Rivers of the Night

Chapter 728: Be Gentle

"Did you find anything else of interest?"

A young man stood with his arms crossed. His gaze was crimson, his hair a swamp of black that was hard to distinguish. It didn’t really look as though it had individual strands at all, but more like it was a miasma.

It was a technique that was eerily reminiscent of Betrix, but given the robes he wore, he was no assassin. He was too flashy, too full of himself, the folds and layers looking entirely impractical for anyone who would need to do any sort of real battle.

However, given the three strong men around him—two particularly large and burly, and the last being a silver fox in his middle ages who carried the vitality of a cheery youth—maybe he didn’t need to do much fighting on a personal level at all.

The insignia of the Umbra Clan hung from all of their waists, that of the young man’s being particularly large and bold compared to the others. It carried around it a ring of amethyst and ruby in solid slabs of cut gems, as though to flash wealth as prominently as possible.

That ribbon of violet and crimson crystal was something reserved for only the core members of the Umbra Clan—those designated for the most comfortable of lives, no matter how worthless they were.

Though... Ensey Umbra might look useless, but his actual value was far from that.

"No, young master. This creature is the only thing we managed to find. Everything else was either dead or broken to ruin," one of the burly men replied.

Before the four men, there was a cage, a broken and shriveled Alpha laying there at the center of it all. Too weak to even move, the barely budging chest of the Alpha formed loops of shallow, irregular breaths.

"Mm. This creature... is interesting. I cannot feel its Mancy Path, even when it is like this. It might be of a rare, unknown path. I want to nurse it back to health and then study it. Maybe it could be worthy of being a mount."

The silver fox middle-aged man shook his head. "It is unlikely to even survive. But even if it does, its momentum and Resonance are too weak as a Gold Mancy Beast. Unless it can breed and have a child we can raise from the start to have a far firmer and greater foundation, it won’t be worth it. And there won’t be any guarantee that its path is compatible with your own."

"And what of it? We will just do that, then. Just a little investment."

"This situation is very odd. Taking a creature like this in an expanse of destruction so thorough and wide is bound to come with its share of problems."

Ensey sneered. "And what problems can our Umbra Clan not deal with? Stagnating and trying to stick to the status quo is what ended the Nightingales. I won’t have our Umbra follow the same path. Let’s go."

The words had only just left his mouth when his eyes narrowed. At the same time, the two burly men snapped their heads toward Theron, who had shakily stood at the top of a hill of rubble.

At the moment, Theron looked little different from a beggar. His charming, youthful face was covered in grime, soot, and blood. His robes—or what remained of them—were tattered beyond repair, to the point he was practically walking around nearly naked. Even the feature he had always taken such pride in because of his mother’s words—his hair—was a mess.

It matted in several places, caked in mud and his blood.

But what was clear beneath it all were those sharp pair of blue eyes and the aura of a Seventh Resonance Gold Mancer exuding from within him.

Ensey frowned. He could feel Theron’s cultivation, and it was far too weak. Even the weakest of his guards, the pair of burly Flux Mancers, were already in the middle Dome of Heaven Realm. As for the middle-aged man who looked the perfect reflection of a stereotypical silver fox, he was already in the higher Dome of Heaven Realm.

While Ensey himself was only in the Quasi Dome of Heaven Realm for the time being, he could have stepped forward into this new realm whenever he wanted. He was only biding his time.

To say that any one of them could kill Theron with less than a thought was an understatement.

However, Ensey wasn’t interested in killing him.

"Didn’t you say that everything was either dead or torn apart? What is this?" Ensey gave the burly men a sharp glare.

"Impossible, impossible! Young master, please forgive us, we will kill him right away. But we came across his corpse hours ago and simply ignored him. He had no signs of life at all back then. We’re sure."

"No signs of life?..." The silver fox’s eyes flashed as though he was thinking of something particularly curious.

"Kill him?" Ensey frowned. "Don’t be ridiculous. Capture him alive. He might be the only thing in this entire place that knows what happened here. Maybe he even knows what the Mancy Path of this creature is. A rare mutation like this might have been quite famous in whatever this organization was."

The burly men hurried to assent. "Yes, yes, of course. We’ll capture him right away."

"Be gentle. He’s barely standing at all."

They agreed once again and then dashed off, the rubble beneath them rolling and shattering as they hurried forward.

Theron looked past the two of them, his gaze on the Alpha’s half-dead body. Its state was truly not good. If not for its Blood Mancy, living so long would have been impossible. But if things continued like this, it would breathe its last soon.

At that moment, Theron just felt... an almost irrational amount of anger. He knew he shouldn’t, he knew this was just the way of the world, he also knew that rage, with the state his body was currently in, would only accelerate him back to an unconscious state.

But just unlike before...

His logic didn’t win out.