Rivers of the Night-Chapter 429: Confusion

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Chapter 429: Confusion

On the surface, the Bloomstone were the exact same. But the problem in how they were formed couldn’t help but catch Theron’s attention.

Originally, when they entered this world, the Bloomstones had to be found in the earth, dug up by their efforts. They weren’t supposed to appear from the bodies of the beasts like this.

As far as Theron knew, what made these beasts unique wasn’t the fact that they produced Bloomstone, but instead that they could ingest them. That was what had given Theron the wild idea of doing so himself, and that had ultimately led to today, where he had benefited a great deal thanks to the opportunities his Bloomstones had given him.

But now... these Bloomstone he had become quite familiar with were not only coming from a new source, but they felt different.

’Maybe... it had always been like this?’

Theron thought about the Bloomstone deposits that he had personally come across, and they were always so very odd. They only came in small batches, and they didn’t follow the usual patterns one might expect from a naturally formed vein of mineral.

In fact, thinking back, Theron recalled finding one vein quite literally beneath a stone that looked like it had been placed there deliberately. Back then, he had dismissed it because he was soon buffeted by a group who was targeting the same batch, so he thought that maybe they had hidden it there.

But now... he wasn’t so sure.

He bent forward. The corpse of a creature with golden fur sparking with equally golden lightning lay. It looked more like a puppy than anything else, but it had a pair of wings on its back that seemed descended from angels.

It was an objectively beautiful creature, but Theron had slaughtered it just the same. And out from it, he found his first Tribulation Bloomstone.

Rolling it in his palm, he observed it for a long while before there was a flash in his eyes.

’Mandate.’

He could feel it very clearly now. But in his previous ones...

Theron took out one of the many Tribulation Bloomstones he had prepared. He left the Secret Realm with them, not knowing if he’d be able to come back. But now it seemed that it was a good thing he hadn’t been able to?

The first thing he sensed was the Mandate, and as expected, the Tribulation Bloomstones he had on hand did not have this.

’Wait...’

Something was off. He felt like he was missing something.

The Bloomstones he had taken with him didn’t come from digging them out of the earth; they had come from the Secret Realm library itself. Presumably, those stores of Bloomstone should be the best of the best. Why would they leave their supposed inheritor inferior products?

Theron held them close together, trying to observe the differences between them, when the Mandate-less Bloomstone suddenly pulsed.

The Mandate Bloomstone was swallowed whole in a single instant of time, while the Mandate-less one pulsed with light, radiating a powerful intent all of a sudden.

And then, it divided into two perfect Mandate-less Bloomstone.

Theron blinked, confusion coloring his features. It really wasn’t an emotion that he experienced frequently, but these last few weeks seemed to have offered it up to him in spades.

’What is this... supposed to mean? Are the Bloomstones that come from the beasts not real?’

There was seemingly no answer coming to Theron, so he could only keep moving forward.

He ran into more beasts, that carried more of these Bloomstones with them, and Theron found himself collecting more and more. But eventually, he ran out of space, having slaughtered so many Silver Runebound Beasts that his spatial devices couldn’t hold any Bloomstone without shattering at their seams.

That was when something even odder happened.

Theron met a particularly large hoard of wolves. He decided to take a smarter approach again. He thought about blitzing them, but he didn’t know how many more battles he would have to fight, so he took a more methodical approach, luring them and then kiting them with spells.

As he did so, he retreated through regions he had already been through, only to find that the locations that should have had the scattered corpses of beasts he had already killed were empty.

They hadn’t been taken away, as far as he could tell. But had just... vanished?

Theron eventually dealt with the hoard of wolves and moved forward, returning after a few more series of battles to find the entire pack gone as well.

More questions than answers built up in his mind until he eventually got back to a familiar location.

It was just as he remembered, a sunken land in the middle of forestry. Except... the surrounding plants and wildlife were all dead, wilted and broken into dried pieces that were whisked into the wind.

Theron frowned.

This was a sign if there ever was one, and it wasn’t one that should be ignored either. There was no reason for this bit of land to be so dead compared to everywhere else. But...

What choice did he have?

Clearly, the secrets here were far larger than he knew. And right now, it was his only path to accomplishing what he wanted to.

He stepped forward and down the steps. His feeling that this was a dilapidated coliseum without the pillars and spectators felt all the more real now as a bloody scent filled his nose.

He reached the center and vanished once again.

...

When Theron’s vision cleared, he half expected to face off against the item spirits once again, but this wasn’t the case. He was once again in the library, and the ominous feeling didn’t seem to have manifested into real danger.

Until he looked up.

There he stood, in the middle of a complex magic circle he found all too familiar. But up above, those nine moons, ranging from the brightest blue to the brightest violet, had darkened considerably. freeweɓnovel-cøm

In fact, they now looked far more red than blue or violet.

Theron felt a shudder.

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