Deus Necros-Chapter 716: Death is Mercy

The forest didn’t answer with sound, no birds, no insects, no wind through leaves, only that suffocating stillness that made every whisper feel louder than it should.

"This is a troll..." The lizardmen closest to the trapped creature said.

The words came out cautious, like naming it might wake it. The lizardman’s tail tightened behind him, and his head angled as if he expected the thing to lurch the moment it was identified.

"I can see that," Ludwig said as he got a closer look.

He stepped in carefully, boots sinking slightly into damp earth that smelled wrong, mold and sap and something faintly sweet, like rot trapped in wood. The troll stood frozen in a posture that should have been mid-motion, one arm extended as if it had been trying to reach the exit, or reach someone. Its eyes were wide and glassy, fixed on nothing and everything at once. Vines wrapped it like punishment rather than growth, thorny coils biting deep into flesh and muscle, holding it upright the way a wall holds a trophy.

[Inspect]

Name: N/A

Race: Forest Troll

Level: 166

Status Effect: {Dead} {Entombed}

Lore:

A troll of the Tetra Planes. A glutenous and cruel creature who enjoys overstuffing itself with meat. Preferably live squirming meat. They are extremely territorial and have an incredible regenerative ability that is said that a troll can only be killed if it is beheaded.

**

"It’s very, dead," Ludwig said as he focused on the [Entombed] part.

The wording bothered him immediately. Entombed wasn’t pinned or bound. It implied something sealed, something finalized, like the world itself had closed a lid on the troll. Yet there was no grave. No stone coffin. No burial mound. Just vines and a body that shouldn’t be dead unless someone had done the one thing the lore insisted mattered.

To have died without having its head cutoff.

That contradiction made Ludwig’s skin crawl in a way his undead self rarely allowed. The world lied plenty, but lore tended to be consistent. When lore broke, it meant the rules had changed. Or something here wasn’t playing by the system’s rules.

That was something that contradicts its lore.

Ludwig approached closer, and pulled out Durandal. He held the blade low and controlled, not threatening the troll out of instinct, threatening a corpse was stupid, but because the air around the vines felt tense, like a wire stretched too tight. He slid the weapon across the extended arm of the troll.

No blood emerged, in fact the cut split the meat cleanly that it revealed tissue. Healthy looking and very live tissue.

The flesh beneath was pink and wet, not dried or blackened, muscle fibers still springy as if the body hadn’t accepted death. Ludwig stared at it for a beat longer than he meant to. Living tissue in a dead body. The kind of thing you saw in experiments, not in forests. His stomach tightened again, and he hated that his orc body had a stomach to tighten.

But it was still dead.

Not bloodless for sure, the body wasn’t dried out.

He picked up the communication crystal and called.

The crystal’s surface chilled his palm as it activated, a faint vibration buzzing like a restrained heartbeat.

"Yes," the reply came instantly.

"Kaiser, what do you know about this?" Ludwig asked as he turned the crystal for the Lich to see.

The projection shifted, showing Kaiser the troll’s frozen face, the vinework biting into shoulders and throat, the cut Ludwig had made exposing that obscene freshness. Ludwig watched Kaiser’s expression in the crystal, the way his brow drew together, the way his eyes narrowed the way they did when something violated a rule he considered "basic." 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Frowning, Kaiser took a moment and said, "Nothing really. I need a sample of those vines. Is that thing dead?" he asked to confirm.

"Yeah, very dead, which is..."

"Not possible," Kaiser finished Ludwig’s words.

"You think the same, I suppose."

"Yes, it requires a lot of effort to kill a troll, he is physically fine. I can see that his body isn’t malnourished nor is it plagued, it died by something, but I can’t tell what..."

Kaiser’s voice carried that clinical irritation of a necromancer faced with a corpse that refused to behave like one. Ludwig didn’t like hearing it from Kaiser. Kaiser was the man who made death look simple. If Kaiser sounded uncertain, then uncertainty was real.

"What are the vines for?" Ludwig asked.

"My guess is as good as yours. Maybe a binding tool..."

"I’ll grab a sample for you when we go back."

"Keep the communication channel on, I also want to see what’s inside the mountain."

"Sure, don’t make a sound though," Ludwig said, "It feels like we’re being watched." Ludwig added as he saw a notification appear in front of him.

[You are in a hostile Environment]

The words didn’t flash with drama. They simply existed, and that simplicity made them worse. Ludwig’s eyes flicked over them once and then away, already listening for the consequence. The lizardmen’s scales shuddered, all of them at the same time. It wasn’t imagination either, Ludwig saw it in the way their torsos trembled, in the way their throats worked as they swallowed air like it had suddenly become thick.

"You feel that? That nasty feeling..." Akro said.

"Yeah, and I don’t like it," Ludwig said as he turned his eyes left and right, "Feels like someone is trying to hunt us."

The sensation wasn’t "being watched" the way people said it casually. It felt like pressure, like something’s attention had weight and that weight was sliding across their backs. Ludwig’s body wanted to hunch, to lower its profile, to become smaller. He refused. Becoming prey started with acting like prey.

