I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 869: That is… His blood…[Golden Ticket Chapter Bonus]

He turned around and left the chamber, walking back to where he killed the Ember-Weaver and looked up.

Jack ascended the lightless vertical shaft with effortless, fluid momentum.

Using [Gravity Flux: Reverse], he neutralized his body’s weight, drifting upward through the narrow obsidian chimney like a rising phantom, bypassing the molten ledges and collapsed magma shelves before using [Abyssal Steps] to fold space and cross the final volcanic threshold.

He breached the veil of the waterfall, stepping back onto the emerald clover of Baelok’s subterranean oasis.

The contrast was jarring. The suffocating, divine pressure of the Archon’s tomb and the blistering fury of the magma caldera died instantly, replaced by the grove’s cool, tranquil breeze. Millions of pale cyan spores glowed softly from the vaulted ceiling, their twilight luminescence rippling across the crystal-clear river.

At the edge of the knoll, Ren Ryzard was leaning lazily against an ironwood pillar, his arms crossed over his chest, his katana resting flush in its scabbard.

Beside him, standing rigid by the massive table of polished river-granite, was Baelok.

The exiled orc had not moved. His twin rusted sickles still lay upon the stone, his crimson-stained arms locked tight over his scarred chest. When the water parted and Jack stepped onto the grass, Baelok’s wild amber eyes snapped toward him, searching his clothes for ash burns, melted wool, or wounds.

Jack’s dark coat was pristine. His breathing was unhurried. Not a single drop of sweat marked his brow.

“You took your time,” Ren remarked dryly, a faint smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. “I was beginning to think I’d have to go down there and fish your boots out of the lava.”

“The terrain was occupied,” Jack replied smoothly.

He walked past Ren, stopping directly before the granite table where Baelok towered over him.

The exile stared at Jack with a mixture of disbelief and mounting dread. For twenty years, the rhythmic, concussive tremors of the Ash-Behemoth had vibrated through the bedrock of his garden like an unyielding heartbeat.

Right now, the mountain was completely dead.

“You didn’t run,” Baelok rasped, his scarred jaw tight, his voice thick with gravel. “The tremors stopped ten minutes ago. How did you escape it?”

Jack didn’t answer with words.

He reached into his pocket and produced the heavy, fist-sized crystalline core of the Ember-Weaver.

SLAM.

The crystalline heart hit the polished granite with a heavy, concussive thud, cracking the edge of the stone.

It was still beating. Dark, pulsing veins of compressed crimson and black elemental mana throbbed beneath its glassy surface, radiating an intense, undying heat that made the river reeds on the table curl and smoke.

Baelok froze.

The exiled assassin looked down at the beating core, his amber eyes blowing wide with sheer, unadulterated shock.

His scarred, crimson-stained hands began to tremble, not with fear, but with the sudden, violent realization that the immortal nightmare that had kept him trapped in this subterranean cage for twenty years had been butchered like a common hound.

“The… the heart,” Baelok whispered, his voice cracking. “The core of the Behemoth. You tore it out.”

“Thirty minutes,” Jack said, his voice cold and absolute. “The beast is dead. And your debt is paid.”

Jack stepped closer, his heterochromic eyes locking onto the pariah with unyielding dominance.

“I didn’t come down here to negotiate with an exile, Baelok. I came to claim a weapon. Your sickles belong to me. Your knowledge belongs to me. You will forge my legion into killers who know how to slit throats in the dark, and you will teach me everything you know about war without honor.”

Baelok stared at the smoking heart on the table, then looked up at Jack. The cynical mockery, the feral arrogance, and the bitter isolation of twenty years stripped away completely, replaced by the profound submission of an apex predator recognizing an entity far more terrifying than itself.

Baelok reached down, took his twin sickles from the table, and hooked them firmly into the drake-hide harness at his waist.

“The Red Hand belongs to you, Jack Kaiser,” Baelok growled, dropping to one knee upon the soft green clover. “Lead the way to your war.”

“We aren’t walking back through Krogar’s garrison,” Jack said flatly. “I have no interest in trading words with your brothers.”

Jack raised his right hand.

Dark mana flared violently around his fingers, tearing a jagged, vertical fissure in the fabric of physical space. The air shrieked as a massive, swirling portal of deep void-purple and starlight expanded over the grass, revealing the destination beyond.

Baelok’s eyes narrowed as he looked through the gate.

Beyond the threshold lay no surface fortress, no military barracks, and no mortal kingdom. It was an expansive, vibrant realm.

A lush landscape crowned by a towering, distant volcano, framed by ancient stone monuments carved with enigmatic poems dedicated to the elemental demons: Earth, Water, Wind, Fire, Dark, and Light.

Floor 25 of the Tartarus Spire.

“Step through,” Jack commanded. “Ren, take him to the encampment. Settle him in.”

Ren nodded once, gesturing toward the swirling gate with his chin. “After you, butcher. Come see the army you need to train.”

Baelok rose to his feet, casting a single, final glance at the quiet garden that had sheltered him for two decades. Without another word, the exiled assassin stepped over the threshold, his silhouette vanishing into the Spire, followed immediately by Ren Ryzard.

The portal snapped shut, leaving Jack standing alone in the quiet subterranean grove.

Jack didn’t follow them.

Instead, he turned toward the shadows beneath the weeping willow, his voice calm and deliberate. “Loryn.”

From the deepest shadow behind the tree, space rippled. Loryn materialized from the dark, his posture immaculate.

In his hands, held with absolute, reverent care, was a wide, ceremonial vessel forged of blackened obsidian.

Resting within the basin was a thick, viscous liquid that pulsed with an ethereal, blinding crimson light.

So concentrated, so pure, that the sheer ambient pressure radiating from the bowl caused the green clover beneath his boots to wither and turn to ash.

It was a refined, overwhelming draught of pure, concentrated divine blood.

“It is prepared, Soul Warden,” Loryn said softly, bowing his head.

Jack touched the rim of the vessel, feeling the violent, ancient resonance humming against his fingertips.

With a single gesture of his hand, Jack tore open another localized void rift, stepping straight through the space to return to the lightless, white-stone vault miles below.

He materialized directly before the chained titan.

Vaelok-Tor, who had closed his golden eyes to resume his eternal, quiet vigil, snapped his head up as the space fractured.

The Archon opened his mouth to question why the Successor had returned so soon, but the words died in his throat.

The titan’s burning golden eyes locked onto the obsidian bowl held in Loryn’s hands. He sensed the impossible, terrifying concentration of the luminous red fluid, feeling the primordial marrow of creation vibrating from the liquid.

Vaelok-Tor’s jaw went slack, the massive white-gold chains shivering as the ancient Archon stared in paralyzing, absolute shock.

“That…” the Archon gasped, his voice shaking with sheer terror. “That is… His blood. How… how do you possess this purity?!”