Chapter 114: 500 Days [Golden Ticket Bonus Chapter]
The silver-veined walls pulsed with a slow heartbeat as silence stretched between them.
Jack waited a long moment before speaking.
"You know what it’s like," he said quietly, surprising himself with the admission. "To be hunted for what you are."
Ren’s star-bright eyes softened, just enough to cut through the icy gloom. "I know exactly what that feels like," he said, his voice carrying centuries of bitter understanding. "Your very existence threatens those in power. I wore the word Hero until it became a death sentence."
The air shifted with the weight of old grief. Frost hissed along the floor.
Jack drew a steady breath, the cold scraping his lungs raw. "Then you understand. I can’t stay weak. Not here. Not anywhere."
Ren’s gaze held him, ancient and knowing. "Power isn’t a choice for people like us. It’s survival."
The truth of it settled in Jack’s chest like a stone. He nodded once, feeling the familiar weight of necessity pressing down on his shoulders. "If I can hunt in your domain, without limits and if you tell me how to reach Floor 25, so I can find Malakai’s castle, I’ll grant your request. If you stay true to your word."
For a heartbeat the chamber was utterly still. Even the frost seemed to pause in its relentless spread.
Then Ren tipped his head back and laughed.
It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t kind. It was the laugh of someone who had waited centuries to hear those words, tinged with both satisfaction and dark amusement. A sound that made the torches flicker and the silver veins in the throne blaze like captured lightning.
He dragged a hand across his face, as if wiping away blood. "You bargain like a king," he said, the laughter trailing into a low chuckle that rumbled through the chamber. "Very well. Hunt as you wish. My domain is yours to spill blood in."
Jack’s jaw tightened, sensing there was more. "And Floor 25?"
Ren’s smile widened, sharp as a winter blade. "Ah, but that requires more than a simple exchange, young Warden. The path to Malakai’s castle... that knowledge comes at a steeper price."
The ancient being leaned forward, star-bright eyes gleaming. "Grant me one favor, to be claimed when I choose, for whatever price I name. Then you’ll have your directions to the castle."
Jack felt his hands clench involuntarily, nails digging into his palms hard enough to leave crescent marks.
A favor. An open-ended debt to something that had lived for centuries and had every reason to harbor grudges against the world. The very concept left a horrible taste in Jack’s mouth.
"What kind of favor?" The question came out rougher than he intended, betraying the unease crawling up his spine like ice.
Ren’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered behind those star-bright eyes. "The kind that matters," he said, each word precise as a blade between ribs. "I won’t waste it on trivialities, asking you to fetch me wine or sing me songs. But when the time comes, you will fulfill it. No matter the cost. No matter what I ask of you."
The words hung in the air like a curse waiting to be spoken, so heavy that it made Jack’s skin crawl.
His mind raced through possibilities, each one worse than the last.
What could an ancient, imprisoned hero want badly enough to leverage against Floor 25 access?
Revenge against descendants of his betrayers?
Freedom to wage war against the gods themselves?
The murder of innocents who happened to share bloodlines with his enemies?
Nothing good. That much was certain.
In the silence, he could hear his own heartbeat thundering in his ears, could feel the weight of Corvin’s claws shifting nervously on his shoulder.
But the alternative was staying weak, staying vulnerable, remaining the same helpless target he’d been at six years old when assassins had come for him in broad daylight.
The same powerless boy who’d needed his father to save him, who’d spent ten years knowing that somewhere out there, people wanted him dead for the simple crime of existing.
"Fine," Jack said, the word scraping out of his throat like broken glass. "One favor."
Ren’s smile was all satisfaction and ancient patience. "Excellent. Then let me tell you about the eastern valleys, where nightmares hunt in packs and the strong feed on the weak."
He gestured toward the tall windows, where the blood-red sky stretched endlessly over the desolate landscape.
"The entrance to Malakai’s castle lies far beyond those valleys, past territories where Disaster-class entities roam freely. You’ll need more than raw power to reach it. You’ll need to be cunning, have endurance, and the wisdom that only comes from surviving impossible odds."
Jack straightened, feeling the weight of the commitment settling on his shoulders. "How long?"
Ren’s eyes gleamed with quiet amusement, as if he’d been waiting for this exact question. "At your current pace, accounting for the time you’ll need to grow strong enough to survive the journey... about five hundred days."
His lungs seemed to seize, refusing to draw breath as the words crashed down on him in waves.
Five hundred days. The words echoed in his skull like a death knell, each repetition making the reality more crushing.
His chest tightened until he thought his ribs might crack from the pressure.
A cold knot formed in his stomach, twisting and growing as his mind raced through the thought of survival. Five hundred days. In the real world, that was... twenty-four days, maybe twenty-five if time moved slightly differently than he calculated.
Add the five days that had already passed since Chiron’s visit, and he’d be cutting it impossibly close to the thirty-day deadline his system had mentioned.
If anything went wrong, if he took longer than expected, if he got injured and needed recovery time.
If the journey proved more dangerous than anticipated, he might not make it back before the war began.
His kingdom could fall while he was hunting demons in a tower that existed outside normal time. His people, his family, could die while he chased power in the depths of hell itself.
But the alternative was almost as terrifying. Without the strength he could gain from this journey, without whatever knowledge waited in Malakai’s castle, what use would he be in the coming war anyway?
Marcus Thorne gathered an army in such a short amount of time.
He didn’t know how big that army would grow. If he would strike early.
How badly did Jack want to complete his quest?
Chiron would be watching, but who knows who else would be watching this war.
What could Jack do against that kind of force with his current abilities?
The power he could gain from five hundred days of hunting Nightmare-class demons, from exploring a Soul Warden’s hidden sanctum, from pushing himself to the absolute limits of survival.
It might be the difference between victory and annihilation. But only if he lived long enough to claim it. Only if he made it back in time.
The risk was enormous. The potential reward was everything he’d ever hoped for.
And the cost of failure was everything he’d ever tried to protect.
Jack’s hands trembled slightly before he forced them steady, his voice barely above a whisper. "Five hundred days?"
The silver light seemed to shiver with his disbelief. Corvin shifted uneasily on his shoulder, violet eyes catching the cold glow as the raven sensed his master’s inner turmoil through their bond.
Ren’s laughter rolled through the throne room again, deep and unhurried, echoing off the stone like distant thunder.
"Time moves differently here than in your world, Soul Warden. But yes, five hundred days to become strong enough to survive what waits in that castle."
The ancient being’s star-bright eyes studied Jack intensely. "The question now is whether you have the courage to take that first step into the darkness, knowing you might not return in time to save what you’re trying to protect."
Jack stood there in the frozen throne room, feeling the weight of an impossible choice pressing down on him like the castle itself.
Jack felt like his thoughts were written on his forehead. Every hesitation, every tell, Ren saw through all of it.
’Damn it... can he read every single thought I have??’
He realized his survival, his kingdom’s fate, his very identity, hung on what he decided in the next few seconds.