Just as Ludwig lowered into a predator’s stance—shoulders hunched, tendons drawn taut, ready to end it—the bastard creature turned tail.
It didn’t hesitate.
Didn’t snarl.
Didn’t even glance back.
The Flayed Herald simply spun on its flayed, twitching heels and sprinted—muscled limbs pumping like a thing possessed, red sinew gleaming beneath moonlight as it tore through the mud with animalistic speed.
The air where it stood a heartbeat ago was still quivering from its momentum.
Ludwig blinked, eyes flicking wide in disbelief.
His jaw slackened just enough to hang there in a weird cocktail of disgust, confusion, and abrupt disappointment.
“…That cowardly bastard,” Ludwig spat, voice flat but rising with indignation.
“Ludwig…” Thomas’s voice floated beside him, tone low and skeptical. His form shimmered slightly in the shifting light, more stable than usual.
Ludwig didn’t look at him. “Yeah, what is it?”
“You do realize…” Thomas drawled, ghostly eyebrow raising, “…he’s running in the direction of the manor?”
It took Ludwig exactly one heartbeat to register the implication.
Then two more for his expression to drop.
“…The fucking fragment.” He turned. “Shit!”
Ludwig launched himself into a sprint, legs churning through the muck as fury surged hot behind his dead eyes.
The sensation of being played—that slow, stinging realization—was spreading like a poison across his mind.
“Son of a bitch!” he roared, already lifting Oathcarver over his shoulder as he reached the edge of the more stable terrain. With a snarl, he bent low and activated [Steadfast Leap].
His form rocketed through the air like a black meteor, body spinning once as he cleared the swamp’s deeper veins, landing hard on the other side with both boots slamming into compacted earth.
[Limit Breaker – Activated (4th Cast)]
[Limit Breaker uses refreshed.]
Dark energy surged across his limbs.
His muscles bulged visibly under the Manticore Leather armor, lines of purple-black sigils pulsing across his skin like veins filled with raw violence. The strain was immediate. Even as an Undead, he could feel tendons stretching near their limit. His limbs screamed—not in pain, but in wear.
His vision sharpened.
His mind thinned into singular focus.
There was one last use he had left.
One more cast. After that, he’d be flying on fumes and necrotic adrenaline.
But for now?
It was enough.
Ludwig leaned forward, spine coiling, limbs cocked. He launched into a dead sprint—each step cracking through soil, each movement supported by the unnatural marriage of Strength and Agility.
His body blurred.
Trees vanished in motion blur.
The forest around him was nothing but streaks of vertical color, trunks whipping past his periphery as he chased the bastard creature now tearing its way through the wilderness like a blood-soaked comet.
The Herald let out a sharp, whistling howl.
It echoed like a war horn—and from the shadows, others answered.
Two massive hounds erupted from the side of the forest trail, eyes burning like hell-lanterns. Their bodies were lean, black and murky golden -furred, their mouths dripping steam and glowing viscous drool.
Hell Hounds.
The Herald didn’t even turn back. It simply grinned.
A mocking, hyena-like cackle slipped from its twisted, jawless maw—half-mirth, half-malice.
Ludwig’s face twisted in pure hate.
He launched his body forward, both hands gripping Oathcarver overhead. His whole form twisted in the air mid-leap as he spun once and activated [Surging Slam].
He dropped like a meteor—Dark and violet aura wreathing his silhouette as he slammed Oathcarver downward with the full weight of momentum and rage.
The first Hell Hound was crushed beneath him. The blade split its skull from snout to spine in a single devastating crack. Its body shattered into flaming gore.
[You have slain Hell Hound – Level 89]
The Herald’s tattered ears flapped back from the shockwave.
It turned mid-run—and saw Ludwig rising from the crater it had just created. And the look in the blue eyes of the Mud covered, black blood stained yet still clear eyes of the Undead screamed unholy Bloody Murder.
The Herald yelped audibly, then jammed the Core Fragment into its own mouth, biting down with a snap as it dropped to all fours.
And ran.
Not sprinted. Ran.
Galloping with inhuman speed, its flayed limbs a blur, claws digging into roots, dragging it forward like a demon desperate for deliverance.
The second Hell Hound lunged at Ludwig.
He didn’t even flinch.
He flicked his left wrist.
Durandal’s Shard manifested in a bright scythe form, and with a single smooth arc, Ludwig brought the tip of the curved blade downward—not slashing, but hammering the weapon point-first into the creature’s skull.
