Theron exhaled a heaving breath.
He had known from the start that he would be under a great disadvantage. When the battle started, he had two main goals. First, he definitely had to deal a severe injury to Ironvale from the very start. Second, he had to take the sword no matter what.
Others might not have noticed, but Theron most definitely had. He knew that Ironvale was a Soul Mancer from the beginning—what wasn’t obvious was what his path was.
That was… until Theron saw him throw a sword in the air and ride it across over a kilometer of air. By then, the answer was obvious. Ironvale was a Soul Mancer that followed the bound treasure path. And the sword was anything but common.
If Theron was correct, it had been handed to him by the Patriarch almost certainly.
Theron knew that if he couldn’t accomplish these two things, he would lose. Eruption Bloomstone wouldn’t work well for him because it was far more suited to Flux Mancers. He had to rely on Resonate Bloomstone, but before he killed Dorian, he only had his hands on one.
The good news was that he had more now. The bad news was that he still didn’t dare to carelessly take more than one if he didn’t have to either.
His Meridians had grown enough that they could withstand a Resonate Bloomstone with surprising ease. He hardly felt much pressure at all. But if he took another, he would likely start suffering some damage to his foundation, and that was unacceptable to him for now.
So the question was… if even after the first two things were accomplished, how had he managed to kill Ironvale?
Two of the tenets: controlling the battlefield and keeping your cards close to the vest.
From the start, Ironvale didn’t understand Theron’s full scope of sensory abilities. Theron was just a Bronze Mancer, and though his aura had grown exponentially more powerful, Ironvale was a Soul Mancer with sharp senses as well. He knew that Theron was still only using Bronze Resonance Mana.
As such, Ironvale knew that Theron couldn’t possibly have a Third Eye. To add to this, every time Ironvale used a misdirection method, Theron fell for it. Though Theron always managed to save himself from lethal damage, he had suffered more than once.
That made Ironvale even more certain in his assessment.
But the truest cherry on top…
Theron looked up to the hole in the ceiling.
He had controlled the battlefield from the very start.
Ironvale didn’t have time to consider how the shattering in the ceiling even happened. But if he did stop to think about it, he would have begun questioning many things.
How had Theron, who was obviously hidden in the lake of lava, controlled the destruction of a ceiling?
The answer was that, ironically enough, the ceiling and those rocks were the only true forms of Mana control that Theron could exert here. Even after Theron entered Veinsong, he hadn’t been able to sense the true essence of Water Mana well enough to flow into his Water Mancy blade style properly…
And yet, he somehow controlled rocks?
Back then, when he stopped, he was checking out the sort of rock that was above this space. After confirming it would work, he marked it.
The rocks in this region were under a constant state of pressure. Not only was the moisture content in the air incredibly high, but so was the heat.
One of the reasons wilderness experts warned about casually heating up rocks found by riversides was because they could easily explode, but this time, Theron was using the opposite principle.
He didn’t want the rocks to rapidly heat up; he wanted them to rapidly cool.
The problem was that he didn’t have the Mana quantity or quality to do that…
Until he ate the Eruption Stone.
The real reason Theron couldn’t cast Water Mana here wasn’t because he was so suppressed. Even if he was suppressed, with his control, he would be able to cast at least something as simple as [Water Bullet].
No… the real reason he hadn’t been able to was because he was depleted. He had channeled almost all of his Mana into those rocks above. Then, controlling them from a distance, he used his Water Mana to rapidly absorb all the heat in the rocks and their surroundings.
The sudden change caused them to shrink relative to the rock around them, and the tempering process made them incredibly brittle.
The end result was them shattering and falling like rain from above.
But once this happened…
Who said Theron lost control of them?
His Water Mana had saturated them. All he had to do was protect them from the heat around them no differently from how he protected his own body. With them protected, his Water Mana wouldn’t evaporate, and he would still have control over them.
If you permeated a material with enough of your element, controlling it was theoretically possible. But maybe in the history of Bronze Mancers of this province… Theron was the first to succeed in such a thing.
By now, the rest of the story was too easy to grasp.
Ironvale thought he could pull the wool over Theron’s eyes, only for him to run full speed into a boulder. It might not have been enough to kill him, but it definitely shook his brain and concussed him, causing a lag in his reaction.
It wasn’t a blow he had seen coming, so he couldn’t even brace himself.
By then, cutting off his head was as easy as flipping over a palm.
As for what Theron meant by he didn’t have to risk it, well…
His gaze shifted to Thessa.
Theron sheathed his short sword, not even bothering to look for his dagger. He knew it was molten metal along with his hand right now.
It was time to go.
He flipped a palm, popping a Bloomstone into his mouth.
As he vanished into the distance, seemingly forgetting about Thessa, tendrils of white gold began to wrap around his body, rapidly healing his wounds…
And regrowing his severed forearm and hand.