Chaos Heir

Chapter 1613: Changes

Something had changed in Khan’s presence, or rather, it had activated. His figure had begun to release a constant, destabilizing force that the world couldn’t oppose, forcing it to leak the very energy that made it.

The ability was eerily similar to Khan’s previous effects on technology. His chaos had been a problem for so long whenever those tools were involved, and the issue seemed to have returned, albeit in a primitive but profound fashion.

And there was more to that destruction. It wasn’t mere hunger. Khan could sense a deeper meaning behind that deceptively primitive desire to devour his surroundings and fill his stomach. It wasn’t even a simple reaction to his battle intent, but that truth remained hidden for now.

Khan didn’t even have the time to linger in the new experience since more of those flooded his brain. His upward charge was faster than anything he had unleashed earlier, carving a vast groove in the emptiness of space as he instantly reached the God.

The charge was actually so fast that Khan failed to perform any attack. He unleashed so much momentum that he almost lost his balance, ending up crashing directly into the God.

And if Khan himself were surprised by his own sprint, the God had no chance of reacting to it.

Khan’s figure acted as a spearhead that pierced through the God’s body and continued to rise upward, the groove his sprint dug becoming a massive wound in that separate universe.

Space bent and cracked, but tides of obscuring smoke leaked out of that injury, covering it while blowing at full speed after Khan, attracted by his body as if he were the greatest gravitational force in the world.

Khan actually had trouble stopping himself. He instinctively spread his arms, his clawed fingers stabbing into the fabric of space to slow himself down.

The instinctive reaction eventually dispersed Khan’s incredible momentum, making him stop far higher than his initial target, surrounded by cracks that immediately fixed themselves while sending more obscuring energy toward his figure.

The charge had destroyed the God’s body, who had seemingly disappeared, but Khan was under no such misconception. Still, he ignored the matter for now, pulling his hands out of the fabric of space to put them under his obscuring gaze.

Khan’s reason had steadily caught up with his instincts during those exchanges. Proper understanding and awareness had constantly spread inside his mind throughout the battle.

Khan felt more beast than man now, but those shallow concepts couldn’t describe or define his state. The longer he spent growing accustomed to his being, the less those theoretical limits made sense.

Sacrificing both mana and True Chaos had deprived Khan of higher forms of energy that could lead to superior states of being. However, his body could generate and release something equally strong, if not stronger.

The ascension had deprived Khan of proper perception, but was that skill really gone when his basic senses had transcended their primitive purposes?

After all, Khan could literally perform something similar to breathing and hearing without air, which should be necessary to make those actions possible.

And then there was the thunder in Khan’s brain, seemingly acting as an echo of his previous element while also vouching for its existence.

It was as if Khan’s subconscious was trying to speak to him, telling him not to let his previous understanding of certain concepts limit him.

Khan should have lost things during his ascension. He had willingly sacrificed them to retain a more human mindset, but were they truly gone? Or did they change alongside him, transcending what his still-limited perspective could conceive?

The brainstorming made Khan lower his hands and close his eyes. His body could move on its own, but his feet and fingers could also touch the fabric of space, using it as any other foothold to propel his sprints.

Thunder roared in Khan’s brain, almost cheering at his growing understanding, intensifying the destructive influence he inflicted upon his surroundings.

What Khan wielded wasn’t his element. It wasn’t mana, but was it any different if it could serve the same purposes and more?

And that innate suction force that affected the leaked True Chaos also fell in the same category. It came from the True Chaos, but it matched the [Blood Vortex], albeit in far greater scope.

Khan knew he had changed, but he had also remained the same. That had been the whole point of his peculiar ascension in the end. It had been his plan all along, and what that entailed seemed to be up to what he wanted to perform.

The God obviously didn’t leave Khan to his thoughts. He had initially chosen to use a physical figure to make things easier for the invaders, but that strategy had run its course now.

The one-horned body didn’t reform. Instead, long, darker-than-black lines appeared across the vast expanse, opening to reveal massive, elliptical eyes with intense scarlet irises.

Thousands of those eyes opened around Khan, surrounding him from every direction. Layers upon layers of those organs encircled him, turning the empty darkness into a nightmarish landscape.

And something boiled inside those countless pupils, as if an unfathomable amount of energy was condensing inside them, before unleashing raging tides of annihilating blackness.

Khan was still immersed in his thoughts, but felt everything. His ears had somehow picked up the creation of those giant eyes. His nose had updated him on the texture of the energy they had released, and his touch had sensed the shrinking of the universe that the attack had demanded.

The attack was so widespread that it left no escape routes. It was also so fast it might as well be instantaneous. Yet, Khan felt confident in his ability to face it, his instincts telling him about many possible courses of action.

Khan could call upon his hunger to destabilize the encircling tide before it could touch him. He could spit thundering energy to destroy whatever tried to come close to him.

Khan could also charge ahead, his feet instinctively steadying themselves on the non-existent surface he could treat as any other foothold. He also believed that would be his best sprint yet, his body preparing to accompany and empower it.

However, Khan did nothing of the sort. His mind searched for something else, something at the very source of the thunderous roars that were trying to overwhelm his entire awareness.

And when the tide was about to crash onto Khan, he opened his eyes, which didn’t focus on anything specific as his brain released a mental message, uttering a word he hadn’t used in a long time.

“Kneel,” Khan ordered, and the incoming tide instantly crawled to a halt, hovering all around him in complete stillness.