“This is pretty sick!” Thomas said, drifting slightly above the waterlogged battlefield, his ghostly form flickering with a dull gleam as if the air itself had grown weary of his presence.
“Yeah, I know.” Ludwig’s voice was low, distracted, eyes scanning their surroundings like a predator trying to count how many more wolves were in the woods. He turned his head, the faint glow of his eyes catching the light just enough to show the creases of mental wariness across his brow. “But are you sure you’re looking for the fragment?”
“Already found it,” Thomas replied, bobbing in place with the casual swagger only the dead could afford. “It’s buried a few dozen meters under that massive pile of mud.” He pointed with a spectral finger toward a mound that looked just like all the others. “The one you skewered? It’s pinned under all that gunk. Can’t move. Probably drowning in its own blood and regret.”
Ludwig gave a grim nod. “Oi, big guy,” he said, looking down at the hulking form of the Drowned Lord, “get us closer to that pile of mud.”
The Drowned Lord, however, didn’t so much as twitch in acknowledgment. Its massive, bloated head shifted just slightly to the side, one milky eye lazily glancing back at Ludwig with the bored disinterest of a cat being asked to fetch something. It gave a long, slow croak—low, guttural, entirely unbothered.
The sound was drawn-out, echoing with a tone of indifference that somehow managed to be insulting.
It didn’t move.
Didn’t obey.
Ludwig stared, brow twitching. “I didn’t think I’d have mutiny to deal with right now,” he muttered, more annoyed than surprised. “I said—get me to the damned mud pile.”
His voice dropped into a guttural snarl as he pushed necrotic energy into his arm. The sigils of Rise Undead reactivated across his arm like a flare of branded fire. Veins blackened. The air grew colder.
The Drowned Lord felt it.
It paused mid-croak. Then it groaned, not in pain, but in reluctant acknowledgment. Its double-jointed legs creaked with wet, rubbery friction as it leaned back—then launched forward in a grotesque leap that was somehow graceful and disgusting at the same time.
The impact was seismic.
Mud erupted outward in a tidal wave as the creature landed square atop the designated pile. Sludge and black water sprayed in all directions, coating Ludwig’s regalia and dousing the nearby reeds. The sheer force of the landing flattened half the swamp in a twenty-meter radius and peeled back the surface of the mound, revealing a twisted, half-crushed Reaver flailing weakly beneath the frog-ghoul’s massive webbed hands.
The Reaver’s remaining wing twitched helplessly, its limbs kicking at nothing, more out of instinct than purpose. Every attempt to move ended in failure. Beneath the sheer weight of the Drowned Lord, it may as well have been trapped beneath a landslide.
It hissed—weakly, like a deflating bladder.
Ludwig jumped down from the Drowned Lord’s shoulder, landing in a crouch. His boots sank ankle-deep into the sludge as he approached the pinned Reaver. The thing saw him, and its eyes widened with recognition. It began to screech—not in challenge, but in panic.
Too late.
The Shard of Durandal flashed as Ludwig drove the blade straight under the creature’s ribcage, the sound of the entry point more crunch than slice. The impact forced the Reaver to buck once, spasming under the pain, but Ludwig was already twisting the weapon.
Then—rip.
He tore it outward with both hands in a sharp, brutal arc, dragging the edge through the Reaver’s chest like a woodsman splitting kindling.
The body opened up in jagged halves, like a set of shattered wooden planks kicked in by a boot.
[-12,998 HP]
[You caused: Fracture, Laceration, Bleeding, Massive Organ Rupture…]
Ludwig ignored the flood of system notifications. The only thing that mattered was what he felt—his hand plunging into the cavity he’d just torn open. Viscera slid past his gloved hand. Heat. Blood. Movement.
His fingers closed around something spherical, squishy.
A sac.
He yanked it out with a wet pop, bile and fluid streaming down his forearm. The thing pulsed in his hand like a second heart.
With no hesitation, Ludwig ripped it open.
Inside, nestled like a cursed jewel inside a rotten oyster, was the fragment.
The final Wrath Core Fragment.
[You have found the final and fourth Wrath Core Fragment!]
He stared at it for half a heartbeat, ichor dripping from the sides of the dark-glowing shard, its surface pulsing with an internal red glow—heartbeat-like.
“Alright,” Ludwig muttered, wiping the worst of the slime off on the torn remains of the Reaver’s wing. “Now how the hell should I sacrifi—”
“LUDWIG!”
Thomas’s voice hit his mind like a whipcrack. Not just urgent—panicked. Loud. Wrong.
Ludwig didn’t have time to turn.
The swamp went still.
Dead still.
No croak. No splash. Not even the lazy breath of the Drowned Lord.
Silence.
That was all the warning he got.
The world tilted.
Ludwig’s body was launched—lifted off the ground as if struck by a siege weapon. He flew backward, tumbling violently through the air, limbs loose as gravity became meaningless. Then—impact.
He slammed into the mud dozens of meters away with a brutal splash that sent water and rot flying in every direction. He slid across the ground in a spray of filth and bones, finally stopping when his shoulder dug into a submerged root.
His body ached—not in the way mortals hurt, but in that low, grinding pull of bones breaking even though his nerves no longer cared.
[-6,800 HP – Critical Hit!]
[As an Undead, You are immune to being stunned.]
[Your ribcage has fractured.]
Ludwig spat mud and gore, coughing reflexively. There were no lungs left to empty, but something in him still remembered the feeling of breath being knocked out.
His arms slapped against the swamp floor, pushing himself up.
Pain meant nothing. Only data.
But even as he stood, he saw it.
Something was standing in the exact spot where he’d just been.
And it should have been dead.