Chapter 842: Beyond Reach

Ludwig stepped first.

Sloth answered by doing almost nothing.

That was what made the exchange so infuriating. Ludwig came forward with the full weight of Noctivex’s enlarged form, the ice cracking beneath every step as Wrath rolled from his armor in heavy red waves. Nightbreaker rose in both hands, its pentagonal head vibrating with such hunger for impact that the air around it seemed to grind. Any creature that had seen Morde’Xander once, even through inherited memory, flinched at the sight of that weapon lifted again upon Solania’s frozen field.

Sloth merely looked at him.

The Sin stood upon the black water where his throne had refused to sink, pale and immense, his smooth body almost statue-like beneath the dull glow of the battlefield. The few crimson eyes set across that strange, almost featureless head followed Ludwig’s approach with the tired disinterest of someone watching dust drift through a room. He did not raise a guard. He did not brace. He did not step back.

Ludwig swung.

The blow should have split the icefield apart and taken half of Sloth’s body with it. Every muscle in his giant frame drove into the motion. Wrath fed the strike. Noctivex reinforced the movement. The declaration of Pride, I deny Stillness, burned through his Living Vessel and rejected the suffocating weight trying to make his body remember exhaustion.

And still, the swing weakened.

Not at the start. Not enough for Ludwig to stop it. It happened near Sloth, within that last stretch of distance where a strike became a kill or a failure. The momentum bled away as if the attack had reached a place where motion itself had no permission to matter. Nightbreaker slowed by fractions, then more, then more, until Sloth shifted his head aside by a handspan and the mace passed him without touching flesh.

The weapon hit the ice.

The ground broke open in a screaming crack, sending shards of frozen stone and old snow flying outward, but Ludwig felt the truth in his arms. That had not been the strike he threw. That had been the corpse of it.

Sloth’s hand moved.

It was barely a blow. A lazy backhand, almost insulting in its lack of effort. Ludwig’s instincts roared louder than thought, and he dragged Nightbreaker’s handle across his body just in time. Sloth’s fingers touched the haft.

The impact launched him.

Ludwig’s giant body tore backward across the ice, boots carving a trench through the frozen field before his shoulder slammed into the outer structure of the Necropolitis. A section of black wall burst inward beneath him, grave-stone and dead masonry breaking apart in a cloud of dust and blue soul flame. The dead city groaned, not in pain, but in irritation transmitted through every dark stone.

From somewhere above the broken battlement, Kaiser’s voice snapped down, "That takes effort to repair!"

Ludwig shoved a slab of black stone off his shoulder and stood, Noctivex plates grinding back into place. "Then repair faster."

"I am beginning to dislike how much your solutions cost me."

"Put it in writing."

Ludwig’s eyes were fixed on Sloth. The closer he had gotten, the heavier that authority became. I deny Stillness kept him moving, but it did not erase the enemy’s domain. It only gave him the right to struggle inside it. Near Sloth, every motion wanted to decay. Every intention began losing teeth before it reached the skin.

Behind him, the wider battle had no room to assist.

The undead army was already locked against the horde, the Necropolitis straining under the endless flood of malformed servants hammering its outer streets. Gale could not come. The Death Knight had turned when Ludwig was thrown, but the black water where Sloth’s throne had dipped exploded outward as two of the fallen amalgamations broke back through the ice. They rose from the frigid depths like drowned giants refusing to stay buried, their bodies swollen with black water and broken ice, and hurled themselves at Gale with enough force to drive even him back a step. Oathcarver met them a moment later, and the Death Knight disappeared into a clash of giant bodies, shield, steel, and dead fury.

So Ludwig had no wall behind him.

No Gale beside him.

No army to spare.

Mot moved next.

The young saint planted his staff against the black stone of the Necropolitis and sent his tendrils forward. They did not burst out wildly this time. They slithered, thin and numerous, crawling over the ice, through cracks, along the remnants of Van Dijk’s tar, and across the battlefield like purple veins seeking a heart. There was nothing holy in them. Nothing clean.

Titania arrived from above.

She did not touch the Necropolitis.

That alone proved she understood more in a single glance than half the Holy Order had learned in their entire lives. Her glowing form crossed over the dead city’s rooftops, holy aura held tight around her body so it would not spill downward and wound the undead defenders. Four divine presences flickered behind her like distant crowns of light, not attacking, not overwhelming the field, but carrying her through Sloth’s pressure where ordinary men had dropped to their knees.

She came down like a falling star with her sword wrapped in holy flame.

Sloth looked up.

Ludwig came from the front again.

Mot’s tendrils came from below.

For a heartbeat, it looked like three catastrophes converging on one unmoving target.

Then all three failed to arrive.

Titania’s holy flame guttered first. The closer her blade drew to Sloth, the more the fire lost urgency. It did not explode against a barrier or clash with darkness. It simply weakened, shrinking along the edge of her sword until the divine blaze became a thin glow, then a dying ember. Her face tightened, but she carried the strike through with pure skill and force.

Sloth moved one foot aside.

Not quickly. That was the worst part. He avoided her as if the blade had been slow from the beginning, as if the whole charge had always been too tired to reach him.

Mot’s tendrils wrapped around him an instant later.

Or tried to.

They coiled over Sloth’s shoulders, around his arms, across his torso, and down his legs, yet none of them touched. Ludwig saw it clearly from the front. The tendrils had not missed. They had curved around the shape of him as if something invisible occupied the space before his skin. They tightened and tightened, trying to constrict, but it was like watching ropes strain around a cone of empty air.

Mot frowned. "I cannot grasp him."

"Join the line," Ludwig muttered.