"I don’t enjoy games where I’m prey," Gale said as he drew Oathcarver.

The blade came free with that heavy whisper of metal moving through air. Even limited by the Tower, Oathcarver still carried presence. The lizardmen flinched slightly at the sound, then steadied when they realized Gale wasn’t aiming at them.

"Me neither," Ludwig finished as he cutoff a bit of the vines and placed them in his inventory.

He used Durandal’s edge carefully, slicing through the vine without letting the thorns drag across his skin. The vine fought the cut like tough leather, and when it came free it didn’t bleed sap. It felt dry, brittle, wrong, more like something that had been grown by magic than by soil.

"Doesn’t those thorns remind you of something," Gale said as he walked forward.

"Yep, the Thorn Queen. Back in the Dawn Islands."

"You think Wrath’s servants came here?"

"I doubt it," Ludwig said as he walked forward. "Pride wouldn’t simply let it fester here."

Even saying Pride’s name in his head felt like tasting poison. Usurpers didn’t share territory. If something like The minion of Wrath’s thorn magic had seeped into this floor, then either Pride had allowed it, or Pride was involved in it. Neither option was comforting.

"Chief..." Akro muttered.

"Yes?" Ludwig asked.

"I think I saw movement up there," he pointed up.

Ludwig squinted his eyes, there was nothing but fog. It crawled between trees higher up the slope like a living thing, thick enough that even starlight couldn’t cut through it. But he couldn’t dismiss the sight of a lizardman, it was far better in darker areas and at night. Akro’s gaze stayed fixed, and Ludwig trusted that steadiness more than his own human habits.

"Let’s keep moving for now," Ludwig said, "Stay behind me, and stay close." Ludwig added as he flicked the scythe into sword form.

Durandal’s tip grazed the ground as Ludwig moved up, making sure to keep his eyes peeled for anything that could jump them. The sound of metal kissing dirt should have been loud in this silence, but somehow the forest swallowed it too. That disturbed Ludwig more than it should have. Sound didn’t disappear unless something was taking it.

Another effigy soon appeared in the distance.

This time it was a goblin.

Same expression of horror, this one however was on the ground with his hands spread forward, clasping dirt trying to run.

It died in its spot and was vine encased.

A bit away from it, more goblins, more trolls, more orcs, even lizardmen.

The scene spread like a gallery of failure. Bodies caught in different moments of panic, one mid-sprint, one crawling, one half-turned as if it had tried to look back and regretted it. Every face was carved into the same final emotion. Not pain. Not rage. Horror. The kind of horror that didn’t just kill you.

It convinced you death was mercy.

"Wait, that’s Kafka!" Akro said as he approached one of the Lizardmen.

It was a Champion lizardman with a missing arm. The missing arm didn’t look new, it was a stub. The stump was old enough that scar tissue had smoothed it over; this wasn’t a fresh injury from the latest cycle’s wars. This had history. Akro’s voice tightened, and Ludwig felt the shift in his breathing.

"I remember him, we were friends back in the day, and one time he disappeared." Akro said.

"So this confirms it. The people that died here... cannot return to the planes... even if a cycle occurs again," Kaiser’s words echoed from the crystal.

Kaiser sounded grim now. Not curious. Grim. Ludwig stared at Kafka’s frozen posture and felt his own earlier suspicion harden into certainty. The ogre mountain wasn’t just an enemy territory. It was an exit from the cycle, and not the kind that led upward with a reward.

"What could have caused all this... not to mention," Ludwig looked at every other effigy. "I don’t see a single Ogre here..."

"This is getting worrisome," Gale said.

"That’s new coming from you," Ludwig said.

He tried to keep the tone dry, but the truth was he agreed. Gale worried when the battlefield itself felt wrong, when the rules didn’t match experience.

"No, this means one of two things. Either the Ogres have all perished, or they’re responsible for this and are waiting for us higher up."

"I hope it’s neither," Ludwig said as he walked between the effigies. "If that was the case, then that means ogres are not so keen on helping any of us."

They kept on going ahead until for the first time, they heard a sound.

The sound of laughter.

Of young children laughing.

In any other place, any other context it would have been fine. Here, it gave even the Undead Ludwig the shivers.

The laughter echoed again. The same pitch. The same cadence. Exactly the same.

Ludwig stopped walking. "...Did you hear that?"

"Yeah," Gale said slowly. "It repeated."

The repetition was what made it poisonous. Children didn’t laugh the same way twice unless they were mocking. Or unless the laughter wasn’t real to begin with.

The vines around the nearest corpse tightened with a dry creak.

Kafka’s body... moved.

Not alive

Just... pulled.

"Chief..." Akro whispered.

"Look at them."

Ludwig followed his gaze.

Every single corpse...

Wasn’t facing down to flee anymore.

One by one

Their heads had turned toward Ludwig’s group

"Don’t move." Gale muttered.

Something giggled

Right behind Ludwig.