I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 823: Groveling

The freezing plasma that had been gathering in his throat collapsed into a pathetic puff of harmless gray mist.

For sixty seconds, every single infernal pathway, every drop of demonic essence, and every spell was rendered useless.

The Blue Demon let out a muffled, raspy groan of pure, unadulterated shock.

His single eye widened in paralyzing horror as he realized that the foundational power he had cultivated for a thousand years in the deep abyss had been severed by a single thought from a human.

Jack stepped onto the first marble tier of the royal dais, stopping two paces from the giant’s battered, bleeding head.

[Sovereign’s Command]

Jack’s heterochromic eyes locked onto the Blue Demon’s single, terrified iris. The ancient, crushing weight of the Soul Warden.

The spiritual gravity of an entity that commanded the eternal legions of the Spire bore down directly onto the demon’s consciousness like a mountain of lead.

Jack parted his lips.

“Truth.”

The single word did not echo with loud volume, yet it struck the chamber with the force of an unbending cosmic law.

The Blue Demon’s spirit buckled instantly.

The invisible chains of the Sovereign’s Command sank into his mind, bypassing his pride and loyalties, and stripping him entirely of the physiological capability to resist or deceive.

His massive, indigo jaw moved involuntarily, his vocal cords vibrating with absolute, compelled submission.

Jack looked down at the helpless giant.

“Who was your primary collaborator on the surface for the production, harvesting, and distribution of the drug Bloodrush within the Kingdom of Caeloria?” Jack asked, his voice ringing through the silent hall with terrifying clarity.

The Blue Demon’s neck muscles bulged. His teeth clicked together in a desperate, futile attempt to bite his own tongue off to prevent the confession.

It was completely useless against the Sovereign’s Command.

His throat relaxed, his lips parted, and a deep, gravelly voice thick with the wet rattle of abyssal blood echoed off the marble walls for everyone to hear:

“Caspian Alyon.”

The name dropped into the hall like an executioner’s axe.

“The pale councilor,” the Blue Demon continued, the compelled truth pouring from his lips in a steady, unbroken stream. “He provided the private transport wagons stamped with the royal exemption seals from the western gates.

He delivered four hundred captured orcs from the Krogar border skirmishes and two hundred Vileblood elves from the capital’s lower wards every fortnight directly to the subterranean processing vats.”

The demon’s single eye trembled, unable to stop the flow of words.

“He received sixty percent of the refined liquid Bloodrush to distribute through the military academies and the border garrisons,” the demon confessed.

“He utilized the manufactured panic of the Krogar border conflicts to justify increased troop movements, masking the transport of living cattle into our refinery, and funneled the vast gold profits directly into private holdings managed under the Council’s discretionary budget.”

The silence that followed in the grand chamber was deafening.

Down on the floor, pressed against the stone balustrade, Caspian Alyon’s entire body went rigid.

The color drained from his face until his skin looked like parchment.

His jaw hung slack, his eyes wide and unblinking, filled with the horrifying, suffocating realization that every secret, manifest, and clandestine meeting he had conducted in the dark for the past two years had just been laid bare before his King, his Queen, and the entire royal court.

“N-no…” Caspian whimpered, his voice cracking into a high, shrill shriek as he dropped flat onto his stomach, dragging himself across the blood-slick floor toward the royal dais.

“No! It’s a lie! It’s a demonic trick! Your Majesty! Maelor! You cannot believe the words of an infernal beast!”

King Maelor stepped down from the high throne.

His movements were slow, each step carrying the terrifying, crushing weight of a five-hundred-year-old sovereign whose patience had finally reached its absolute end.

He walked to the edge of the dais, looking down at the groveling, sobbing councilor with eyes that burned with cold, unyielding fury.

“A demonic trick, Caspian?” Maelor’s voice dropped into a low, resonant rumble that shook the glass in the high windows.

“A trick that matches the shipping manifests retrieved from the western gates? A trick that explains why hundreds of our people vanished without a trace from the lower wards while your personal guard patrolled the streets?”

“It was for the realm!” Caspian screamed, completely breaking down, clawing at the hem of Maelor’s royal mantle with trembling, bloody fingers.

“Maelor, listen to me! The Krogar border was pressing! The orc clans were mobilizing their shamans! We needed stronger soldiers! We needed warriors who could ignore pain and shatter their lines! The Bloodrush was the only way to elevate our common infantry to match the physical brute strength of the western hordes! I did it to save Caeloria!”

“You did it to enrich yourself,” Jack Kaiser’s voice cut through Caspian’s desperate wailing like a cold steel blade.

Jack stepped to the base of the dais, looking down at the groveling councilor with pure, unmitigated disgust.

“You manufactured the border conflict,” Jack said, his heterochromic eyes pinning Caspian to the stone.

“You sent rogue strike teams into Krogar territory to slaughter their outer villages, provoking their chieftains into retaliatory raids.

You created the very war you claimed you were trying to prevent, all so you had an excuse to capture their scouts, harvest their blood, and turn your own subjects into addicted, expendable thralls.”

Queen Morvana sat paralyzed on her throne, her golden eyes darting between Caspian’s pathetic, groveling form and the severed corpses of her Council.

The entire foundation of their political power had just been exposed as a fabricated, blood-drenched business venture.

The threat of foreign invasion that she and Sariel had used for decades to keep Maelor from reforming the laws.

Maelor looked down at Caspian, then slowly lifted his gaze to meet Morvana’s pale, sweat-slicked face.

“For three hundred years,” Maelor spoke, his voice carrying the absolute, immutable finality of a sovereign passing judgment, “this Council sat in judgment of the Vilebloods. You called them mongrels. You called them stains upon our ancient lineage. You barred them from the Academy, forced them into the slums, and treated them as subhuman cattle.”

The King’s hand clenched into an iron fist at his side.

“Yet here lies the truth,” Maelor decreed, his voice echoing out through the shattered chamber doors, reverberating through the marble corridors of the palace. “The pureblood nobility of Caeloria was not defending the realm. You were farming your own people to line your pockets with demonic gold.”

Caspian buried his face in the blood-stained stone, weeping hysterically, his fingers digging into the cracks of the floor as the weight of his treason crushed what little remained of his sanity.

The Council of Eleven was no more.

Nine lay dead from the poison.

One lay headless upon his desk.

And the last was groveling in the blood of his co-conspirators, fully exposed before the King.

Jack Kaiser looked upon the ruined court of Caeloria.

“I still believe there is more information, King Maelor,” Jack said with a smirk. “Demon, tell me the truth: was Caspian the only one you had dealings with? Surely, this wretched elf could not be the mastermind behind everything?”