With Status Quo in play, the living finally found enough strength to crawl away from the center of the battlefield.

It was not victory. It was not even freedom. The Gray Tower Master’s spell had not broken Sloth’s authority, only held its worsening pressure in check long enough for those who had no place in this fight to understand they were breathing on borrowed time. Priests dragged other priests back. Paladins who had dreamed of glory minutes earlier now used their shields as crutches, stumbling away from the Necropolitis and the black water where Sloth stood. Soldiers pulled the ones too far gone by the shoulders and belts, teeth clenched, faces pale with shame and terror.

Safe was a relative word under Sloth’s gaze.

But farther was better than closer.

So far, the human ranks had avoided true slaughter. No lines had been broken inside Solania. No mass of monsters had reached the citizens behind the walls. The wounded were from exhaustion, panic, stray impacts, and their own foolishness more than from enemy claws. By ordinary standards, that was a miracle. By the standards of this battlefield, it was merely proof that the dead city and dark magic had carried almost the entire burden.

The humans could not defend their city.

Not from this.

Van Dijk withdrew from the front, but his spell did not. The black swamp he had spread across the ice remained active, dragging servants of Sloth beneath its surface whenever they pushed too far ahead. Spears of tar still rose and stabbed. Black blades still cut. The pool still consumed, slow and merciless, buying the Necropolitis more time. Van Dijk himself turned away from Sloth only when he confirmed Ludwig, Titania, and Mot had engaged him directly, and even then, his eyes kept flicking back toward the center field as if every step away offended him.

Celine and Joana had been brought behind a partially sheltered section near the city’s inner defense line, where Titania’s careful blessing had stabilized them enough for ordinary healing to matter. A couple of priests and paladins worked over them with trembling hands, their holy light reduced to narrow, controlled streams so it would not spill toward the Necropolitis. They looked terrified to use too much power and terrified to use too little.

Van Dijk arrived beside them.

"What’s the situation?"

One of the priests looked up, swallowing hard when he realized who stood over him. "Impressive vitality, both of them. They’ll make it."

The Black Tower Master’s face did not soften, but something in the air around him loosened by a thread. "Good. Keep them safe."

The priest hesitated.

It was the wrong time to hesitate, and he knew it, but fear and doctrine made fools of men even in the presence of the obvious. His hands remained over Joana’s wounds, light flowing from his palms, yet his eyes moved toward the distant black swamp and then to Van Dijk.

"But, Master Van Dijk," he said, voice strained, "is this right? You were banned from using that dark magic. Is this truly alright?"

Van Dijk looked at him.

The priest almost flinched, but to his credit, he did not stop healing.

"What is the purpose of your faith?" Van Dijk asked. "The gods you follow."

The priest blinked. "To herd the masses, and save them."

"We’re doing the saving part now," Van Dijk said. "Even if it looks ugly."

The priest said nothing.

Van Dijk’s gaze shifted briefly to Celine’s pale face, then back to him. "Sometimes you have to cut through skin to heal the body. Sometimes one has to be extreme."

The priest lowered his head, shame and understanding mixing unevenly across his expression. "I’ll remember that."

"Good. Then heal."

The priest nodded and returned both hands fully to the work.

Van Dijk turned his eyes back toward the battlefield.

Sloth had begun to move.

This time, every step mattered.

Before, his motion had been a lazy inconvenience, a pale giant dragged reluctantly into action. Now, each step made the ground tremble as though the world itself wished he would stop. Cracks spread beneath his feet, but Van Dijk’s eyes narrowed immediately. It was not the ice. Not truly. The frozen surface split because something deeper was tearing first. Space itself fissured where Sloth stepped, thin fractures appearing in reality and correcting themselves a blink later, as if existence had been forced to endure movement from a being whose nature rejected motion.

Sloth was acting.

Active.

In motion.

It should have gone against his authority, but somehow that made him feel more dangerous.

"I despise being forced to move," Sloth said.

"Unfortunately for you," Ludwig replied, "you’ll die if you don’t."

He charged.

This time, Ludwig did not look at Sloth’s body.

His eyes lowered behind Noctivex’s visor, then almost closed. He let the world become shape, pressure, and presence. In the dark behind his senses, Sloth was not a person. Not a pale giant. Not the Sin standing before him. He was a depression in the space around him, a condensation of wrongness occupying a point on the battlefield. That was all Ludwig allowed himself to perceive.

Not Sloth.

The place Sloth occupied.

Nightbreaker trailed behind him, red aura licking along its length. Ludwig brought the mace around with brutal force and aimed at the depression in the world.

Sloth raised one hand.

The mace struck.

This time, it landed against Sloth’s palm.

Not cleanly enough to break him, but cleanly enough to matter. The impact cracked through the air, and Sloth’s arm rattled from wrist to shoulder. The pale giant’s eyes narrowed, and the slow rhythm of his motion changed. His other hand came up, no longer drifting with lazy contempt, but driving straight for Ludwig’s face.

Ludwig’s instincts screamed.

Wrath erupted from his forehead.

Two large crystalline horns shot forward from the crown of Noctivex’s helm, thicker and sharper than before. These were not accidental growths born from overflowing aura. They had purpose. Shape. Intent. Ludwig tilted his head down and met Sloth’s punch with them.

The fist struck.

The crystalline horns shattered.

Fragments of red crystal exploded outward, but Ludwig did not move back. The force shook through his skull, down his spine, into the plates of Noctivex, yet his boots held. His neck groaned. His teeth clenched. But he remained where he stood.

