Read Novel Full Chapter 870: Red Soul Key
Chapter 870: Red Soul Key
The divine pressure radiating from the obsidian basin made the ancient air inside the vault hum like an overdrawn bowstring.
Vaelok-Tor’s colossal horned head strained forward, the white-gold celestial chains groaning in protest as they bit deeper into his collarbones and collar-struts.
His burning golden eyes, wide as siege shields, remained locked onto the glowing crimson fluid in Loryn’s grasp.
He had lived since the dawn of the world, witnessed the shaping of the continents, and endured eons of dark subjugation, yet his stone-hewn face held only sheer, unadulterated disbelief.
“That radiance…” the Archon rasped, the syllables vibrating through the bedrock like rolling thunder. “The marrow of the Creator… How does a mortal walk with the uncorrupted draught of His veins?”
Jack didn’t answer. He stepped toward Loryn, taking the heavy obsidian basin into his right hand.
The liquid was viscous, thick as molten ruby, and pulsing with a rhythmic, hypnotic frequency that matched the silver streaks in his soul meridians.
The heat radiating off the surface was intense enough to incinerate mortal flesh, but to Jack, it felt like an anchor reaching out for its vessel.
He raised the rim of the basin to his lips and drank.
The liquid didn’t taste of iron or copper. It tasted of pure, primordial fire, cold deathfrost, and the absolute weight of ancient stars. The moment the draught crossed his throat, it didn’t travel through his stomach; it detonated directly into his soul core.
A violent, blinding flare of crimson and silver light tore through Jack’s skin.
His veins burned like incandescent wire, the silver streaks running through his meridians flaring so bright they shone straight through his dark wool coat.
His soul expanded with concussive, terrifying force, driving the air from his lungs as the ancient essence bonded directly with his marrow.
A succession of pale-blue system prompts flooded his vision, the text glowing with razor-sharp clarity against the blinding light.
[Target Consumed: Essence of Sarin (God’s Blood Tree Refinement)]
[Integration Progress: 5 / 21 God’s Blood Trees Consumed]
[Total Divine Blood Purity: 23.81%]
[The Bloodline of the Creator Awakens Latent Memory Strands…]
[System Insight Acquired: Technique of Sarin (Incomplete)]
[Elements Detected: Dark + Fire]
[Hint: Primordial Combustion of the Void. When the absolute cold of nothingness meets the undying flame of creation, all matter unravels at its fundamental source.]
[System Insight Acquired: Technique of Sarin (Incomplete)]
[Elements Detected: Water + Wind]
[Hint: The Weeping Gale. A planetary compression technique capable of drowning continents beneath atmospheric pressure.]
Jack exhaled slowly.
A plume of pale silver and red mist vented from his lips, dissipating into the ancient air of the vault.
The searing heat in his core settled into a deep, hum-like resonance, vibrating through his bones with cold, unyielding authority. The 23.81% purity sat within him like an immovable mountain, grounding his mana in a way no standard cultivation ever could.
Vaelok-Tor watched the light recede beneath Jack’s pale skin, his colossal jaw tight with profound, terrifying reverence.
“Twenty-three percent…” the Archon whispered, reading the divine resonance settling in Jack’s chest. “You are not merely drinking His essence. You are consuming the World-Trees… You are swallowing the pillars that anchor this reality.”
Jack lowered the empty obsidian bowl, handing it back to Loryn without glancing at the titan. “A throne is not reclaimed with empty hands, Archon. Purity is merely the foundation. Now comes the harvest.”
The artifact hummed with dark hunger, its hollow eye sockets drinking in the vault’s ambient light. Jack raised the mask before him, his heterochromic eyes glowing with absolute, chilling command as he accessed the legion interface of the Soul Warden.
[Active Bound Units: 6,247 Tidefang Demons]
[Initiate Mass Soul Sacrifice?]
[Target: The Warden’s Mask]
[YES] or [NO]
“Sacrifice them all,” Jack commanded flatly.
[Confirmation Received.]
[Commencing Mass Extraction…]
Jack felt his chest, and his flesh parted.
A circular void tore open in the center of his chest.
A dark, yawning abyss that spiraled directly into the furnace of his inner soul core. From within the hole, an immense gravitational suction screamed to life, tearing through the spiritual fabric of the physical realm.
Six thousand two hundred and forty-seven spiritual silhouettes tore through the void. The Tidefang Demons manifested not in physical flesh, but as screeching, ethereal phantoms of deep-sea horror.
Their forms, barbed dorsal fins, and needle-toothed maws thrashed desperately against the crushing draw.
They did not die in blood. They were drawn in a roaring vortex straight into the open hole in Jack’s chest.
