Rivers of the Night

Chapter 787: Theron’s Hiatus (7)

For even a Transcendent to have died in the tower, it could only be said that the threshold for success in the Luminescent Tower was now on a completely unfathomable level.

Something had certainly changed between now and the first time Theron had entered. Or, maybe, it was as simple as the Luminescent Tower shifting its challenge to suit the world that it was in.

Either way, maybe because he was sending clones in and had never entered with his main body, Alpha was able to continuously abuse this, and he improved by leaps and bounds as a result.

Every small incremental improvement his clones made was tripled by the time they returned to his body, stacked until they could hardly be stacked... and yet even those plateaus would be entirely blown through.

Theron tried to see if cutting his Karma would allow him to enter now. It was a risk, but he had always been a confident person, even if he had been much more silent in the past.

However, the tower still rejected him, oddly enough. It made him wonder if there was something even more powerful than Karma out there that the Luminescent Tower was tracking. Or... maybe it could just tell that he had already received its blessing.

Either way, Alpha became relentless.

The true shock of it all didn’t make itself apparent until one of Alpha’s clones successfully made it through, though...

That was the day Alpha successfully formed a clone that improved its Resonance beyond his own. When that clone worked, it was like a cascade of chain reactions was triggered, and Alpha finally progressed from Arcane to Celestial.

This was just a small change to Theron at this point. But when this progress was stacked not just one time, but four times over, triggering a change in the other two clones and Alpha, it was practically like a world-ending event.

It took an entire month of grinding, but the result was that the pressure Alpha gave off was truly suffocating.

By the end of the first year, though Alpha hadn’t managed to make it from Celestial to Primal, in this year Alpha had managed to make it to the Quasi King Realm.

As easy as Theron’s improvement had been, Alpha’s was even easier. All he had to do was absorb the Cores of the beasts they killed, and his body naturally progressed.

In fact, part of Theron felt that it was because his cultivation was improving so quickly that Alpha’s Resonance lagged behind. Logically speaking, someone with such poor Resonance shouldn’t be able to improve so quickly. Yet despite having to feed three clones and itself, Alpha improved as though a rocket-fueled engine was strapped to his legs.

If not for the fact it was feeding so many of its clones at once, Alpha would surely already be in the King Realm and might have already made good progress within it.

Regardless, Theron was very satisfied with this hidden use of the Luminescent Tower.

Because they were clones, every time the tower tried to give them its blessings, the clones collapsed first. Because of that, when a clone succeeded in making it to the end, it became little more than a blob of energy that could be directly applied to Alpha’s Resonance.

Even when the clone failed to make it to the end, it was the perfect training exercise.

Usually, Alpha had a hard time training his clones, especially here in this world. The clones were too weak on their own, and the enemies here were too powerful. So Alpha had to keep himself fused.

But with the tower, the difficulty was set to the level of the clones, and it was designed to pull out unearthed potential.

It was a shame that Theron couldn’t find a way to enter himself, but maybe that was good. He didn’t have any clones. And even if he had, if his clones died like Alpha’s did, reabsorbing them wouldn’t be as easy as Alpha made it seem.

Alpha was a Blood Mancer. When his clones died, he could just reabsorb the blood, and that was why this method worked for him.

Though Theron’s own bloodline was peculiar as well, he didn’t know if it was even possible to use the same method, since the Bloodline Marble still refused to display itself to him even after a year...

As did the Dagger Call Platform.

But, at the very least, after the Luminescent Tower showed him its underbelly, he had something to be satisfied about.

It was after about this year period passed that Theron began to feel that he had spent enough time out in the wilderness. Even so, he still spent another four months out there.

Was it laziness? He didn’t know if that was the case. It was just that... he didn’t know what kind of peace he would be able to experience if he were to return now.

Was his life exactly "peaceful"? Well, there were beasts trying to kill him every day, beasts no less intelligent and resourceful than humans.

But there was still a certain tranquility to it all that he couldn’t explain. Maybe this was just the state the world was meant to be in... he didn’t know.

All he did know was that he just felt... comfortable.

So, he wrung himself dry of that feeling. Not only did he celebrate his 16th birthday out in this wilderness, he was also rapidly approaching his 17th.

Then, one day, as though seeing something on the horizon, he abruptly decided that today was the day he should return.

Even so... he was so far from where he had appeared with Ayame and the old man that even with his new strength, it still took him an entire month to travel back.

He slowly approached Demon Corps civilization, riding on Alpha’s back with a peaceful smile and an almost languid and lazy look in his eyes.

He leapt off of Alpha when he saw a familiar hut, his bare feet sinking into the soil just the slightest bit.

’Hm?’ Theron raised an eyebrow.