The Lizardman was confused, "Pride?"
Even through the crystal’s projection, Ludwig could see the hesitation in the skeleton’s posture, head tilting slightly, jaw parting as if the word didn’t have a hook to attach to. It wasn’t feigned ignorance.
It was the blank spot of soone who had lived through hundreds of loops without ever being allowed to na the hand turning the wheel.
"The entity..." Ludwig said.
"I know not of such things, I thought you ant that as the sin of pride." The lizardman replied carefully trying not to sound either foolish or obtuse.
"Close enough, but it seems like you’re unaware." Ludwig thought for a second.
"Then tell sothing," Ludwig said. "Why did the orcs change?"
He kept his tone even, but his mind was already moving faster than his mouth. If the skeleton didn’t know Pride as an entity, it still might know the symptom, the shift, the escalation, the mont the cycle stopped being "normal."
"I recall... not so quite, brief and fragnted mories when that happened." The Lizardman said.
"Tell of all you know, it might help." Ludwig asked, his eyes focused on the skeleton hoping for at to put on these bones of information.
"It began when the Ogre tribe disappeared from the planes. No matter the cycles, they stopped showing themselves."
The sentence landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Ogres again. Everything curved back toward that mountain.
Ludwig felt the sa cold certainty he’d felt when he first heard "horns" and "withdrawn." It wasn’t coincidence anymore. It was a thread. There was sothing relevant in the Ogre mountain and he needed to get to the bottom of it.
"Could they have already perished?" Ludwig asked.
"You do not perish entirely when you’re here. You get halted a few cycles, then brought back to fight again, it happened to , many tis." The skeleton explained.
Ludwig thought for a mont. This was in the realm of Necros. To return to life wasn’t sothing Necros would allow.
Necros didn’t share. Necros didn’t "pause" souls and hand them back to the world like toys.
If that was true, then the Tower wasn’t just a trial. It was trespassing. It was being arrogant against Necros’s command. And was overstepping his authority.
[Sudden Quest!]
The notification almost made Ludwig jerk from his position.
Treachery
The Tower of Trials is alleged to have the ability to revert Life and Death.
Necros is a jealous deity, he refuses to share the souls that are bound to return to him with other powers.
Find out the cause of such rumors and verify their truth.
Reward: Shard of Darkness.
The words sat in the air with the kind of calm cruelty only a system window could have. Treachery. Alleged. Verify. Ludwig’s jaw tightened. A Shard of Darkness was not a casual reward. It was a missing piece of his own progression, the thing holding [Existence IV] hostage back in his status screen. Necros wasn’t asking politely. Necros was pointing a finger at the Tower and telling Ludwig to investigate. And getting a shard for re investigation ant that Necros was extrely interested in the result of such a task.
Ludwig frowned though. Because if he gave him a quest that paid this much. It ant that Necros did not know of what was happening inside the tower.
That’s absurd.
Or maybe... this is a realm that’s hidden from his sight.
That thought was worse.
A place where even Necros didn’t see clearly. A place that could "revert life and death." The Tower’s whole existence suddenly felt like an insult to his patron god’s authority, and Ludwig understood imdiately why the quest was nad Treachery. If the Tower was stealing the right to recycle souls, that wasn’t just unusual, it was heresy.
This was also probably why the people who ca out from the tower were all mind wiped.
To have such dealings happening under the gods of Ikos’s sight was travesty to the divine level.
Ludwig looked at the crystal and asked, "Then what?"
"The orcs, they once had a King. A powerful one, who decimated every other race, enslaved them, and put them under him in less than a week. And once they challenged the ogres. Neither side seed to have the upper hand. I was one of the slaves conscripted for that battle..."
The skeleton spoke like soone describing a storm they had lived through too many tis to dramatize.
Ludwig pictured it instantly: an orc king at peak cycle, crushing tribes, forcing obedience, building an army out of fear rather than contracts.
Then walking into the one opponent that didn’t fold, and the whole world stalling because neither side could easily be erased.
It was happening again only this ti a different king ruled this race.
"How did he ascend then?" Ludwig asked.
"I don’t know, he walked up the mountain of the ogres by himself, and soon there was no sighting of that king. We don’t know if he had ascended or died there..." the skeleton replied.
