Chapter 788: Unwelcomed Guest

Rivers POV

Sitting on the worn-down mat his daughter had given him years ago, he continued to meditate in peace. At least he tried to. Meditating had never been his forte, and despite spending close to two decades down here, he had only touched the surface of the world's deeper workings. Nothing that could help him find the truth or even fix his issue.

There were times when he wondered if it was truly worth it. His daughter, Rhea, certainly didn’t think so, and she liked to remind him whenever he visited. But his beautiful late wife, Yuri, seemed to think otherwise.

Before her passing, she said that she figured it out. Then again, her talent and level of comprehension had always been far above River’s own. He was glad that Rhea inherited more from her mother than she did of him.

That chasm of comprehension only became more apparent over time, as shown by the decades he spent sitting next to this rift, not much closer to the truth than he had been from the start. But Yuri liked to say he was more stubborn than anyone she knew, so he persevered.

Despite his body failing him and his foundation slowly leaking away with every passing day, he persevered.

He didn’t even really care about that, though. At some point, he didn’t care about his personal strength. His only concern was finding out what Yuri had found out all those years ago. What had she learned that forced her to make those decisions? What could have possibly pushed her to make that choice?

And he knew the answer lay less than a hundred feet away. The swirling portal of kinetic and death energy was just as profound as it had been all of those years ago.

He shifted his legs, feeling his aging body creak. An old injury he’d gotten from a Clearfang Serpent flared up like an annoyingly persistent itch. Yet over the years, he found that he didn’t mind it. Now, it was a gentle reminder of his past and the days when Yuri had been alive.

Better days.

His meditation was interrupted, though. His senses couldn’t help but pick up a few anomalies from within the rift.

Quickly recalling who was currently inside the rift, he couldn’t help but indulge his curiosity. He sent a small sliver of his perception into the rift. The brat who Leander brought over was an interesting kid. He was one of the first truly interesting people to enter the rift in a while.

Most of the people who came here were young brats who were still wet behind the ear and barely knew the difference between their hands and their ass. None of them truly understood the value and uniqueness of a rift such as this. They took it for granted as they increased their affinity, or used it to prove to their parents how special they were.

Yet Rivers didn’t get the same feeling from the young boy Leander brought over. Leander bringing him along was the first hint. Leander was one of the few in the younger generation Rivers actually respected. He believed Leander would become a pillar of the sect for years to come.

Some of the elders didn’t seem to agree, placing too much emphasis on Leander’s lack of natural talent and bloodline. But they were idiots.

Leander’s personality was the sort you could build an entire clan behind. His talent also wasn’t as bad as the others believed. He might not have been born with the Dawnfield legacy or a perfect affinity, but he had an even better talent.

He had a good head on his shoulders.

As for Leander’s sister, Phoebe, Rivers wasn’t so sure about that one. She was talented enough in almost every aspect one would care about. But she had a lot to prove and felt the constant need to show people. Then again, she was young and had time to learn. Leander had clearly been helping her.

Rivers shook his head and sighed, then looked back at the brat.

What was his name again? He thought, frowning, tapping his aging chin.

Julius, he recalled. It was Julius.

The fact that Leander took the time to escort him here meant he was someone special. Someone Leander thought was worth catering to and introducing to Rivers.

And Rivers didn’t disagree. From what he could sense, the boy had a foundation as solid as a ten-foot slab of adamantine. The only foundations he had sensed come close came from generational talents he'd met over the years.

Maybe even more than them. It was hard to tell without a closer inspection, and he didn’t think the boy would be agreeable to that.

That same boy was currently slaughtering his way through the rift with an ease that Rivers found a little disturbing. It wasn’t the pace that alarmed him. It was the casual, playful way he treated a rift of this magnitude.

Despite being alone, he wasn't just breezing through the rift; he was handicapping himself to grow his skills and improve his abilities.

The anomalies that interrupted his meditation session were due to this very same thing. The boy must have acquired a Concept or evolved a current one from the feeling of it. The lingering effects he sensed from the rift hinted that it was profound as well. It wasn’t just some low-tier Concept.

Then right after that, the boy somehow managed to kill one of the guardians of the third floor. A beast that was never meant to be killed. Its very nature was supposed to be unkillable. A Tier 4 empowered by the rift in such an unnatural way that the Words of the World had to add a condition that allowed the individuals who entered the rift to choose not to fight it. In this case, it restricted the monster from leaving a dedicated area. A weak, but technically fair limitation.

More intrigued by the moment, he watched as the boy continued through the fourth floor. He had barely given the fruit on the third floor a second glance. It seemed his target was a fruit on the fourth floor.

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That being said, the fourth floor was where things got truly nasty. Only a team of dedicated Tier 4s was normally allowed on that floor. The level of strength of the floor's opponents was above the norm for Tier 4. They were close to the third floor guardian’s strength, but since they were enhanced by an environmental factor, the Words of the World didn’t deem it necessary to restrict them as it had for the third floor guardian.

That being said, it didn’t stop the boy from slaughtering the occupants like they were nothing but Tier 4 rabble. He even seemed to acquire a new skill that Rivers deeply suspected was above epic rank.

His senses screamed that the spatial energy wrapped around that cloak was highly profound and was probably acquired because of the Concept he learned earlier. If he didn’t know any better, he would have thought the boy was a void energy user.

