Rivers of the Night

Chapter 331: Path of Mancy

Theron’s gaze lingered on the scarlet hue of his blood, the dripping moonlight reflecting across its surface and almost tinging it with a violet hue.

It ran down his fingers so easily, so fragile, so loose, falling to the ground only to slide off into the ether, lost and forgotten.

It was an odd melancholy for such a minor wound, and Theron found himself distracted by it for a moment. Was that him? Or was that…

Theron looked toward where the gaze had to have come from. There was nothing there, nothing that he could see with his eyes alone, anyway. And he no longer felt that blade pressing up against him.

But he was sure that it had come from there.

It was oddly only all the more sad that he couldn’t tell where this feeling was coming from.

There was a flash in the skies and Theron slowly turned around. There, on the opposite side of the palace’s rounded roof, a young man stood. He swayed from side to side on a lightning rod, and yet his sword was like his counterbalance.

Simple, plain, even rusted in some locations up to the hilt—it couldn’t have weighed very much at all.

There was nothing beautiful about the blade at all, but for some reason, Theron found that he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. That simple blade a common farmer might use to defend his crops, that a normal foot soldier of a small village might hang from his hips, was now in the palms of a young man just a step away from Gold Mancy, and yet it felt so very natural.

Wren’s face was obscured by the shadows, but Theron felt that even if it wasn’t for his hood, he would hardly be able to pay attention to the former’s face at all.

It wasn’t a young man standing in front of him—it was a blade. So Theron unsheathed his own.

Neither young man said a single word, but when they moved, the world stilled.

SHIIING.

The howl of a sword blazed through the air.

Theron caught the trajectory of the blade with a backhanded grip, his dagger planning to drag it to the side so that his short sword could follow up. But almost instantly, he knew it was impossible.

His daggers weren’t great, but they were still Bronze Resonance Treasures. And yet, the moment it came into contact with this common, rusted sword, it was like a hot knife through butter.

His dagger didn’t chip—Theron felt as though he hadn’t caught the blade at all. Wren’s sword sliced through it cleanly. If it continued like this, the best case was losing an arm, the worst was his head.

Theron’s reaction was as quick as lightning. The moment he didn’t feel the pressure he should have for blade-on-blade contact, he twisted his wrist.

The notch Wren’s sword had just formed became his leverage as he twisted it to the side, sidestepping to make some distance.

However, Wren was reacting as well. His eyes were dull, radiating a silver beneath his hood as his sword vibrated.

Theron’s dagger shattered into countless pieces, pelting into his chest and head like the filler of a grenade.

Blood splattered. There was simply no time for Theron to cast a spell to protect his entire body; he only had the time to form a protective casing around his head, allowing his chest to be impaled.

Luckily, the vibration wasn’t of great power because Wren simply didn’t have the time, so while Theron’s flesh was torn, his bones and ribcage were fine.

Shu.

Theron accelerated back, trying to make some distance, but Wren followed, his sword sweeping in an arc behind him.

With a twist of his stance, Theron glided up the golden-red grooves of the palace’s roof. He made his body skinny, facing his short sword forward and forcing Wren to meet it.

There was a swift exchange of blows, arcing lines of curving silver and blue rebounding against one another in a cascade of sparks as they rushed to take an advantage.

An advantage Wren quickly gained.

Theron had grown used to suppressing his opponents in skill and wit in battle, but it couldn’t be forgotten that he was just an Elemental Mancer. There was a reason it was so surprising every time he used something that seemed akin to a Weapon Resonance.

Wren, however, only knew the way of the sword. He knew no spells, he had learned no techniques, no methods. All he knew how to do was to kill, to sever, to execute.

And when the simple strokes of his blade entered a flow, he became an endless tide, a tsunami of fluctuating Sword Mana that crashed down in an abyss of waves.

Theron’s guard was thrown out of whack, his chest opening up to an enormous slash from Wren. However, as the blade passed through, Wren immediately felt that something was wrong.

BANG!

The Water Clone exploded and Theron appeared on a curving peak of the palace a distance away. His robes fluttered, his short sword already sheathed.

Theron wasn’t a fool. He made his decision instantly the moment he saw Wren’s abilities.

It seemed that it was time to stop holding back.

For a long while now, Theron’s default state in battle was to pull out his blade and attack. That wasn’t just because he was arrogant, but it was also a method of learning more about his body and this odd bloodline within him that seemed capable of speaking to Paths of Mancy he should have no access to.

However, Theron had never forgotten his truest roots even if his enemies seemed to have.

He was a Mage.

A Water Mage.

With the blue moon as his backdrop, the singing cadence of Water Mana as his muse, he raised his hands, one sphere of wildly rotating water after another taking shape.

Runes began to thrum across their surface, and suddenly, it became difficult to tell just which was the real moon…

The one in the sky?

Or Theron himself?

Theron exhaled a slow breath.

Veinsong.

He would end this quickly.