I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 398: The Greatest Hero versus The Greatest Army

Rhys straightened, despite his nervousness, as curiosity temporarily overrode his fear. ”Where are we headed?”

Jack didn’t turn around to look at them, already opening a portal that would take them off Floor 25. The swirling darkness coalesced in front of him, reality bending to accommodate his will as the domain’s master.

His mana flowed through the air, creating channels through space itself.

”Floor 23,” Jack said, his voice carrying across the glowing landscape. ”There’s a Blessed One I’m looking for.”

Rhys’s confusion was audible in his voice. ”Blessed One? What’s that?”

Pho spoke up, his cold tone carrying a matter-of-fact explanation. ”Someone like me. A being who has been blessed by Tartarus himself. The tower’s will manifests in certain individuals, granting them power beyond their wildest dreams. We’re stronger, faster, and more resilient than we should be.”

The Deathfrost Demon’s blank white eyes gleamed with pride. ”It’s why I survived as long as I did on Floor 24. Why I could challenge beings above my weight class. The tower’s blessing made me more than I was before.”

”And there’s another one on Floor 23?” Sylph asked, her tiny voice still shaky but curious despite her fear.

”Yes,” Jack confirmed. ”And I need to kill them.”

The casual statement sent a ripple of tension through the group. Kill a Blessed One. Just another item on Jack’s to-do list, said with the same tone someone might use to discuss grocery shopping.

Jack glanced at Pho. ”What’s the quickest way to get to Floor 23?”

The Deathfrost Demon’s blank white eyes gleamed with amusement. ”There’s a way to get from Floor 23 from inside the vault on Floor 24. A hidden passage that most demons don’t know about. I used it occasionally when I ruled that floor.”

”The vault,” Jack repeated, his smile becoming sharp and hungry. ”Then let’s go see my money machine.”

He stepped through the portal without waiting for responses, the darkness swallowing him instantly. Red lightning crackled along the portal’s edges, his power suffusing the spatial tear.

Father Caelen moved without hesitation. His trust in Jack was absolute.

Pho followed suit.

Loryn slipped through shadows at the portal’s edge, his form briefly becoming incorporeal before solidifying on the other side.

Rhys hesitated at the portal’s edge, his winter-ice eyes wide with residual fear. The swirling darkness made him pause.

”Come on,” Sylph said, her tiny voice carrying exasperation despite her own fear. She flew toward Rhys and pushed against his back. Although she was pretty small, she possessed incredible power.

Rhys fell through the portal with a yelp, disappearing into darkness.

Sylph followed a heartbeat later, muttering something about how Astrape caused all this mess to happen.

The portal collapsed behind them, leaving Floor 25 in silence once more.

Ren stood alone near the castle entrance, his star-bright eyes fixed on the space where Jack had disappeared.

The glowing grass pulsed beneath his boots, the eternal sunset painting everything in shades of gold and crimson.

Melania slithered up beside him, her emerald eyes gleaming with curiosity. Her serpentine lower body coiled elegantly, scales catching the light in patterns that looked almost hypnotic.

”Well,” she said, her voice carrying amusement. ”That was interesting. The Soul Warden can’t actually bind you yet. And here you are, free to leave whenever you want.”

Ren’s lips curved into a smile that carried centuries of patience. ”Free to leave? No. Free to walk away from this floor, perhaps. But still trapped in this tower, still unable to return to the world outside. That’s not freedom, Melania. That’s just a larger cage.”

He turned and walked toward the castle, purple armor catching the eternal sunset light.

”Prepare the eastern chambers,” Ren said, his voice carrying command despite the casual tone. ”I’ll be staying here for a while.”

”How long?” Melania asked, following behind him with fluid grace.

Ren’s smile widened. ”However long it takes for that boy to become strong enough to free me. Months. Maybe years.”

He paused at the castle entrance, looking back across the glowing landscape where spirits drifted, and demons watched from safe distances.

”But I’ve waited three hundred years in a frozen throne room, watching nothing change, feeling time pass like water through my fingers. At least here, there’s progress. The Soul Warden is growing stronger. Building power. Making mistakes and learning from them.”

His star-bright eyes gleamed with dark anticipation. ”Besides, Sylph was just a pawn, following orders from contractors she barely understood. But the others...”

He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t need to.

”Astrape has what’s yours,” Melania observed, her tone carrying curiosity. ”Will you tell him what they took?”

”Eventually,” Ren replied. ”When he’s strong enough to understand what it means. What it cost me.” His jaw tightened fractionally. ”For now, let him think it’s just revenge. Something he can understand.”

He walked into the castle, leaving Melania at the threshold.

The interior was dark, despite the glowing landscape outside; shadows pooled in corners and stretched across floors made of polished black stone.

”Revenge is patient,” Ren said quietly, his voice echoing in the vast entry hall. ”And I’ve learned patience in the hardest possible way.”

His star-bright eyes gleamed in the darkness. ”When Jack Kaiser returns with the power to bind me properly, when he’s accumulated those impossible token amounts and restored his Soul Warden pieces, when he’s strong enough to actually free me from this prison...”

He smiled, and the expression carried three hundred years of accumulated fury wrapped in controlled determination.

”After all this time, I’ll finally be able to get revenge. After all, this isn’t the first time he’s been to this tower or to Erebon.”

Melania watched him disappear into the castle’s depths; her emerald eyes were thoughtful. She’d served Ren for decades, had watched him endure imprisonment with stoic patience that would have broken lesser beings.

But she’d never seen him smile quite like that before.

It wasn’t the smile of someone planning simple revenge.

It was the smile of someone planning to burn down kingdoms and salt the earth where they once stood.

And now he had an ally. A Soul Warden who thought like a warlord. Who killed without hesitation and bound souls without remorse.

Who accumulated power with a single-minded focus that reminded Melania of Ren himself from all the stories she heard passed between demons.

’This,’ Melania thought, slithering into the castle after her master, ’is going to be very interesting when it finally happens.’

Outside, the spirits drifted through the glowing sky, unaware that Floor 25 had just become home to something far more dangerous than any demon Jack had bound.

A hero with nothing left to lose and centuries of patience, finally sees a path toward freedom.

Off in the distance, a heavy rumbling could be heard. The ground was shaking from the force of Emberion created from snoring.

A heavy, sulfurous huff escaped its nostrils, sending twin plumes of grey smoke curling into the air.

’Ren, don’t tell the boy. If you try, I’ll have to kill you before you can go back. But then again, maybe Master will return and just kill you himself. That sure would be fun to watch.

The Greatest Hero versus The Greatest Army to ever touch this tower.