Theron’s eyes swept over the plain room. It was well and truly the room of an assassin, bland in all respects and carrying not the slightest hint of personalization.
Grey stone made up the bed and the tables, and there wasn’t so much as a window. Not that there would be one when they were so deep underground anyway.
However, if the room had anything going for it, it was the cool air that was somehow fresh and airy instead of stuffy and humid like one might expect.
Theron noticed quite quickly that there were hidden spatial nodes filtering in air from what must have been quite a nice region.
Maybe he was wrong in his initial assessment. There was a bit of personality to this room, it was just that they weren’t obvious at a single glance.
‘In that case, what else is hidden from plain sight?’
Theron began to look around, feeling for fluctuations with his senses. He pushed his Third Eye to its limits, sweeping over every nook and cranny until he found something.
He walked up to a stone bookcase that had nothing but editions of the tenets of an assassin on them. It was actually quite the fascinating collection, starting from the olden days and moving up to the present.
Theron had actually never seen these previous editions, and he was curious to read them if he ever got the time. He wondered what changes were made and why.
There was definitely a fluctuation there. Something was hidden here.
The trouble here was much the same as it had been in the outside world. Theron didn’t have the material on hand to do what needed to be done, but this was also on a much smaller scale as well.
This node was far better hidden, so as expected, it wasn’t as dangerous or elaborate. Its strength was in its subtlety.
‘I can take advantage of that, maybe
Theron’s gaze flashed. He knew what to do, but it would require accomplishing something he wasn’t sure was possible.
‘Let’s try it. I might be able to push my control to a new level
Theron took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Slowly, he sank into Veinsong. It was almost like he was dipping his toes into the water, his breath becoming shallower and shallower until it seemed to vanish entirely.
Then, his palm began to glow a subtle blue.
Water Mana streamed forward, weaving into the nodes and pushing into its nooks and crannies.
There was definitely a mechanism here that would trigger if the node was forcefully opened through strength alone. If that happened, whatever was inside would certainly shatter to pieces.
But by the same token, using Mana was definitely a shortcut to this. It had to be remembered that when Theron first got his hands on the Black Limbo Tortoise’s Beast Core, he had only been able to store it away because it was in a special box.
The power of an item decided how powerful the spatial device you needed to store it in had to be. Meaning, if you overloaded space with too much high quality Mana, it would collapse.
Normally, it wouldn’t be easy for Theron to do this, not when the Space Mancer was a Gold Mancer. Using Silver Mana to overwhelm something formed by Gold Mana was almost impossible.
But, this particular spatial node was formed to collapse at a forceful entry. It wasn’t built as strong as possible, but instead as subtle and cleverly as possible.
This left Theron in an odd limbo where he had to be careful, and yet forceful enough to break it. But at the same time, he was trying to control his Mana from what was essentially a world away.
Controlling Mana near you was difficult enough for most. Controlling Mana with a barrier of space between you… now that was a different task entirely.
But after his recent breakthroughs, Theron had noticed something very particular about Cultivation…
Why was it that emotions were so important? What was it about emotions that made his Water Resonance so much more powerful sometimes?
He found that when he was angry, his Water Mana could become very hot. But when he had a tone of anger, and then suddenly controlled it, as though dousing it in ice-cold water, his Water Mana could become especially cold.
He was very used to suppressing his emotions, and he noticed that whenever that happened, a stream of something icy cold would come from his lips and enter his necklace.
But, recently, he had found his mental state shifting. He was growing more arrogant, and his anger was stirred more frequently.
This had been happening as early as his very first battle with Thessa where she mentioned his parents. He assumed that had he not restrained himself and went as far as to kill her back then, he would have experienced his first stream of heat.
It was because he had restrained himself that he hadn’t noticed much earlier… that there was a heat streaming within him as well.
Theron realized that somehow, these emotions made him feel closer to his Mana, as though he was giving them character, or imprinting them with his psyche in a way that was far deeper than usual.
That feeling increased his closeness to his Mana, and by extension…
It made controlling it far easier.
Theron’s eyes flashed open as the spatial node collapsed almost gently. It was akin to a gentle rush of wind, not carrying the slightest hint of destruction it should have.
With a movement, Theron caught a stone jade out of the air. It looked almost like a piece of sapphire that was slowly being chiseled out of a greying stone.
Theron felt his heart leaping out of his chest when he touched it.
He didn’t know why, but he was absolutely certain…
This was a piece of the moon. The very same moon looming above all of their heads tonight.