Chaos Heir

Chapter 1614: Authority

After everything that had happened, Khan shouldn’t have anything remotely close to authority over higher forms of energy. Still, there he was, somehow ordering around the God’s True Chaos.

The action didn’t only create a majestic sight. Those all-consuming tides of obliterating energy looked ready to crash onto Khan but remained perfectly still, as if becoming a peaceful spherical sea that encircled him completely.

Khan’s successful order also shocked the God, whose thousands of open eyes scattered all around the spherical sea widened a bit more, betraying that emotion.

Moreover, something even greater unfolded inside Khan. The successful enforcement of his authority over the incoming violent energy resonated deeply within him, flooding him with a sense of profound awakening.

Ordering that violent energy around had felt strangely good, almost natural. It didn’t make any sense for Khan to wield that kind of authority, but reason had long since abandoned the battlefield.

Somehow, Khan was authority incarnate. Leadership was his duty and birthright.

The Great Old One and its species were planetary overlords by right, by virtue of their very genes.

Part of Khan’s training had involved learning to dominate the mana, which he had ultimately mastered before seizing what its inheritance had to offer.

Now that the True Chaos had joined the equation, Khan’s birthright extended over it, including it in what his bloodline rightfully had authority over.

Of course, that wasn’t a mere symbolic trait. It involved more than the sheer power to dominate. That birthright had transcended its original meaning alongside everything else about Khan, becoming a proper innate ability.

And after experiencing it for the first time, Khan couldn’t stop feeling it anymore. He knew in his very bones that the world was his to take and control. He was its rightful ruler by virtue of his birthright.

It was strange, really. Khan had spent most of his life feeling wrong and out of place, never finding a solution to the issue. He had eventually accepted himself and achieved happiness, but the sad truth behind his state had remained undeniable.

However, the birthright Khan experienced validated his existence down to his genetic level. That instinctive feeling was so intense and solid that it could be nothing else but a universal truth.

Khan had been reborn as a rightful ruler, a position that the very universe had awarded him. His being couldn’t be more correct.

It reached the point that even if Khan somehow managed to feel wrong anyway, he would have to accept that everyone else had even less right than he did to inhabit that world.

Obviously, Khan couldn’t have such thoughts. Despite his past traumas and habits, he couldn’t go against a nature ingrained in his very mindset, making him lean deeper into it.

“Shatter,” Khan ordered through another mental message, and the spherical sea crumbled into disparate clusters of pitch-black smoke.

That smoke immediately converged toward Khan, absorbed by his figure, partially filling his bottomless energy reserves to strengthen him. He was recovering from a starvation he had just begun to feel, but his chosen meal hadn’t changed.

The God had remained uncharacteristically still throughout the process. That superior being had yet to abandon that thousands-eyed shape, but the shock had left that multi-eyed stare, replaced by even sterner seriousness.

The Maker had told the truth. The True Chaos had defeated several beings comparable to the Great Old One during its expansion. They had all been powerful to a different degree, but the God had always wielded a superiority proper to his existence.

Nevertheless, Khan was different. He was a new kind of horror, a superior version born from higher energies. In a way, he was the chosen child of the universe, its most perfect creation, the closest being to its throne.

That guess was by no means exaggerated. The battle was happening inside the God’s universe, a world of True Chaos that represented his superior existence. He should have unmatched authority there, but Khan’s innate gifts made him his equal in that field.

Actually, if the God had to be honest, Khan looked superior in that regard. After all, his authority resulted from the transcendence of several kinds of rightful leadership.

“God of the True Chaos,” Khan called among that stillness. “Shall we end this?”

Truth be told, Khan didn’t expect actual answers. Words had become pointless long ago. He and the God carried the banners of two opposite ways of life, making their clash unavoidable.

Yet, to Khan’s surprise, the God did more than reply. He asked a question.

“[Why have you chosen this form]?” The God asked. “[Why have you forsaken your potential for higher states of being]?”

As always, the mental message carried comprehensive meanings. Khan’s bloodline did indeed carry incredible peculiarities, but that path remained a dead end.

Still, as much as Khan wanted to reply, he couldn’t, and the fault didn’t lie with him.

The God simply wouldn’t be able to understand why Khan had done what he had done. He was too beyond what Khan valued to accept it as an explanation.

“I will take the universe, too,” Khan decided to say, “But I’ll do that on my own terms.”

“[Energy will always strive for higher forms],” The God argued. “[Superior beings will always pursue even higher states of being. Time will make you an evolutionary relic].”

The God was right. The mana was gone now, but something similar might appear in a matter of millennia or longer. Additional higher energies could be born alongside it, and Gods could ascend from them.

That was a natural progression, an unstoppable evolutionary process that would exist as long as living beings occupied the universe.

The True Chaos was only one of the divine threats of Khan’s time, but many others could be somewhere else, and more were bound to appear in the future.

Realistically, the only effective way to ensure complete domination was to follow the True Chaos’ evolutionary path, becoming the universe itself, removing those variables altogether.

Yet, Khan couldn’t do that anymore,

“Power must be tested with adversity,” Khan said, using the God’s own words before lifting his tattooed hand, forcefully closing his fist to stab his own palm.

The skin that had remained unharmed until now finally suffered injuries, but no blood came out of them. Khan had lightning bolts coursing through his veins, and that was exactly what rushed out.

Scarlet sparks escaped from Khan’s palm, gathering on it before converging toward his sharp fingernails, rising higher to illuminate the vast expanse with their red radiance.

“But I’ll only take a throne worth having,” Khan continued, his mental message echoing the thundering might on his fingertips. “And only I can acknowledge that value.”

“[Gods are superior but specific beings],” The God announced, using the same words the Maker had spoken. “[Their throne will always exist above yours].”

“The solution is obvious then,” Khan commented, stretching his fingers, the sparks on his fingernails turning into proper lightning bolts that raged above him. “No more Gods.”