Rivers of the Night
Chapter 437: Die.

Chapter 437: Die.

“You actually showed up. How unexpected.”

The voice came out in a near growl, fury bubbling up within it. The longer Theron had spent away, the more the Patriarch had learned about just how much this little bastard had screwed him over.

It started in small ways. But it continued to bubble forth until there was no denying it at all.

Even when Patriarch Thistle thought that things were in his control, they weren’t at all.

Theron was responsible for it all.

From Burne’s, his most trusted aid’s, death. To Thornhulk, the son of a valued vassal that turned against them because Theron assassinated him. To the deaths of Lani and Surgen, this brothers’ sons and the fallout that nearly crushed the Thistle Clan as a result afterward.

Everything Patriarch Thistle learned made him feel like he was losing his mind. This boy had been beneath his thumb to the point that even his wife was a facade to make them think they had a weak point on him that didn’t exist at all.

So when he said that he was surprised that Theron had shown up, he well and truly was. He had a hard time believing it at all.

Just how many of the Thistle’s failures were due to this young man right in front of them? Was there any decision he had made in the last year that was even truly his own? Or had this boy been pushing his buttons from the very start of it all?

When Theron only swept a gaze over him before looking up into the skies, the former Dean almost lost his mind completely. He had never felt such unbridled fury in his life, so much so he began to unleash a mad cackle toward the skies.

‘Something about this… feels like it’s a dream more than reality…’ Theron thought silently to himself. The dissonance was only getting stronger, as though he had been pulled into an illusion even stronger than all of this.

But he couldn’t put his finger on why he felt like that.

One part of him wanted to remind him that this was, indeed, reality. But another part was unleashing harsh wails in his mind, screaming for him to wake up.

Slowly, he touched the necklace around his neck. Oh how much he wished that this was nothing more than a dream, that he could just wake up right here and now to find his mother and father looking over his bed, Little Bobo hopping up and down on his chest with her little feet without regard for his or her own safety.

Unfortunately, that wake up call wasn’t coming.

Shiiiing.

Almost softly, he pulled out his father’s blade and that of Ironvale’s. A contrasting black and radiant blue played against one another, one reflecting the light of hope he once held, the other reflecting nothing but the darkness ahead.

He looked around toward the thousands of Thistles present and the looming power beyond anything he had personally felt high in the skies.

Power? Singular? No. There were two of them.

It seemed that this wasn’t as simple as Malaya at all.

“It seems he saw us this time.”

“Don’t speak to me.” Ancestor Thistle said coldly. “Had you let me kill him when I wanted, things would have never reached this point.”

This time, Ancestor Nightingale didn’t respond at all.

“It makes no difference.”

Both of their pupils constricted into pinholes. That was because the voice didn’t come from either one of them.

It came from Theron.

“Kill him!” Patriarch Thistle roared.

The forest seemed to suddenly come alive, writhing twisting vine-like root jetting up as sharp as swords and daggers. They swam across the air with such speed that they reached Theron in an instant.

It looked like he would be impaled on the spot, that he would be ripped asunder. There were hundreds of Thistles attacking at once, and yet they coordinated so perfectly as though they had planned all of this out from the start…

And that was because that was precisely what they had done.

BANG!

The air seemed to explode, but Theron didn’t move a single inch.

All of the piercing toward stopped an entire three meters from him, not even touching the slightest bit of his clothing. He stood there, cold, indifferent, unbothered by it all.

Chi.

And then they began to slowly freeze over.

At first, it was subtle, but then it began to spread as though the chill was growing like cancerous tumors. Flowery buds of icicles chipped at the brown bark, turning it into shades of white, silver, and radiant blue.

BANG!

The trees exploded, chips and pieces falling to the ground in a rain that blocked out the silence that would have held true otherwise.

They said that Wood was a Variant mutation of Water and Earth, an elevated form of the two that stood as the more powerful form of Mana.

That’s what they said, anyway…

So why did it feel like they were children waving around their weapons in the face of a master?

It was quite ironic. So long ago, Dean Thistle had given Theron a technique that held a secret trigger within it that would strip him of all control of his Mana. Maybe he never thought he would see the day where his own Wood Mana became useless before Theron because its Water Mana content was too high.

Theron slowly raised a hand.

The forest floor shook and bits and pieces of frozen root, sharpened to a point, rose from the ground.

They didn’t notice until now that each and every one of the roots they had so painstakingly prepared to impale Theron had been chipped off perfectly. And now, all the sharpness they had honed with their Wood Mana had instead become Theron’s to control.

The Law of Density flourished.

Die.

It wasn’t a word Theron spoke aloud, and yet the world seemed to obey the command nonetheless.

Streaking lines of blue soared across the air so fast the Thistles could hardly react.