Jack Storm stopped being a man the day the world decided he was a problem to be solved.
It didn't happen with a declaration.
It didn't happen with a speech.
It happened in a thousand quiet rooms, behind a thousand locked doors, when people in power looked at footage of a man who could summon demon armies and erase gods and realized something cold and terrifying:
They no longer mattered.
1. THE HUNTS BEGIN
The first attempt came while Jack was standing on the edge of a rift in Poland, watching a dozen D-rank spirits crawl out of the air like insects emerging from a wound in reality.
He killed them with a gesture.
The rift sealed.
Then the bullet hit him.
A tungsten round wrapped in consecrated sigils struck his forehead dead center. The impact rang like a church bell.
Jack blinked.
The bullet fell to the ground.
"…Huh."
He turned slowly, eyes glowing faintly red, and extended his awareness across kilometers.
He felt the sniper. Felt the shaking breath, the adrenaline, the terror.
Jack could have killed him without moving.
Instead, he whispered:
"Go home."
The man dropped his rifle and ran.
Jack didn't stop him.
2. THEY KEEP TRYING
Two days later, a strike team ambushed him in the ruins of a burned-out Spanish city.
Thirty operatives.
Powered armor.
Suppression drones.
Reality-anchor devices designed to hold a god.
They fired everything at once.
Jack raised one hand.
The city went silent.
Gravity flattened the entire team into the street. Weapons shattered. Armor bent inward like soft metal.
Jack walked through them calmly.
"I don't want to hurt you," he said.
One soldier sobbed.
Jack released them all.
They fled.
3. POISON, CURSES, AND DESPERATION
They tried poison next.
Something brewed from demonic venom and alchemical rot. Enough to kill a dragon.
Jack drank it from a bottle of water left at a safehouse he sometimes passed through.
He felt a brief heat.
Then nothing.
"…That was creative," he muttered.
They tried curse-bombs. Psychic assassins. A possessed child meant to explode near him.
Jack neutralized all of it.
He never killed the humans.
He couldn't.
He understood them too well.
4. WHY THEY WERE RIGHT
Jack stood on a cliff overlooking a city in South America, lights glittering in the dark.
He could destroy it.
He wouldn't.
But he could.
That was what terrified them.
"No one should be this powerful," he whispered.
The Nether Core pulsed quietly.
"I don't belong to you anymore," Jack said to the distant world.
"And you don't belong to me."
5. THE WORLD SCRAMBLES
Behind closed doors, panic became policy.
Thousands of scientists were brought into classified facilities. Supercomputers ran simulations of Jack Storm turning hostile.
Every one ended the same.
Human extinction.
A report was passed across a long table:
Storm cannot be contained.
Storm cannot be neutralized.
Storm cannot be reasoned with long-term.
Storm must be removed from the board.
Crowe stared at the words.
"There is something," he said quietly.
The room turned to him.
"An old project," Crowe continued. "We shut it down because it was too dangerous. But it might work."
A general frowned. "Dangerous to Jack?"
Crowe shook his head.
"To reality."
Silence followed.
6. JACK'S BORING WAR
While the world panicked, Jack hunted.
D-ranks.
C-ranks.
Possession clusters.
He erased them with single blows.
A punch.
A wave of force.
A summoned demon tearing them apart.
It was too easy.
He didn't feel like a hero anymore.
He felt like a janitor.
And that scared him.
He returned to Hell often, upgrading, strengthening his summoning ranks, widening his control.
Still not enough.
7. THE SHADOW OF THE SS-RANK
Jack hovered in the upper atmosphere one night, Earth glowing beneath him.
He thought of the SS-rank.
How easily it had stopped an S-rank.
How small he had felt.
"No matter how strong I get here," Jack murmured, "I'm still nothing out there."
The hunger twisted inside him.
"Then I'll keep climbing."
8. CROW E'S SECRET
Crowe stood in a dark underground lab.
A machine sat at its center.
Not a weapon.
A gate.
A device meant to move something that should never be moved.
Crowe placed his hand on the control panel.
"Jack," he whispered, "you've become too important to let exist."
He activated the prototype.
Something rippled across reality.
Far away…
Jack Storm felt it.
And for the first time in weeks—
He felt afraid.
The world should have been celebrating.
In just three days, Jack Storm erased over ten thousand demons.
Rifts vanished.
Possession clusters collapsed.
Cities that had lived in terror for months finally slept without screaming.
It should have been a miracle.
Instead, it was a countdown.
Because every demon Jack killed didn't just save lives—
It made him stronger.
THE STORM HARVEST
Jack moved nonstop.
Wings blazing, teleporting now instead of flying, vanishing from one side of the planet and appearing on the other in a shimmer of distortion.
A rift in Mexico.
A possession outbreak in Jakarta.
A B-rank cult summoning in Eastern Europe.
Jack appeared, struck, and left nothing behind.
He wasn't tired.
He was hungry.
Every kill poured soul energy into the Nether Core, pushing it higher, denser, more absolute.
The hunger felt good.
That scared him.
HELL CALLS AGAIN
Jack didn't resist the pull this time.
He wanted it.
Hell's platform received him in a storm of violet-black flame. The Infernal Broker bowed its fractured head slightly now.
"You are approaching a threshold," it said.
Jack flexed his wings.
"Give me what I earned."
The upgrades ignited.
TELEPORTATION
Space folded.
Jack disappeared.
Then reappeared ten meters away.
Then a hundred.
Then across the platform.
Not movement.
Rewriting position.
Jack laughed softly.
"Nice."
WEAPON DOMINION
A second tree bloomed.
Swords.
Spears.
Guns.
Blades forged from thought itself.
Jack reached out.
A black greatsword formed in his hand.
He dismissed it.
A spear replaced it.
Then twin pistols.
Then a massive hammer.
All at once, all possible.
"I can be anything," he whispered.
The Nether Core pulsed in approval.
A-RANK ASCENSION
The air shifted.
The Broker's voice deepened.
"You have crossed the line. Your existence is now classified."
Jack felt it.
His soul density skyrocketed.
His presence warped Hell's gravity.
"…I'm A-rank," he murmured.
The Broker nodded.
"Officially."
Jack smiled.
Then Hell tested him.
THE DOUBLE A-RANK BOSS
Two massive figures descended.
Not one.
Two.
Twin demon generals, each radiating enough power to flatten cities.
They attacked simultaneously.
Jack teleported.
Blades formed in his hands.
The fight was brutal but fast—teleport strikes, force detonations, nightmare assaults, summoned demons ripping into infernal flesh.
One A-rank fell.
Then the second.
Jack stood alone again, breathing hard but smiling.
"Still not enough."
EARTH DOESN'T FEEL SAFE
Jack returned.
The world felt smaller.
Crowe watched the satellite feed.
"…He's getting worse."
"No," a scientist corrected quietly. "He's getting closer."
THE EXPERIMENT
A soldier volunteered.
No hesitation.
No fear.
They enhanced him.
Stronger bones.
Faster nerves.
Denser muscle.
He became superhuman.
But not supernatural.
Crowe watched the man lift a car.
"Still useless," Crowe said.
Then it hit him.
"…We need Storm."
Silence.
"We need his DNA."
A scientist whispered, "Sir… how do we make a god bleed?"
Crowe looked at the screen showing Jack Storm hovering over the Earth.
"I don't know yet," he said.
"But we're going to have to find out."