He raised his left hand and fired a cluster of dark bullets from a distance, testing whether range would fare better than a swing. The shots tore forward, sharp, dense, and ugly with killing intent. Halfway across the field they still looked lethal. Ten paces from Sloth, they began to slow. Five paces, they unraveled. One pace, they vanished completely, mana losing structure as if the spells had forgotten the purpose of impact.

Sloth’s eyes settled on him again.

Ludwig felt the answer before the words came.

Nothing reached him.

Not properly.

The closer any act came to Sloth, the more its consequence decayed. A sword lost flame. A mace lost momentum. Tendrils lost contact. Spells lost form. It was not defense in the ordinary sense. It was futility shaped into distance.

Titania recovered in the air and landed on the peak of a broken wall outside the dead city’s direct structure, her sword lowered but not relaxed. "His authority kills the strike before it lands."

"No," Ludwig said, stepping forward again, "it makes the strike decide landing is too much work."

Sloth almost sighed. "You understand, yet continue."

"Story of my life."

Ludwig rushed again.

This time he did not swing wide. He shortened the motion, kept Nightbreaker closer, and drove in with a compact thrust of the mace’s head toward Sloth’s chest. Less distance. Less room for momentum to die. Wrath compressed behind the strike instead of flaring outward. I deny Stillness burned harder through his body, the declaration grinding against Sloth’s field like two laws trying to occupy the same breath.

For one instant, it worked better.

Nightbreaker reached closer than before.

The air between the mace and Sloth screamed.

Then Ludwig felt it.

The true resistance.

It was not simply slowing. Not merely draining force. The closer Nightbreaker came to Sloth’s pale skin, the more impossible contact became. It felt like trying to push two magnets of the same polarity together, only the rejection was not physical alone. It was conceptual. The attack could approach. It could threaten. It could promise violence.

But the last inch refused to exist.

Ludwig’s arms shook with the strain. Noctivex’s plates tightened around his shoulders and elbows, living metal groaning as it tried to force the motion through. Wrath roared down the handle of Nightbreaker, red aura clawing toward Sloth’s body. Pride denied stillness with enough force to crack the ice beneath Ludwig’s feet.

The mace did not touch.

Sloth looked at the weapon hovering a breath from his chest.

Then at Ludwig.

"How," he asked quietly, "do you intend to win when even reaching me is beyond you?"

Ludwig bared his teeth.

Before he could answer, Titania struck again from above, this time with no holy flame spread into the air. She compressed it all into the edge of the blade, a focused line of divine fire rather than an aura. Mot altered his tendrils as well, twisting them into thin spears that stabbed through the space around Sloth rather than trying to bind him. Ludwig held Nightbreaker in place, trying to keep the pressure fixed long enough for one of them to break through.

None did.

Titania’s sword came within a finger’s width and went dim.

Mot’s spears bent around the unseen boundary and pierced only air.

Nightbreaker remained suspended in that impossible final distance.

Sloth raised one hand.

Ludwig abandoned the push instantly and crossed the handle of Nightbreaker before him. Titania kicked away from the air above Sloth, and Mot’s tendrils retreated like snakes sensing a boot.

Sloth’s palm touched the handle.

The force that followed was absurd.

Ludwig was driven backward again, though this time he managed to stay upright for the first ten paces. His boots tore trenches through the ice, his arms screaming from the impact. The eleventh pace broke his footing, and he skidded into another outer wall of the Necropolitis, cracking it rather than fully collapsing it this time.

Kaiser’s voice rose again, thinner with outrage. "Ludwig."

"What?"

"That wall was load-bearing."

"Okay, that one, my fault..."

"Your faults are expensive..." the Lich’s mana was clearely draining far faster than he liked.

Ludwig pushed off the wall and rolled his shoulders. Pain moved through the Living Vessel beneath Noctivex, dull but present. Sloth’s strikes looked effortless, but that did not make them weak. The opposite, really. The bastard spent no visible effort and still struck with enough force to launch his giant form through dead architecture.

That meant every exchange was costing Ludwig more than it cost Sloth.

Which was probably the entire point.

Titania hovered above the battlefield, golden light tight around her body, eyes narrowed in calculation. Mot stood farther back, staff raised, tendrils coiling around him in frustration. The three of them had attacked together, with three different powers, from three different angles, and Sloth had barely moved.

Behind Sloth, his servants continued throwing themselves against the Necropolitis. Behind Ludwig, the living battlefield remained mostly crushed beneath the pressure, with only Titania’s careful support and the spread of I deny Stillness allowing some of them to breathe without collapsing entirely. The Hero still had not risen. Priests still trembled. Soldiers still clutched weapons they could barely lift.

And the dead kept fighting.

That was the only reason the field had not already become a graveyard.

Sloth looked at Ludwig with that same tired dislike.

"Resistance is excessive," he said. "You swing. You fail. You stand. You fall. You return. You fail again."

Ludwig lifted Nightbreaker back onto his shoulder.

"Yeah, but I ain’t stopping anytime soon."

Sloth’s eyelids lowered slightly.

It was not anger.

Not quite.

But Ludwig saw the annoyance beneath the stillness. Thin. Quiet. Almost buried. Yet real.

Good.

If Sloth was unbeatable because nothing could reach him, then the first step was not to strike harder. Ludwig had already proved that was useless. The first step was to make him keep choosing effort. Again and again. Make him move. Make him answer. Make the Sin of Sloth spend himself one tiresome refusal at a time.

It was a terrible plan.

A stupid plan.

Possibly the only plan.

Ludwig grinned beneath the helm and lowered his stance.

Titania saw the change and raised her sword again.

Mot’s tendrils spread low across the ice.

Sloth stared at them all as if they were the most exhausting creatures existence had ever produced.

Then Ludwig moved first again.

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