Theron returned to his dorm room that night without much fanfare. But what he didn’t expect was for a certain Teacher Burne to be standing there, waiting for him.
A powerful aura descended onto Theron the moment he appeared, causing him to narrow his eyes.
“Why are you late in returning?” Burne asked coldly.
Theron didn’t reply directly, pointing to the skies.
“Is it not a beautiful night? Why would I return so soon?”
Burne frowned. Who would call this a beautiful night? It was the worst night to be out.
But seeing how dry Theron’s clothes were, he faintly understood something. And that was when his heart shook.
“Eighth Resonance?!”
He didn’t even mean to say the words out loud, but they slipped without his prior knowledge. For a Gold Mancer to make such a mistake, one could guess the level of shock he was in.
“No. No you were not.”
“It seems that your senses are lacking a bit, Teacher.”
“What did you say to me?” Burne growled, the pressure on Theron increasing.
“I think that instead of growing so infuriated with me, you should instead thank me for saving your Thistle Clan from an even more embarrassing loss tonight. But if you’re more interested in relying on worthless nobles instead of real geniuses, you’re free to go out and lose more.”
BANG!
Theron fell to a knee, the Soul Imprint in his body burning with a furious light. It practically felt like he was being burned all the way through him.
“Have you remembered your place yet?!”
Burne’s voice boomed, nearly causing Theron’s forehead to smash to the ground. Seeing his head finally matted in the rain, its relentless pelting beginning to soak him through, he finally felt a small hint of satisfaction…
Until he almost heard Theron’s sneer through his voice.
“Whatever helps you feel better, oh great Teacher.”
Burne’s eyes flashed with fury and he raised a palm, ready to kill Theron right then and there. It almost got to his head… almost.
In the end, his respect for Dean Thistle was too high, and it wasn’t yet time to kill this boy. That and…
A message jade flared in Burne’s spatial ring.
The Thistle’s eyes opened wide and he dashed away without a word, not even following up on Theron’s disrespect.
Theron didn’t even look in the direction Burne left, his arrogant demeanor vanishing. With a flick of his finger, all the rain that had soaked him through vanished, leaving him completely dry as he walked into his dorm room. ṟɴ𝐨ʙΕS
His expression had an eerie calm on it. If not for the throbbing pain in his knee and his slight limp, one would have thought he hadn’t gone through anything at all just now.
’The third
The third tidbit of information that Theron had learned from Manson’s Soul Tie Jade was that the Ironharts would be visiting on this date.
That sounded like a worthless tidbit, he should have already known, but it was vastly important… that was because it was directly as a result of this tidbit that he knew where the Ironharts would be tonight.
The Heavens had chosen to smile down on him today and given him the rain. Others hated it… he relished it.
Today, the legend of River would begin.
But quite soon, he would start another one.
Looking toward the window, the heavy rain threatening to soak even it through, a peculiar question entered his mind.
He wondered… when would he be able to start Theron Galethunder’s legend?
**
BANG! BANG! BANG!
A chandelier fell from on high, a throne soaring through the air and shattering a pattern-adorned window. Dining room tables as heavy as small hills crumbled to pieces, and the earth reacted as though the ocean’s waters were ripping and soaring into tsunami-like striations.
“BRING ME MY SON BACK! BRING MY SON BACK TO ME!”
A headless corpse with the character River written on its chest lay in the middle of the hall. Somehow, despite all the destruction, it was the one thing entirely untouched.
A woman wearing nothing but bandages across her chest and heavy lower armor stomped about, her Mana flooding out in violent waves.
At the entrance of the dining hall, a man stood. He was the only reason the destruction hadn’t gone beyond these limits. If not, the entire manor would have long been crushed.
His eyes, however, weren’t on the woman, nor was there a hint of dissatisfaction in them. Instead, there was the very same endless fury alone.
Looking at his son’s headless corpse, he couldn’t remember ever having felt so infuriated.
And this actually happened under the Thistle’s watch.
All those promises. All that bloviating. All that arrogance.
And for what?
For his strongest heir to die like this?
“Mona.” Earl Ironhart spoke in a voice that sounded like a drill grinding against heavy metal.
There was a flash and old man Mona fell to his knees before the Earl, not moving his head from the smashed position in the ground beneath it.
“I want nothing to do with the Thistles.”
Old man Mona shuddered from head to toe, understanding the implications of such words.
“Your head. Give it to the Nightingale’s in apology.”
“Understood!”
The old servant didn’t even try to argue.
There were many good ones to be had. What if it was the Nightingale’s that had killed his son just so he would do exactly this? Wouldn’t he be falling into their palms?
But Mona knew that even for the Ironhart’s who were known to be hot-blooded, there was no fool with such a high noble title.
Earl Ironhart had already thought of this. It just didn’t matter.
If the Nightingale’s could do such a thing in the thick of the Thistle’s territory, then the Thistles weren’t worth taking a shot on. What good would his Earldom be if it lost all of its heirs?
But that wasn’t the worst part.
The blade that killed his son hadn’t even scratched his nephew. That meant the Nightingale’s didn’t just send some Gold Mancer… they sent a youth.
They were sneering down from above, disdainful of their arrogance.
The words were simple, but fierce:
“You think you have geniuses? Watch this.”
There was no rebuttal to be had.
Mona waved a hand, rising up from his kneeling position, and forming a blade of metal and slicing his own head off in a single motion.
His body didn’t collapse, remaining there in its kneeling posture. It was his final pride as a cultivator.
Until the rampage from the Matriarch of the Clan blasted what remained of him to pieces.