Rivers of the Night-Chapter 345: Howling Wind

Thessa didn’t even react to the pain, her other hand continuing to hold onto her sword as she continued to attack in a fervent flurry.

The problem was that Theron had already known this would happen. The Fire Spirit Mancer was hot on his tail, but that only made it harder for Saularon to understand what was happening.

Theron was so ubiquitous with water that she couldn’t pick him out at all. Only Exsaa could from a distance, viewing the battle from a third party’s perspective.

Logically speaking, because of this, Theron’s trick shouldn’t have worked. Unfortunately for Exsaa and the others...

Exsaa wasn’t a Water Mancer.

Saularon turned to a specific direction, confident and assured...

Chi.

Her head went flying.

Exsaa’s eyes opened wide as Theron suddenly appeared, his breathing calm and even.

BANG!

At the same instant, Thessa ran into a wall of water formed by none other than Saularon herself, being launched into the distance. Her head smashed against a tree, her body lying there, bleeding out.

Theron looked back toward her. He didn’t want this woman to die just yet—she was probably even more useful than Aetherion would be, and at least for now, her potential seemed greater too.

But if she died from blood loss, then that would just have to be her fate. He wasn’t going to overextend himself to save her, not when there was danger lurking for him.

He stood in silence for a moment, breathing deeply. Nothing about his demeanor seemed to say that he was waiting for someone else to come. It looked like he was well and truly at the end of his rope. freёweɓnovel.com

As Saularon’s head rolled to his feet, her once pretty features marred and twisted by death, Theron’s eyes couldn’t help but narrow.

It seemed he wouldn’t be able to pretend for much longer.

Theron suddenly moved, punting her head away with all his might.

BANG!

The head exploded in the distance as Theron crossed his arms, ripping on the water wall falling behind him to protect himself from the explosion of the body that came next.

All of the compressed Mana within was forced into a ball and surged outward—a corpse explosion technique steeped in a sinister air and using the bones of its victims as the shrapnel to impale more of the same.

Theron’s body shook, being sent flying back so hard and fast the wind itself pained his scalp.

BANG!

His back rebounded against a thick tree, knocking it down and rattling all the bones in his body. Until now, Theron had only suffered flesh wounds, a deep fatigue etching itself into his mind as well. But right now, it felt like his entire body was collapsing from the inside out.

This... he hadn’t expected.

Not at all.

[Corpse Explosion] was an ability he had heard of before, but it was unique to Necromancers as far as he knew. For Exsaa to mimic it, it required exceptional Mana control—Mana control maybe even surpassing that of Theron’s.

That was because usual [Corpse Explosion] relied on Death Mana, a unique Spirit Mana named as such because of its connection with death itself. Usually, it was the form that all Life Mana within the body took once said life was snuffed out.

Due to this, Death Mana was uniquely capable of controlling other Mana types, because much like Life Mana, it was downstream from all Mana types.

But Exsaa wasn’t a Necromancer—or Death Mancer, as they were officially known—she was a Poison Spirit Mancer. That meant that unlike what a Death Mancer would be capable of, what she had just done was far harder by almost countless orders of magnitude.

A Death Mancer would be able to convert all Mana into Death Mana, take control of it, and then force it to compress, then explode.

Exsaa had used her Poison Spirit Mana to take control of Water Mana—which she had almost no affinity with at all—forced it to compress, and then explode.

Not only that, but she had managed to do it fast enough and subtly enough that although Theron was ready for anything, he was still a half-step slow to reacting.

It was hard to explain just how much more difficult that was. Theron had no confidence in doing something like that if he were in Exsaa’s position.

Wren had proven himself to be a great genius, but it seemed that this Exsaa was still a step beyond him—and there was another one waiting in the forest somewhere. That, Theron was sure of.

Coughing, Theron stood to his feet as quickly as he could manage, his eyes flashing around as though he didn’t know where Exsaa was.

The forest was quiet, eerily so. The howl of the wind seemed to have become frighteningly muted as well, and that was when it clicked for Theron.

Wind Mancer.

The weather had just been disrupted, there had been heavy rain not long ago, and the lingering aftereffects of the Tribulation were still riding high. There was only so much of the wind that a forest—especially one so close to its edges—could possibly block.

There should be rustling leaves, bowing trees, the howl of wind... somewhere. At least in part.

But there was none of that.

The second hidden person had to be a Wind Mancer—and one with the ability to hide in the wind just as easily as Theron could hide in the water.

The moment Theron grasped this, his gaze sharpened. As the lingering effects of the explosion hung in the air, he took advantage. In this moment right now, there was a huge upsurge of Water Mana in the air.

Why?

Precisely because of Exsaa’s exceptional control. As Theron had said, she didn’t convert the Mana first, then use it. She compressed Saularon’s Water Mana directly. Which meant...

There was suddenly a large amount of ambient Mana in the air for Theron to make use of.

Theron pushed himself to his limit, roaring.

BANG!

The water exploded, curtains of thick mist spreading out in every direction.

Found you.

Theron’s eyes glowed with a deathly menace. As beaten and broken as he was, it didn’t stop him from taking a strong step to the side and slashing out with all his might.

However, he could also sense that... Exsaa was moving.