Rivers of the Night

Chapter 791: Obliged

Theron’s smile felt like the grin of a nightmare demon to Lenwu. The speed of his draw and fire was one of his greatest prides. He had always been a Flux Mancer that focused heavily on speed, and much of that speed wasn’t just placed into dodging and evading, but also the pace at which his hands moved.

The drawback to that was that his bows didn’t have great power. But he had always made up for that with bows of high Grade and Resonance, and arrows as well. By doing that, his weapons could compensate for his weakness and he could continue firing at mind-numbing speeds even against enemies in the King Realm.

Yet, all of a sudden, his pride had become nothing more than a joke.

Theron reached a hand forward and his fingers slipped into one of his bubbles of water. There was a shift and sparkle as he grabbed the arrow, pulling it out and observing it for a moment.

He couldn’t help but shake his head. Were all bowmen such spendthrifts? The materials these arrows were made out of could bankrupt a nation, and he had just casually fired tens of thousands of them in a few seconds. He probably had much more where that came from.

If his bow and arrow were anything to go by, then his spatial devices were almost certainly obscene in size. Even these tens of thousands of arrows would fit in Theron’s own device, let alone whatever he was carrying around.

Chi.

The arrow vanished from Theron’s palm.

Lenwu stood in the skies, his eyes wide with shock. He held his bow in one hand, but his other... no, his entire arm was gone, blown off by an arrow that whizzed by in a trail of Dark Mana.

It looked like a bomb had gone off near his shoulder.

Theron whistled. He hadn’t put much strength into that at all. In fact, he had only tossed it up and then deconstructed the arrow, reconstructing it at the same pace near Lenwu’s arm.

Yet, the treasure that was the arrow itself was so powerful that Lenwu almost died despite the fact Theron didn’t originally have such intentions.

Theron shook his head.

Was it because he was bad at controlling his own strength? Far from the truth.

Was it because he had underestimated how powerful the arrow was? Also far from the truth. With his eyes and his comprehension of formations now, it was impossible that he wouldn’t be able to see through the strength of the arrow.

The real problem was that Lenwu was even more fragile than he thought and he had paid very little attention to the man when he appeared because Theron had, one, grown a habit of not wantonly using his Third Eye because it was far too dangerous to do so in the wilderness, and two...

He couldn’t take this idiot seriously even if he tried.

It had been a very long time since Theron felt the urge to take much of anything seriously. That was because he hadn’t run into danger in a while—another thing that was far from the truth.

The true reason was that he had entered a state of true relaxation even in the midst of danger. He had learned to enjoy life, its every waking second having something new for him.

He had turned off his brain in a lot of ways, saving it for learning, but he hadn’t done much scheming or deducing in the last near year and a half at all.

’It’s probably about time I turn that part of me back on,’ Theron said with a smile just as Lenwu’s scream peeled across the skies.

The idiot dropped his body and grabbed at his shoulder, trying to stem the bleeding. Then, seemingly recalling that he had other healing methods at his disposal, he rushed to use them, chugging an entire bottle.

Spendthrift wasn’t enough to describe this Lenwu. Just a single one of those pills was probably worth half the arrow arsenal he shot into the air just now, but he had swallowed a dozen of them.

And now...

BOOM.

Lenwu’s body exploded, a rain of blood and gore falling from the skies.

Alpha barked and flashed through the skies, sniping a King Core out of the air and swallowing it whole. But then he made a face of disgust and spit it out, letting it roll to the ground.

After seeing the Core, Theron could see why. It was the murkiest King Core he had ever seen in his life. The impurities were off the charts. One could only imagine how many poor excuses for pills he had swallowed just to get to this point in the first place.

Even so, this Core was still far better than the first King Cores Alpha had ever swallowed back during their face-off-against-the-Umbra days. But clearly, Alpha’s palate had risen significantly since then.

Theron took a breath and sighed. "Well, I tried. But you can’t outrun stupid."

Alpha landed near Theron, shaking furiously. All the blood on his body vanished as Theron leapt up.

"Alright, off we go."

Alpha reached a palm forward.

BOOM.

The gates blasted open. Well, they had already been open, they just weren’t open enough for Alpha’s liking.

Alpha suddenly came to a stop after strolling into the city quite a distance. Then his head turned back.

"Well? Didn’t you all say that there was an execution you had to be at?"

...

A pair of eyes snapped open.

BOOM.

Deathly grey peeled away at heavy slated walls. It looked like a box of concrete was just moments away from collapsing in on itself, but somehow it managed to hold up.

A young man moved a hand to a bracelet on his wrist, feeling around before he realized it was missing. His eyes fell to his side, only to see shards and broken pieces of gems sparkling against the grey floors.

Lenwu was dead.

The young man stared at the broken pieces for a long while.

To a King, even a split second could be the equivalent of days, even weeks to a mortal. But for Chosen Inshwelu, he didn’t move even for several minutes.

How long did he spend staring at it, trying to decipher just what it was he was seeing?

He couldn’t wrap his head around it.

Who dared to kill his younger brother? One of the other Chosen? Was it Vlensci?

Inshwelu slowly stood to his feet, crushing the pieces of the gem to fine dust beneath his sole as he walked out.

A foggy grey hung around him, a destructive Mana that ripped the air itself apart growing in density with every step.

...

Master Uyon’s body dripped with blood. His head hung low, his palms and feet staked into a large black wooden cross that seemed to be eating into his flesh.

Everywhere the black wood touched, his skin rotted and festered, small beetles eating at him.

But to the old man’s credit, he didn’t make a single sound. Though, it was hard to tell if that was because he was so strong-willed or if he was completely unconscious.

When Theron caught sight of the old man, he raised an eyebrow. This seemed to be a bit... much.

He had run into that wood out in the wilderness, and he had used his Karmic Thread and Needle to scribe it. The conclusion?

One of the most sinister materials he had ever come across.

He wasn’t sure of the name because he never bothered to scribe that deeply. But what he did know was that this rotten wood had a symbiotic relationship with a colony of beetles born at the Gold Realm. They grew quickly, and had a similar fascination with flesh as one might expect a termite to have with wood.

Their excremite was especially nurturing for the rotten wood... but only after it was severed from the tree it grew from and died.

Essentially, the excremite of the beetles allowed the tree to continue living in ways it couldn’t while it was truly part of the living.

But that didn’t explain why the beetles would choose this rotten wood in specific. It wasn’t like anyone would be stupid enough to let their flesh rot against it just so that the beetles could take advantage.

And that secret was in the hard shell of the beetles. The special excretions that formed and reformed their shells were formed out of this wood. This wood helped their shells not only to be shockingly sturdy, but they had rotting effects against attacks that dispersed them even further.

They were small, fast, hard to track, and even once you finally did, killing them was practically impossible.

Oh... and they had a sweet tooth for rotting flesh.

There was a circle of people around the platform the old man hung from, but there didn’t seem to be anyone else watching. It was like whoever had put him there was arrogant enough to believe that no one would try anything...

Or maybe they were specifically waiting for someone to do exactly that.

So Theron obliged.