Rivers of the Night

Chapter 814: Confident

Theron strolled in with a bright smile on his face, pulling along Ayame. She was clearly not very used to having to deal with such "public displays of affection." She had tried to take her hand away several times already, but Theron practically had a death grip.

By the time they got to the door, she couldn’t continue to do that; otherwise, it would look ridiculous, so she could only go along with it.

Jun’s gaze only casually looked over. When he saw the scene, he didn’t have much of a reaction at all. Somehow, it was obvious to the deepest depths of his soul that he didn’t care.

Theron looked around the place, smiled when he saw Jun and Gione, and then looked toward the tables before he landed on one.

There wasn’t anything as rudimentary or reductive as name tags. But the Demon Corps Princes obviously had a far cleverer method.

Each seating arrangement was aura-tagged. Someone of weak soul would find themselves naturally directed to where they were supposed to sit, and if such a person tried to fight against it and sit where they shouldn’t, there would be a strong resistance against it. If such a person was too weak, it might even lead to direct death.

Of course, if a person was weak to that extent, even fighting back against their impulse would have been near impossible in the first place.

For Theron, it wasn’t difficult at all to pick out two things. The first was Ayame’s exact seating arrangement, which was unsurprisingly quite close to where Gione and Jun were standing. The second was the fact that there was no place for him to sit at all.

He had half expected, after the commotion he had caused at the entrance, that Jun would have prepared a seat specifically to humiliate him. But Jun didn’t. In fact, Jun didn’t change his plans at all.

On the inside, Theron couldn’t help but smile. This Jun was very interesting.

Theron walked forward, his steps quite confident. He was probably the only King present here. Even the herald at the door was a Saint.

Unfortunately, because the invitation

had no information on it, even the herald himself wasn’t informed of the purpose of everything, nor did he know everyone on the invite list. So when Theron had introduced them—especially given the fact Theron had the token of a Demon Duke—he could only use the name given to him.

Now, the situation was set, and countless gazes swept over toward Theron and Ayame. The name they had just heard was both unfamiliar and yet very familiar at the same time.

Many of these Demon Dukes were well aware of Ayame’s feats. A rising talent who had completed enough Demon Duke missions to propel herself toward a chance at Demon Prince disciplehood was too rare for them to not be aware of.

And yet, it was Theron’s name that truly rocked their ears.

How could news of a Demon Duke’s death be hidden? And how could news that it was a King who had felled him not spread even faster than that?

They had all been waiting for their opportunity to meet Theron Galethunder...

They just never expected that it would actually happen today.

Theron greeted Jun and Gione both with a nod, then walked to Ayame’s seat and pulled it out for her.

Jun’s eyes flashed with something peculiar. Just the fact Theron was able to touch Ayame’s seat at all said a great deal.

But then Theron did something that made the entire hall fall completely silent.

He took the seat right next to her.

Jun’s seat.

Not everyone had senses as sharp as Theron’s, and even though many in this hall in specific were at least close, they weren’t familiar enough with Ayame’s aura to pick out exactly which seat that was for her. So, even after Theron and Ayame appeared, they hadn’t noticed the problem just yet.

Now, though, it was impossible

for them not to.

Theron reclined in the seat a bit comfortably, the light of the lava pooling in swirls of crimson and gold dancing across the hidden embroidery of his robes. Beautiful indigo and deep, dark violets flashed like a velvety canvas, enticing the senses.

Gione chuckled, looking down at Theron from the place he stood beside Jun. They weren’t far from the seating arrangements at all.

Now that many thought about it, it was odd that the two most valuable individuals here would be the only two that were standing while everyone else was seated at their banquet tables.

But now they couldn’t help but wonder if that was by design, to wait and see what Theron and Ayame would do.

"You’re quite gracious hosts," Theron said with a smile. "To think that you’d wait for everyone to be seated before you found a seat yourselves."

Theron patted the one seat left to his side. "Come on, big guy, take a seat. Let the grand heir sit where he truly wants to sit."

Gione’s eyes flashed, his chuckle stopping for a moment.

This Theron wasn’t just a little bold, he was bat-shit insane.

There were certain things that couldn’t be implied even in banter, much the same way Jun would have never let it slide that Jung had pretended to be the heir in his place. The latter was almost certainly a challenge to the death, and the former—which was basically Theron implying that Jun wanted to sit on the Demon Prince’s throne—was orders of magnitude worse.

Even Jun himself was taken aback by the words. It was like Theron wanted to force him to attack.

At first, he thought that Theron had come here planning to use his shield as a Demon Duke to remain alive. It would certainly cause problems for the DiBarr if a Demon Duke was invited only to be killed in their territory.

Of course, Theron had never been invited. But when the story spread, such semantics would be long forgotten.

However, causing problems for his father was exactly what Jun wanted. He wouldn’t mind killing Theron a thousand times over.

But this... was different.

Was Theron a fool? Or was he really so confident in his abilities as a mere King?