Rivers of the Night - Chapter 711

Chapter 711: Third
Theron paused in front of his room’s door. He had returned to the King Inn without much effort or fanfare. Though, there was a loophole in his story.

The King Inn was definitely monitoring his movements, so they would know he had left the Inn and only returned now. But given that he had escaped before the news of matters spread very far, he doubted anyone would connect him to those events.

If anything, even if they thought he returned because of that, they might just believe he thought it was too risky to be out and about in the city for now.

However, Theron still felt like something was wrong.

‘Someone’s inside.’

Theron didn’t hesitate for long, his expression indifferent as he twisted the knob and stepped inside. He didn’t sense anything immediately, but that didn’t stop him from tapping a foot to the ground and vanishing.

A blade passed right through a location he had just been in.

‘Blood.’ he thought.

His body was still fading through [Shadow Step] when he took another step, his body separating into a dozen different iterations all at once before…

Squelch.

A sickening, almost oozing sound echoed through the room. Theron felt his fingers slide into something particularly wet and constrained. There was a groan of pain, and the person in question tried to pull back, but Theron hooked in fingers, touching onto an inner organ that was particularly sensitive.

“Move again and I pierce right through your heart,” Theron said coldly.

The female assassin didn’t dare to budge even a single inch.

By now, Theron saw who the perpetrator was. It seemed that she had somehow managed to survive, and her way of seeing things was not too dissimilar from his own.

She had almost died at the hands of the King Inn’s people, but she didn’t escape, instead remaining within the King Inn to the point she almost got the drop on him.

Almost.

Unfortunately for her, she had been severely injured. Theron’s fingers were in a large gash in her side, one that had even severed her rib cage. When he said he would pierce her heart, he wasn’t joking at all. His fingers were only an inch or two away from it. A single eruption of Mana would sever it along with her life.

One would think that an assassin like this would be ready for someone to target their weaknesses. The problem for the female assassin was that this was far from the only severe wound on her body. In fact, there was one she wanted to protect far more than the others, and that was a deep gash right across her belly just a mere few inches from her Core.

If that wound was any deeper, let alone an injury or death, she would be a cripple. It had been a simple matter for Theron to feint toward it and then take this wound instead.

She wheezed in pain, every slight movement of Theron’s fingers within her body making her feel like she was dying inside. It practically felt like something had crawled inside of her and died, oozing out plumes of Death Mana.

Theron reached his other hand up and toward her mask. She subconsciously moved away, but his fingers flexed and faintly touched at the edge of her heart. Theron’s nails were well-groomed and actually quite short, but even their slightest graze felt as though a chill she couldn’t reach was wiggling through her body.

Unable to move, she couldn’t stop Theron from ripping her mask off.

Almost immediately, Theron’s eyes narrowed.

Somehow, she looked familiar and yet not at the same time. He was certain he had never seen this woman before, and he couldn’t quite pinpoint where he would have ever seen someone similar.

Theron wasn’t used to not being able to figure something out, so he could only ask the Nightingale Ancestor Bird.

‘I have no way of knowing why you would find her familiar. I, at least, haven’t seen anyone similar. But there are techniques that female assassins like this might use to make you lower your guard. It might very well be a charm Spell or treasure of some sort. They would both fit in about the same category.’

Theron’s gaze flickered.

That made sense. It would also explain why he couldn’t pinpoint where he knew her from despite his memories. Maybe anyone who looked at this woman would feel that she was somewhat familiar.

And beautiful at that.

Maybe a little too beautiful.

Theron had thought that the Matriarch of the Hall was beautiful, but she felt like an old hag compared to this young woman.

But once again, Theron dismissed the thought. If she could make herself look familiar to him, then there was no doubt that she could make him feel as though she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

While he couldn’t quite understand how someone with a soul weaker than his own could do such a thing, there were no answers that would be coming, so he could only bury the thoughts for the time being.

He would figure it out eventually.

“You are smart enough to know the situation you’re in,” Theron said calmly. “I don’t believe an assassin like yourself, especially given your strength, is so put off by a little bit of pain. I can tell that you’re faking it, though your acting is quite good. In fact, you probably let me put you into this position, right?”

The female assassin froze, her expression slowly turning from one of agony to a frigid frost.

“I get it. You don’t want to alert the King Inn that you’re still here, so you want to end this as quietly as possible. Get my guard down, kill me, retrieve your badge… It’s too bad that it doesn’t matter what your reasoning was. Do you think you can still catch me off guard if I know exactly what you want to do?

“You’ve lost to me twice already. Would you like to try for a third?”