Rivers of the Night - Chapter 310

Chapter 310: The Sentiment [600 GT Bonus]
“Don’t worry, their little Crown Prince is wrapped around my finger.”

“Little? He’s a grown man.”

“I’m not referring to his age, Wren.”

“For the love of any god there is out there, if only I could go a day without listening to your nonsense.”

“I seem to remember someone not feeling this way about five years ago.”

“I grew up!”

“Is it that you grew up? Or that you couldn’t handle me?”

“You never—!” Wren stopped talking as though he realized he had just fallen into a trap. Exsaa’s mad giggling seemed to get more than just that away as well.

Vellan shook his head. Going on a mission with these people was really going to be the end of him.

Chopra was a murderous madman. Wren didn’t know how to take anything seriously. Exsaa was obsessed with pretending to be some sort of common street whore. And then there was him, supposed to be the level-headed brute managing all of this.

Sometimes he felt their Young Master did it on purpose.

“Let’s—” Vellan was cut off as Wren and Exsaa looked toward him at the same time.

“Stop worrying about it so much. There’s no one in this province that can touch us. Even that old hag will have to obediently wait by the side,” Wren said with a grin.

Vellan let out an exasperated breath, but it was clear by his demeanor that, at the very least… he agreed with the sentiment of the words.

**

The rumbling caught the attention of Aliza first, and then the others all turned at once.

“Enemy att—!”

The words were stalled halfway through Aliza’s mouth before she could even release the signal flare in her hands.

Then she stood there frozen, her lip twitching. She watched as Theron flashed out ahead of the puppet army, taking the lead and directing them to their various locations. He didn’t even bother to have them join up with the puppets he had already organized, for the most part.

Instead, Theron seemed to have a new plan for these puppets, separating them out into cells and small squads that scattered across their territory in frankly… odd ways.

Aliza tilted her head in confusion as everyone rushed to her location, wondering what was going on. Then, their reactions were much the same as hers.

Theron had maybe been gone for half an hour. How’d he… come back with all of those puppets? Did he…

The realization hit them.

The only way this would be possible was if Theron had already taken out one of the fortresses on his own.

Everything about the thought left them completely speechless, their minds practically short-circuiting. It just… didn’t make any sense for this to be the case.

They still stood there in a daze even up until the point Theron finished and returned to the fortress.

“What…” Aliza started, before shaking her head. “Forget it. I don’t want to know. I want to understand why you set up the puppets like that instead.”

“They’re cannon fodder, and expensive scouts,” Theron said.

“But… wouldn’t it be better to just add them to our total?”

Theron shook his head. “They gave us 1000 puppets, but this was already too much for us to control effectively on our own. They’re not sophisticated enough. Truthfully, having so many is more of a red herring than anything else.

“There are many examples of successfully capturing a large number of puppets in the past, but the win rate amongst those that did is only about 50%. It’s not a worthwhile advantage, even though it looks good.

“Useless numbers are almost as bad as having no numbers at all. Giving them simple commands, spreading them out so that they can’t interfere with one another, and using them like triggered traps in the wild will be far more effective.”

“And you didn’t set up any to the south because…”

“The river is that way,” Theron pointed to the southeast, “and that way,” he continued, pointing toward the southwest, “there’s nothing remaining.”

Aliza and the others fell into silence. Somehow, the first statement was almost as arrogant as the latter.

Theron didn’t need any puppets stationed to the southwest because the fortress that was there had already been wiped out by him. And he didn’t need any stationed to the southeast because… the water was his to command.

But these words underlied an extra layer of confidence Theron had as well—that being that he was betting no one would be able to sneak around the carefully laid-out scouting units he set up to attack them from the back either.

Not only would they not come from the south, but they couldn’t come from the north and worm their way to their south either.

“What do we do now?”

“Now?” Theron asked. “Just wait. They will come to us. Take up stations in the tower, meditate, rest your minds, make certain that you are ready for combat any time within the next day.

“When they inevitably come, we will crush them.”

“But…” Supra hesitated, then looked in the direction of the Firewing fortress, not sure how to put it.

“They are on their own,” Theron said calmly. “In the outside world, they are our allies. Here, they are not. It is that simple.”

Remembering how Inanm hadn’t hesitated to target Theron, they knew why this was being said. The Firewings and Nightingales might be in a partnership, but it wasn’t one that was even publicly announced just yet—at least not by any method other than a betrothal.

The wedding had yet to even happen.

Whatever alliance their two provinces had, it wasn’t part of their job to overextend themselves for the Firewings, especially not when this hadn’t been discussed earlier.

So, they all listened to Theron, taking up their positions.

Of all the groups, they were without a doubt the most relaxed and casual.

While they were all but napping on the job, the other side of the map was about to trigger its first full-scale battle.

The Sangun and the Auran had, indeed, marched together.

The Sangun split their army, one headed toward the Gold Clan and the other toward the Firewings. As for the Auran… they sent their full army toward the Firewings.

What the Sangun didn’t know was that they wouldn’t find anything where the Gold Clan had once been.