Rivers of the Night

Chapter 789: Gentle (1)

Theron’s head moved with hardly any input from his thoughts. A black arrow zipped by his ear, the harsh grating sound forming a boom that would have shattered his skull just months ago, let alone his eardrum.

"Well..." Theron blinked, his portrait of the old man flickering once before it solidified. He hadn’t expected such a poor response for such a simple question, but clearly the old man had gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble. "...That wasn’t very nice."

Alpha growled and moved on instinct. Before Theron could tell him to stop, he had already landed on the shoulders of the massive guard, the latter’s head having become little more than a fountain of blood spurting into the skies.

Theron’s lip twitched, but then he chuckled, slipping his fingers into Alpha’s mane and giving him a loving pat. This was probably the right decision to make anyway.

This place wasn’t normal society. While Theron hadn’t spent any time with the people of the Demon Corps, he felt like he knew them intimately regardless.

He had seen so much of the world that he understood there was only one way a society could exist in a place like this.

The other guard roared and Theron’s smile vanished, a sharpness radiating from his eyes. He only looked over, and yet a head flew into the skies much the same, the Mana in the air reacting to his command without word or spell.

Both guards collapsed and Alpha deftly landed on the ground without the slightest sound.

Theron looked back to the crowd gathering up in a line. They seemed shocked, but not to the point of panic. One would have thought that something like this happened at least once a month.

"Who can tell me who this man is and what he’s done?" Theron asked.

There was silence in reply. But Theron could tell that it wasn’t a silence caused by lack of knowledge, but rather one of self-preservation.

They didn’t want to speak and potentially offend whoever had made the guards act like they had.

Theron pursed his lips and nodded. "Alright, let’s try something different then. For every three seconds someone doesn’t speak, I’ll kill a fifth of you all at random."

The crowd paled. A fifth?

Half of them wanted to say bullshit. Theron was so young, and there were so many of them.

But the guards were Kings, and Theron and his beast companion had hardly lifted a finger to kill them. In fact, they couldn’t even feel Theron’s cultivation clearly right now.

Still, there was something else. There were several Kings amongst those waiting as well, and they had seen how Theron killed just now. That ability... Mana acting based on one’s will instead of one’s explicit command...

That could only be done by someone who had grasped a Profound Truth.

But it didn’t make any sense. How could there possibly be such a young Saint?

They shivered.

"Three." Theron started counting. "Two."

"—Wait! Wait!" An older man with a little girl hiding behind his leg spoke out. "He’s Master Uyon. He’s Mistress Ayame’s master, correct? He’s scheduled for execution today, but no one knows why. It hasn’t been announced yet. Most of us are in line here because we’re being forced to come and publicly witness this execution."

Theron raised an eyebrow. "Mistress Ayame? How do you know her?"

"We know her because she is only one mission away from successfully earning the right to challenge a mission of a Demon Prince. She is the fastest in recorded history to do this, but she offended a Chosen of Demon Duke Towuzen because she refused an opportunity to become a Chosen her—."

Theron waved a hand and an arrow moments from taking the old man’s life was trapped in a bubble of water.

It was a scene that didn’t make any sense at all. The bubble was so light, almost fluffy. It didn’t seem like it had any defensive properties at all, and yet the arrow silently entered it and somehow lost all of its momentum.

"He’s talking to me. Don’t you think it’s kind of rude to try and cut him off?"

The old man was dripping in cold sweat. He didn’t know why, but the moment he started talking and Theron started asking more questions, he had no resistance at all.

If he had just stopped with his mention of the old man’s execution, it might have been fine. But then he went on to give details about Ayame and those matters, and that was clearly way too far. He hadn’t even originally intended on mentioning these things, but Theron’s tone and words had somehow pulled them right out of him.

Theron wasn’t really paying attention to the old man anymore, though. He had looked over his shoulder to find a young man with skin as pale as a full moon standing on the tall city walls.

Above his head, a hovering pair of demonic horns hung. But above even them was a halo of black.

He looked down indifferently at Theron’s bubble of water before his gaze slowly turned toward Theron himself.

"Who are you?" he asked coldly.

"Me?" Theron smiled. His smile was the same gentle smile his teachers had always loved, that his mother told him could rule the world one day. It was the sort of smile that lulled one into a sense of comfort and ease, like you could trust him with anything.

And the voice that matched it was no less gentle.

"I’m Ayame’s husband. She didn’t tell you about me?"

The young man’s expression went from indifferent to frighteningly cold in a single instant of time.

"I can give you one chance to take that back."

Theron leapt off Alpha’s back with a graceful swing of his leg, landing softly on the ground and looking up with a proud look in his sparkling blue eyes.

"Take it back? Now why would I do something like that?"

The young man had already vanished after the first half of Theron’s sentence.