Rivers of the Night-Chapter 413: Balance

Balance.

The pool of blood had risen up to Theron’s knees. He could feel the heft of it all, a crushing weight pressing down on his soul seemingly with every intention of ripping it to pieces.

Every time he sank into it, the pressure increased. But it seemed to also have a therapeutic effect on his soul whenever he stepped out as well.

Theron was slowly teasing apart the secrets of the slab, and after five entries, that was probably his greatest discovery. There was a great synergy between the necklace his father had left him and the slab, the two working in conjunction.

No, they weren’t working together. It was more accurate to say that the slab was capable of excavating the foundation of the necklace for him to a much greater extent.

This made sense to Theron. The necklace always seemed to respond to his mood, absorbing energy based on his emotions. He hadn’t noticed it until he started paying attention to those cold breaths he thought were just a natural part of himself.

But every time he felt a strong emotion and controlled it, he exhaled a cold breath. Every time he raged and let it fuel his strength, he exhaled a hot breath.

Whenever this happened, the necklace would absorb them, and then when things reached a certain point, it would turn whatever that was into an energy that poured into his soul, strengthening it considerably.

Thanks to this, Theron’s Third Eye was probably already beyond even those Divine Realm beings, though he had never tested this to be certain.

All he knew was that by his own extrapolations, even the best on the Mandate Leaderboard were no match for his Third Eye, and the margin was so large that he couldn’t see how their progression into mid-tier or high-tier Gold Mancy would make a difference.

If the necklace was working based on his emotions—emotions that seemed to be the foundation of his two Mandate Paths—then it only made sense that by strengthening those Mandate Paths, the progress his soul had made would deepen and he would benefit to a greater extent.

His soul hadn’t broken through one of those barriers again. But the benefits of the barriers he had already broken through deepened.

Every time he stepped out of the slab having shown some progress, it was actually his soul that benefited the most.

Even now, Theron didn’t quite understand the soul—what it was, or even how he was cultivating it. The soul was something that supposedly only Gold Mancers could make use of, which was why \[Soul Escape] was such a shocking technique for the old assassin to get him to learn in the first place. But Theron knew little else.

However, its range of benefits seemed endless... and yet simultaneously unhelpful in getting him to understand this Law of Balance.

He kept thinking about a balance between hot and cold, but that wasn’t it. This was a Law specifically for the chilling path; the fact his necklace needed both to trigger a change in his soul was irrelevant.

Theron frowned. He rarely struggled with things like this, and it was making him wonder if there was something wrong with him. Was the blockage something else? What was holding him back?

His thoughts drifted as the suffocating pressure of the slab increased. As though his blood was punishing him for his incompetence, he was being slowly crushed.

He had felt the arrogance of his bloodline before, but he had also felt the indifference the Laws of Water felt toward it. Everyone was just so arrogant and stuck in their own bubbles. The irony that these inanimate things were mirroring the actions of humans and their ilk wasn’t lost on Theron in the slightest.

There were just so many things that didn’t make sense to him. Plus, there was one question that had been on his mind for the longest time.

If he really did have a special bloodline, and his necklace along with his father’s sword were truly two things perfectly tailored to it...

Then why was he the only Water Mancer in his family? Even his little sister had been an Ice Mancer by affinity.

How could a mutant bloodline like his work so well with these things? And why did it feel like it was always supposed to be Water in the first place?

Was it even possible for Ice Mana to follow a heated path?

Confusion colored more of Theron’s expression, and despite the length of time this high-quality plaque was giving him, he found that he was quickly running to the end of it.

Was he going to fail just like that?

Theron suddenly coughed up a mouthful of blood, his body shuddering as he was shocked awake. The streams of water around him almost exploded, but luckily he was buried deep enough in the river that things were still kept quite covert.

That was the good news.

The bad news was that the moment he woke up, his stealth was ruined. While no one on the surface could sense the disturbance, the same wasn’t true of the various sea creatures here.

Back in the Nightingale Empire, the power of creatures was pretty limited. Mana Beasts were very rare, and Gold Mancy Beasts even rarer.

The case wasn’t the same here at all. This deep in the river, it was practically ruled by Gold Mana Beasts. Though Runebound beasts were still rare, Imbued and Manaborn ones were much more common...

And still several times more powerful than their human counterparts.

Theron acted first before he could grasp the full scope of the situation around him.

With a twist of his intention, he propelled his injured body out of the way, his thoughts spinning.

He honestly couldn’t believe that he had failed.

This was the only thought he had time to spare to anything other than survival, because a row of jagged teeth and an antenna of glowing light had appeared before him.

’Runebound?’ Theron’s eyes narrowed.

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