I will let you live. Stoke that hatred, become the fuel for my Karma.

Theron awoke with a start, the familiar words dancing in his mind's eye as though drawn in a cursive streak of blood. Sweat coated him from head to toe like beads of small reflective icicles.

It took a while for Theron's heart to slow to its usual crawl, his mind feeling foggy. His connection to the Mana around him, usually so bright and so very clear, felt like it was a world away, as though a fog was constantly hanging over it.

He sat up straighter, a splitting headache threatening to pierce his mind through.

It had been three days since he made it to this inn. In this time, he hardly did anything but eat and sleep, and even the former felt like something he could barely do sparingly.

He didn't know what Goddess Sacharro had done to his body, but what was clear enough to him was that everything he had been building toward felt like it had been torn down.

Just a week ago he felt like he could step into Gold Mancy whenever he wanted. But right now, it felt like doing so would just get him killed.

He cast his senses toward his dantian again to find that it was swirling with that unfamiliar yet familiar mass of Mana. A second Core had appeared in his body, much murkier and less polished than his original Core. On top of that, it felt empty and without foundation.

He had known from the start that she was on a level he couldn't comprehend. But no matter how many books he had read, how intelligent he was, or how accepting he was of that fact…

How was he supposed to react to a woman capable of forcefully giving him an affinity he had never been born with and creating a second Core in his body?

The situation felt grim. His body was weak from the forceful change, and his access to Water Mana, and even his usual personal control over his Life Mana, seemed significantly weakened.

Another problem was that the mutations to his Meridians had also begun to eat away at the Dark Mana pathways in his Meridians already. Meaning, there were already some common Dark Mancer Spells he couldn't even cast with such an affinity because he didn't have the circulation pathways for them.

In typical Theron fashion, he already had a solution to at least one of these problems. The weakness to his body, as he understood it, was no longer just because of the forceful change.

Of course, the sudden evolution had been like putting him into a perpetual state of fight or flight that drained him completely after so many hours, but since then, his body had already adapted. He had the body of an Arcane Beast, after all.

Well, he wasn't sure he could still say that now that his Galethunder lineage had been cut off the way it had been. Those aspects of his bloodline felt a world away to him right now.

All of this said, the real reason he was feeling so weak right now was because there was an enormous gap in his foundation. In fact, there might be two.

He had a new Core sapping away energy from him, but it had no Echo to stabilize it, and the Echoes he did have were practically like a cancer to it.

The Immortal Jellyfish and Blue Pufferfish were perfect Echoes for Theron and he had built his entire cultivation path around them, but now his entire foundation was screwed up.

Obviously, he needed to hurry and get his hands on the Echoes he needed. But… what should he choose?

He felt like the smartest thing to do was probably to return to the Dark River, maybe even try and see if this gap in his foundation could allow him to replace his Water Echoes.

The Dark River was full of Dual Resonance, Water and Dark Mancy Beasts. For his current situation… they seemed perfect.

But Theron didn't want to do this.

Abandoning his Echoes felt like he was giving up on his bloodline and accepting this new… cancer within him.

The Dark Spirit, whatever it was, must have been sacrificed at the altar of Goddess Sacharro's actions, because now it didn't exist to help him control Dark Mana either.

Instead, Theron felt the best thing to do, instead of replacing his Water Mancy Echoes, was to use these Dual Resonance Echoes as his Dark Mancer Echoes instead.

That way, maybe he could make Dark Mana his secondary, and regain some of the control he had lost over Water Mana, and maybe soon regain it all.

He knew that that woman hadn't done this to him out of spite. For whatever reason, she needed him to be a Dark Mancer. Sadie had been a Dark Mancer, and obviously she needed that of her incarnation.

And just as obviously…

He didn't give a damn about her intentions.

He was no Dark Mancer. He was Theron Galethunder, and he had the name of a Water Mancer.

Setting his jaw, Theron slowly pushed himself up. After this third day, he realized that laying in bed wasn't going to heal him. If anything, he would only grow worse by the day as this second Core threatened to eat him alive.

Rising to his feet gingerly, he looked himself in the mirror.

Today… today was his fifteenth birthday. Looking at the youth staring back at him, haggard, beaten, and worn, it seemed a miracle he was standing on his feet at all.

However, those eyes of his, sharp and blue, were as calm as ever. The killer of his parents was still out there.

No matter what he had done to Garethon and Gian, it hadn't felt like enough. No matter how much they screamed, he could never be satisfied.

Maybe he wasn't meant to be satisfied. Maybe he was just meant to chase his next big kill.

He had promised it once and he didn't have to say it again.

He would make her suffer.

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