’t look like a hero at all." Tull said, "More like a villain..."
"Would you like to be like the one your Empire calls hero then?" Ludwig asked.
"You know what, I take that back. I was wrong." Tull said imdiately.
Even the prince was surprised by Tull’s reaction he was not a man who ever apologized.
Ludwig smiled, "Regardless, my mission is to eliminate all the Usurpers, and the forr apostles renounced that mission, so they too need to be felled by my blade. So far I killed two of them. apostles and Usurpers... There’s a few more left."
"And why are you telling us all that?" Tull asked.
"To explain my predicant, I’m not a dark mage user. I’m dark magic itself. Born by it, molded by it... I’m a creation that was brought here to bring ease to the people though many think I’m just another undead. So, I chose to hide it." Ludwig shrugged.
Neither Tull, the prince, nor Redd had any words for Ludwig. They felt the weight of his mission, looking at the dissipating corpse of Envy they understood the gravity of the situation too.
He was tasked with eliminating foes that Necros sent many other apostles before him yet they all failed.
They also saw the reason the forr ones failed.
Though this one wasn’t as nearly as powerful as the Wrathful Death in terms of destructive power, her influence alone had been enough to warp reality. Envy had suppressed and oppressed with re words. If this fight had taken place elsewhere, among different people, with different resources to envy, the outco could have been catastrophic beyond asure.
No one wanted to even think about it.
If it wasn’t for what Ludwig did, or what happened to him, though they didn’t fully understand it, they had a hunch.
Sohow, Envy took Ludwig’s power but it was too much for her to bear. If she hadn’t, they would all be dead.
"So, what now?" Tull asked.
Ludwig took a glance at his notifications and said, "First thing first, we need to cleanse this river. And I know how..."
The words
[Eternal Quest in progress]
were shining still in front of his eyes.
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