"MURDER! DESTROY AND ANHILATE! KILL, RAMPAGE, OBLITERATE AND EXTINCT!"

The command wasn’t sound so much as pressure, Wrath packed into language, battering the inside of Ludwig’s skull like a fist on a door that refused to open.

It wanted out. It wanted permission. It wanted everything to become simple again: kill, break, move on.

Ludwig’s jaw tightened until his tusks ached, and he forced his breathing to stay even despite the living body’s frantic insistence that something this violent should come with shaking hands and a racing pulse.

Ludwig tapped the side of his head twice with his knuckles, "Shut up, man. Let me think," he said as, with the other hand, he whipped out Durandal.

Durandal glowed and vibrated like an answer, the weapon’s weight settling into his grip with a familiarity that was almost comforting in the middle of madness. The crystal horns on his forehead hummed with that red hunger, and the air around him felt thick, as if the world itself was bracing for what he was about to do.

He didn’t posture. He didn’t bark orders. He simply moved into the only language Wrath respected.

The Red King pushed his face forward toward Ludwig in a roar, spitting blood and gut remains all over the place.

Hot droplets pattered across the dirt and stone, a wet stench that hit Ludwig’s nose like a slap, iron, bile, half-digested flesh. T

he Red King’s breath rolled out in a rancid gust, and the thing’s bulk shifted with obscene confidence, as if it believed size alone was the same thing as inevitability.

It was close enough now that Ludwig could see stringy viscera caught between teeth meant to grind armies.

"Your breath stinks," Ludwig said as he took the first step forward.

It wasn’t bravado. It was contempt, small, petty, and sharp enough to matter.

He stepped in as if he had all day, as if his body wasn’t already starting to scream under the load of Wrath, as if the rule of "Only a King can kill a King" wasn’t a noose tightening around the entire battlefield.

The ground itself began rumbling and trembling from the excess of aura that the Heart of Wrath was releasing.

The earth reacted the way flesh did when pressed against fire: it tightened, split, and gave up. Hairline cracks ran outward from Ludwig’s boots, snapping through pebbles and roots, and the thin green of the plains browned and curled in seconds.

Even the moisture in the air seemed to recoil, leaving a brittle dryness around him that made the blood on the ground darken faster.

"It’s time we end this, been stuck in this damn floor for too long now," he said and simply disappeared from the place.

One blink, he was there, Wrath made into a man-shaped problem. Next, the space he’d occupied was empty, as if the tower itself had lost track of him. The displacement didn’t crackle or flash. It just happened, and the only evidence was the way dust lagged behind reality for half a beat.

Ludwig’s move was far faster than anyone around him could see; they only saw the side of the Red King’s shoulder gush out in blood, a long streak and wide one, where the Red King only howled after the fact.

The cut arrived before the pain did. A brutal diagonal line opened along the Red King’s shoulder, and for an instant the wound didn’t even bleed, then it erupted, thick blood spilling in a sheet that painted stone and dead grass. The Red King’s howl came delayed, confused rage catching up to damage that had already been dealt.

He turned his head to see Ludwig with his back turned to him, "You’re too slow, fat man," Ludwig muttered.

He didn’t even grant the Red King the dignity of facing him. The insult came soft, almost casual, like Ludwig was commenting on bad craftsmanship. Under it was calculation: every second the Red King wasted roaring was a second Ludwig didn’t have to spend.

And with his left hand raised in a fist, a chain wrapped in it extended all the way to the red king’s ankle.

The soul-chain snapped outward, black and taut, not dragging along the ground so much as cutting through the air toward its anchor point.

It wrapped the Red King’s ankle like a shackle closing, links biting into flesh and scale and whatever else the monster had turned itself into through stolen meat.

Ludwig pushed his hand forward. The yank wasn’t about strength alone; it was timing, leverage, the chain making gravity into a weapon. And it made the red king fall on his back, dust, debris, rocks, and dirt all spread and splashed outward from the impact. The ground itself morphed and moved like it was a wave from how much the red king weighed.

The Red King’s balance vanished, and the enormous body went down with a crash that shook teeth and loosened stones. Dirt surged in a ring like surf and doused his allies and his enemies, debris leaping as if the ground had been slapped, breaking apart undead and skeletons that Kaiser had summoned. The shock of it rolled outward, and for a moment, the plains looked like they were breathing and anything that stood near the king had falled on their back or forward from being unable to balance their bodies.

A pig-like squeal echoed from the red king’s mouth as he refused to be exposed to such humiliation. The squeal was pure indignity, too high, too animal, the sound of something massive being reminded it could still be made to look stupid.

It answered that humiliation with violence, both hands smashing down hard enough to create another shuddering ripple through the terrain. Dust geysered up, pebbles jumped, and the Red King hauled itself upright with the kind of furious speed only rage could provide.

"WEAK MEAT!" the red king, for the first time, said something that could be understood.

Not that it mattered to Ludwig.

"DIE!" it said as it jumped at Ludwig with both hands extended wide open. It felt like a mountain was about to fall down onto the ground.

The leap swallowed distance in a way that should have been impossible for something that size.

Shadow crashed over Ludwig’s position as the Red King came down, palms spread like it intended to catch him and grind him between them. The air pressure alone felt like a weight pushing down on Ludwig’s shoulders.

But it was too slow.

Ludwig dodged by simply taking a step back that pushed his body several dozen meters away from the orc’s grasp.

He didn’t sprint. He didn’t roll. He simply stepped, and the world slid under him, distance snapping open like a torn seam. The Red King’s hands crashed into empty space where Ludwig had been, pulverizing dirt and dead grass, leaving a shallow crater and a spray of debris that never even came close to touching him.

The impact failed to even destabilize Ludwig, who rushed forward, and the massive Durandal sliced right through the Orc’s fingers. Making them spread apart and fall like tree logs. Falling uselessly, and making it clear that the prey had become the hunter.