I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 846: [Ice Spark]

“I did not strike the rock with physical force. I did not waste my mana creating a massive lance of ice to throw through the air. I reached into the moisture already resting inside the target’s physical structure, concentrated my intent, and ignited the spark. When you master the Ice Spark, armor becomes irrelevant. Thick hides become useless. You do not cut the enemy’s body; you turn their own internal fluids into the weapon that tears them apart.”

Pho stepped closer, poking a heavy claw directly into the center of Rhys’s chest, right over his heart, the cold from the talon sinking deep into the boy’s sternum.

“You have water mana flowing through your meridians, Rhys. You have the foundation. Stop trying to hit them hard. Reach inside them, find their moisture, and snap your fingers.”

————

Rhys opened his eyes.

The memory dissolved, leaving him standing in the center of the Glacial Sanctuary on Floor Twenty-Two.

The Clan Leader of the Frost Demons was already in motion.

The massive titan lunged forward with explosive speed, his heavy dark-iron battleaxe raised overhead, wrapped in a raging vortex of blue ice mana that threatened to cleave the young prince and the permafrost beneath him in two.

“Perish, mortal!” the Clan Leader roared, the axe descending in a blinding arc of destruction.

Rhys did not raise his daggers to parry. He did not leap backward to evade the strike.

He took a single, fluid step forward, slipping cleanly beneath the descending arc of the massive axe.

His body moved with the silent, weightless grace of a falling leaf, his left hand coming off the hilt of his dagger and extending outward until his fingertips hovered three inches from the Clan Leader’s heavily armored left shoulder plate.

The Clan Leader sneered, shifting his weight to bring his massive elbow down to crush Rhys’s skull. “Your daggers cannot pierce my crystallized armor, boy!”

Rhys focused the entirety of his water mana, visualizing the dense, frozen moisture circulating through the demon’s internal mana meridians and shoulder joints.

He stripped away its fluid warmth, compressing its molecular density until it reached the absolute, critical threshold of flash-freezing pressure.

Rhys snapped his fingers.

A sharp, microscopic detonation cracked from beneath the Clan Leader’s heavy left shoulder plate.

Deep within the joint, where the demon’s dense muscle tissue connected to the bone, an infinitesimal spark of super-compressed ice mana ignited.

The moisture inside the Clan Leader’s left shoulder joint flash-froze, expanding with millions of pounds of internal hydraulic pressure.

The dense muscle fibers ruptured, the thick bone shattered into thousands of needle-sharp shards, and the heavy crystallized ice armor covering the shoulder fractured into fine, powdery dust from the inside out.

Before the Clan Leader could even register the agony, Rhys shifted his footing, his right hand snapping forward to hover over the demon’s right shoulder.

A second sharp snap cracked through the air.

With a dual burst of pulverized bone and freezing blue blood, both of the Clan Leader’s massive arms tore completely free from his torso.

The heavy dark-iron battleaxe crashed into the permafrost with a deafening clang, still clutched in the dead, severed fingers of his right hand.

The Clan Leader let out an ear-splitting shriek of agony.

The catastrophic internal pressure of the twin detonations rippled through his entire upper body.

The crystallized ice armor covering his chest and back fractured along every seam, crumbling into a useless pile of blue rubble that cascaded onto the permafrost.

The colossal titan fell to his knees, his torso swaying, his severed shoulder sockets weeping streams of dark azure blood that froze instantly as they touched the ice.

The entire Glacial Sanctuary went dead, horrifyingly silent.

The dozens of Frost Demon sentinels watching from the perimeter stood paralyzed, their jaws slack, their amber eyes wide with catatonic terror.

They did not just see their Clan Leader defeated; they had witnessed the signature art of their ancient Warlord executed with flawless, surgical perfection by a mortal boy.

Rhys did not hesitate.

Channeling a thread of emerald lightning through his right dagger, Rhys stepped behind the kneeling titan. With a single, clean horizontal slash, the lightning-infused blade sheared through the exposed, armorless neck.

The Clan Leader’s massive horned head severed cleanly from his shoulders, rolling across the permafrost and coming to a rest at Rhys’s boots.

Rhys reached down, driving his left hand into the shattered chest cavity to pull out the fist-sized, dark azure Dread-rank core that pulsed with dense, rhythmic ice mana.

He stored the head and the core neatly inside his spatial ring, his breathing steady, his heart rate calm.

He turned to face the surrounding sentinels.

The moment Rhys looked up, every single Frost Demon in the courtyard dropped simultaneously to both knees.

They did not raise their weapons.

They did not utter a single challenge.

They slammed their four-meter glaives flat against the permafrost, pressing their horned foreheads to the frozen stone in desperate submission, their bodies shaking with the same terror their ancestors had felt when Pho had conquered their realm.

“Where is the tree?” Rhys demanded, his voice cutting through the freezing silence.

The lead scarred sentinel scrambled forward on his knees, his forehead scraping against the ice as he pointed a trembling claw toward an elevated stone alcove nestled beneath the high permafrost archway at the rear of the sanctuary.

“In the alcove, Master,” the sentinel rasped, his voice cracking with desperation. “It rests within the sacred vessel. It has not been harmed. Take it. Take whatever you desire, emissary of the Warlord.”

Rhys walked past the kneeling sentinels, his boots crunching against the frost as Mira followed closely behind, the circle of dark crimson fire wisps continuing to spin in effortless harmony around them.

Rhys ascended the short flight of ice-carved steps leading to the elevated alcove.

Resting upon a pedestal of carved dark granite was an ornate, heavy pot forged from volcanic obsidian, designed to insulate whatever was planted within from the Spire’s ambient freezing temperatures.

Growing within the pot was the God’s Blood Tree.

The tree stood barely three feet tall, its twisted, silver-white trunk smooth as polished marble.

Embedded within its slender branches were three small, ruby nodules that wept tiny beads of glowing, sacred sap, a substance known for its powerful regenerative properties.

Because the tree was securely planted in its insulated obsidian vessel rather than rooted in the hostile permafrost, Rhys did not need to perform a dangerous, delicate excavation of its root system.

Rhys placed his hands firmly around the sides of the obsidian pot, checking the vessel’s structural integrity before lifting it smoothly from the pedestal.

With a slight shift of his mana, he stored the entire pot and the God’s Blood Tree cleanly inside his spatial ring alongside his harvested beast trophies.

Rhys turned on his heel, stepping down the ice stairs to stand before the silent, kneeling army of Frost Demons.

“Floor Twenty-Two is cleared,” Rhys said.

He looked over at Mira, whose vacant amber eyes met his with unblinking obedience.

“We have all required objectives,” Rhys said, looking toward the northern horizon where the spatial beacon to the lower transit network pulsed with faint purple light. “Let’s pay Theo a visit now.”

Rhys turned his back on the conquered sanctuary, his boots cutting a clean path through the permafrost as Mira fell into position at his shoulder, the two figures advancing directly into the storm toward the portal that was summoned to transport them to their new destination.