I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 564: [-979,776 HP]

His entire demonic form thrummed with accumulated power, every movement sending small electrical discharges across his scales.

The sensation was intoxicating.

He felt this much energy contained within his enhanced physiology, knowing he could release it all in a single devastating attack.

Jack’s left hand extended, more lightning gathering in his palm as he shaped it into physical form.

Lightning arced from his body as it struck multiple demons, building stacks for the skill he was about to use.

Lightning exploded off of his body, stacking each buff he had to practicing the damage he was about to inflicted on this poor demon.

The electricity coalesced into a bolt four feet long, crackling with the combined power of his base magic stat, his demonic transformation’s enhancement, the Overcharge stacks waiting to be released, and the Branded mark’s triple damage multiplier.

His mind ran through the cascade one final time, confirming that the sequence was correct and that all multipliers would apply simultaneously.

The numbers should be astronomical.

Far beyond anything he’d achieved in human form, far beyond what the Council members had demonstrated, potentially approaching levels that would let him fight entities operating on scales he’d previously thought impossible.

He threw the lightning bolt.

The projectile crossed the distance to the branded demon instantaneously, electricity moving too fast for normal perception to track. It struck the glowing mark on the creature’s chest with precision, eliminating any possibility of missing, despite the technique’s overwhelming power.

Then every accumulated multiplier triggered simultaneously.

The explosion was catastrophic, light and sound combining into a sensory assault that would have overwhelmed normal awareness.

The courtyard’s stone cracked and shattered, debris launched outward in an expanding ring that forced other demons to dive for cover or risk being caught in the blast radius.

But Jack’s blood-red eyes tracked only the damage number that appeared in his vision, the System calculating total injury with clinical precision that made the technique’s effectiveness absolutely clear.

[-979,776 HP]

The demon didn’t even have time to scream.

Its body ceased to exist, vaporized so completely by the accumulated damage that not even ash remained.

One moment it had been standing, frozen in obedience to its master’s command; the next, it was gone, erased from reality by an attack that dealt nearly one million damage in a single strike.

Jack stood motionless, staring at the space where his test subject had been, his enhanced mind struggling to process what he’d just accomplished.

Nine hundred seventy-nine thousand, seven hundred seventy-six damage.

In a singular, unprovoked assault, he emerged unscathed, incurring no personal harm or significant financial burden, unlike the devastating Elemental Necrosis that almost cost him his arm.

Just clean, overwhelming destruction that eliminated the target so thoroughly that recovery was impossible.

His tactical assessment kicked in immediately, analyzing what the numbers meant in practical terms.

Most enemies he’d fought, even Disaster-class demons and enhanced warriors operating far above normal human capability, had health pools ranging from two hundred thousand to five hundred thousand.

Mira had possessed two hundred fifty thousand HP, and he’d still eliminated her with Sarin’s Judgment despite not having all these additional multipliers active.

But this... this was different.

This wasn’t a legendary technique requiring precise elemental fusion and a divine framework to execute properly.

This was just a cascade of his normal abilities, triggered in sequence, combining multipliers that the System allowed to stack without apparent limit.

Branded’s triple damage.

Overcharge’s accumulated stacks.

Faith Stacks.

Thunder Mantle.

Demonic Mastery.

Demonic Transformation’s doubled output.

His SS-rank talent multipliers.

All of it combined into a single attack that could potentially one-shot most enemies he was likely to encounter.

And he’d felt no strain executing it.

No exhaustion, no mana depletion warning, no sense that he’d pushed his capabilities to their limit.

His demonic form had handled the power output effortlessly.

Jack’s lips curved into a grin that would have looked manic on a human face but appeared absolutely demonic on his current features.

His fangs gleamed in the courtyard’s light, his blood-red eyes blazed with satisfaction and dark excitement, and his tail swayed behind him like a happy puppy.

This was power.

Real, undeniable, overwhelming power that transcended what any normal Soul Warden should possess at his level.

The other demons in the courtyard remained frozen, their supernatural awareness recognizing their master’s satisfaction and the casual ease with which he’d just vaporized one of their number.

None of them moved, none of them spoke, they just waited with perfect discipline for whatever would come next.

Jack’s grin widened further, his mind already racing through possibilities.

If he could deal nearly one million damage with basic ability cascade, what would happen when he added Sarin’s Judgment to the sequence? What destruction could he achieve with legendary technique amplified by all these multipliers, executed in demonic form with no concern for backlash?

What would the other twelve legendary skills do once he unlocked them through consuming more God’s Blood?

The hunt for the remaining twenty trees suddenly felt less like a distant goal and more like an immediate priority.

Each tree would bring him closer to complete mastery of Sarin’s techniques, would unlock hints about legendary abilities that had once reshaped reality itself.

And if consuming just one tree had elevated him to this level, then what would consuming all twenty-one trees accomplish?

’I need to find them,’ Jack thought, his mind already planning the search despite knowing it would require navigating tower politics and power structures he’d only begun to understand.

’Every tree, every percentage point of Sarin’s blood, every hint about the locked skills. Whatever it takes.’

His blood-red eyes tracked across the courtyard, noting how the bound demons maintained their frozen positions, how the castle’s damaged structure bore evidence of the violence of his transformation, how reality itself seemed to recognize what he’d become and respond with appropriate wariness.

The Obsidian Monarch.

Sarin’s Successor.

A demon wearing a human soul, or perhaps a human wearing a demon’s flesh.

The distinction was becoming less clear with each passing moment, each new revelation about what he was becoming.

But whatever he was, whatever cosmic role was being mapped onto his future, whether he chose it or not, one thing was certain:

He was going to be strong enough to face it.

Strong enough to demand answers rather than accepting half-truths.

Strong enough that gods would think twice before trying to manipulate him toward destinies he didn’t understand.

Strong enough to hunt down twenty God’s Blood trees and claim power that had once made Titans tremble.

The throne room could wait for repairs. The demons could resume their work. The tower’s politics and the Council’s inevitable response to Mira and Warren’s elimination could all wait.

Right now, in this moment, Jack enjoyed the rush of understanding exactly how powerful he’d become and the intoxicating knowledge that this was just the beginning of what he could achieve.

The grin on his demonic face widened impossibly further, fangs gleaming as dark laughter bubbled up from his transformed vocal cords.

While not overtly angry, there was a discernible tension, and the distinction between ambition and obsession was increasingly blurred.

Power like this could reshape the tower.