Rivers of the Night - Chapter 309

Chapter 309: Vellan. Chopra. Wren. Exsaa.
Elder Kelyne Black watched every single twitch and change to Theron’s expression—from the moment he received the two sketches from Ray and Supra, to the moment he picked up the extra 1,000 puppets without hardly lifting a single finger.

‘He knew.’

She was sure of it. It wasn’t too obvious, especially since Theron hadn’t spoken his thoughts directly, but she trusted her gut instinct. There was simply no way he hadn’t.

His mannerisms had completely changed the moment he saw the maps, as he had to have deduced something. Then he decisively chose a direction and acted on it.

From his actions, one would have thought that someone from the outside world had contacted him, informing him of what was happening. But this time, Elder Kelyne Black was putting in all her effort to ensure that couldn’t happen.

She wasn’t a Spirit Mancer and couldn’t stop such subtle tricks with subtlety of her own. Instead, she just shrouded the fluctuations of the portal with her own aura, using raw power to block everything out with a thick mist of Water Mana.

There was no one contacting Theron. She knew that.

Which meant… he had deduced it all on his own from maps of places he hadn’t even personally seen.

No, maybe he already had an inkling before he even stepped into the world. How else did he know which directions to send Ray and Supra off to in the first place?

‘I see…’

The realm had limited space. As such, normally, there would be signs of the “edge” of the world. This edge was like a murky grey-blackness that only became obvious when you were close to it. Otherwise, you would see it as a normal expanse of skies.

It was a clever illusion that many weren’t even sure of the purpose of. But at the very least, it made being in a realm far more comfortable than it would be otherwise.

However, if one was sensitive enough, it would be possible to pick out the flaws in the illusion. The closer one was to the barrier, the more obvious those flaws would be.

The moment Theron stepped into the world, he realized something… the flaws were too hard to pick out. In fact, he couldn’t see any of them with his current sensory perception.

He immediately felt that this was odd, considering that according to all the records he had read in preparation for this, the fortresses were usually placed in neutral positions near the barrier for the sake of fairness.

There was some randomness to the landscape, and some might have more easily defensible positions than others, but it wouldn’t be exaggerated—and certainly not something as lopsided as this.

When Theron saw this, he sent Ray and Supra northeast and southeast because he sensed water to the southeast. No matter what, even if he was wrong, he wanted to understand the situation of a body of water large enough to sense from such a distance.

As for why he picked northeast… it was for no other reason than to test his theory. There were no obvious signs at all.

He bet that if the only large body of water was concentrated in one area, there would certainly be someone taking advantage of it—which meant that the region that couldn’t take advantage of it would be more likely to be their ally.

In the end, it was just a guess. An educated one, but a guess nonetheless.

And a guess that ended up being correct.

In an instant, using a fraction of the time, he got information about the entire battlefield. And while others were only just starting to gather information, he had doubled the size of his army, destroyed one of the fortresses.

And returned like a king.

‘…A confident little boy, for very good reasons, it seems…’

Every day, Elder Black’s fondness for Theron seemed to grow. Suddenly, she found herself quite enamored.

…

“What do you think?”

Three cloaked figures sat in a room, watching the scene play out before them. Truthfully, they had just set up some petty tricks without much effort to mess with Theron a bit. But seeing them crumble so easily…

Well, it was hard for them not to be a little annoyed.

“Just let Chopra handle it. Won’t it end the same way?”

“Young Master told us not to kill him, and Chopra isn’t the best at controlling himself.”

“Yeah, but he’s the weakest of us and the only one who would care enough about this to make it seem real. Young Master told us not to kill him, but we also have to actually push him. If I went, I’d be too busy laughing.”

“Well, I would be too busy flirting. What a cute little boy. I wonder why Young Master is so interested in him. It can’t be that Young Master is interested in such things, right?”

“Why don’t you go ask him personally and see how that would go for you?”

The giggle of a young woman echoed. “As if Young Master would ever harm me for a little joke. I’ve seen enough of Young Master to know what he likes very much.”

“The joke might be fine. Pining after other men, though, that’s a different matter.”

“It’s a little boy. I hardly think Young Master would feel much of anything at all. I just want to pinch his little cheeks and see if his balls have dropped yet.”

“Are you two finished? If so, shut up.” A gruff voice echoed.

“You’re no fun, Vellan.” You could practically hear her pout in her voice.

“We have important things to focus on. What is the situation with the Sangun, Wren?”

“What is there to report? They’re little obedient puppets. Nothing has changed.”

“They’re bound to buck eventually. They’re weak, but they aren’t fools. They’ll realize soon enough that we don’t have nearly the same influence in this region as the Black Clan. Once they see that, they’ll be doing whatever they can to get back into the Black Clan’s graces—including selling us out.”

A giggle came from the woman again—a woman quite feared throughout the world… Exsaa.