Rivers of the Night-Chapter 856 - 31 Seconds

Theron couldn't understand what was going on around him, not fully.

His soul was too weakened and tired right now to even access his Primordial Earth. He actually wasn't even sure if his specialized Water Mana could heal him in this situation because of it.

This was all to say that he wasn't able to use his Third Eye much to scan and understand the world around him. But what he did know better than anything else was that Ayame was crying.

He didn't know what it would take to make a woman like Ayame cry. But he also still hadn't figured out exactly what had been able to make a woman like Ayame scream like she had earlier either.

Theron was just completely in the dark about what was happening, but he grunted nonetheless, trying to get up once more, only to be held down by Ayame—or whatever this was—once again.

"Ayame. Where did you bring me?"

There was still no answer.

'Dammit.'

Ayame was completely unresponsive. He didn't have the strength to push her off of him, and to make matters worse, the world around them seemed to be sapping something away from him that he didn't understand. It was making it exceptionally difficult for the small bit of energy he did have left to do any healing for him.

'Wait—!'

Theron's eyes flashed. Could it be?

Theoretically speaking, the Heaven Gate that Ameridia had been telling him about would be likely to have an effect like this. If this place was constantly accelerating your aging, one might think that this might counterintuitively accelerate your healing as well. But Theron didn't think that was actually what would happen because of what Ameridia had explained about the curve.

If you were at the inflection point of your life, then this place would accelerate your aging to the point of no return. But if you were behind it, like that Supreme Commander had been, then you were able to stay here for decades without issue.

How could that be if this place was always accelerating your aging?

In that case, rather than a place that was constantly aging people, it was better to think of this place like a black hole with an event horizon.

After you passed the event horizon—or the inflection point of your aging—then there was no escaping, much like how light couldn't escape a black hole.

However, if you were just outside that event horizon, then just like a planet around a star or a moon around a planet, you would orbit the black hole, never quite falling in and never quite leaving its orbit.

When Theron comprehended this, something seemed to click and a sudden rush of energy pooled into him.

'Huh?'

Theron's mentality shifted just the slightest bit. He had read more books in his library than he could even count, and black holes made up just a small segment of them. But that information allowed him to use his Void Cores just a little bit differently than he could normally.

Suddenly, energy was rushing into him.

But the odd part was that there was no Water or Dark Mana around him, at least not from what he could sense. As for the energy that was there, it hadn't been responding to him at all until just now, and then it was suddenly like the floodgates opened up.

Large plumes of energy filled Theron's body and he began to heal more rapidly than he ever had before.

**

In a distant place, far from Theron, a steel monument that seemed colored in ash and soot stood in the middle of a city, tall and proud.

At the peak of that monument, there seemed to be a clash of chaos, a cloud of subterfuge, death, and decay that refused to settle down.

But just beneath that cloud of chaos, of ringing clashing swords and war cries, there were names—an endless number of them.

The names were packed, and beside each one, there was a timer.

For the first time in a very long time, these names shifted, and at the very peak of it all, a new name appeared.

—

Theron Galethunder - 00:00:31

Alauna Sacharro - 01:22:59

Drake Tatsuya - 01:23:00

Etchen Tatsuya - 01:23:11

May Sacharro - 01:23:13

… 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

—

The cityscape shook and the clouds that hung heavy and dark above them cleared for a moment as bolts of dark gold and streaks of radiant black light descended.

"Hm?"

Sitting in the highest pavilion of Heaven's City, a young man stepped out.

This young man was ranked 113th on the list. As he moved, his hair danced in white, snow gently falling around his sharp silver eyes. His robes were knitted in a comfortable cotton, and yet from certain angles, they looked like the scales of a white dragon.

—

…

Ozen Tatsuya - 03:00:11

…

—

Ozen's pupils constricted into pinholes when the name formed at the top.

There were a sparse few names other than Sacharro and Tatsuya on that list. And yet, everyone knew that those who shared other Clan names on the list were related to these two Clans nonetheless.

The gap between them and everyone else was simply far too large. These so-called "other names" were simply products of women in their two Clans marrying men of other Clans and allowing their children to take their names.

But a lot of times, even when this did happen, the women often insisted that their own names be kept.

A lot of those who carried Tatsuya and Sacharro as Clan names now weren't even main-line descendants and couldn't even be considered branch members of the Clan either. Many of them weren't even human anymore, so far removed from the original bloodline that they were barely related at all.

And yet, they still chose to carry those two names… because they were the two names that carried the most weight in all of existence.

And now, somehow, some way, a new name had appeared at the peak of them all. A name completely unrelated to them.

'31 seconds…?'