Chaos' Heir

Chapter 1558: Taking over

Nothing could protect Khan from the quasar’s energy. Nothing could even hope to block those particles accelerated beyond any reasonable or unreasonable level.

The crackling snake, with all its massive size, was less than air before that scorching power. The humming slashes couldn’t even find anything to cut since each attack went beyond the concept of instantaneous.

The layer of clouds and all its thundering might were powerless, too, and the same went for the [Blood Shield]. Getting cut was unavoidable, and sudden death became a possibility.

A single cauterized wound in the right place could kill Khan on the spot, so he dropped any attempt at defense. He only left the [Blood Shield] in place while focusing his entire attention on attacking.

Because, even before that unthinkable spell, Khan had a plan that didn’t involve simply waiting for the miniature black hole to become too big to control. Actually, that was another death sentence he had to prevent at all costs.

The scarlet, accelerated energy was too quick to dodge and too piercing to block, but the Maker still had to perform his brush-like gesture to launch it.

Additionally, the Maker had to aim, giving Khan a certain window of opportunity he could exploit. His survival instincts also sort of provided timely warnings, making him far from powerless.

The layer of clouds descended from the sky and expanded downward, submerging the area in its crackling fabric. The pillar-like lightning bolts exploded into countless sparks in the meantime, fusing with that cluster of thundering energy.

Of course, the clouds couldn’t completely submerge the area. That was a world of True Chaos in the end, and that energy posed a certain resistance to that vast expansion and attempted contamination.

The crackling fabric also couldn’t get anywhere near the Maker since unfathomable scorching power kept spinning in his palm.

The black hole required the alien’s entire concentration to control. Still, it acted as a constant defensive technique, absorbing anything that fell prey to its gravity, including some purple-red sparks.

Therefore, the Maker’s surroundings remained clear, but that didn’t stop Khan’s plan from succeeding. The alien actually immediately realized that just by looking around.

The clouds couldn’t submerge the alien or his surroundings, but they could encircle him. The Maker found himself in a vast, spherical, but incomplete cage of purple-red energy that did its best to hide anything past it, especially the person flying through it.

That crackling cover prevented the Maker from aiming properly. He had no target to go after anyway. Since the clouds shared one of the main aspects of Khan’s element, they were the perfect hiding spot for him.

However, not knowing where Khan was didn’t make the alien powerless, far from it. The accretion disk had all the deadly energy he could want, and the tiny black hole could deal with the crackling cage issue.

Despite the danger of the move, the Maker relinquished part of his control over the miniature black hole, and its pulling force instantly increased again.

The clouds had tried and failed to cut off the Maker from the world of True Chaos, and the increased gravity ended up sucking their crackling fabric toward that spherical hole.

Needless to say, the attracted sparks turned into raw energy that added fuel to the technique. The black hole grew even bigger in return, steadily escaping the Maker’s control, but he only had eyes for the parting clouds.

The incomplete cage was still in place but had grown thinner, shallow enough for the Maker’s perception to start sensing something. Only vague hunches reached his mind, but he didn’t hesitate to act upon them.

The Maker dipped his fingers into the quasar and swiftly waved them out, sending some of that energy past the black hole’s gravitational force.

The released scarlet energy didn’t flash. It was so fast that the world almost failed to record it, but consequences unfolded nonetheless. The sea of clouds in front of the Maker parted horizontally, revealing the black sky past it.

However, the Maker only cared about the figure inside that horizontal cut. Khan was there, his arms crossed before his face, featuring a cauterized cut that extended to his torso, joining the previous one.

The second cut stretched deeper than the previous one, but it still wasn’t enough to put Khan out of commission. Still, as the Maker dipped his fingers in the quasar again, something else attacked him from behind.

A thundering hiss filled the area as the gargantuan snake snapped out of the cloudy cage, its open maws heading directly for the Maker.

The alien didn’t bother turning. The snake did reach him, but the black hole started affecting its very fabric, dismantling it piece by piece.

The giant creature was coming undone quickly, but used the acceleration provided by the enemy’s technique to close its mouth. That quickened its destruction, leaving nothing but a purple-red haze around the Maker, which the black hole immediately began absorbing.

However, a humming noise followed.

The reptilian head was no more, but its lingering energy suddenly started exuding a bottomless bloodlust. That purple-red mist came alive, gaining sharp properties that flowed alongside the black hole’s absorption.

That flow seemed to hint at the fact that the sharp energy had fallen prey to the black hole, which it did. Yet, the Maker also saw something else. Somehow, the gravitational force in one direction was wavering, severed by the sharp bloodlust.

An opening had appeared, but the Maker reacted accordingly. He waved his fingers upward, into that blind spot in the gravitational force, only for a figure to materialize above him.

Khan did try to attack through the opening in the black hole’s gravity, but the Maker had been faster. A vertical cut split his face in two, stretching alongside the rest of his body, severing him in half.

Victory seemed to have arrived, only for the Maker to realize something. The Khan he had split in half didn’t have the previous two injuries, and he soon saw why.

The two severed halves became unstable, a purple-red color taking over their shades. That fake flesh also split into sparks, which thundered once before unleashing a destructive explosion.

Waves of obliterating mana tried to wash over the Maker, only for the black hole to take care of them. However, someone flew through them, heading for that miniature celestial body.

Khan appeared among that storm of disappearing sparks, his hand stretched toward the black hole, his domineering aura aflame. An otherworldly will to dominate everything and everyone filled the area, leading to an impossible scene.

The miniature black hole and its scorching accretion disk gained tinges of purple-red light. The partial loss of control of the technique exposed them to new influences, which Khan unleashed in an attempt to take over it.

And, to the Maker’s surprise, Khan was succeeding, forcing his technique to let go of its immense energy. Khan wanted to defuse it, so the Maker used his dwindling control to detonate it.