Ludwig stepped forward, his boots sinking slightly into the damp, moss-choked earth as he advanced alongside the floating Knight King and Thomas. The garden of Bastos Manor was a graveyard of nature’s wrath—twisted, skeletal trees clawed at the ashen sky, their gnarled branches like the fingers of long-dead giants. The air was thick with the stench of decay, a miasma of rot that clung to every breath. The once-proud hedges had devolved into thorn-choked thickets, their leaves blackened as if scorched by some unseen blight.
Their path was riddled in bodies and blood, the bodies of many Werebats that lay to eternal rest unable to act up against the Undead anymore.
Each time the group moved, a few enemies would come to challenge them. Mostly were the Werebats, who seemed to be taking control of the area closest to the Bastos manor, including the garden and the city itself.
The city beyond was no better. Time had gnawed at its bones, leaving behind a corpse of crumbling stone and splintered wood. Buildings sagged under the weight of centuries, their roofs caved in, their walls strangled by vines and creeping moss. The streets were fractured, split apart by roots as thick as a man’s torso, their cobblestones swallowed whole by the earth. Seven hundred years of neglect had turned this place into a necropolis—a kingdom of ruin, now ruled by beasts.
And the beasts were watching.
A rustle in the undergrowth. A flicker of movement in the shadows, and more creatures emerged to find prey. The city though looked like a ghost town suddenly was teeming with beasts and monsters of all sorts and kinds.
Ludwig hurried to move out of the main road and chose to go through a side path, he had no need to slaughter his way through the city, calling up unwanted attention onto himself.
Just as he found a path between the broken rundown buildings, a couple Werebats approached him from the shadows of the broken buildings. Though their attempt at being stealthy only made them a target for Ludwig’s sword.
A few swings of his newly learned and slightly mastered Tyrant Blade Style, coupled with some minor though important growth and understanding of the style itself from having watched the Ruler of Tibari break through thousands of enemies, his weapon slew his foes with utter cruelty and finesse in that memory was still a vivid scene in Ludwig’s mind.
Ludwig’s sword swung true, slicing through the closest Werebat’s shoulder. Though he had failed to land a single killing blow, he still managed to apply some of the teachings of the Knight King, his sword sliced down at the Werebat, and the moment the blade cut through the flesh and body of the Werebats, Ludwig twisted his grip then sliced upward, cutting the creature’s neck in the process.
[Execution!]
No time to celebrate. Another beast was already upon him, claws raking the air where his neck had been a heartbeat before.
Ludwig was too used to the loot notification that he ignored it. He still had another opponent he needed to take care of. The Werebats jumped at Ludwig, who instead of dodging, or countering with a slash, he stomped he right foot forward, putting all of his weight and pressure on his front foot, the with the force of his entire Undead Body, Ludwig twisted his calf, transferring the power from the foot through his entire spine and out of his thrusted sword.
The weapon found easy purchase inside the jaws of the Werebat, the blade cut through its throat, stomach and intestines with vicious brutality. The creature could only squirm and the more it struggled the more the blade dug inside it. With Ludwig’s sword gripping fist also deep inside the fiend, he twisted it, and the Cursed Shard of Durandal snapped up, transforming into its scythe form. The blade sliced through the insides of the Werebats and emerged out of its body. Ludwig planted his boot on the dying beast’s face and ripped the weapon free, painting the already blood-soaked ground in another layer of crimson.
blood and viscera spread everywhere further painting the already crude blood covered Ludwig with warmer and more disgusting blood.
“You really need a change of clothes,” Thomas remarked, wrinkling his nose as Ludwig shook thick clots of viscera from his blade.
Ludwig exhaled, flicking a strand of blackened blood from his sleeve. “Yeah, and I also need to learn this.” He pulled a weathered tome from his inventory—Cleanse, Master Van Dijk’s favored spell. “Might save me from smelling like a slaughterhouse.”
“Yeah, that would come in handy, but let’s focus up, two more Werebats on your twelve.” Thomas said.
Ludwig didn’t hesitate. The next wave fell just as quickly, their bodies joining the growing trail of carnage behind him.