"You grew weaker," Ludwig said through the grind of armor. "Without your slow punch, you hit like a toddler."

He drove a kick toward Sloth’s chest.

It stopped inches away.

Ludwig clicked his tongue as his foot hung uselessly in the air, the motion drained at the final distance. For that small moment, he had thought of kicking Sloth. Not the space. Not the point occupied. Sloth. That was enough for the authority to recognize the attack and kill it before contact.

"It’s hard," Ludwig muttered, withdrawing his leg, "to always keep imagining empty space."

Sloth’s eyes followed him.

Ludwig lifted one hand and pointed a finger forward.

"Let’s see," he said, tilting his head slightly. "Was it this way the Demon King used it?"

Mana gathered first.

Then wrath.

Then whatever else Ludwig could force through his Living Vessel and Noctivex’s enlarged frame. The energy coalesced around his finger, black and red and violent, compressing until the air screamed around the point. Jagged protrusions of crystallized aura began growing along his hand and forearm, crawling outward like broken glass given life. The beam technique was crude compared to the Demon King’s, ugly and inefficient, but that almost suited Ludwig better.

He pointed not at Sloth.

At where Sloth stood.

Sloth looked at the growing mass of power with weary disapproval. "It takes too long to charge and use. You believe I will remain standing?"

"No," Ludwig said. "I know you’ll dodge."

He released the magic.

At that exact moment, chains erupted from the space beneath Sloth.

Ethereal purple links shot upward and wrapped around him from ankle to shoulder. Sloth’s three eyes widened. They were not iron chains. Not physical restraints. Not some simple construct of mana meant to hold flesh. They glowed with a witch’s old logic, binding not merely the body, but the occupied space, the entity’s presence within that space, the point of existence where Sloth was.

Ludwig smiled.

"Thanks, Master."

Far behind him, Van Dijk stood with two fingers raised, cold eyes fixed on Sloth.

Chains of Latvia.

The spell had been a legend even among advanced mages, a binding art inherited from a witch said to have once bound a god. It did not care whether the target was flesh, spirit, ghost, or something stranger. If one existed in a defined space, the chains could claim that definition. All they needed was enough mana to enforce the binding.

And Van Dijk had mana.

More importantly, Ludwig had revealed the flaw.

The chains were not trying to strangle Sloth’s throat or bind his wrists as attacks against his body. They bound the location, the occupied existence, the very place he insisted on being. Sloth’s authority resisted, but not perfectly. Not against a spell that had no interest in striking his skin.

Sloth tried to move.

The chains tightened.

He tried harder.

They tightened again.

The beam reached him.

"Avada Kedavra, motherfucker," Ludwig said.

The black-red surge tore across the battlefield.

Ice ripped away in chunks. Fog vaporized. The beam carved a trench through the frozen plain so violently that the air around it howled. Servants of Sloth saw their lord bound and rushed to intercept. They threw themselves into its path, dozens first, then hundreds, their bodies fusing and climbing over one another to create walls of condensed flesh, bone, organs, and blackened muscle. They became barriers made of living corruption, layered thick enough to stop siege magic.

The beam did not care.

It melted them.

Disintegrated them.

Tore and burned through them in the same breath. Flesh became vapor. Bone became ash. Organs burst apart before the lightless heat swallowed the remains. The walls collapsed one after another, and the beam kept going, thinning but not stopping, driven by every last scrap of Wrath Ludwig forced into it.

Then it struck Sloth.

The impact swallowed him.

Ludwig poured everything out. There was no need to reserve anything, he just let loose all the rage and mana in him.

His horns shrank as the crystalline wrath feeding them burned away. His body shuddered beneath Noctivex. The red light between the living armor’s plates dimmed, then vanished in strips, then disappeared entirely. The monstrous shine coating him faded until he looked like black metal without a soul of flame inside it. The beam continued for a few seconds more, brutal and efficient, until the last of his aura left him.

Then it ended.

Ludwig’s arm dropped.

His breath came rough and uneven through the helm.

He was tapped out.

Fog rolled across the battlefield.

For several seconds, no one spoke.

The living watched from their safer distance. The priests had stopped praying. The paladins had stopped pretending. Even the Tower Masters waited, eyes locked on the place where Sloth had stood. The Necropolitis continued fighting. The undead did not care for suspense. Gale was still locked against the returning giants from beneath the ice. Van Dijk’s swamp still consumed. But around the center of the field, the pause was heavy.

The Red Tower Master leaned forward slightly.

"Is it dead?"

Immediately, from every direction of the battlefield where anyone with sense remained conscious, there came a resounding, almost unified sound.

"Tsk."

The Red Tower Master looked around. "What?"

Ludwig smiled beneath the helm.

He knew for a fact Sloth was not dead.

Now the Fire Tower Master had confirmed it.

The fog began to dissipate.

Sloth still stood.

Half his body had been charred black. Blue blood poured from what remained of one side of his head, sliding down over pale flesh and burnt bone. His left arm had been scorched until only bone remained from elbow to finger, the remains glowing faintly with residual wrath. Part of his torso had caved inward, and a long trench of destroyed flesh ran across his chest where Nightbreaker’s earlier strike had made the beam’s work uglier.

Yet he stood.

The Chains of Latvia flickered, their purple light straining for one last moment, then shattered into fading motes.

The enemy of existence remained upright.

Sloth’s burned eyes opened slowly.

"Futile struggle..." he whispered.