Chapter 793: Rewind
[You have slain the Usurper of Death, the Prideful Death.]
[Vanitas Fiero]
The tower has offered you [Ring of Vanitas]
[You have obtained the Crown of Pride]
You have slain three Usurpers. A feat never before achieved.
[Necros refuses to claim the soul of Pride for now]
[The Soul of Pride has been sealed inside your Soul Letting Lantern.]
Necros refuses to meet with you this time.
You must leave the tower first.
You have obtained 1 Shard of Darkness.
[You have completed eternal quest III]
[You can now proceed with [Eternal Quest IV]
Ludwig took a final look at Pride, whose body also began disintegrating and soon became nothing, leaving nothing but a degrading, worthless javelin instead.
The remains scattered without ceremony, no grand divine explosion, no final curse carved into the world. Just a body fading into particles, and a weapon that had once carried Pride’s authority now dulling into something cheap and brittle. The javelin lay there, stripped of meaning, no longer golden enough to deserve fear. Ludwig stared at it for a moment longer than needed, then turned away.
Pride, who lived his life in glory, died in a random place. Unknown to the world, without recognition or worth.
How depressing.
Looking around, Ludwig was the only one left on the mountain, and soon a gate opened up. The absence of the palace left the world strangely exposed.
Cold wind moved freely across the mountaintop, tugging at his clothes and carrying away the last particles of gold.
The gate shimmered without fanfare, a tear of passage standing where the tower wanted him to go. To leave. For Ludwig had achieved both the Tower and Necros’s goals.
Ludwig’s body felt heavy now that the fight was over, as if every death he had endured inside the tower had waited until this moment to sit on his shoulders.
He stood up, walked outside the gate to the real world. The transition washed over him, and for a breath, the mountain, the ruined palace, Pride’s final warning, and the fading notifications all collapsed behind him into memory.
He expected many things. Exhaustion. Silence. Maybe the familiar weight of his companions waiting beyond the tower. Maybe even some sarcastic comment from Kaiser or Gale about taking too long.
"MASTER! YOU’RE FINALLY OUT!" he heard through his communication crystal. The voice cracked through the crystal with urgency and relief tangled together, loud enough to make Ludwig’s attention snap toward it.
But that wasn’t the thing that caught his attention first. The relief in the voice did not match the world he had stepped into.
Looking up at the skies, everything was dark. Not the darkness of the night, no, this was far more... sinister. The skies themselves seemed to warp and churn, while membranes of ethereal and viscous vileness were spreading down toward the world, claiming portions of it. The heavens looked wounded, or infected, stretched by something that should not have been above any living land. Thick layers of unnatural magic or something far older pulsed overhead, not clouds, not smoke, but something wet-looking and wrong, like reality had grown diseased tissue across the firmament.
The city they were on, was completely obliterated. Destruction, death and decay. Buildings had been torn open like carcasses. Streets were split. Towers leaned at impossible angles, and whole districts had collapsed into heaps of stone, ash, and bodies. The air smelled of burned wood, spilled blood, rot, and the bitter trace of magic gone rotten. Whatever had happened here had not been a battle in the ordinary sense. It looked like the city had been chewed and spat out.
There were thousands of corpses laying around the tower. Corpses of creatures Ludwig had seen before. Back in Solana. Their twisted bodies covered the ground in waves, piled against broken walls, scattered across shattered plazas, draped over rubble and torn banners. Claws, fangs, warped limbs, and unnatural hides marked them as things that did not belong here. Creatures that shouldn’t have anything to do with the central city of Lufondal. Ludwig’s eyes moved across the devastation, trying to fit the image into any rational sequence and failing. He had been inside the tower, fighting Pride, while outside the world had apparently decided to start ending without asking him to attend.
He had a feeling that something wrong was happening outside. And with Necros refusing to take Pride’s soul, that made it even more certain.
"What in tarnation happened here?" He asked the two responsible for the thousands of dead monsters around him. His voice came out flatter than he intended, stunned into something almost calm by the sheer scale of what he was seeing. His gaze found Gale and Kaiser among the carnage, and for a moment even Ludwig’s thoughts stalled.
