I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 477: [Floors Sealed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 23]

Jack stood in the forest with Rhys, Brutus, Pho, and Slyph all staring at him with varying degrees of shock, concern, and in Pho’s case, carefully controlled wariness.

The Deathfrost Demon hadn’t relaxed at all despite Death’s departure. His blank white eyes were still fixed on Jack, clearly processing the implications of everything he’d just witnessed.

Jack reached through the Soul Link, pulling on specific consciousnesses from his bound army.

Twenty minotaurs materialized around them in flashes of red lightning, warriors from the two hundred forty-seven he’d bound in the wasteland.

Each one carried weapons recreated through the binding process, their red eyes burning with perfect loyalty as they awaited commands.

Brutus’s expression shifted. Confusion for a brief moment as he processed why his master was summoning more of his kind, then understanding as he realized what Jack intended.

”These twenty are yours,” Jack said, gesturing to the newly summoned minotaurs. His tone carried absolute authority, making it clear this wasn’t a suggestion. ”Brutus will command them. Use them to clear Floors Five through Nine as quickly as possible.”

Rhys blinked, exhaustion slowing his processing. ”You’re giving me twenty minotaurs?”

”I’m putting you on a leash,” Jack corrected, his tone carrying no apology or softness. ”You’ve been clearing floors at your own pace. That pace is too slow. I want Floor Ten accessible within three weeks. These minotaurs will accelerate the process.”

The young tempest mage looked at the assembled warriors. Twenty eight-foot-tall creatures of muscle and horn, each one radiating power that marked them as threats to most adventurers.

Then back at Jack, his silver hair falling across exhausted features.

”And what will you be doing?” Rhys asked.

”That’s not your concern,” Jack replied.

His golden eyes gleamed with something cold and hungry. ”Consider it a lesson in why you should never settle for being merely strong when you could become something that terrifies gods.”

The next twenty days passed in a blur of systematic conquest.

Jack checked on Kyren and Emberion in the Soul Warden’s domain, where he could operate with complete authority over respawn rates, environmental conditions, and territorial control.

Every three days, he opened portals from his domain to whatever floor Rhys had just cleared, arriving to seal the conquered territory and claim it officially.

Floor Five costs 150,000 Death Tokens.

A crystalline cavern system where Rhys had fought through hordes of crystal golems before bringing down the Refraction Golem.

A massive construct that could split itself into dozens of smaller forms.

Floor Six cost another 150,000.

A volcanic hellscape where heat alone killed weaker adventurers.

Floor Seven: 150,000 tokens.

An underwater realm where Rhys had nearly drowned.

Floor Eight: 150,000 tokens.

A sky realm with floating islands where gravity shifted randomly.

Floor Nine: 150,000 tokens. A corrupted temple where undead swarmed in endless waves.

By the end of twenty days, five more floors were sealed.

Jack’s Death Token reserve had decreased by 750,000, but his control over the tower’s lower levels was absolute.

[Current Death Tokens: 38,942,250]

[Floors Sealed: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 23]

And now they stood at the entrance to Floor Ten.

Jack looked at Rhys, noting the exhaustion in the young man’s posture.

Three weeks of near-constant combat had pushed him to his limits. His mana reserves were depleted, his stamina drained, and even his contracted wind spirit looked dimmer than normal.

”You can rest,” Jack said, his tone carrying approval buried beneath layers of cold indifference. ”Ride on Brutus’s back and watch what happens next. You’ve earned a break.”

Rhys nodded slowly, relief evident despite his attempt to maintain composure. ”What about Floor Ten?”

”I’m going to decimate everything on that floor within a day,” Jack replied. His golden eyes gleamed so coldly and looked so hungry that the statement felt less like a boast and more like an inevitable fact.

”Consider it a demonstration of what power.”

He reached through space itself, opening two portals simultaneously.

A display of the portal manipulation skill he’d been developing over months of practice.

