Rivers of the Night

"STOP!"

Theron had already tuned everything out.

A heavy stone fell from above, so large it could crush him into a meat paste.

From the left and right, to the front and back, it wasn't just him that was being swallowed up, but Raiden himself as well.

Realizing that his spear must have only grazed Theron, Raiden was already prepared to move back and leap through to whatever was above. Silver Mancer or not, if they were buried beneath all this stone and earth, they would die.

Surviving a landfall that was on the orders of hundreds of thousands to millions of jin was too far beyond them.

And yet, Raiden didn't have the time to notice that Theron wasn't moving at all. He had dropped his dagger, calmly sheathing his short sword as he bent into a focused posture.

His aura fell into silence, his Mana retracting until he looked like nothing more than a normal mortal.

And then came the solar flares of violet, blues, and pinks. His eyes were still a chilling blue, but his hair almost became akin to the silky strands of an Immortal Jellyfish's lower body.

He forgot about the world, his very intent itself focused into his blade.

SHIIIIING!

Theron unsheathed his short sword in a fluid motion. His actions flowed so perfectly that even given the small, narrow room to work with, the blade itself didn't even touch the sides of the sheath.

And yet, the moment the blade had been fully extracted, the sheath itself shattered in Theron's palm, the power so great that his palm became a bloodied mess.

But even now, he didn't so much as flinch.

His step was more of a flash than a change to his gait. The sudden burst of that first initial movement, that shocking inertia coming with such pace that Theron's hair pinned back, their silky long strands becoming a streaming river to his back as though a manifestation all its own.

Every ounce of his being was forward.

And soon, it became obvious why. Raiden knew he needed speed, and he knew that he didn't have enough of it, so in a moment of quick thinking brought by Veinsong, he immediately activated [Blood Escape].

The Lightning Mancer had already leapt high, dodging the heavy stone and kicking down at them to send himself further up.

Streams of blood-red coated his lightning, accelerating him upward all the more. And even as Theron crouched down from below, a heavy stone about to mince him to pieces, his own pupils had to rapidly bounce back and forth just to keep up with Raiden's pace.

BOOM!

The heavy stone fell from above, a wave of earth crashing out in all directions. But Theron was completely gone.

A streak of blue and the sparkling violet and pink was left in his wake, the roar of the early powerhouse echoing, but doing nothing to stop his forward momentum.

His sword was still in an unsheathing motion, and yet he radiated such sharpness that the stone that fell behind him split into a clean two halves before it collapsed beneath its own weight.

It was such a subtle change, lost in all the destruction, that only those with the sharpest of senses would have grasped it in the first place.

But it only continued to happen.

Theron still seemed to be unsheathing his blade, and yet every heavy stone he came across was split in two one after another.

He streaked upward like a meteor, so fast that he crossed the distance between him and Raiden—who was extending it—in the blink of an eye despite the latter's speed.

And then he burst through the surface.

Chi.

Raiden landed on the crumbling soil and moist grass, finding himself a place that remained relatively stable.

To his back, Theron skidded across the very same soft soil, his momentum not nearly as controlled. His heels dug in, leaving two deep trenches.

There was an odd silence between the two that belied the complete and utter destruction beneath their feet.

Theron slowly lowered his blade, rising up from his crouched position with a calm countenance and a face that was only the slightest bit pale. He teetered on the edge of a Mana Depleted state, but he stood ramrod straight nonetheless.

All the while, Raiden still seemed frozen in place, until a sudden burst of blood akin to a pipe leaking beneath too much pressure erupted from his shoulder down to his chest.

A clean cut ran down diagonally, severing his collarbone, his shoulder, a lung, and his heart in a single stroke.

Raiden's hand trembled, his grip on his spear tightening as though to ensure that he was still alive for the moment. But it wasn't nearly enough.

The veins of his neck bulged, and the muscles he had left tried their best to slowly turn back toward Theron.

He was a man who was supposed to reach the pinnacle of the world, a man who was just months removed from staking his future position in the Nightingale Clan. His entire life was in front of him.

Had his master not insisted on suppressing his cultivation for so long and forcing him to learn the fundamentals of assassination rather than leaning into his talent, how much further along would he be? He was only around 16 years old, but he had all the confidence in the world that he would have already been a Gold Mancer by now.

In just these three months alone where his master had finally cut him loose, he had gone from a low-tier Silver Mancer to a higher-tier.

And now… now he was… dead?

"You want to know about Merchant Greycoat, right?" Theron asked.

Raiden's pupils trembled.

"Well, I can tell you one thing for certain. He's the reason you're dead right now. As for the rest, figure it out in the afterlife."

Raiden's pupils slowly dilated as the rest of his body relaxed.

He fell over, collapsing into a pool of his own blood that was all too quickly sapped up by the moist soil around them.