Rivers of the Night

Theron's gaze flickered back and forth. He didn't have an easy method of dealing with this.

He had no flying abilities, and what methods he might be able to use to mimic such a thing for a short while were mitigated by the heavy inner armor weighing down all of his actions.

'In that case…'

Theron's body suddenly shot out like it was fired from a cannon, instantly reaching his top speed as he crossed over the cage, kicking off the top of it and soaring out.

Chi.

His dagger dug into the side of the rock face. He slipped a bit, the edge of the dagger barely sinking an inch in as cracks surfaced on it. Theron had no choice but to tilt the blade, his grip tightening as he hung from this edge.

At the same time, he pressed forward as hard as he could with little leverage to work with. If he let up the pressure, the blade just might carve out and back toward him.

Whatever material this prison was encased in, it was hard. But luckily, it was unrefined and seemed to be a natural formation. If it was tempered even by a mediocre blacksmith, there was no way Theron could be able to make it very far.

Theron felt the rock face from a closer distance.

'Too smooth.'

The only reason the sound of his dagger hadn't reverberated was because of an application of his Law of Vibration. He had been hoping that after an initial strike, he'd be able to use his hands and finger strength to make it the rest of the way, but it seemed he was unlucky.

'The hard way, then.'

Theron took a breath, his mind focusing as he suddenly released.

He plummeted from above, his speed accelerating quickly.

There was a drop of several hundred meters between himself and the ledge the guards stood on. Under normal circumstances, though it would be a bit uncomfortable, this height wouldn't kill a Silver Mancer.

The problem was that this space wasn't normal, and the Ancestor Veil had prepared.

Gravity bent around him and he accelerated down even faster than he should have. It felt like a single slip-up would cost him his life. No, it was more like the moment he dropped down in the first place, he was already set up for death.

Chi.

Theron's foot lightly tapped the rock face just the slightest bit. When it seemed as though he would plummet straight down, he instead began to fall at just the slightest diagonal—only barely enough to miss the ledge.

The two guards suddenly looked up, but Theron had already pulled out his father's short sword.

Chi.

Theron wasn't just moving diagonally away from the rock face. He was also moving diagonally across the guards, from the left to the right.

Everything was perfectly timed to use the gravity of the prison against the two guards.

The heft of his father's sword increased exponentially in a single instant as Theron's blade slashed down.

The two high-tier Gold Mancers, powerhouses in their own right, were split in two.

SHUUUU!

Theron shot past them. His blade passed through the top of one's head and through his ear, then through the collarbone of the neck and nearly through his waist, just barely being above it.

In one blink Theron was there, and in the next he had plummeted past, falling toward the abyss below.

Suddenly, Theron was facing another problem.

His speed now was far too fast. The guards were dead, in great thanks to the gravity and the durability of his father's blade capable of withstanding that amount of power, but how was he going to stop himself now?

Theron sheathed his dagger, raising his father's short sword up. He barely had half a second before he hit the bottom—he was simply moving too fast. But he had his own methods. From the moment he let go, he had already been circulating them.

A concentrated sphere of Water Mana had appeared to his back, right where his inner armor was. Lying horizontally, his eyes flashed with intensity.

The Law of Expansion, Intensity, Friction, and Pressure all exploded at once with an activation of \\[Pressure Burst].

BOOM!

Theron coughed up a mouthful of blood, but a strong upward force was pressed onto him. It wasn't enough to cancel out his downward motion entirely, but it was just enough that…

Chi.

His father's sword cut cleanly into the rock face. Theron tilted his wrist until his downward momentum came to a slow stop, a long streak being left within.

He took a moment, heaving for breath as he looked down.

He was mere feet away from his demise. If he jumped down now, he would cross a distance even a toddler would die from.

A close call indeed.

He took another breath, pressing down the raging pain in his body.

'This must be where all the Mana that powers this place comes from…'

Down below, layers of Mana Crystals were laid out. Theron had heard of them before—forms of currency that only the pinnacle existences used, while most everyone else used coins.

It seemed the Mandate Guild was so wealthy they could use them like this. Or maybe it was something special about this mountain itself.

Plop.

Half a corpse landed with an almost subtle splattering.

The sound seemed to refocus Theron. Life was really so fleeting in this world of cultivation, snuffed out without a care.

This time it was he who came out on top.

Next time, however? Who was to say?

His eyes radiated a chilling cold as he flipped up, pulling out his father's sword and then stabbing again.

He worked his way up against the gravity as fast as he could, his breathing heavy by the time he made it to the ledge and pulled himself up.

The rock, slick with blood, almost made him lose his grip before he managed to flip up and look at the state of what he was facing.

Another problem.