I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 877: New Army

The air in the tomb tasted of scorched copper and pressurized elemental mana, vibrating with the raw, volatile power of the seven matrices Loryn had prepared.

Above them, the massive chains groaned.

Vaelok-Tor strained forward against his obsidian pillars, his mountain-sized horned head lowering as his burning golden eyes locked onto Jack. The ancient Celestial Archon took a deep, shuddering breath, the sonic rumble vibrating through the bedrock.

“You returned whole,” Vaelok-Tor rumbled, his stone-hewn face etched with profound disbelief. “You stepped into the Crucible of the dead Wardens, unarmored and alone, and your ego did not shatter. You carry no wounds upon your spirit.”

The Archon’s gaze narrowed, his ancient divine perception piercing straight into Jack’s soul.

He saw the Dark Sigil. He saw the dormant draconic covenant. But then, deep within the architecture of Jack’s meridians, Vaelok-Tor sensed the second soul.

Bound, subordinated, and woven into his core with absolute, flawless precision.

The Archon’s golden eyes widened.

“A Soul Graft…” the giant breathed, the white-gold links at his collarbones shivering. “You did not merely survive the dead. You claimed one of their masters. You dragged a former Warden out of Malakai’s cage and branded her to your will.”

“She had information I required,” Jack replied smoothly, walking past Loryn toward the edge of the seven bubbling vats. “And she knows how to run a fortress. I don’t leave useful tools to rot in the dirt.”

“And the Red Sigil?” Vaelok-Tor pressed, his voice vibrating with solemn weight. “Did the spirits yield the master matrix to ignite the flame within my buried sons?”

Jack stopped before the central vat, where the pulverized Magmaheart Lattices churned in a roiling, volcanic soup of liquid fire.

“The original parchment is not in the Spire archives,” Jack said, his heterochromic eyes reflecting the glowing red fluid. “It was stolen centuries ago by the Ember Clan. They took it to the volcanic caldera of Floor 30.”

Vaelok-Tor let out a deep, gravelly rumble of disgust. “The Ember Clan… Deserters and scavengers who groveled before the false thrones when the Father departed. If they hold the parchment, they will have spent centuries reinforcing their walls.”

“Then I will tear their walls down,” Jack said flatly. “Floor 30 is merely the next milestone. But I don’t intend to march onto their floor with an empty vanguard.”

Jack turned his gaze downward, looking directly through the polished white stone floor beneath his boots.

Miles below this chamber, resting in the petrified basalt faults of the planetary mantle, lay the thousands of primeval orc bodies.

The uncorrupted, eight-span juggernauts of Vaelok-Tor’s original firstborn line, preserved in volcanic glass for ten of thousand years, waiting for a master with the blood and the will to awaken them.

“The complete Red Sigil is required for full elemental ignition,” Jack said, withdrawing Sarin’s First Tome from his coat. The Book of Origin hummed against his palm, the newly duplicated page glowing with crimson and gold celestial script. “But the Book of Origin provides the foundational chassis. We do not need the full fire master-matrix to begin the forging. We have the demon blood. We have the seven elemental matrices. And we have the blood of the Creator.”

Jack opened his right palm.

A sharp, silver-black line of dark mana sliced across his skin. Jack let his own thick, luminous blood drip directly into the bubbling cauldrons.

HISS!

The reaction was instantaneous.

The seven vats ignited simultaneously. Blinding pillars of elemental fire, lightning, and light shot fifty paces into the air, illuminating every corner of the vast tomb in an incandescent tempest of creation.

The alchemical brews turned colors vibrating with a frequency so dense that the white stone floor began to fracture beneath their weight.

“Loryn,” Jack commanded, his voice cold and absolute over the roaring elemental storm. “Break the seals. Flood the strata.”

“With pleasure, My Lord,” Loryn replied, his skeletal hands gripping the massive release levers carved into the stone platforms.

With a single, violent pull, Loryn wrenched the levers down.

The bottoms of the seven stone vats fell away.

Hundreds of thousands of gallons of boiling, matrix-infused demon blood, saturated with the pure essence of Sarin, poured into the deep fissures beneath the floor, plunging in cascading, luminous waterfalls straight into the lightless catacombs below.

The world stopped.

For five seconds, there was only the sound of distant, echoing steam deep within the earth.

Then, the mountain woke up.

THUMP.

A single, cataclysmic heartbeat tore through the continental bedrock.

THUMP.

THUMP.

The white-stone vault shuddered violently, dust and petrified minerals raining from the vaulted ceiling. Vaelok-Tor threw his head back, his ancient golden eyes blazing with savage, vindicated fury as a sound began to rise from the deep fissures.

A sound that had not echoed across the realm in ten thousand years.

It was the synchronized, roaring war-cry of thousands of primeval throats, rattling the foundations of the world as the firstborn horde awakened from the dark.

Jack stood at the edge of the chasm, the gale-force heat whipping his dark coat around his shoulders, his heterochromic eyes burning with unyielding, predatory ambition.

The stone floor did not merely crack; it parted along ancient, geometric fault lines carved when the chamber was first laid down.

Steam vented in violent, pressurized plumes from the freshly blasted shafts. The smell of burning iron and primordial blood filled the vaulted ceiling, choking out the cold, stagnant dust that had settled over centuries.

Jack stepped forward, his boots coming to rest on the sheared edge of the main shaft.

Deep within the dark abyss, miles beneath the white stone, shadows shifted.

The waterfalls of boiling alchemical blood and crushed elemental matrices had struck the dormant bedrock like lightning into dry brush.

Where there had once been only the frozen, petrified forms of Vaelok-Tor’s firstborn, there was now motion. Violent, mechanical, and horrifyingly coordinated.

Massive claws of obsidian-crusted bone dug into the sheer rock walls of the chimney.

The first juggernaut emerged from the dark.

He was nearly nine spans tall, his torso broad as a battering ram, corded with dense, dark muscle that looked carved from cooled volcanic slag.

The ancient bone-plates fused across his brow and shoulders glowed with thin, hairline fractures of crimson and silver light.

The unmistakable brand of Sarin’s blood fused with demonic catalyst. His hollow eye sockets ignited, flaring with sharp, burning amber flames that looked up through the shaft and locked directly onto Jack.

Behind him came another.

Then ten.

Then fifty.

The subterranean chimneys shuddered under the sheer weight of thousands of tons of living war-engines hauling themselves out of the earth.

They did not clamber like mindless beasts or shambling corpses. Their breathing sounded like the rhythmic bellows of a blast furnace.

[System Notice: The Primeval Vanguard]

[Vessel Integration: 100%]

[Lineage Claimed: The Firstborn of Vaelok-Tor]

[Units Awakening: 10,572]

Above the roaring vents, Vaelok-Tor’s chains screeched as the titan leaned forward as far as his bindings allowed. A feral, terrible sound tore from the Archon’s throat.

It was half laugh and half battle-cry.

“Look upon them, Successor,” Vaelok-Tor roared, the seismic resonance of his voice rattling the loose stone from the walls. “No clan oaths. No hollow surface honor. Only the original steel the Father forged before the cowards chained me to the dirt.”

Jack looked down into the sea of burning amber eyes rising through the fissures.

Below, eight thousand primeval warriors halted their climb simultaneously, dropping their massive fists against the rock walls in absolute, terrifying subjugation.