Rivers of the Night - Chapter 551

Chapter 551: Shifty Swordfish and Impenetrable Octopus

It could be said that whether one was in the Bronze Resonance Realm, the Gold Resonance Realm, or the Cloud Resonance Realms, the true state of one’s Mana was a gaseous form.

The first three Realms were a crutch, and that crutch was only slowly being released at the Cloud Resonance Realm. But even then, it was still just the beginning.

By this logic, though, Theron realized that even when you managed to convert your Cloud into a Dome of Heaven, you would still be relying on this crutch. However… you would be much closer to shedding the need for this crutch entirely at the same time.

Why was it that Theron could put his hand in the cloud without being crushed?

Well, there was Mana much more powerful than himself all around in the world around him. Manas of Resonance so great and powerful that he couldn’t hope to control them even within a decade, even on this planet occupied by such a weak Sect.

If your powerful Mana wasn’t in such a controlled state that even a child could pass their hand through it, what right did you have to replicate the Dome of Heaven?

Wouldn’t you be a frog at the bottom of a well for the rest of your pitiful existence?

It was when Theron understood this that everything clicked for him and the path of cultivation became clear.

It was no wonder the Dome of Heaven Realm was seen as such a lofty existence. And yet, to Theron, despite not knowing what Realm lay beyond it, he was sure there was one… and he was sure that the Dome of Heaven was just the beginning when it came to wielding true, unbridled power.

Whatever Realm lay beyond, however many there were, he wanted it.

And it was his understanding of all of this that made him realize that Mana, specifically his Mana, was here to serve him.

All of these cultivation paths were built on trying to mimic the Heavens. And his own Mana Resonance seemed capable of mimicking other paths.

At that point… didn’t that mean that his path forward was limited by only his own imagination?

It was then Theron was even more certain that his path of Control was the right one. He had stumbled onto what seemed to be the truest essence of cultivation, the path where one’s Mana was firmly in one’s grip and no one else’s.

Theron had always liked the ability of Dark Mana to construct and reconstruct itself, as well as its ability to disperse and siphon energy as well.

When he understood the path he wanted to take, he knew that he wanted these two abilities to be a core part of how he progressed. So when he targeted his new Echoes, he kept this in mind.

He wasn’t lying to Lyra when he said he didn’t know the names of his Echoes. But he was also trying to hide something as well.

The only environment that should have so many Dual Resonance creatures was the Dark River. Now that the Patriarch was dead, the odds that anyone knew this were limited. But he didn’t want to draw too much attention to it if he could help it.

This aside, both of the creatures he had chosen had unsurprisingly come from the Dark River.

The first had the ability to flicker between the currents of the Dark River, dancing between them as though continuously teleporting with ease. They also had the ability to attack from one current and have it manifest from the other.

They were especially hard to catch. Though they didn’t fight back, that didn’t mean they couldn’t run. It took Theron a full day, and that was despite the fact it was a “mere” Quasi Gold Arcane Beast.

He should have been far stronger than the creature, but he was forced to outsmart it in order to catch it, driving it into the bottom of the sea where the river was suspended above them and it no longer had any currents to rely upon.

The second Echo Theron had used was the one he had just used on Kaelen. The first Echo had come from a creature that was incredibly thin and fast, almost like a swordfish, yet without the pointed nose. This second Echo, though, came from a creature that one wouldn’t expect to find in a river at all…

An octopus.

If the first Echo was hard to catch because it was too fast and agile, this one was hard to catch because it was simply too… sturdy. The octopus was like an impenetrable wall. Every attempt was met with a tentacle, and even when you crushed it, it would simply regenerate another by the time you got close.

It might as well have been a hydra.

Theron had never thought that he would struggle so much with creatures at his exact level of cultivation, but the environment they lived in was too much in their favor.

Without much of a choice, he had to rely heavily on the Alpha to get things done, especially given his condition at the time.

What these Echoes could do alone was already quite great. But… it was what they could do when fused with his original and foundational Echoes that made them truly powerful.

He casually named the two for his own sanity, choosing the Shifty Swordfish and the Impenetrable Octopus. It was the second of the two that Theron used against Kaelen, fusing it with his Immortal Jellyfish to exhibit the level of control he had.

Usually, the Impenetrable Octopus would use those streams of dense, dispersing Mana to protect itself, but Theron directly used it as an attack. The same principles that made its walls so difficult to penetrate were the exact same principles that made it so difficult to shrug off when used to suppress instead.

If Theron had been able to tack on a third Echo in his Blue Pufferfish Echo and increase the density of it all as well…

Let alone suppressing Kaelen, he could have crushed him to death.

Unfortunately, this seemed to be Theron’s limit. As for why… it was because his comprehension of Dark Mana wasn’t nearly as deep as Water Mana.

Even if he wanted Dark Mana to be secondary, first he had to comprehend just what made it tick…

And that was what the Nightingale Sect was for.