The law of existence had been applied without exception or mercy.

The duration of the screams exceeded that of prior groups.

Three more notifications erupted:

[400 Souls Processed]

[Soul Army Capacity: 800 → 900]

[500 Souls Processed]

[Soul Army Capacity: 900 → 1,000]

[600 Souls Processed]

[Soul Army Capacity: 1,000 → 1,100]

The final batch rose.

Two hundred and ninety-three Blight Demons. The last batch Jack had decided to sacrifice. Their forms dragged upward by the Chain with force that made them convulse and thrash against invisible restraints that couldn’t be broken.

These were the final souls from the initial massacre.

The ones whose corpses had been left to rot in the clearing, whose essence had been bound to this location by the violence of their deaths.

Jack watched them all and, with each convulsion, repeated the same phrase.

"It is the duty of the weak to be stepped on by the strong."

The words had become a mantra now, delivered each time a new batch was pulled into the vortex.

It was not due to Jack’s reinforcement of the philosophy, as he possessed an unwavering certainty in its principles.

Rather, he articulated these truths because of their inherent validity, believing that truth warranted vocal expression even in the absence of an audience, save for those in their final moments or those who had already passed.

The two hundred and ninety-three were unmade in seconds, their forms fragmenting as they were exposed to energies that transcended normal decomposition.

The final screams echoed across the clearing, bouncing off swamp water and stone, creating reverberations that made reality itself seem to shudder under the weight of what was occurring.

Two final notifications erupted for this phase:

[700 Souls Processed]

[Soul Army Capacity: 1,100 → 1,200]

[800 Souls Processed]

[Soul Army Capacity: 1,200 → 1,300]

The vortex at Jack’s core began to stabilize, the screams fading as the last echoes of the recently consumed souls dissipated into the background hum of spiritual energy being processed.

Eight hundred ninety-three souls had been fed into the Soul Well. The Mask of the Soul Warden was incrementally repaired. The capacity to bind additional servants had increased by eight hundred.

The mathematics of power accumulation was simple to understand.

[Mask of the Soul Warden: 15% Repaired]

Jack’s attention shifted to a single entity that stood apart from all the others.

The creature’s soul was denser than any Jack had processed so far. The Sovereign had served Jack with absolute loyalty for months. It had fought on his behalf. It had never questioned his commands or shown anything except perfect obedience.

It had been useful.

But none of this mattered.

Jack’s right hand extended, the gesture casual and dismissive, as if he were brushing away something that had become inconvenient.

A tool that had outlived its purpose. An asset that could be more efficiently deployed as fuel than maintained as a servant.

The Chain manifested one final time.

It struck like lightning, wrapping around the Granite Sovereign’s soul and pulling it with force that made even this powerful entity convulse in shock.

The creature hadn’t expected this. Death was temporary for Jack’s bound servants, but the Sovereign had believed it would eventually resume the existence it had been maintaining. It had believed its loyalty and service would be rewarded with continued existence.

That assumption had been incorrect.

Jack’s chest opened once more.

The vortex at his core expanded, becoming a maelstrom of spiritual force that dwarfed anything that had come before.

The Granite Sovereign was drawn inward, its dense form fragmenting as it was exposed to energies beyond the limits of normal decomposition. Power flowed through Jack on a scale that made previous sacrifices seem insignificant.

The scream was different this time.

This time it was much deeper. It made the ground beneath him crack, and the swamp water ripple outward in waves that propagated across the entire clearing.

The Sovereign’s essence was rich with power accumulated over centuries of existence. Every bit of it was stripped away, converted, consumed, and integrated into Jack’s being.

A notification erupted that dwarfed all the others:

[Blessed Soul Processed: 1/10]

[Warning: Soul Well Resonance Detected]

[Massive Structural Restoration Initiated]

[Mask of the Soul Warden: 15% → 87% Repaired]

[Soul Army Capacity: 1,300 → 4,550]

The Mask on Jack’s face erupted with light.

Dark silver that pulsed in rhythm with the core of his being. The cracks that had webbed across its surface for months began fusing, the artifact restructuring itself as power flooded through it at scales it hadn’t experienced in millennia.

Jack felt the weight lighten. The artifact itself became more responsive, and Jack could feel its will start to manifest.

The limitations that had constrained his binding capacity for so long suddenly revealed themselves as mere temporary restrictions rather than fundamental law.

He could bind four thousand five hundred and fifty souls now.

His current bound army totaled approximately 403 entities.

He had the capacity for over four thousand more servants, each one potentially as powerful as the creatures he’d already claimed.

The realization settled across his consciousness not as an achievement but as a simple acknowledgment of what had always been true, waiting for him to unlock it.

The clearing had fallen silent once more.

Jack turned away from the clearing’s center.

His attention shifted toward the remaining souls.

Jack’s right hand moved.

The gesture was different this time. Not the dismissive wave that preceded consumption, but the authoritative command that initiated resurrection and rebinding. Seventy corpses rose from the swamp mud where they’d been left to rot.

Their bodies began reconstituting, flesh regenerating, bones reforming, organs reconstructing themselves with supernatural speed that transcended natural healing processes.

Within seconds, the seventy were alive again.

They stood in the clearing’s center, absolutely loyal to the being who’d just committed genocide against their clan.

They knew what they were now. Tools to be used. Servants whose sole purpose was to execute their master’s will until such time as that will deemed their continued existence no longer valuable.

Jack waved his hand.

Portals erupted across the clearing.

Tears in reality that opened to reveal the familiar architecture of Floor Twenty-Five. The passages shimmered with the same dark energy that characterized the Soul Warden’s castle, anchors that would transport the newly rebound Blight Demons directly to Jack’s domain.

"Floor Twenty-Five," Jack commanded, his voice carrying absolute authority. "Wait for further orders."

The seventy moved without hesitation.

They walked through the portals with the mechanical precision of soldiers who’d accepted their role in a hierarchy they couldn’t question or resist.

Their bark-like skin caught the portal’s edges as they passed through, and then they were gone, transported to Jack’s castle to await whatever purpose their master decided next.

The last portal closed.

The Ashen Clearing fell silent except for the sound of swamp water continuing its eternal work of dissolution.

Jack stood alone in the space he’d just transformed. A monument to the souls he’d unmade and the power he’d extracted from their dissolution.

The work here was complete.

Jack turned from the clearing and began walking toward the dimensional anchors that would carry him back to Floor Twenty-Five.

[Notice!!!]

[Mask of the Soul Warden is at 87%! When the Mask is repaired to 100%, it will change from fractured to normal. It will also unlock its ability associated with the mask.]