Rivers of the Night

Chapter 736: What Did He Want?

Theron walked forward slowly, every one of his steps as light as a feather.

This time, he wasn’t caught unprepared. The moment he walked through the threshold of the city, his eyes had seen the movement of the runes and sigils.

They knew he was here.

In truth, while he wasn’t expecting this exactly, it was fine by him. He also imagined that this was how they had known he had entered Venlow City as well.

Whatever happened this time didn’t quite matter, though.

By now it should have been obvious, but the more he fought, the more he pushed himself, the stronger he became.

If he wouldn’t have any bottlenecks from now until the Quasi King Realm...

Why should he take every step slowly and steadily?

The blaring sirens faded into being for Theron as though he had phased them out earlier.

The people around him began to scream, and they all scrambled, rushing to their homes. Each of them seemed to understand the danger that was being posed to them, while Theron himself seemed to not understand at all.

One step after another, slowly and surely, he made his way to the center of the city.

Suddenly, he stopped, his head tilting back. A black arrow whizzed by, missing his head by fractions of an inch.

With a flicker of his wrist, Theron caught the edge of the arrow with the tip of his blade. It curled into the skies as though it had been parried away.

Sinking his senses into the arrow, Theron completely stripped it of the Mancer’s control.

His spear spun in his hands, rotating so fast winds kicked up and the dusty roads were swept clean. A howl of air current surged until...

BANG.

The butt of Theron’s spear hit against the falling arrow, sending it soaring so fast a single blink would have left it outside your eyesight.

PUCHI.

The archer didn’t even see it coming. A Dome of Heaven expert snuffed out just like that, without even the knowledge that his own Mana was the one that ended his life.

Bloody hell was unleashed a moment later.

One arrow after another flew from the buildings, so many it felt like the skies were being blocked out. The density of Dark Mana was so great it might as well have been the case.

The foundation of the city shook, and a formation peeled into being across its airspace, forming an impenetrable dome.

Theron took a breath.

He wasn’t angry right now, but he also didn’t quite know how to feel. That rage that was in him before felt almost like it was sizzling down to mere embers, barely glowing.

He didn’t know what he should be mad at.

What did he want?

Revenge?

The destruction of everything?

Things like this had never really been in his personality; they had just been pushed onto him by the world around him, and maybe the bloodline raging through his veins.

He liked to read, to learn.

No...

I like to fight, too, Theron thought in a bit of a daze.

But it wasn’t the fight itself he liked. Anyone could fight.

He liked outsmarting his enemies, and doing so in a fight felt like the moment the stakes were at their absolute highest.

There was nothing that could give him that same level of high, that could concentrate such pressure and payoff in a single, fleeting moment.

He hadn’t wanted to admit it before. He thought himself to be above it all.

But something about realizing that he was staring at a mirror when he thought of Matriarch Macie also made him understand he wasn’t as perfect as he thought.

Theron looked down at the bracelet on his hand. To think... a damn dog made him think about all of this.

At the very least, he had something in this world, even if it was just a beast.

Theron exhaled a breath, and the arrows were already upon him. The world accelerated around him, and he suddenly moved.

His spear moved like flowing water and wispy darkness—one blended into the next—and in the moment, it was little more than an extension of his body.

Every glancing blow led to a chain reaction of two, three, or even four more. He parried one arrow in exchange for five total, a second for ten, a third for fifteen.

Sometimes he flowed, and sometimes he seemed to vanish.

And then he countered.

His spear spun in his hands.

Sometimes it became a whip, its blade catching the arrows, its body curving, and a snap sending them back.

Sometimes it became a bludgeon, the butt of it cracking against them like a mace against hard stone, sending the arrows flying back even faster than they came.

Not a single time did Theron seem to rush, not once did he become flustered or overwhelmed.

The world danced in the palm of his hands, a golden glow still radiating from his skin as the healing pill he took earlier continued to work with a surge of rushing might.

Yes. This felt good.

Come.

Theron took another step forward.

BANG.

The arrows broke off in the air, snapping and shattering.

His Third Eye surged and ripped the Dome of Heaven Mana from their bodies. With another spin of his spear, a surge of might erupted from him, wisps of darkness spreading out in all directions.

[Dark Confluence].

...

The city fell into silence. Death hung in the air.

Under this silence, a single step echoed as Theron strode out of a wall of darkness that collapsed after him.

He laid eyes on the teleportation platform he was headed for. However, it was no longer as sparsely populated as it usually was.

An army, dressed in heavy black armor, stood before it led by three. Averi and Benni... but there was also the third, a woman who wore a dress of velvet that cinched tight around her waist but flared wildly below her waist and elbows.

That woman—she was the real danger. She was on a completely different level than the silver fox.