Rivers of the Night - Chapter 712
Chapter 712: Baptism
Even Theron had to admit he was impressed. His nail was still grazing her heart, his fingers were still hooked into her body with the same amount of strength, but there wasn’t even the slightest fluctuation in her gaze. It was like her head could be slowly impaled with a blade and she still wouldn’t flinch in the slightest.
Compared to the woman who looked frustrated when he interrupted her assassination, she was like a completely different person. It seemed that playing the distressed, naive assassin was her shtick, and it clearly worked for her.
Theron wouldn’t be surprised if that was how she had managed to escape the King Inn in the first place. Given how powerful the Merchant King was, he didn’t seem like the person who would lose even if he was careless.
But she was even better.
Something told Theron that even the sex wall was only up there as a façade. Despite its existence, there was a distinct lack of that familiar scent in the air. Ninety percent of her personality was only put on for show…
Just like him.
“Then kill me. What are you waiting for?”
Her voice sounded so very soothing to the ears, so very familiar. At almost any other moment, Theron would have lost himself to a bit of a daze for the briefest of moments. But not long ago, he had been in Veinsong, and his focus was still lingering on the very edges of it.
Now that he was facing such an opponent, he was just moments away from ramping it back up.
Not only was she sharp, but she was a full two realms of cultivation above him in strength.
Theron had fought Chen not long ago, and logically speaking, with his current power he should have crushed him even while holding back. All things considered, he didn’t use his new Spells, he didn’t rely on any Resonances or any Mandates, mostly so that it would be easier to hide his identity in the future. But he was also someone who had easily crushed Dome of Heaven experts in the past.
Yet, somehow, Chen kept up with him quite well despite only being a Quasi Dome of Heaven expert.
Clearly, the geniuses in this sector of the universe were much stronger. Their fundamentals were more sound and the danger they presented was much greater.
If a Quasi Dome of Heaven expert could stall him for a moment, what could a Sixth Resonance Dome of Heaven expert do if he didn’t have the advantage of fingers literally inside of her body?
“I can if that’s what you want,” Theron said calmly. “I’m sure you think you’ll react in time, but I doubt that. Instead of killing you, though, I can tell you now that returning to the assassin’s guild will be useless to you.”
The female assassin’s gaze flashed as she immediately understood. She didn’t need to know the details of how, but it was obvious Theron had done something that exposed the fact she lost her pendant.
The guild had a zero-tolerance policy when it came to things like this. If they found her, she was dead.
Clearly, Theron also understood this intimately enough.
Despite this realization, her expression didn’t change, remaining the same frosty cold.
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” Theron smiled gently. “I want information. Something tells me that you’re the sort to know more than you’re letting on. There’s probably a very good reason you took on the assassination mission of the Shonagh Clan’s young master, right?”
The female assassin fell into silence for a long while, scanning Theron’s expression.
Oddly enough, the two of them were only around the same age. Theron was highly focused on her charm technique, but it was easy to miss that she was at most 16 years old, while Theron hadn’t turned 15 all that long ago.
They likely weren’t even a year apart in age, and somehow Theron doubted the assassin’s guild knew that.
“No answer?” Theron’s smile deepened. “And what if I mentioned the Demon Corps?”
Once again, the reaction of the young woman gave absolutely nothing away. Unfortunately for her, Theron’s finger was grazing her heart. He felt it speed up just the slightest tick. It was only for a single beat, but given she was a woman whose heart had been completely steady from the beginning, this might as well have been as good as a confession.
“Which Demon do you serve?” she asked coldly.
Clearly, she knew that she had been exposed as well and no longer bothered to hide it.
“Which?” Theron’s head tilted to the side. “I don’t serve any. Not yet, anyway.”
The female assassin’s eyes narrowed. “You want to join?”
Theron could feel that for some reason, she didn’t believe him. It seemed that she had speculations that he was part of the Demon Corps as well from the very beginning.
As for Theron himself, he only had a few guesses, but he only confirmed them because of the location of his finger. Though the female assassin probably thought he couldn’t sense it, he could feel her Life Mana shifting and changing, exerting a control over her body that only a Blood Mancer should have.
Interestingly enough, it was probably because Theron had said those words about him being faster that she began to speculate herself on his origins. When he mentioned the Demon Corps, she thought she had confirmed it already.
“I’m open to everything. But it feels to me that you haven’t quite succeeded in joining just yet, now have you?”
The female assassin didn’t reply, and Theron knew that he was right.
He had learned some things about the Demon Corps after being accused of being a part of them. He liked having information about everything, so this wasn’t much of a surprise.
The female assassin had all but confirmed it now. The Nightingale Ancestor thought that Theron was the one on the baptizing mission for the Demon Corps, when it was this female assassin who was.
Whatever her mission was, though… Theron had a feeling that it wouldn’t be ending with the death of Chen.
That meant that the standards of the Demon Corps she had chosen were impossible to fathom.
Sending one Theron to face off against the Nightingale Sect had already made countless individuals feel it was ridiculous.
But now they were sending this one 16-year-old to deal with a Clan as powerful as the Shonagh.
No, it was probably even more expansive than even that. These waters ran deeper than Theron knew without a doubt.