I Died and Became a Noble's Heir-Chapter 294: [Welcome back, Master]
Marcus Thorne stood in the center of fifteen thousand men who’d stopped breathing normally.
The Emperor-class dragon behind Jack Kaiser radiated heat that made sweat pour down their faces despite the dome’s chill.
Magma dripped from scales in slow, steady drops that hissed when they hit the ice.
Silence stretched.
Broken only by the Starfell emissary’s whimpering as he cradled the stumps where his hands used to be.
Then a captain in Marcus’s front ranks straightened. His jaw set. Hand tightening on his sword until the leather creaked.
"FUCK THIS!" He raised his blade high. "He’s one man! One demon! Rush him together and..."
"FOR GLORY!" Another captain joined the cry.
"FOR COIN!"
The spell broke. Perhaps two hundred mercenaries surged forward, desperation overriding their fear.
Boots thundering against the ice. Weapons raised. Voices roaring battle cries that echoed off the crystalline walls.
They made it perhaps thirty feet.
Emberion’s mouth cracked open.
The wave of superheated air hit the charging mercenaries like a freight train.
Steel flowed like water, copper turning liquid, leather igniting so fast it didn’t even have time to smoke. The men inside their armor had it worse.
Flesh bubbled. Skin sloughed off in sheets. Eyes boiled in their sockets, bursting with wet pops that were somehow audible despite the screaming. Bones showed through for just a moment before they too began to char.
The smell hit next. Burning meat mixed with molten metal. Sweet and acrid, the smell made some men start to puke.
Twenty-three men reduced to smoking, twisted shapes on the ground. Some were still twitching. All of them were unrecognizable as humans.
Emberion’s laughter rumbled through the dome.
"Foolish creatures," the dragon’s voice carried satisfaction. "Did you truly believe steel would protect you from volcanic fury?"
The remaining fourteen thousand mercenaries took a collective step backward.
Marcus’s bladder had already emptied earlier. Now his bowels threatened to follow. His legs shook. His breath came in short gasps that fogged in the cold air.
Around him, hardened killers who’d faced death in a hundred battles found themselves unable to look at the smoking corpses. Some turned away completely.
Others stared with blank expressions, unable to process that they were all about to die.
"Anyone else?" Jack’s voice cut through the silence. "Anyone else want to try?"
No one moved. Fifteen thousand men holding perfectly still, hoping that stillness meant survival.
Then chaos erupted.
Men at the back of the formation tried to run, slamming into those in front.
Weapons clattered to the ground, abandoned as soldiers sought any escape from the dome’s crystalline walls.
"Let us out!"
"Please!"
"We surrender!"
"MERCY!"
The cries overlapped, building into a cacophony that came from men cracking under pressure.
Soldiers clawed at the ice walls with bare hands, fingernails splitting, blood streaking across transparent surfaces.
Others curled into balls on the ground, hands over their heads, praying to gods who weren’t listening.
Jack watched the display with golden eyes that held no compassion or satisfaction.
Just a cold assessment of creatures that had threatened his family and were now learning the consequences.
Pho stood motionless beside him. Blank white eyes tracking the panicking mercenaries with the same intensity a cat watches mice in a cage.
’The master did not tell me to stop,’ Pho thought, his consciousness operating beneath the soul binding’s compulsion. ’He commands me to kill when ordered. But he never said I couldn’t kill without being ordered.’
The Deathfrost Demon raised both hands.
The temperature plummeted further. Frost spread across the dome’s floor in branching patterns, it was both beautiful and deadly.
Forty-five spikes of crystalline death erupting from beneath forty-five mercenaries simultaneously.
The spikes punched through boots, through legs, through torsos, through skulls.
Each one perhaps six feet long, two inches thick at the base, tapering to points sharp enough to split atoms.
Blood froze before it could spray. Bodies lifted into the air, suspended on ice that held them like macabre sculptures. Mouths opened to scream, but the words never came out.
Eyes wide with shock that would last eternally in their frozen faces.
The dome fell absolutely silent.
Forty-five corpses hanging in the air. Perfectly preserved. Displayed for every survivor to see exactly what awaited them.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[45 enemies defeated]
[Demonic Frenzy conditions met]
[Activating Demonic Frenzy]
Jack’s body jerked. His golden eyes went wide, then rolled back slightly as something else flooded through him.
Not the demonic urges he’d felt before. Something or someone was taking control from the inside.
His HP bar appeared in his vision, draining rapidly.
3,375... 3,206... 3,037...
The numbers fell like stones dropped into an abyss.
Jack’s hands trembled. His jaw clenched hard enough to crack his teeth. Every muscle locked as two forces warred for control of his body, his consciousness trying to suppress the frenzy, and something else pushing him aside.
2,868... 2,699... 2,530...
His vision blurred. The dome around him becoming indistinct, shapes losing definition as his HP continued its relentless descent.
Then his consciousness was shoved aside entirely.
Like being pushed out of a driver’s seat while the vehicle kept moving. Jack’s awareness remained, trapped as a passenger in his own body, but unable to control anything.
The entity that took over didn’t struggle with the frenzy.
Jack’s posture changed immediately. His spine straightened. His head tilted at an angle that didn’t quite match how he normally held himself.
When his eyes opened, they carried weight that transcended the young body containing them.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[Welcome back, Master]
The words appeared in Jack’s, no, the entity’s vision.
But Jack, trapped in the passenger seat of his own consciousness, he couldn’t read the words.
"This skill is annoying," the entity spoke with Jack’s mouth, his voice came out deeper than it should have been, causing the very air to vibrate with each word.
[Demonic Frenzy Status: Active]
[Current HP drain: 169 HP/second]
[Master, I do not understand. The frenzy is...]
"Turn it off."
[...Master?]
"You heard me." Irritation colored the words. "Turn it off. And while you’re at it, upgrade the skill."
[Master, such an upgrade would require significant...]
"Do I look like I’m asking?"
Silence in the system interface.
Then:
[...Acknowledged. Skill upgrade in progress]
[Demonic Frenzy → Demonic Mastery]
[New Effect: +169 HP/second regeneration while transformed]
[Duration limitations removed]
[Upgrade complete]
Jack’s HP stopped draining. The numbers stabilized at 2,194, then began climbing. 2,363... 2,532... 2,701...
The entity flexed Jack’s fingers, feeling the young body respond with precision it hadn’t possessed moments before. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂
Power flowed through transformed muscle and bone without resistance, without the degradation that had plagued Jack’s previous uses of Demonic Frenzy.
Then those golden eyes swept across the dome, taking in the carnage, the frozen corpses, the terrified mercenaries, the demons standing ready, and...
"Emberion."
The dragon’s massive head snapped up. Those molten amber eyes went wide.
Disbelief warred with something that transcended joy, creating an expression on draconic features that dragons weren’t supposed to be capable of making.
Emberion said nothing. No words could encompass what that recognition meant.
Instead, the Emperor-class dragon, a creature powerful enough to level kingdoms, ancient enough to remember when the world was young, lowered his massive head until his snout nearly touched the ground.
Complete submission.
Absolute reverence.