The first led to Floor Twenty-Five, where Father Caelen waited among the Soul Warden’s claimed territory.

The second connected to where Loryn kept his studies, followed by an unlikely sight.

Marcus Thorne stumbled behind, dragged by Loryn’s clawed hand gripping the slave collar around his neck.

The once-proud clan leader was unrecognizable from the man who’d tried to kill Jack’s family months ago in Elysium’s timeline.

He was missing his right leg below the knee; the wound healed, but left him permanently crippled.

His body was skeletal, skin stretched tight over bones that jutted at sharp angles, showing his malnutrition that bordered on starvation.

His eyes were sunken deep into his skull, haunted, holding the thousand-yard stare of someone who’d been broken long before capture.

Two years and nine months had passed for Marcus Thorne in the tower’s accelerated time.

The slave collar around his neck pulsed with dark energy. A binding that prevented speech, prevented escape, and prevented everything except obedience to whoever held the control token.

Loryn held that token, his purple eyes studying Marcus with clinical disinterest, as if the broken man were nothing more than equipment being transported.

The man’s face showed no emotion as he took in the scene. Rhys’s exhausted form, the bound Marcus Thorne, and Jack’s transformed appearance.

Rhys’s expression shifted from confusion to recognition to horror in the span of seconds as he processed who the crippled prisoner was.

”That’s... that’s Marcus Thorne. From the Thorne Clan. He’s the one who...”

”Tried to kill my family,” Jack confirmed, his voice carrying the temperature of a winter grave that had been frozen for centuries.

”Yes. He tried to start a war. Thought the Kaiser family would be easy targets with my father deployed to the king.”

His golden eyes fixed on Marcus’s broken form for a short second.

He was cataloging every detail of the man’s suffering. ”I made him watch as I forced his men to slaughter each other. Made them choose between killing their brothers or dying themselves.”

Jack’s tone didn’t change.

Still cold, controlled, but carrying fury that had been honed to a needle point over months of patience and systematic planning.

”Then I kept him alive. Fed him just enough to survive. Let him watch as I grew stronger while he rotted in a cell, waiting for this moment.”

”What moment?” Rhys asked, though his voice suggested he already knew the answer wouldn’t be pleasant.

”The moment I show him what he accomplished by attacking my family,” Jack replied with cold precision that made each word feel like a surgical incision.

”When we return to Elysium, the Thorne Clan will be wiped off the map. Every trace of their existence will be erased as if they never were. Their lands will be claimed. Their wealth is redistributed. Their name will become a cautionary tale about what happens when you make enemies of the Kaiser Clan.”

He looked at Marcus Thorne, whose eyes showed recognition and absolute despair in equal measure.

The broken man understood every word despite his inability to speak, and the knowledge of his clan’s coming destruction was visible in the way his remaining strength seemed to drain away.

”But first,” Jack continued, his smile visible despite the cold fury underlying every syllable, ”he gets to watch what I’ve become. Gets to see the power he helped create by forcing me to treat threats seriously instead of showing mercy.”

His golden eyes gleamed. ”Then he gets to carry that knowledge back to whatever afterlife accepts the souls of men who make enemies of those they should have feared.”

Rhys swallowed hard, processing the casual declaration of genocide Jack had just delivered. The young tempest mage looked at Brutus, at Pho, at Slyph, searching for some reaction that matched his own unease at hearing an entire clan’s extinction discussed like routine business.

But the minotaur’s expression was neutral, accepting his master’s declaration without judgment.

Pho’s blank white eyes showed nothing, the demon having long since accepted that Jack Kaiser’s vengeance was absolute. Even Slyph pulsed with her green aura, offering no moral commentary.

Because they all understood something Rhys was still learning through harsh lessons.

Jack Kaiser didn’t make idle threats.

And when someone came for his family, when they threatened those under his protection, the consequences were absolute and inevitable as the sunrise.