Gale was missing an arm, and half his undead armor was completely shattered and warped. What remained of him looked like it had been crushed, burned, and dragged through a battlefield twice for good measure.
Blackened metal hung from his body in broken plates, and pale undead flesh showed beneath the gaps. Kaiser was missing half of his entire body, being supported and carried by a couple undead as his own side had endless undead humans, citizen, from this very city. The sight of those undead citizens made Ludwig’s chest tighten. These had not been soldiers brought from some far battlefield. They were Lufondal’s people, dragged into undeath by necessity, tragedy, or something worse.
"What have the two of you done?" Ludwig asked, his eyes opened wide to the massive destruction. The question came out before he could stop it, sharpened by shock rather than accusation alone. The tower stood behind him, the city lay ruined before him, and the two beings he had left outside looked like they had spent every moment fighting not for victory, but for delay.
"It’s not us..." Kaiser said, "The world seems to be ending...we were too late..."
"That’s not even remotely funny," Ludwig looked up again, "This shit looks like Mot’s doing." Ludwig picked up his communication crystal.
His first call was toward Celine.
No reply.
Joana.
No reply either.
Then his own master.
The crystal picked up. But it wasn’t Van Dijk.
It was someone that looked... older, far more solemn, and had a grave expression on his face.
"Ludwig?" the man asked.
"Who might you be?" Ludwig asked, "And where’s master?"
"Where have you been... oh, I see the tower... so you were safe..." he said.
Ludwig’s brow rose, Safe? The tower claimed the lives of ninety nine out of a hundred people. How is that safe?
"What are you talking about old man..." Ludwig stalled, "That robe, you’re the headmaster of the White Tower."
"Yes, I’m Balthazar Deadra."
"What are you doing with master’s communication crystal?"
"It seems that you’ve been missing for a while and don’t know what’s going on, where are you? I’ll send over someone to pick you up."
"I will have to refuse, I don’t trust you, and don’t know what’s going on."
"Your master... is not right, right now."
"What about Celine, or Joana, if they’re with you, give them to me, let me talk to them..."
"They... unfortunately passed away."
The words felt like a crack had just spread across Ludwig’s heart.
His hand tightened on the crystal, he could barely control himself.
"Seems like you’re using Dark magic, good, we’ll need you here then."
"Dark Magic? What? Need me? Last I heard that was reason for execution. What the fuck is going on, old man!"
"Lufondal has fallen, the Emperor was captured. The beasts from beyond Solania have invaded the country. The Desert Kingdom had... a monster of a creature joining them, and they also assisted in the invasion. Nothing remains of the Lufondal you knew of."
"What is Mot doing then? He’s not someone who’ll allow stuff like this to happen."
"It’s due to him that we lost the sky..." Balthazar said. "Though that was the only way for us to live. These creatures, they grow stronger during the day. Mot used his... deity to blot the sun, but it seems that it had awoken it, albite temporarily. Come to the white tower. It’s the safest place right now. You’ll learn more about what is happening once you are here." Balthazar continued explaining.
Ludwig took a deep breath.
The world was fucked.
"When did this happen exactly?"
"Three months. It started from Solania, the invasion happened while the current missing Pope was there. We suspect he had something to do with the creature that is leading these things."
"And care to tell me, what this creature is?" Ludwig asked.
"I don’t know how to describe it honestly... he never opened his eyes while his monsters did all the work. He never moved or ordered, and was carried on a palanquin by fiends and beasts. But what does that serve you, if you know?" Balthazar asked.
A notification appeared in front of Ludwig.
[Eternal Quest IV]
[You have been informed of the location of another Usurper. Slothful Death.]
"Oh, trust me, that information is very fucking important," Ludwig turned his head toward the tower. "This life isn’t worth living," he said as he sighed.
"No wonder Necros banned me from doing this tower before I kill the Scryer. Without the ability to rewind and choose a point of death, I wouldn’t even have this option." He sighed.
"What are you talking about?" Balthazar asked.
"Don’t worry about it, I’ll fix this. All of this. This isn’t a life worth living. Too many lives lost, shit. Having to fight Pride again will be a bitch and a half..." I sighed "Fuck it, let’s rewind."