Finally, the road to the city proper lay before them—a desolate stretch of broken stone and creeping shadows. The night was oppressive, the crescent moon a mere sliver of light struggling against the suffocating dark. And then, looming in the distance like a monument to savagery, was the Spire of Teeth.
At first, Ludwig had mistaken it for some grotesque natural formation—a jagged tower of bleached bones and yellowed fangs, fused together in a mockery of architecture. But now, up close, the truth was undeniable. This was no accident of nature.
The Spire pulsed with malevolence. Rivers of dried blood crusted its surface, flaking off in patches like diseased skin. Countless holes riddled its structure, gaping maws from which winged shapes flitted in and out. And massive dried up trees that looked like the heads of devils were painted on them grew from the spire. Their color was the same as the very blood that their roots probably feasted on to grow to their current atrocious forms.
That wasn’t all, Werebats. Hundreds of them. Their screeches filled the air, a cacophony of hunger and malice, they hovered and flew around the spire while many of their kin walked and marched the ground, as if surveying, protecting, and even guarding the place.
Ludwig pressed himself against the crumbling wall of a nearby ruin, his breath stilled. For a few seconds he thought he was spotted, but thankfully, that wasn’t the case. The werebat’s agitated nature was a new thing Ludwig experienced here, they were different from the other Werebats that moved around the Bastos March, these ones had intelligence in their beady red eyes.
“We’re going stealth now?” Thomas whispered.
“We have to, these guys don’t look normal,” Ludwig muttered. “Also, that thing—it’s their nest. And we’re outnumbered a thousand to one.”
“This is supposed to be a dungeon? Like the Rat Lord” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know, it could simply be a construct made from the prey of Werebats and it could also be a dungeon, we’ll find out once we’re there, but first,” Ludwig said as he heard the sound of rustling leaves coming from inside one of the wall-less buildings near him.
Another quick skirmish and another dead foe. Thankfully the kill was instant, quick and silent.
Ludwig obtained more souls and loot, and realized that he had procured a great deal of corrupted souls so far.
He hesitated on whether he’d use them, or save them for now.
“Are you going to level up?” Thomas asked, intrigued by Ludwig’s sudden halt and inspection of his procured souls.
Ludwig placed them back inside his inventory, “No, not now. The Knight King said I don’t need them, better have them saved up as unused souls for now. Let’s keep going,” he said and headed toward the spire.
The closer he got to it, the stronger the smell of blood hit his undead nostrils, though he didn’t feel the disgust from the smell, it was still an assaulting metallic and rancid smell that bothered him.
Just as Ludwig was about to walk up to the spire, he noticed a bunch of Werebats carrying the corpse of what looked like a humanoid toad. A man shape monster with the face of a toad, wearing nothing but a loincloth, its blue skin was ravaged in many places and blood seeped out of them slowly. The creature was still alive as it weakly tried to protest and fight back to no avail. The Werebats dragged its body across the crude ground and inside the spire.
“Are you going in now?” Thomas asked.
“No, we’ll wait for a bit, look up,” Ludwig said as he gazed up at the werebats flocking the ski es. They seemed to be on the lookout for something. “I feel like if we go in hastily, we’ll be discovered, and for some reason, I feel like we should keep a low profile.”
And then, as if to prove his point, a group of frog-men emerged from the ruins, their weapons raised in defiance. The response was instantaneous.
A tidal wave of fur and fangs descended. The frog-men didn’t stand a chance. Some were torn apart mid-scream, their limbs ripped from their bodies. Others were seized, their struggles futile as they were dragged, screaming, into the Spire.
Ludwig’s hunch was actually on point, as immediately, the few Werebats that were flying above the spire began screeching, and a great deal more Werebats came out of the spire.
Not far from Ludwig’s hiding, a group of frog men were approaching the spire, and the moment they were spotted, the entire Werebat army came at them from all direction.
It only took a few seconds before the majority of the frogmen were turned to bits and bloody pieces, while the more unfortunate ones were captured and dragged toward the spire.
“Damn, even I don’t think I can survive that…” Ludwig said. “We’ll need a new approach,” he said as he looked back at the corpse of one of the Werebats he slew before. “And I think I have a good idea.”