Rivers of the Night-Chapter 420: Eat

The middle-aged man unleashed a roar and Theron’s eyes flickered. The field of lightning suddenly dispersed, but something else was wrong.

It was fine for the field to disperse—the spell had already been disrupted for all intents and purposes, this was the logical next step. The real problem was that it hadn’t happened as a natural result of that; the man had forcefully cancelled it.

Theron felt his Laws being overwhelmed not by better comprehension, but stronger Mana. And then there was another surge.

CLANG! freewёbnoνel.com

The middle-aged man was rattled, his neck quaking as a shield of hexagons formed over his flesh right where Theron’s blow struck. The reverberating impact was so strong that Theron felt his wrists fracture, his arms quaking as his sword nearly flew from his hands.

The man, however, only took a single heavy step back. The gap in their power was too strong, and while Theron’s short sword had become a Runebound Treasure, this was a new world he was stepping into right now.

A man of this caliber would certainly have a Runebound Treasure of his own. And while Theron’s was Silver, his would just as certainly be Gold.

And it seemed like he had chosen to use his precious funds on the one thing that could save his life at a critical moment.

"You... almost killed me."

Theron landed heavily meters away, the reverberating impact having sent him reeling. But his next words still came out calmly.

"Almost?"

The man’s eyes widened, but it was too late. A blood-red scythe cut across his neck.

Freezing, the man couldn’t seem to believe it as his vision spun. As his head fell from his shoulders, the last sight he saw was his body still standing there in shock, unable to understand what had happened until he landed between his legs and he saw it...

The blood-red beast that had somehow appeared behind him.

His vision slowly dimmed, his last thoughts about the cruelty of the cultivation world. One mistake was well and truly all it would take to lose your life forever.

And at that point... there was no getting it back.

Theron ignored the pain in his wrists, sheathing his weapon and walking forward. Bending over, he picked up the bracelet he had tossed to the ground when the middle-aged man was much too focused on Ippe’s death.

This was none other than the summoning bracelet he had taken from Exsaa. While he was at the Tyre Imperial Clan, there was no convenient place to keep the Alpha, and he didn’t want just anyone investigating how special it was, so Theron had kept him in the bracelet until now.

Luckily, the Alpha had progressed to the Third Resonance and had done well for itself.

While Third Resonance Gold Mancy wasn’t enough to defeat a character like the middle-aged man, Blood Mancy was particularly unique.

As Theron had seen before, the Alpha was capable of basically being in a state of perpetual Blood Escape, while also being far more capable than others would be at replenishing its lost blood.

That was to say that the Alpha’s main ability was quite literally outputting more power than its cultivation realm assumed it to be capable of.

If the Alpha didn’t have to worry about a second attack or defenses, it was quite literally the absolute perfect glass cannon. A glass cannon that could also apparently harm itself considerably.

The Alpha slumped to the floor, the luster of its fur fading somewhat almost instantly. But Theron wasn’t worried... that being because it had the perfect method to replenish itself.

"Eat."

The Alpha didn’t need to be told twice. It lumbered forward and began to devour the man’s corpse.

Theron watched in silence, and as expected, the benefits from this corpse were far superior to what the Alpha had gained from Elder Kelyne Black.

It wasn’t just this, though. Theron was paying attention to something else in particular.

Laws.

He hadn’t had a sense for it before, but after seeing how much more powerful Laws made himself, he began to wonder about the Alpha as well.

As a Runebound Beast, the Alpha should have its own Laws, no? But it was a mutated beast with no lineage. Would it still have Laws, then?

Did beasts just randomly manifest the Laws suited to them? Or did they get passed down? And if they were passed down, didn’t that mean the Alpha had a useless set of Laws designed for the Manaborn Beast it had once been?

And if these Laws were passed down, presumably the beasts’ ancestors had to learn them at some point, so how had they done that?

Watching intently this time, though, Theron’s answer was clearer than ever. Especially when the Alpha dug into the middle-aged man’s dantian and ripped out the Core, swallowing it in one whole.

The Alpha was swallowing Laws.

However, oddly enough, it wasn’t learning the same Laws as the middle-aged man. Somehow, it was using the Laws in connection to the man as a bridge to flesh out its own Laws.

It was all very vague and Theron could only catch the faintest edges of it, but it left him fascinated. This Blood Mancer path... was this why it had never appeared before? Just what were its limits, exactly?

And most importantly, how was it that his own blood had allowed the Alpha to have this mutation if he himself wasn’t capable of doing any of this?

Theron shook his head and walked to another location. When he killed Ippe, the latter’s blood had coated his palm and he had felt something truly shocking at that moment...

He felt that if he focused enough...

He could actually control Ippe’s blood just like he could his own.

This was the real reason Theron was thinking about the Alpha’s mutation so much. Was it related? But then why could he only feel this for Ippe’s blood and not the countless other people he had fought? Was it a recent mutation?

Or... was it related to his connection to the Harmon Clan in specific?

He asked that question because, as he had just seen... he could control the middle-aged man’s blood as well.

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