But that was laughable. Learning void energy before establishing a domain or advancing to Tier 5 was unheard of. It was too volatile and too dangerous to even experiment with. Even with the boy’s healing skill, it would be extremely dangerous to even touch.

He had heard of cases when foolhardy brats tried to incorporate void energy into their skills, and all that was left behind were bloody smears. And those were the lucky ones. Sometimes their bodies were never recovered.

His wrinkled brows narrowed, and he fidgeted on his mat, frowning deeply as he slowly picked up on hints that one usually associated with void energy. Everything in Rivers' rationale told him it was impossible, but his senses told him something else.

Was this kid right in the head, or was he just stupid?

If he could work with spatial magic to this degree, why was he even bothering to enter this rift? This was a treasure trove for people who specialized in kinetic energy, not a playground for bored spatial prodigies.

Rivers was contemplating the mystery of this boy when he suddenly picked up the slightest blip of energy coming from one of his hidden relays. This wasn’t out of the ordinary. People often came to this rift for many reasons.

But the person approaching was doing their best to remain hidden. Their stealth skill was really good too. Even to his perception, he could barely make them out.

However, instead of confronting them, he closed his eyes and pretended that he didn’t see them. Watching the boy must have piqued his dormant curiosity, and so he watched as this intruder entered the hidden room where the rift portal was held. It was immediately clear that they weren’t from the clan and weren’t supposed to be here.

At first he thought it was simply some rogue cultivator who might have heard rumors of the rift and wanted to test it out themselves. But he quickly dismissed that thought. The information on this rift was highly regulated. The only way to learn its location was for someone from Clan Dawnfield to tell them.

He also observed several powerful items on their person. Most of them would have bankrupted most households. Some even had functions he had never seen before.

He sat there motionlessly as the person silently approached him from behind. He held back a scoff when he felt them suddenly summon a blade and plunge it toward the back of his neck.

The blade shattered like glass against his skin.

Rivers slowly opened his eyes and turned to look at his would-be attacker.

“Seriously?” he asked with a slightly disappointed sigh. He was old and tired, not helpless.

The Tier 5 immediately tried to flee, but Rivers wasn’t about to let him. Perhaps if he'd left right away, he would have, since it would have been more trouble than it was worth. But after he tried to kill him, he couldn’t allow that.

Plus, he wanted some answers.

Rivers’ aura, which had been sleeping, roared awake and snatched the intruder by the throat. The man might have a pretty solid stealth technique, but his body enhancement required some serious work.

Rivers almost killed the guy by accident with his aura alone.

He also grabbed the large cylindrical object from the man’s waist and examined it closely. He had no idea what kind of item this was. It was so neatly compacted and isolated that his senses couldn’t penetrate a single layer of the object’s surface. What also drew his attention was the fact that this item wasn’t inside a storage ring.

He was ninety percent sure that it wasn’t activated yet. Not like some of the other items on the man’s body. Which led him to believe this item couldn’t be stored in a storage ring.

But that raised the question: what kind of object couldn’t be held inside a storage ring? He brought it within a few inches of his eyes.

Was this thing alive? Or was it an entirely independent spatial cache?

He pulled the man closer.

“What is this?” he asked, holding up the cylinder.

The man tried desperately to fight back, but Rivers’ aura wasn’t something he could fight. His will crumbled in the face of its dominance, and he slipped straight into the man’s aura, selectively pressuring him until he answered Rivers’ question.

Unfortunately, a contract was in place. A very deep one.

He immediately slammed his will into it and halted it from killing the guy instantly. As he did so, he kept prying for more information.

“What does this object do?”

The man’s eyes trembled as the contract tried to squeeze his soul. However, it wasn’t enough to prevent him from getting what he wanted.

“I’m not sure, but it's supposed to corrupt the rift,” the man finally answered in a listless tone. The light in his eyes was already fading.

Corrupt? What did that mean?

“Who sent you?”

“Unknown. I was hired through an intermediary and was forced to sign a soul contract just to hear what the job was.”

“What organization are you from?”

“Independent.”

A mercenary then, Rivers deduced.

“How did you find the location of this rift?”

“It was part of the mission brief I was given.”

“And the items?”

“They were left at a predetermined location.”

Rivers frowned deeper the more he listened. The man’s soul was cracking at the seams, so he knew he didn’t have much time left.

“What city did you come from?”

“Dawnreach.”

“How much were you paid?”

“Twenty Tier 5 cores and five superior-grade skill enhancement potions.”

That is quite a lot, he noted with a frown. Not an amount just anyone could spend. He noticed the man’s soul was almost completely deteriorated, and so he asked his last question.

“Who were you supposed to contact after you completed the mission?”

“I was supposed to activate a beacon I was given,” the man said, holding out a small token in his right hand, but it dropped to the ground. The man’s body was already aging with every passing second. His skin was pale and crumbling like sand. Rivers had been stabilizing the man’s soul and body as best as he could, but the soul contract had already killed the man.

Rivers finally let the man fall apart, his body looking like a body that died a few decades ago rather than a few seconds ago. He picked up the token and studied it.

Then he looked over at the clan’s estate with a dark glare. Those old fools should know better than to mess with him and the rift. He didn’t care what they did inside their fancy mansions, but someone had just made him extremely annoyed.