I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 405: I AM THE SOUL WARDEN

Smoke drifted across the devastated arena floor, obscuring visibility.

Jack’s enhanced vision cut through the haze, searching for the Champion’s body, for any sign of...

The smoke cleared, and Jack’s grin faded.

The bones that collapsed onto the arena floor were easily forty feet long, its massive skeletal frame constructed from what looked like thousands of interlocking bones that definitely didn’t come from any single creature.

Its skull was the size of a wagon, eye sockets burning with necrotic green fire. Wings made from membrane stretched between finger bones spread wide, each one spanning twenty feet.

[Entity Detected: Bone Dragon]

[Rank: Disaster]

[Level: 65]

[HP: 240,000]

[Affinity: Fire]

But Jack barely registered the dragon.

Because the floor was moving.

Skeletal hands burst from the sand across the entire arena. It began with hundreds, then thousands.

An army of the dead pulling themselves from whatever hell Valdoren had summoned them from. Skeletons in rusted armor, wielding ancient weapons, their empty eye sockets gleaming with the same green fire as the dragon.

They rose in waves, filling the arena floor until there was barely any open space left. Jack did a quick count and stopped when he hit three hundred.

The crowd’s reaction was split between excitement and terror.

”VALDOREN SUMMONS THE DEAD!”

”THIS ISN’T A FIGHT ANYMORE! THIS IS AN EXECUTION!”

”THE SOUL WARDEN IS OUTNUMBERED A THOUSAND TO ONE!”

”SOMEONE STOP THIS! HE’LL BE TORN APART!”

In the announcer’s booth, Valdoren raised both skeletal hands, his voice booming across the Colosseum with theatrical magnificence.

”LADIES, GENTLEMEN, AND INDESCRIBABLE HORRORS! THE TRUE ENTERTAINMENT BEGINS NOW! BEHOLD AS THE SOUL WARDEN FACES THE IMPOSSIBLE!”

Jack stood at the center of the rising undead horde, Oscar held loosely at his side, and began to laugh.

The sound started quietly, then built until it echoed across the arena. It wasn’t nervous laughter, nor was it fear. Jack was laughing with excitement.

”You know what?” Jack called out, his amplified voice cutting through the crowd’s noise. ”I was going to kill you quietly, Valdoren. Quick and clean. Professional courtesy for the person who tried to murder me when I was six years old.”

He paused, letting that revelation sink in across thousands of spectators.

”But fuck professionalism!”

Jack slammed Oscar’s butt into the ground, and red lightning exploded outward from the impact point.

The electrical discharge spread across the sand in branching patterns, forcing the nearest skeletons backward.

Then he began walking forward, directly toward the bone dragon, his voice carrying absolute certainty.

”I AM SOUL WARDEN JACK KAISER!”

Every demon in the Colosseum could hear him now, his words infused with power that made the air vibrate.

”YOU WILL NOT FORGET THIS DAY!”

Another step forward. The skeletons parted before him, their instincts recognizing something in his presence.

”I WILL BE KING OF THIS TOWER!”

The bone dragon turned its massive skull toward him, green flames intensifying in its eye sockets.

”YOU WILL ALL SERVE ME!”

Jack’s red eyes blazed brighter, lightning crackling across his entire body now, the Infernal Set responding to his power.

”I WILL MAKE MALAKAI LOOK LIKE AN ANT IN COMPARISON!”

For a moment, the Colosseum was silent.

Then the demons began to laugh.

It started with a few scattered chuckles, then built into full-throated laughter that swept through the stands like wildfire.

Thousands of voices raised in mocking amusement, demons literally holding their sides as they howled at the audacity of this human claiming he’d surpass the legendary Soul Warden.

”KING OF THE TOWER!”

”HE THINKS HE’S MALAKAI!”

”THE ARROGANCE!”

”SOMEONE KILL HIM BEFORE I DIE LAUGHING!”

Pho stood smoothly, his blank white eyes fixed on the arena below. His pale hands reached up and pulled back his hood, revealing his bluish-white skin and the cold, power that radiated from his frame.

The demons nearest to their section went silent immediately.

”Is that...”

”No. It can’t be...”

”That aura...”

Pho raised both hands, and the temperature in the Colosseum dropped twenty degrees in an instant.

Frost began forming on railings, weapons, and anyone with exposed skin.

”ICE PRISON.”

The air crystallized.

Walls of ice erupted from the Colosseum floor, growing at impossible speed. They shot upward, expanding outward, interlocking with each other.

Within seconds, a dome of blue ice covered the entire structure, sealing every exit and trapping everyone inside.

The ice was easily fifty feet thick, translucent enough to see through but strong enough to contain a nuclear explosion.

Runes carved themselves into the surface, ancient symbols that pulsed with cold power.

The laughter died.

”PHO THE BLESSED!” Someone screamed, terror replacing amusement. ”THE DEATHFROST DEMON!”

”HE SERVES THE SOUL WARDEN!”

”WE’RE TRAPPED!”

”SOMEONE BREAK THE ICE! GET US OUT!”

Several powerful demons tried. Fire spells splashed against the walls uselessly, the heat absorbed and dissipated.

Physical attacks bounced off without leaving a mark. Even concentrated energy beams merely created small clouds of steam before the ice regenerated.

They were sealed in.

Jack smiled up at Pho, nodding once in acknowledgment. Then he turned his attention back to the arena floor, and his smile became something sharp.

He reached toward the space above the Colosseum and pulled.

Space tore open like paper, and portals began forming. They appeared across the entire upper level of the Colosseum, circular rips in reality that revealed swirling darkness beyond.

And through those portals came Jack’s army.

They poured forth like a flood of darkness. Demons of every classification, all wearing matching armor of black metal with red accents. The armor was uniform and professional, marking them clearly as an organized military force.

Nightmare-class demons comprised the bulk of the force, their varied forms weaving a nightmare tapestry of claws, teeth, and otherworldly features.

They came through portal after portal, filling the upper levels, taking positions along railings and walkways with military precision.

They didn’t attack.

They didn’t speak.

They stood still, thousands upon thousands of eyes fixed on the crowd below, and waited.

Jack counted silently as the portals continued disgorging his forces. Twenty thousand. Twenty-one. Twenty-two.

The portals finally closed when the count hit twenty-two thousand, three hundred and forty-seven demons, all under his absolute control.

The Colosseum was completely silent now. Even Valdoren had stopped his theatrical commentary, his skeletal form frozen in the announcer’s booth as he processed what he was seeing.

Jack’s voice cut through the silence like a knife.

”PHO SERVES ME.”

He gestured toward the Deathfrost Demon, and twenty-two thousand demons turned their heads in perfect synchronization to look at the legendary Blessed One.

”SOME OF YOU WILL TOO.”

Jack began walking forward again, Oscar held casually at his side, moving through the skeletal horde as if they didn’t exist.

The undead pulled away from him, their necromantic programming confused by the presence of something that was simultaneously alive and saturated with death energy.

”BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY...”

He stopped directly in front of the bone dragon, which had lowered its massive skull to his level. Those green flames burned in its eye sockets as it stared into Jack’s eyes.

Jack reached out with one hand and placed it against the dragon’s skull, right between the eye sockets. Red lightning crackled from his palm into the bone, and the green flames flickered.

”VALDOREN WILL BE LEAVING IN A BOX!”