Rivers of the Night-Chapter 850: Answer
Kenton felt his vision flash before his eyes.
It didn’t feel like a boy or even a man was standing in front of him right now. It felt like he had poked at the bottom line of a wild, untameable beast.
He was dead.
Theron’s sword came for his neck and he knew he couldn’t make it to block in time.
“FUCK!” Bamby roared, a wave of Soul Mana radiating from him that sparked into flames. It filled in the cracks that surged through the ground and exploded the earth beneath Kenton’s feet.
The earth in front of Kenton tilted upward while the earth behind his heels collapsed. He was sent reeling backward and a pillar of flames enveloped Theron’s arm as his sword passed through the air, missing.
Theron didn’t seem to feel the pain. As his clothing and skin burned, his head snapped toward Bamby as though he had completely forgotten about Kenton.
Half of his body was on fire, even right up to his eyes, but he didn’t blink a single time. It was as though pain wasn’t something he could feel or experience.
How could he feel heat when his blood was boiling even hotter?
Theron’s dagger-wielding wrist twisted. Bamby had just diverted a large amount of his mana to save Kenton. He didn’t have enough strength in the downward stroke of his hammer to maintain the same amount of pressure anymore.
Just the slightest twist of Theron’s wrist forced him a step back.
Theron pulled out his father’s short sword from the flaming pillars, his burnt and still-burning flesh holding onto its hilt with still the very same amount of strength and fortitude.
He swung at Bamby.
The cut was simple, but sharp. Fluid and yet fleeting. The perfect melding of Dark and Water was suffocating and impossible to track, heavy and yet suddenly light, forceful and persistent, but somehow also delicate.
But it was all distilled into a single attack, so focused and perfect he almost stopped to admire it.
Death calling woke him up.
He hurried to block, barely managing to do so, and yet Theron followed up with another, and then another.
Bamby found he didn’t have the time to gather up Mana for a different attack; he was constantly retreating, constantly on his back foot. Every attempt he made to change the situation was suffocated and ripped to shreds. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺
It was like Theron was dissecting everything it meant for him to be a cultivator. Every bead of sweat he had shed, every drop of blood he had bled, it was all meaningless in front of Theron.
It didn’t matter how many times he had drilled an attack, a defense, a counter, a strike, Theron found its flaws with a flickering rage in his eyes and cut it down.
His body moved like a tornado at times and then like a raging stream at others. It swept in like a pulsing tide and receded with its ebb, only to suddenly and abruptly swing by as quickly as a flash of light passing an abyssal alley.
Erratic and unpredictable, he flowed through the cracks and crevices of Bamby’s defenses like water finding a place to leak through or darkness hiding from the shine of the sun.
He was going to die. He was going to die. He was going to die.
The words roared in Bamby’s heart as the realization suffocated him.
“KENTON YOU SON OF A BITCH—!” Bamby roared, and yet this only gave Theron more openings.
Sword and dagger danced, cuts flashing into being as though Theron’s speed was faster than light itself could track.
Lines of blood cut into Bamby’s cheeks, then his arms and his legs, then across his chest and wrists. Each one was shallow, but every subsequent one was just a little deeper, and then just a little deeper beyond that.
One mistake, one single misstep, and it suddenly felt to Bamby as though he couldn’t even bring out 20% of his power properly.
Theron stomped it out like a spider in the night, as though a grotesque creature he couldn’t deign to bring out more than a heel for.
Bamby’s life flashed before his eyes as Theron suddenly found a hole in his guard.
It was here. His death.
Just when it was about to happen, Theron vanished, appearing again before a Kenton who was trying to sneak by them once again. He had wrapped around the vortex, hoping to escape detection while Theron was busy. Then he chose the penultimate moment of the battle to dash forward.
He was wrong.
Theron didn’t even show the slightest bit of reluctance in vanishing.
There was a belief in his eyes that burned like the solar flares of the sun and reflected even in the depths of night brighter than even the surface of the moon.
He could kill them once. He could kill them twice, thrice, more. It didn’t matter.
If he abandoned a chance to kill the first time, there would be a second time. And if he had to abandon the second time, there would be a third.
There was no one, not a single soul in this world—not Ameridia, not the Supreme Commander or the Demon Emperors themselves—that would cross this line.
BOOM!
Kenton was thrown back, his injuries now even heavier than before.
“DAMMIT!” Kenton roared, his fury finally showing on his face.
He landed and rolled on the ground, his body a mixture of injuries previously caused by Theron and then further exacerbated by the wild method of saving him that Bamby had been forced to use.
He rolled to his feet to find that Theron was rapidly closing in. Gritting his teeth, he knew what he had to do. He had been saving this, but there was no other choice at this point.
He pulled out a vial from his spatial device and chugged it.
…
Messo’s pupils constricted. “That…”
Ameridia slowly nodded. “It seems we have our answer.”
The healing elixir barely touched Kenton’s lips before his body exploded with vitality.
