Rivers of the Night - Chapter 358

Chapter 358: Brazen
Theron stepped into Daggers of the Night once again, his mind still swirling with various thoughts, and his purpose relatively unknown—even to him.

Well, he knew why he had returned; he just didn’t know exactly what he was looking for.

The piece of the moon seemed like a large enough secret, but Theron felt that there was probably something deeper here.

Everything he learned about the Daggers of the Night seemed to suggest some underlying secret.

They were together, but separate. They seemed to work together, but were also in competition. Their goals seemed aligned, but also not too clear.

It was all very confusing.

When Theron first joined the Daggers of the Night, his own thought was that they were an assassin organization. They took money in exchange for completing tasks, and that was the end of it.

Then, when he found Sadie’s identity and almost killed her—before nearly losing his life to a certain Lightning Mancer—he thought that the Daggers of the Night were maybe some elaborate plan by the Nightingales to control several Empires from the dark.

But oddly enough, Sadie and the Nightingales didn’t seem to have any influence at all on this branch. Theron would have certainly noticed if they had—he had contingency plans specifically for them, plans he never ended up needing.

And then there was Aliza. Supposedly the daughter of the old assassin, and carrying knowledge with her that, quite frankly, didn’t make any sense.

Why would secrets of Theron’s bloodline be hidden away in the Imperial Academy of the Nightingales? How would Aliza know it was there? Had the old assassin really spent all that time in the Thistle Brook branch to find what his daughter was looking for? Then what was the relation between Theron’s bloodline and the moon?

There were so many questions, and too few answers.

Even for Theron, there were simply too many powers at play, too many secrets he wasn’t privy to, too many moving pieces.

The only solution he had was… diligence.

He walked through the Daggers of the Night, ignoring those that he came across. He no longer feared anyone here. There might be some powerful Gold Mancers around that might want to take advantage of the situation to take control of things, but the lingering fear for a certain Space Mancer would keep them in check for the time being.

The assassins had mostly scattered, and given their dispositions, the odds they would easily return until the dust had settled were minimal.

Theron didn’t actually know exactly what he was looking for. His steps were slow, and he scanned everything from side to side, the Alpha walking next to him.

Right now, he wanted to take everything in himself.

‘The exact same.’

These were Theron’s thoughts after he walked through the entire underground network of tunnels again.

There were areas of the Thistle Brook branch that he had never been able to access. But Theron believed with quite some assurance that the mapping of this region was exact.

He remembered noticing this before, actually. After the initial culling in the Thistle Brook branch, the branch had—obviously—been moved. But the layout was the exact same.

Theron had forgotten this little detail, mostly because it didn’t seem all that relevant. Maybe the hideout was some massive treasure akin to an immortal abode that could be wrapped up and shipped elsewhere. That wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

But for this hideout to also have the same layout?

Theron walked back into the Space Mancer’s office, his mind flickering with thoughts.

He picked up a quill from her desk and began to draw, outlining the tunnels from the outside in until he got to the very center.

The very location Dagger Calls took place in—a slab of rusted bronze encrusted with blood and death.

It seemed to be another insignificant detail, but Theron found his hand circling around it again and again.

‘A formation capable of compelling you to tell the truth…’

His eyes narrowed.

The more Theron learned about the world, the more he realized just how little he knew in the past. But this one should have been more obvious to him.

During a Dagger Call, two people stood in this etched formation and filled a bowl with their blood. From then on, they were compelled to speak the truth, or suffer horrible pain as a result of not doing so. It was precisely how he had painted Raiden into a corner during their second meeting.

When Theron knew nothing of the world of cultivation, he could easily accept this. He had learned about the Dagger Call during his initiation as an assassin, and back then, he hadn’t even had any cultivation to speak of.

How could he know what was natural in this world of magic and what wasn’t?

But when he thought about what would be necessary to compel a cultivator to tell the truth, he grew more serious.

This wasn’t just any application of Spirit Mana—it was the highest order. For it to be distilled into what seemed to be a mass-produced formation, identical throughout all Daggers of the Night branches, it was even more shocking.

It was one level of impressive for a Spirit Mancer to be able to do this. They would be able to read, adapt, and oppress with what should be their experience.

But for a formation to do it? It meant that all of the contingencies were already baked in.

Programming an artificial intelligence of sorts to replicate what a human could do was orders of magnitude more difficult than just training a human to do it in the first place. And that was precisely what this formation was.

An artificial application of intelligence—a program capable of compelling the same result again and again.

Such a high level of Spirit Mana application…

If the Daggers of the Night were capable of this, just what other secrets were they hiding? They couldn’t be tied to the Seijin as well, could they?

‘I’m still missing something…’

Theron’s steps flashed and the Alpha rushed after him. Soon, they were in the Dagger Call hall, staring at the rusted formation together.

A rustle of black robes caused Theron to look up. It was a familiar man. While his face was hidden, the fluctuations of his Mana were too obvious to Theron.

He had been in the room of high-tier Gold Mancers.

“You are quite bold to come back here after lying to all of our faces. Tell me… is Mesmeralda already dead?”