Rivers of the Night

Theron dashed away at his fastest possible speed, not waiting for the guards to question him at all.

He could feel that they were Gold Mancers. Gold Mancers, the most powerful Mancers of this continent, restricted to mere guard duty in this hellish place.

However, they were still just Lower Gold Mancers.

"Dammit! Report this!" one of the guards barked. "The rest of you! With me!"

…

A message went to the main council. Unfortunately… there were no elders or the Patriarch present at this moment. They had all surged toward Macie's peak, thinking they had the Demon Soldier pegged.

By the time they realized they had been fooled, the situation would be much different.

Rather than trying to find Theron in their own home territory, the scope of their search radius would become the entire planet, a place much larger than Theron was used to navigating, and yet it also happened to be precisely what he needed right this moment.

…

Theron dashed forward, his eyes radiating an icy color as he turned the effects of the Mandate Core off.

Water Mana surged around him and ice plated his feet. The earth became a sheet of blazing white-blue, and Theron suddenly accelerated.

Friction seemed to become a thing of the past, his body bending forward as he curled off the road ahead.

The path to the Nightingale Sect was open and wide, almost brash and bombastic in a way that was only natural for such a large power. But it also embraced the realms of nature and the world around it as well.

As prominent as the path was, it wasn't very far from the wilderness.

In fact, because of their arrogance, the Nightingale Sect was very hard to reach and very secluded from the rest of society on the planet they called home.

And luckily, that gave Theron a lot to work with.

With a swipe at his face, Theron replaced the shroud of darkness obscuring his features with an icy mask instead, water coating him and bouncing light so furiously around him that it was impossible to pinpoint exactly what he looked like.

Theron accelerated further, his water icing over thick water vapor in the air into paths of ice he used to curve around trees and leap over hurdles.

The fluidity of his movement only grew with every passing moment as he got used to a greater and greater abundance of Mana in the air.

He swept out his Third Eye wantonly for the first time, only limiting it slightly to within just a hundred meters of himself before kicking up his pace to a whole other degree.

The Third Eye wasn't just about senses; it was also the medium through which Silver Mancers could communicate with atmospheric Mana.

Theron didn't realize until now just how limited his own was.

There was a limit to the range of Spells. Even if your Third Eye stretched thousands of miles, if you waited for a Spell to gather Mana from that far away from you, you'd need minutes to cast a single Spell to completion. By then, your enemy could kill you ten times over.

Theron's Third Eye had grown so powerful that, though it wasn't as exaggerated as thousands of kilometers, he could easily cover dozens of kilometers with his Third Eye—but even that couldn't be used in battle unless he could buy a few seconds to complete a cast.

But in this world… he realized that the Third Eye shouldn't be limited by range, but instead by the density of Mana it could actually control.

There was so much Mana in such ridiculous amounts that Theron found that even if he had hours to cast a Spell, it would become well oversaturated long before he could use all the Mana within dozens of kilometers.

In fact, his Third Eye would hit its own limit long before this.

If Theron was correct, in this world, the value of a powerful Third Eye was even more important because of this Mana density. The more powerful a Third Eye, the larger the concentration of Mana it could wield, and thus the more powerful your spells would be.

Because of this, Theron found himself icing over large chunks of soil and trees well ahead of himself with hardly any effort at all.

It had to be remembered that Theron wasn't an Ice Mancer; he was a Water Mancer, his Water Mana just happened to be capable of growing chillingly cold.

The ice he was forming now was almost auxiliary in a way, crafted by the effects of his cold Water Mana acting on the world around him.

This was to say that it technically took more effort for him to ice things over than it would for an Ice Mancer. And yet…

It felt so easy.

His control was improving by leaps and bounds. He was so enamored by it that he almost didn't notice when he had lost the guards entirely.

With a stomp of his foot, he changed directions, surging away. He stopped using his Water Mana and swapped back to Dark Mana, seamlessly blending into the forest.

He knew the moment he saw those patrolling disciples that he could take advantage of it. It was obvious to him that they had given them strict patrolling duties without telling them what they were really fighting—using them as bait.

The question was, what would they gain by Theron killing their disciples?

The answer, then, was equally as obvious.

Information.

What information?

Information on Theron's location.

Realizing this, Theron used it against them.

He caught and captured the disciples, killing them systematically on his own time when he was well away from their patrol bubbles. He lured them into believing he was rushing away in one direction, when in reality, he was aiming toward a completely different gate.

By now, they should be realizing the mistake they had made. Unfortunately for them, finding Theron had suddenly become thousands of times more difficult.

A cold glint lit in Theron's eyes.

This world was really just the same no matter where you looked. They callously used their own disciples as bait to catch someone who had already killed one of their own? Why? Because Sadie was more valuable to them?

For what purpose? Because she was more talented? Because they cared about her more?

The chill around Theron grew denser. But this time, it radiated through the Dark Mana.