Rivers of the Night

Chapter 852 852: Lower

Theron crossed his arms, his hair dancing. His eyes bloomed into orbs of indigo light, his hair vanishing in that same light—or maybe it was that the individual strands had truly become that light.

His soul bloomed and the world around him flashed, his Primordial Earth taking root and infusing itself into the very ground.

However, a world of ice and another of raining fire bombarded his own, weakening it and shrinking it.

Theron, though, didn't seem to notice, his body shaking only for the briefest moment before his waning roar returned.

"Stay out of this," Kenton said coldly.

He didn't wait for Bamby to reply, taking a step and vanishing. When he appeared again, his blade was already about to stab right through Theron's dantian.

Reacting quickly, Theron slipped to one side, but he was still a step late.

The blade tore through his gut, barely missing his dantian by a few inches at most.

'So fast.'

Even in his rage, those two words and that one conclusion roared in his ears fiercer than even his own fury.

He kicked out to push Kenton away and stop the latter from tearing into him, but Kenton had already vanished, appearing outside of his range in a blizzard of cold for the smallest fraction of a second before vanishing again.

Theron raised his blades and pivoted.

BANG.

A sword slashed down from above, sending him flying and skidding across the earth. Cold ate into his back with every rebound, gnawing away even at the flames that continuously danced on his body.

But he didn't even get the chance to get up before Kenton appeared high above him, swinging his blade down from above.

"Who are you to think you can have an Undefeatable Spirit?" Kenton asked, his voice carrying on the chilled wind.

BANG.

Theron blocked with his dagger, but the blow was too heavy. Kenton descended from above, his sword eating into Theron's shoulder and drawing blood down to the bone.

The ground beneath them shattered and that was Theron's only path of escape. He just managed to slip free, using the curve of the ground away from their clash to gain some breathing room.

However, Kenton was relentless. The breathing room was brief, and then he was already upon Theron again. And then again.

"You're an ant crawling through the crevices of the soles of shoes. You think yourself undefeatable only because you play in a small pond."

Every blow seemed just on the teetering edge of lethality. A quarter slice of Theron's neck, a thrust right by his heart and through his chest, a blade that just nicked the bone of Theron's skull, splitting the skin that once protected it like a blooming flower.

"Without your petty little tricks, I would have defeated you with not even a tenth of my peak strength. Do you think that this is all I have? Do you think this is my limit? I have more. I have more than you can even imagine.

"Who do you think you are?!"

Kenton's voice grew into a tempest from its original monotone cold. His hair became wilder, his teeth longer, a deep, bestial blood that ran through the core of his body rampaging.

His strength increased again and he feinted a strike with his sword, only to remove a hand from its hilt and suddenly claw at Theron's belly.

PUCHI.

He ripped right through Theron's dantian and through his spine. Then he pulled, ripping out guts and blood in a gruesome spray.

"THERON!"

Lyra's scream echoed even over the chaos. She tried to run forward, but a barrier she didn't understand or see appeared in front of her. She couldn't even finish raising her leg before she was frozen in place.

As for Kenton, he didn't even look. Lyra's cries were swallowed by the howling winds and violent pulses of energy.

Theron grunted, his vision swimming as he collapsed to the ground.

However, Kenton found himself frowning. He hadn't felt any Cores just now at all. It was like his arm had passed right through a void. Where were the twin Cores Theron should have had?

Theron's body shuddered, his thoughts not quite so coherent.

The pain of wounds and injuries, of broken limbs and shattered bones, wasn't what he feared. He hardly reacted to those. He had experienced enough of it.

What pained him was that he wasn't fast enough, not skilled enough, not smart enough to come up with a way to overcome this without relying on treasures.

It left him furious, but—.

"Summon it," Kenton said coldly. "Go ahead. Your fancy little platform. Do it."

Theron's expression was blank as he tried to stand up. He wasn't even breathing at this point. His lungs were in ruins, and where would he be sending the oxygen? All of his inner organs were in a complete mess.

The only reason he could even try to stand after his spine had been so severely damaged was because of his control over his blood.

It was all he had left. But it was a trump card that Kenton had already seen before. It was what had injured him so fiercely in the first place.

Theron looked up and met Kenton's gaze, his body looking far more like a zombie's than any living, breathing entity should have. His guts spilled over his waist, his neck was a quarter cut through, the sword wounds that went through his body and out his back too numerous to count.

Yet his gaze was the same, lines of indigo wafting from it like smoky plumes of light.

Chi.

Kenton's sword flashed too fast to track, slicing from one eye, across Theron's nose bridge, and through the other.

"Lower your gaze."

Theron still didn't react. His body swayed just the slightest bit as the world went black before him, the pain and the oozing of his blood becoming the only signs that he had lost his vision to the outside world.