[-28,477 HP – CRITICAL]
[You have caused: STUN, Fractured Skull, …]
The hound dropped instantly, twitching spasmodically in the dirt.
Ludwig twisted the scythe’s shaft once, pivoting it like a lever, then yanked it free from the beast’s skull with a wet crack before dismissing it back into inventory.
He dropped low, shoulder brushing the dirt.
He hurled Soul Shackles forward, latching onto a high branch ahead, then pulled, catapulting himself again into the air.
The trees raced by.
But so did time.
The sound of wings behind him—Reavers, screeching and closing in. Not just from behind now—above. More were flying in from the manor.
They were converging.
The Herald was laughing again, that hideous screeching chuckle echoing off bark and mist.
It was gaining ground.
It was close—too close to the manor.
Too close to the Moon Flayed King.
Ludwig glanced at the time.
[Wrath Core Stabilization: 7:13 Remaining.]
His heart—what was left of it—lurched.
He couldn’t let the Herald reach the King.
He couldn’t even dare let that happen.
A wild thought flared across his mind. A cheat. A failsafe.
Kill himself.
Die now.
Respawn at the Death Point near the Moon Flayed King’s initial appearance.
A retry—via death.
But fate was always uglier than it looked.
[The Moon Flayed King’s presence is distorting your Death Point!]
[Your last Death Point has been corrupted.]
[Deus Necros’s Blessing activated.]
[Your Last Death Point will be applied in a future date rather than a reset of time.]
Ludwig’s entire face contorted.
“Are you kidding me?!” he roared, nearly tripping as his next grapple point—a brittle branch—snapped clean off and sent him crashing hard to the ground.
He hit the dirt, skidding, momentum slowed.
Mud splashed across his vision as he caught himself on a roll.
Ahead—through the trees—the Herald was hysterical. Laughing louder now, the hideous chortle mixing with its panting and the hissing howls of its blood-bound kin. It could see the manor walls now. The King’s presence was like a miasma on the wind.
And Ludwig was too far behind.
He would lose.
Unless—
“SON OF A BITCH!!” Ludwig howled, voice shaking the trees. His veins burst with dark light. “LIMIT BREAKER!!!”
It was the last charge.
The final burst.
Every sigil on his body lit up like molten veins, his entire form wrapped in a cocoon of cursed energy. His aura exploded outward in a ring of smoke and pressure.
He crouched low—both knees cracking, sword held behind his back in a reverse grip, his left hand digging into the ground like a beast ready to launch.
The muscles in his thighs swelled, to the point his Manticore Regalia groaned, seams straining.
“You only get one shot,” he whispered.
And launched.
[Surging Leap]—Activated.
He became a blur of flame and silver, tearing through the air with an unstable trajectory.
But even this—even this—wasn’t enough.
Mid-flight, Ludwig spun once.
Then again.
And a third time.
[Summersault Slam – Combo Limit reached]
But Ludwig had plans beyond limitations.
At the soles of his boots, two orbs of flame ignited.
BOOM.
A double explosion rocketed him forward. In a spin! A fourth!
[-360 HP]
[-360 HP]
Then another.
BOOM. BOOM.
More fire. More pain. Then another spin and more!
His health dropped like an anchor.
He spun faster.
A blade of flame.
An undead meteor.
A freaking weaponized blender of fire and steel tearing through the forest sky. Unfortunate flying Reavers could only be split in flaming halves as they tried to intercept the torpedoing saw of fire and steel.
The Herald turned, finally hearing the unnatural roar behind it.
Its eyes widened—horrified.
It had reached the last clearing.
It could see the Moon Flayed King in the distance—just a glimpse of that towering silhouette framed in silver light.
But that moment—that brief instant—
Was all it had.
Because as it turned, it saw Ludwig.
A fireball. A streak of burning death.
Spinning like a curse unbound from flesh. For a fragmented frame of time, as if life itself paused for the Herald to see a reaper of Death singing the last requiem.
The hurling Undead’s eyes were wide.
His mouth split in a grin so wide it nearly tore his undead cheeks open.
“HOW DOES IT FEEL?!” Ludwig’s voice was everywhere. In the trees. In the wind, and ironically in the marrows of the servant of the Flayed King.
“THAT FLEETING HOPE OF YOURS?!”