Rivers of the Night-Chapter 306: One Place

Chapter 306: One Place

Theron stood there for a while.

His original intention was to send Ray and Supra off again, just to confirm where the next ones would come from. But it seemed like this wouldn’t be necessary at all.

The moment he had the thought, he was certain that it was true. While he was surprised a bit by the brazenness of it all, it also helped him to calm down quite a bit.

There was something particularly… amusing about it all.

It was an odd thought to have given the situation, and it was certainly not the sort of thought practically anyone else would have had in this situation, but it was the feeling that Theron had nonetheless.

Sometimes the world of cultivation was well and truly a joke.

Your ancestor put in all that effort—scratching and clawing, swimming through rivers of blood and climbing mountains of blades—all so that you could sit perched on your throne of superiority.

And then what?

You abused all of that power in the most cowardly ways possible, staining their names and running their reputation into the ground, taking advantage of the fact that no one dared to speak openly about you to do the most foul things imaginable.

Then, one day, you would enrage the wrong person, poke the wrong bear, and it would all come crumbling down.

In that moment—the moment you finally needed the same edge your ancestors had, finally grasped that the gravy boat wouldn’t continue forever and into perpetuity—it would be too late for you to refine yourself into that blade.

Theron had read countless stories throughout history. The fall of dozens of Empires, the collapse of the most powerful of Clans, and each and every time there were seemingly only two factors that led to their demise.

Time and hubris.

Watching these scenes play out right now, feeling how this Spirit Mancer kept poking and prodding at him as though this was a game rather than the lives of real people…

Amusement was all Theron could feel.

Amusement that was short-lived, quickly replaced with a cold, brooding sort of sharp indifference.

It was this same casual hubris—that feeling of invincibility that these people walked around with—that led to the death of his family. In this case, it seemed that it was going to be up to him to be the wrongly poked bear.

The lion with a flowing mane.

Theron unsheathed his short sword and dagger, the movement so subtle that the sound of it was the only thing that alerted those around him to what was happening. What they didn’t know, of course, was that Theron was more than capable of unsheathing his weapons without the slightest hint of a whisper.

But those watching didn’t need to know that.

“I will be back,” Theron said calmly. “Within the next half an hour, it is doubtful that anyone will attack. But I will return at most ten minutes later than that.

“If there is anyone that does attack, send a signal flare into the air. I will be able to return within three minutes.”

After saying this, Theron’s body flickered, and he vanished.

The Nightingale participants looked at one another. From all of Theron’s earlier preparations, it seemed as though they were just going to hunker down and win a war of attrition. But now he was suddenly disappearing. What did this mean?

The oddest part was that Theron wasn’t going to any one of the locations they had scouted, but instead to the southwest—the location opposite the corner protected by the flowing river.

…

Theron had spoken so many words about what to do in case he didn’t return in time for an attack, but he knew that there were no others prepared to attack any time soon.

Right about now, the other fortresses had probably just about finished setting up their defenses, or were in the process of putting the finishing touches on them. They had yet to spare the manpower for scouting.

This round had occurred so many times that there was already an established meta for doing things—one that Theron had completely deviated from.

Though it was possible that they could have deviated from this meta as well, the odds of it were slim to none. The only exception to this was likely the Gold Clan, which had suffered so many losses by now that there was little they could do but take chances others would not.

Theron had already deduced that the Gold Clan would be the greatest variable, but he hadn’t known exactly where they were, so he couldn’t take advantage of it. But after Ray and Supra returned with their information, he was quite sure of where they were.

Logically speaking, if the Sangun and their backers were rigging the location of the fortresses, they would do so all the way.

If the Sangun were southeast, protected by a curving, L-shaped arc of river, and the Firewings were to the northeast, then where would the Aurans and Golds be?

It seemed like a 50/50 chance that Theron would guess correctly, but he was far more sure of himself than that.

If the Aurans and Sangun were working together like Theron thought, their positions would be locked away in the locations that would deal the worst blow to their enemies. That left only one location the Aurans could be.

The northwest.

With the Sangun at the southeast and the Aurans at the northwest, they would be in the best position to pincer the Nightingales. In addition, because this was a realm with a defined border, they would also easily be able to trap the Firewings and the Golds if it became necessary.

This, likewise, meant that there was only one place the Golds could be.

The southwest.

Theron’s body flashed through the trees and came to a sudden, dead stop as a stretch of plain spread out before him.

The Golds didn’t have even the slightest bit of natural protection, but as Theron expected, they had read and reacted the fastest. Realizing their situation, they mobilized their entire army and were marching toward the one location they could.

With the river blocking the path to the Sangun, they had begun marching due north rather than toward the east…

Where they would inevitably run into the Nightingale Empire.