I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 465: An Anomaly

The world stabilized around Jack in fragments.

Jack stood in the center of a barren plateau, storm clouds churning above with unnatural fury.

Lightning struck constantly, bolts thick as tree trunks hammering the ground in patterns that seemed almost intentional.

The electrical discharge was so intense that the air itself glowed faintly yellow

’System,’ Jack thought, his jaw tightening. ’Where am I?’

[Floor Fifty-Two]

The notification appeared and vanished, offering no further context.

Floor Fifty-Two. He’d jumped from Twenty-Three through that yellow portal, chasing Stormfang through what should have been a short connection between adjacent floors.

Instead, the portal had carried him down twenty-nine floors in an instant.

Jack’s red eyes scanned the wasteland, searching for the wyvern that had led him here.

No sign of Stormfang. The creature had vanished completely, leaving Jack alone in this electric hellscape.

”The Soul Warden.”

The voice was thunder given speech, resonating through the air and inside Jack’s skull simultaneously.

It carried weight that made his bones vibrate, power that pressed against his skin like a thousand sharp blades.

Jack’s hand went to Oscar’s hilt as he turned toward the source.

The dragon descended through storm clouds with movements that defied physics.

Its body was impossibly long. Hundreds of feet of that coiled through the air like a river.

Yellow scales covered most of its length, brilliant as polished gold, while white scales formed intricate patterns along its spine and belly.

The creature had no wings, yet it flew with effortless grace, as if the air itself obeyed its will.

Hundreds of arms extended from its body, some thick as castle pillars, others thin as human limbs. Each one ending in claws that could crush a tank.

The arms moved independently, creating a forest of motion that was both mesmerizing and deeply unsettling.

And its eyes. Golden orbs the size of carriages burned with constant electrical discharge, lightning crackling outward from them in branching patterns that never ceased.

[Entity: Tharaxis the Stormbreaker]

[Ancient Lightning Dragon]

[Level: 105]

[Demi-God]

The system notification appeared unbidden, and Jack felt his stomach tighten at that final designation.

Demi-God.

One step below true divinity.

The dragon’s massive form coiled through the air until its head, easily five times the size as Jack’s entire body, hovered twenty feet above the plateau.

Lightning crackled along yellow scales, not striking outward but flowing across the creature’s body.

”I remember the last one,” Tharaxis rumbled, his voice carrying across the wasteland. ”She sat on that throne for barely a year before something ended her.”

Jack met those golden eyes without flinching, his hand still resting on Oscar’s hilt. ”You knew the previous Soul Warden?”

”Knew her?” Tharaxis’s laugh was distant thunder. ”I watched her rise. Watched her bind creatures across a dozen floors. Watched her make the same mistakes every Soul Warden makes. Thinking power alone would be enough to survive what hunts them.”

The dragon’s head tilted slightly, studying Jack with that unnerving intelligence. ”This one feels different. Angrier. More...” Lightning intensified around his eyes. ”Ambitious.”

”Are you the Dragon God?” Jack asked, his tone direct despite the overwhelming presence before him.

Tharaxis’s laugh boomed across the plateau, loud enough that nearby rock formations cracked from the sound pressure. ”The Dragon God? No, little Soul Warden. There is no Dragon God anymore. Not since Typhon ate him.”

The casual way the dragon delivered that information made it somehow more horrifying.

”Typhon,” Jack repeated, his mind processing the implications. ”He ate a god?”

”My brother,” Tharaxis confirmed, his voice carrying something that might have been old grief. ”The Dragon God ruled our kind for millennia. Maintained order. Enforced the natural laws that governed our existence.”

The dragon’s countless arms shifted, claws flexing. ”Then Typhon decided he wanted that power for himself. Challenged my brother. Consumed him whole during the battle.”

Jack’s expression remained neutral, but internally his mind was racing. A dragon powerful enough to kill and consume a god. That level of threat was beyond anything he’d encountered.

”Typhon calls himself King of Dragons now,” Tharaxis continued. ”Self-proclaimed ruler of our kind. Every dragon ranked Disaster-class or higher comes from his seed. He’s built an empire on the corpse of divine authority.”

”And you?” Jack asked. ”What does that make you?”

”Demi-God,” Tharaxis said, lightning crackling more intensely from his golden eyes. ”One step below godhood. I was born of the same divine essence as my brothers, but I chose a different path. They sought to rule. I sought to perfect the storm.”

Lightning crackled along the dragon’s body with increased intensity. ”Now I exist here, in this tower, waiting.”

”For what?”

”For someone interesting to arrive.” Tharaxis’s gaze fixed on Jack with renewed focus. ”Tell me, Soul Warden. Why do you hunt my child?”

The question caught Jack off guard, though he didn’t let it show on his face. ”Stormfang is your child?”

”One of many,” Tharaxis confirmed. ”Scattered across the tower’s floors. Most are weak. Failures that barely deserve the draconic name. But Stormfang...” The dragon’s voice carried something like pride. ”Stormfang inherited something unique. Lightning affinity. A trait that should be impossible for our kind.”

Jack’s mind connected the pieces. Dragons were naturally weak to lightning.

Every piece of information he’d gathered confirmed that fundamental truth. Yet Stormfang wielded lightning with unnatural talent, and now Jack stood before a dragon literally made of electrical power.

”Lightning is a dragon’s weakness,” Jack said carefully. ”Yet you command it. Stormfang commands it. That shouldn’t be possible.”

”It shouldn’t,” Tharaxis agreed. ”Under natural law, dragons cannot possess lightning affinity. The element is anathema to our existence.”

Lightning arced from his eyes with renewed intensity. ”But I am not bound by natural law. I am Demi-God. I transcended those limitations through sheer will and divine essence.”

The dragon’s head lowered slightly, bringing those massive eyes closer to Jack’s level. ”Stormfang inherited a fraction of that transcendence. A genetic anomaly born from my bloodline. The creature is blessed by Tartarus itself, given power beyond its rank, because the tower recognizes potential when it sees it.”

Jack processed this information, his strategic mind already cataloging the implications.

”You didn’t answer my question. Why do you hunt my child?” Tharaxis demanded.

”Because I’m building an army,” Jack stated.

”Because Stormfang represents power you want to claim. Because blessed creatures make valuable additions to a Soul Warden’s collection.”

The dragon’s countless arms shifted, creating a sound like distant rainfall.

”The same reason you hunted the Hydra. The same reason you’ll hunt every powerful creature in this tower until you have enough strength to challenge whatever enemy you’ve marked for death.”

Jack’s jaw tightened slightly. The dragon’s assessment was accurate, uncomfortably so.

”I hunt Stormfang because it’s a wyvern with lightning affinity,” Jack said, his tone carrying no apology. ”A blessed creature with growth potential beyond its current rank. Binding it strengthens my army. Strengthens my position. Brings me closer to goals that require overwhelming force to achieve.”

”Honest,” Tharaxis rumbled, something like approval in his voice. ”I appreciate that. Most mortals would invent noble justifications. Protecting others, maintaining balance, serving some greater good. But you...” The lightning from his eyes intensified as he studied Jack. ”You want power, and you’re willing to take it from wherever you find it.”

”Yes,” Jack confirmed.

”Good,” Tharaxis said. ”Dishonesty bores me. Ambition I can respect.”

The dragon’s head tilted again, that massive skull blocking out most of Jack’s view of the storm above. ”But hunting my child puts you in an interesting position, Soul Warden. Because Stormfang fled here for protection. Sought sanctuary in my domain. And now you stand before me, having chased a wounded wyvern through a portal you didn’t understand.”