The dark mana of his core stripped away their consciousness, their bestial identities, and their crude forms, grinding the six thousand souls down into raw, concentrated spiritual fuel.
The swirling vortex turned from deep violet to a dense, blinding black, the sheer mass of compressed spiritual energy howling like a hurricane inside the white stone vault as it was swallowed into his center.
Vaelok-Tor’s golden eyes widened as he watched thousands of abyssal entities vanish directly into the void in Jack’s chest without a shred of hesitation. “To consume your own legions… You hold no sentimentality for the tools you wield.”
“A tool that has outlived its purpose is dead weight,” Jack replied, his voice unmoved by the dying shrieks of six thousand demons. “They were fodder. They will become the foundation for something far deadlier.”
The swirling spiritual current vanished into his core, and the hole in Jack’s chest sealed shut with a concussive snap.
[Mass Sacrifice Complete.]
[6,247 Tidefang Demons Consumed.]
[Soul Capacity Refined & Expanded.]
[Troop Allocation Ceiling Increased: +6,200]
[Current Troop Allocation: 5,378 / 31,200]
Thirty-one thousand two hundred.
The ceiling had shattered wide open. Jack lowered his hand. His active forces were down to five thousand three hundred and seventy-eight elite units, but the void waiting to be filled was vast enough to house an entire legion.
Jack turned his head slightly toward Loryn. “Bring them in. We prepare the horde.”
“At once, my Lord,” Loryn bowed, his dark eyes glittering.
He raised her slender hands, carving three intricate runes into the empty air before him.
Spatial mana flared across the white stone floor as three massive, swirling rift-gates tore open in the center of the divine tomb.
The violet portals hummed with the familiar, heavy gravity of the Spire, connecting the lightless sanctuary of the Archon directly to the logistics vaults of Floor 25.
Through the portals stepped dozens of towering, obsidian-skinned lesser demons.
They moved with rigid, mechanical discipline, bearing heavy iron harnesses and rolling massive, iron-banded casks through the thresholds.
The barrels were painted in stark, contrasting colors: deep, oxidized crimson and pitch-black iron.
THUD.
THUD.
THUD.
The casks were unloaded in precise, orderly rows across the pristine white stone, cracking the floor under their immense weight.
The crimson barrels sloshed heavily with high-grade, filtered demon blood harvested from the Spire; the black barrels held concentrated Orc blood.
Jack walked between the rows of barrels, his focus shifting to his dimensional storage.
With a single sweep of his hand, he opened the vaults of his inventory.
Piles of raw, blinding elemental matrices rained down onto the stone with musical, ringing clatter. The air in the vault instantly saturated with conflicting, overwhelming elemental mana as hundreds of masterwork crystals tumbled into organized heaps:
The dark, light-absorbing shards of Nightglass Cores.
The blazing, molten radiance of Magmaheart Lattices.
The crackling, high-frequency blue sparks of Boltweave Spire crystals.
The deep, oceanic luminescence of Tideglass Crest crystals.
The dense, earth-anchoring weight of Earthshard Halo crystals.
The whispering, translucent emerald currents of Galeweave Heart crystals.
And the pristine, prism-like divine fractures of Radiant Vein Prism crystals.
The sheer concentration of raw, unrefined power turned the divine tomb of the Archon into a roaring, industrial nexus of war.
Loryn immediately drew a long, curved ceremonial dagger from his sleeve, stepping toward the barrels and beginning to crack the heavy iron seals.
He poured the thick demon blood into massive stone vats, mixing in the black alchemical binders with fluid, rhythmic precision, preparing the raw base concoction that would receive the seven matrices.
Vaelok-Tor looked down from his groaning chains upon the mountains of elemental matrices, the rivers of demon blood, and the young human standing at the center of the storm.
“You possess the formula,” the Archon rumbled, his voice thick with grim anticipation. “The matrices are whole. The blood is gathered. But how do you intend to command the past, Successor?”
Jack reached into his inner coat pocket.
He didn’t pull out the Book of Origin, nor did he draw a blade.
Between his pale fingers rested an intricate, non-terrestrial key. It was forged from a shifting, iridescent metal that seemed to exist across multiple dimensions simultaneously, its surface covered in microscopic, weeping eye-glyphs and interlocking mechanical gears that turned on their own without friction.
The moment the key caught the light, the air inside the chamber turned freezing cold.
Vaelok-Tor’s massive frame shuddered violently. The white-gold chains screeched as the Archon pulled back, his golden eyes blowing wide with absolute, primal recognition.
“That… that shape,” Vaelok-Tor gasped, the stone plates on his brow cracking under the strain of his revulsion. “The gears of the Unmaker… A Soul Key forged by the hand of Malakai!”