Rivers of the Night - Chapter 354

Chapter 354: Another Experiment
Theron closed his eyes, taking slow breaths. One puff of chilling cold came from his lips after another.

His ability to push the cold and heat in his Water Mana now was most definitely substantially greater. But the odd part was that his ability to do this had too little to do with his Water Resonance.

In fact, the higher his Resonance became, the harder it seemed to be to change the temperature of his water. It was only because his Third Eye had had a fourth breakthrough that he was able to progress even further.

He didn’t even know how to establish or rank these Third Eye breakthroughs. But every time he had one, his mind became sharper, his comprehension abilities greater, and the cherry on top was this mysterious temperature-changing ability—not to mention the fact that even Gold Mancers couldn’t seem to keep up with his acute senses.

His Resonance made his Water Mana stronger, and thus more resistant to temperature changes. But his mental—or maybe his soul—breakthroughs evened it up.

Thankfully, there was good news, even though progress on that front seemed very slow.

Water’s ability to transfer heat was very strong. It could store a great deal of energy and also dissipate a great deal of energy. That meant that the stronger Theron’s Water Mana became, even if he couldn’t alter its temperature by large percentages, his ability to influence the temperature of other things—especially with speed—was on another level.

Vellan hadn’t even noticed when Theron changed the temperature of his wind to ruin the stream of his currents because it had all happened so fast.

As for Exsaa, she couldn’t fathom how Theron had appeared near her without her realizing because, for one, Theron’s ability to isolate and deal with sudden heat was on an entirely different level now. And… she didn’t expect Theron to be sneaking right into her blind spot because she had no idea that he even knew where she was in the first place.

The Alpha suddenly nudged Theron again, and it looked at Elder Black’s corpse, its saliva dripping.

Theron looked at the corpse and shook his head.

“Go ahead.”

There was a flash of happiness in the Alpha’s eyes, and it shot forward, its teeth ripping into the elder’s body, though it happily tossed the lady’s spatial ring back over to Theron.

Theron looked at it, then nodded, moving to do the same to Exsaa. Chopra’s ring was on his person already, as was Wren’s. That just left Vellan’s.

He wasn’t sure if Vellan’s spatial ring would survive the destruction, but he managed to find it—cracked, but still mostly whole.

Theron didn’t plan on taking these spatial devices with him originally. Out of an abundance of caution, he didn’t know whether the Seijin Clan had a method of tracking them down.

But after some thought, he realized that he was probably overthinking things. Why would he be worried about that at this point?

The young master of theirs could find him through karma whenever he wanted. They were too linked.

In fact, he could probably observe Theron whenever he wanted.

This wasn’t a normal chessboard Theron was playing on. The only place that was safe was the actual sanctuary of his mind. Nothing he said aloud or took personal action on could be considered to be a secret anymore.

So why wouldn’t he take these if they were useful to him?

‘Destroyed… I expected about as much…’

What Theron was actually most interested in was Vellan’s inner armor. It had actually destroyed his dagger so easily without even a scratch.

But if the inner armor was still fine, then Vellan would still be alive—and that would be its own annoyance.

All the Runes on the armor were dim, and Vellan’s head and limbs were gone.

‘Hm?’

Theron crouched down. It was true that what was left of Vellan’s corpse was a mess, but the inner armor was still here.

Originally, Theron thought it was covered in cracks, but when he flicked it, the cracks fell away, forming an even finer mesh beneath that seemed… fine?

‘What’s this?’

Theron wasn’t sure what he was looking at. A weaker inner armor hiding a stronger one? What was the purpose of that? And why didn’t this stronger armor activate to protect Vellan?

‘Oh…’

Theron slapped down with a palm and it rebounded away with a great amount of force. Changing tactics, he pressed down a palm instead, holding firm onto Vellan’s chest and then suddenly pulsing down with a great amount of power.

The sickening sound of bone crunch and what fleshly inner organs remained spilling out echoed.

The inner armor flattened out into a silvery-blue mesh and squeezed out what was left of Vellan. Then, Theron conveniently picked it up and nearly tipped over.

‘Heavy. Why carry this around as a Wind Mancer?’

Despite the thought, Theron knew that Vellan wasn’t normal. Theron had also never heard of a Wind Mancer that chose to use heavy hammers as their weapons of choice either.

The silvery-blue mesh of inner armor suddenly wiggled and then latched onto Theron.

Almost instantly, Theron understood. Vellan wasn’t wearing this armor by choice—it had chosen to latch onto him at some point, and he couldn’t take it off. Because of that, he had no choice but to become the opposite of what one would expect from a Wind Mancer, leaning into heavy weapons to mitigate this dead weight he was carrying around everywhere.

Theron’s thoughts moved like lightning and he let go of the armor, taking a strong step back, but it had already latched onto his wrist, wrapping him and rushing up his arm.

He could feel it pricking at his skin, absorbing his blood greedily and seeking to form a stronger and stronger connection.

Theron remained calm, but his brow was tightly furrowed. Was this another sick joke the Seijin had played? Wren had certainly been put through a great deal of trouble, so Theron didn’t believe that Vellan had ended up with this inner armor by accident.

Another experience, perhaps?

How was he going to avoid it, though?

The inner armor had already covered his entire arm, worming to his shoulders under his tattered robes. It was already looking to take up the same spot on his torso it had on Vellan’s for so long.