Rivers of the Night

Theron seemed unbothered. He relentlessly attacked, one fierce combo after another.

Mason was ultimately a Dark Mancer, and it showed. He was excellent at controlling his shields and moving them into position. But his spear was mediocre, and Theron, despite being slower and weaker, was running absolute circles around him.

Every savage attack fell on air or the feeling of the softest cotton. Theron bobbed and weaved, using Mason as though he was target practice.

In the past, Theron struggled against Silver Mancers because of their absolute control over ambient Mana, but now he was on another level entirely. Before him, even a Quasi Gold Mancer couldn't pull on Mana as they pleased…

Especially not in the rain.

Chi. Crack. BANG!

Theron's short sword shattered.

He pivoted out of the way of a spear, its tip crossing along the length of his chest but hitting nothing but air once again.

In one fluid motion, he gripped his now empty hilt and threw it at Mason's face. Falling back, he didn't get much power behind it at all, but that didn't stop a swirl of Water Mana from propelling it through the air. Or so that was what it looked like.

Mason could tell the subtle difference. It wasn't that Water Mana was propelling it, but rather that Theron was controlling the rain falling through the air to move out of its way so that the heavy pelting storm didn't affect his throw.

How could someone be casual enough in battle to do this? And why even put in the effort? At most, the rain could budge the hilt a few fractions of a millimeter. Was it worth being so precise?

Mason didn't realize that the moment he had such thoughts, he had already lost… not the battle, but the journey of cultivation itself.

[Pressure Burst].

BANG!

A shield appeared in the path of the hilt, but after Theron had been wielding the weakening sword for so long, he had poured a great deal of Water Mana into it, allowing him to burst it apart at the seams at just the perfect time.

This was the real reason Theron's sword had shattered. The protective glow on it had mostly been for show as Theron slowly ebbed its structure away with his own Mana.

The shield shuddered on impact and was blown back.

Theron's back foot slammed into the ground and his Silver Core glowed with a radiant light as he pulled on his Blue Pufferfish Echo in earnest for the first time in this battle.

A [Water Wrap] formed beneath his foot, spiraling beneath it and looking as solid as a blue steel pillar. Its density was so high that all the moisture in the surrounding ten meters was soaked out from the ground just to form what was ultimately an arm of barely six inches across.

[Pressure Burst].

BANG!

And then half of it exploded, its tail end whipping Theron forward.

The distance between Theron and Mason hadn't been very far to begin with since Theron had only just dodged the latter's spear. This was why Mason had found it even more ridiculous that Theron would do something like controlling the rain to fall around his projectile. There wasn't time for the rain to change much of anything about its trajectory.

But what Mason didn't know was that Theron wasn't controlling the rain for that sake alone. What he wanted was to ensure that the impact caused by the shattering of his sword hilt came with enough control that the rebounding of the shield went to the exact position he wanted.

From the start of the battle, Theron had been observing Mason's fog, clearly a projection of his Echo. While the miniature shields seemed to teleport at will, that was impossible.

Although Dark Mana could display some Space Mana-like abilities in the hands of those talented enough, it wasn't to the point that it could be used so freely, and it had far more limitations than Space Mana did in this regard.

Space Mana could casually shrink and expand space, pulling two nodes together or suddenly apart. Dark Mana's teleportation, though, usually worked by deconstructing and then reconstructing something. It looked like teleportation when in reality it was just speed.

To control nine small shields like that randomly would consume a lot of soul strength. The only way to make it easier was by having them rely on a movement pattern of sorts, or more accurately…

A formation.

Like this, each shield would have its own region of protection, and though there would be some overlap, if one region was disrupted just enough, and in just the right way…

BANG!

Theron's fist collided with Mason's nose, crushing it with yet another activation of [Pressure Burst]. This spell should have consumed a large amount of Mana every time, but Theron had already used it more than two dozen times in the course of this battle alone and yet he wasn't showing even the faintest signs of Mana Depletion.

In fact, his second attack came even faster.

His dagger-wielding hand swung, slashing out against a lagging shield that just barely managed to recover in time, but a cascade of clangs had already sent the formation Mason was relying on into chaos.

The first shield collided against a second, which collided against a third and fourth.

Half of the formation was ruined in an instant. There was only one that remained that was still somewhat working properly, but without the support of the formation…

Theron's dagger easily parried it away.

With a soft touch, Theron landed on the ground and crouched, Mason's spear slashing out over his head and missing entirely.

He leapt up in a fluid motion, so fast that he almost ran his own head back into Mason's blade. But everything down to the slightest millimeter had already been calculated.

Another slash of his dagger, a second fist to the face, a kick to the liver.

One vicious combo after another that seemed to target the perfect spot every time to keep Mason's miniature shields in perfect disorder.

Time and time again, though, Theron's dagger collided against that one shield as though it was the one thing protecting Mason's life, until…

Chi.

The shield split in two.

Mason's eyes opened wide, the struggle on his expression bearing ripe fruit as despair colored his irises.

Who was this monster? Was he trying to break the shield to prove a point?

Theron's blade continued forward, in a fluid motion. A streak of radiant blue, gliding beneath the night's moonlight and relentless rain being the last sights the Grand Duke Clan genius ever saw.

Mason's head was severed at the neck.