The detail mattered: by himself. No army. No escort. Just a king walking into the ogres’ mountain alone and vanishing.
That didn’t sound like conquest. It sounded like a door. A way out... maybe.
"No one ever tried to go to the mountain?" Ludwig asked.
"We did, we tried that after many cycles. But..." the lizardman halted.
"Speak," Ludwig’s frustration was growing.
It wasn’t impatience for drama. It was the pressure of ti and the feeling of a trap closing around the story.
When people paused in stories like this, it usually ant the next part was the part you didn’t want to accept.
"Whenever we sent soone, even other races, they just... never co back."
The sentence was simple, but it felt like a knife sliding between ribs.
"Could it be that they ascended too? To upper floors?" Ludwig asked, doubting his own words as they ca out from his mouth.
The skeleton shook his head. "Ascension only happens to those who are given a quest by the tower. Those who challenged the tower. But here... even the netizen of this floor never returned to their cycle."
Ludwig closed his eyes to think.
He could feel the shape of the problem now: the ogre mountain was an anomaly even in a place built on anomalies. People sent there didn’t recycle into the thirty-day loop. They didn’t die normally. They didn’t return as puppets. They were simply gone. That ant the mountain wasn’t part of the scenario’s normal reset. It was a hole in the machine. And holes were where truth leaked through. But that was all assumptions, without eyes in the sky, or without witnessing it himself. Ludwig could only speculate. And that didn’t solve anything.
"What do you think, Ludwig?" Kaiser interrupted.
"I’m trying to figure things out."
Ludwig couldn’t help but feel that sothing’s fishy is going on in the ogre mountain. But he couldn’t simply understand what. Not yet. But the Tower and Necros had both shoved him in the sa direction now, and Ludwig didn’t believe in coincidences that paid Shards of Darkness.
"We have to go there then..." Ludwig looked up at the darkened skies, his expression even darker.
"What if the sa happens to you?" Kaiser asked.
"I can always return, that’s not a problem. The issue is..." Ludwig stalled.
Even saying it out loud felt like admitting weakness. Ludwig’s immortality was a crutch he hated relying on, but it was still a crutch. The Tower could punish him with ti and pain, but it couldn’t permanently remove him unless it found a way around Necros. And that was sothing that the tower would never be capable of.
Ludwig had already saved a point before entering the tower, he could return to it whenever.
But that wasn’t the main issue now.
"We can’t win," Ludwig said.
"The war?"
"Yes," Ludwig said, "There is no way we can beat those numbers and that much power. you should have seen it."
He didn’t need to elaborate. Kaiser had heard the report. Gale had witnessed it. A thousand red orcs, a level 200 tyrant with Pride touched into him, goblins being converted into more orcs by feeding on hearts. Even if Ludwig enslaved every tribe, even if he rallied hundreds, the Red Tusks could replenish in minutes what Ludwig gained in days. And what Ludwig had was eggs, and the orcs were rocks. One could already imagine the collide and the result.
"Can’t Kaiser poison them, the sa way he did to the lizardn?" Gale asked.
The Knight King gave a good solution, but unfortunately Kaiser shook his head.
"Not possible, Fleshmancy is like undeath. It changes one’s body to be different. Poisons that would kill a being of the sa race will be ineffective. Might even make them more rabid instead. It’s like pouring oil on flas expecting it to douse off." Kaiser explained.
"So we really have to go then." Ludwig said.
"That sounds very risky." Akro said.
Akro’s eyes flicked toward Ludwig’s face, then toward Gale, then toward the lizardn beside him. He wasn’t refusing. He was asuring the cost and the odds the way a good soldier did. Risk was unavoidable. The question was whether the risk bought anything.
"Follow , and if we return you’ll be freed from this brand," Ludwig said as he pointed at Akro’s chest.
The offer cut through fear like a blade. Freedom was a word that made even enslaved bodies straighten. Ludwig watched the lizardn’s posture shift, shoulders squaring, eyes sharpening, because a concrete reward turned terror into purpose.
There was not a single ounce of hesitation from the lizardn, "We follow!"
"Good, we’ll have to go and check for ourselves then, Akro, lead the way, we’ll need to see what’s on that mountain."
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