Chapter 267: Where |
Theron slowed the Alpha down, his gaze placid. The smile he had worn before vanished into the wind, replaced by his true personality once again.
Truthfully, he didn't care about Dean Thistle. The man had been in the palm of his hands from the very start. All the nonsense about remaining a hungry lion went in through one ear and out the other. In Theron's eyes, the Dean had always been a wall of false bravado.
Steering the Alpha to a side, Theron changed directions for a moment and then came to a sudden stop by the river. The Alpha leapt into the trees where it perched in silence, seemingly not weighing much at all even with Theron on its back.
The seconds ticked by in silence until the Alpha suddenly fell down from the trees, stopping right in front of a familiar figure.
Aliza, the Fourth Year of the academic stream and the very same young woman who had been harassing Theron for so long.
Startled at first, she "relaxed" when she realized it was Theron.
"It's actually you. I didn't expect that you would be so powerful."
"I don't really have time to waste on niceties," Theron said calmly. "You know why I'm here."
"… What are you talking about?" Aliza frowned.
Aliza's expression froze. She looked like she well and truly couldn't believe what Theron was saying at all.
"You… are you doing this because I bullied you a little bit? If anything, you were the one that bullied me. Things between us couldn't be so bad that you actually want to target me like this, right?"
Theron stared at her, deadpan. There wasn't the slightest fluctuation on his face and he looked as though he could stand in silence with all the patience in the world until she decided to tell him what he wanted to hear.
"Are you serious, Theron? We just came back from a life and death struggle and you actually want to ruin all the good cooperation we've built up?!"
Theron remained unmoved and unbothered, his gaze cold, but the murderous aura around him only slowly increasing.
He had been suspicious of Aliza from the moment he found the main Mazes of the Mind technique. The trouble was that he had nothing else to point to, her actions were impeccable. There also wasn't any certainty that Mazes of the Mind was all that suspicious in the first place.
Though the tablet that was left behind was very odd, it wasn't to the point that constituted betrayal. After all, the only people who could leave such a book in the library were someone with the same librarian credentials as Aliza, or someone with enough power to ignore all of that—whether politically or literally.
But in that world, no matter which case was the truth, what sort of convoluted, twisted logic would you have to finagle your way through before coming to the conclusion that only a traitor could have such information?
Aliza might not have even known the significance of the Mazes of the Mind either. Who was Theron to say that she was really looking for the technique in his hands, and not just truly after the book itself?
Because of all of this, the actions might have been suspicious, but they weren't enough for Theron to be standing here today.
However, then came Aliza's actions in killing General Pennel's lieutenant.
Swift, decisive, sharp… all things an intelligent woman like herself should have…
Unfortunately, it made no sense for that decisiveness to appear in a young woman of her early twenties who had only known the academic stream all her life.
The last piece of the puzzle came from the Sangun Clan themselves. Whether it was the Mist Mancer, or the shadow, or the Earth Mancer, all of them had used sound to disorient the mind.
Theron had managed to make it through because of his Water Resonance for the most part. But there was another part of him that played an enormous role…
His Third Eye.
At first, Theron didn't know why this thought kept coming to mind. Mazes of the Mind was a technique forged to hide one's Third Eye from detection. It didn't necessarily make it stronger in detection.
But then he found the answer hidden in plain sight. He was thinking of the philosophy of Mazes of the Mind…
Not the technique.
Why was he assuming that the two were the same?
And yet, even with all of this said, there was another reason entirely that Theron was so sure. His Third Eye had evolved again for the fourth time, so when he first laid eyes on Aliza once more…
Everything fell into pieces.
He felt it. The faint tinge of something familiar.
A brand. A Soul Brand.
Daggers of the Night.
Theron knew this, and yet he still asked Aliza what country she came from. He had a very good reason for this, and that was because if she answered, he just might be getting a two-for-one deal where she would think he was assuming she was from the Empire of the province instead of the assassin's organization, while simultaneously revealing to him where she was from.
The undercurrents of Daggers of the Night were unknown to Theron, and the depths their waters ran at were likewise quite confusing for even him.
More unluckily, he had run into Ruu, only to have to use her as a chess piece to advance other things.
Now that he had run into another pawn, how could he not take advantage?
There was one possibility that itched at the back of Theron's head, a possibility that made his hairs raise on end much the same way it did whenever he felt like he had touched upon a profound deduction.
And when Aliza finally realized there was no getting out of this for her, and she spoke the words, Theron's eyes lit as bright as torches.
"I… I am from the Sangun Territory, I swear."