Chaos' Heir

Chapter 1600: Options

Of course, Khan didn’t believe a single word he had said. Truth be told, he didn’t even remember them.

The state of anxiety Khan had fallen into was so deep that his mind had defaulted to instinctive responses. It would devise anything as long as he could get out of his predicament as soon as possible to chase after the God.

Khan had always been good with words, and his knowledge of the Thilku Empire had made them quite sharp, hoping that his insults could earn him a reaction from the fuming Emperor he could exploit.

And Khan had succeeded, albeit not in the way he had expected.

The punch that landed on Khan’s face was simply earth-shattering. Even his direct clash against the Great Old One paled before the might that crashed onto his cheek, and the spherical separate dimension seemed to agree.

The atmosphere the God had created so that Khan could speak shook to no end, reaching the critical point, chunks of it shattering into nothingness while other parts gave birth to massive hurricanes.

Even the dimension’s edge seemed to struggle to withstand that dense might, almost growing solid under the pressure that fell on the fabric of its space. It didn’t bend, but it came close.

Meanwhile, Khan’s cheekbone directly cracked, and the same went for the teeth on the right side of his mouth. Even his jaw broke, sending his whole skull into disarray, but something meaningful unfolded elsewhere.

The punch carried a devastating pushing force that the best efforts of Khan’s cells couldn’t match. A pressure his flesh and bones couldn’t hope to oppose pressed on him, finishing the job he had attempted to accomplish earlier.

A physical wave of terrible pain joined the melting torture that afflicted Khan’s existence. His wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, and knees tore themselves apart while pushing on the ten slabs that pinned him to the sky, ultimately breaking free of those shackles.

That freedom came in the form of an unstoppable backward momentum. Khan flew across the whole separate dimension, unable to stop himself, until his back slammed into something that didn’t exist but was strangely unmovable.

When Khan’s spinning world stabilized, he realized that he had reached one end of the spherical separate dimension. Still, that detail barely managed to occupy a tiny fraction of his perception.

Khan’s senses made him aware of far more concerning issues soon enough. His limbs were unresponsive and in a terrible state. His joints were crushed, only attached to the rest of his body through thin patches of torn skin and flesh.

Blood also fell from Khan’s mouth, nose, right eye, and right ear. Half of his face was broken, caved in, and hanging, filling his unavoidably open mouth with a metallic taste.

Healing those injuries, or at least part of them, typically wouldn’t be a problem. Khan was indeed exhausted but had enough nutrient reserves to stabilize his condition.

However, the fiery blackness that had set off on Khan’s feet was still there. Actually, it had spread to what was left of his ankles now, consuming him and limiting his access to his healing properties.

Khan could probably still fix himself somehow, but his predicament hadn’t changed. He was on borrowed time and could only really pursue a single course of action. He could delay the transformation, heal himself, or use his energy to keep fighting despite his terrible state.

That choice wasn’t actually up to Khan. He would have still gone for the third option, but the world also forced him to pick it since a huge, fuming figure was flying at full speed through the massive tornadoes to charge at him.

It seemed Khan’s words had truly struck a nerve since the fuming Emperor looked set on killing him. Yet, he didn’t delude himself into thinking that he had somehow snapped his companion out of that transformation. That sad reality was actually in the open for him to see.

The separate dimension still had a no-mana rule. Despite Khan’s attempts, he couldn’t summon his energy outside his body.

Meanwhile, the fuming Emperor seemed to have no problem unleashing his full power, meaning he wasn’t using mana. He was relying on something that the separate dimension allowed. He was wielding True Chaos.

To make the situation even sadder, Khan had no time for mourning. He would die if he didn’t do something against his transformed companion’s charge, but his options were limited once again.

Khan wielded the Great Old One’s species’ might, but that wasn’t enough to face the Emperor. It had already proven itself unsuitable for the task, and Khan didn’t have access to his limbs now, while True Chaos empowered his transformed companion.

As things stood, it seemed that Khan had no option but to die. He couldn’t summon spells, and his cells would probably fail to endure another direct blow. No matter how he saw it, he was dead.

Still, desperate times called for desperate measures. Truth be told, Khan had one additional option. He had more than mana and might inside him now. His melting transformation had begun, so he also had access to True Chaos.

Of course, Khan couldn’t use that superior energy directly, but his body had a way of harnessing its power.

’Eat it!’ Khan thought, sending a mental order to his cells, which stopped whatever they were doing and focused on that single task.

The transformation advanced sharply. The fiery smoke that had covered Khan’s ankles suddenly shot up to his waist. His body was letting it take over itself, avoiding stopping it entirely to harness a single drop of its transformative might.

Khan felt as if something broke inside his dwindling existence. His cells screamed in pain and died, but a surge of massive energy also spread inside him, suddenly enhancing his senses and restoring functions that the God had forbidden.

A faint redness joined the blue of Khan’s eyes while torrents of purple-red mana escaped from his back, expanding at his sides as if they were a pair of unfolding wings.

However, those waves of mana soon split into hundreds of pieces that morphed into the shape of stylized reptilian eyes, which brightened until they became as blinding as an actual star.

"One thousand eyes!" Khan cried, almost hissing as mana accumulated in his throat, shooting a beam that fused with what the reptilian eyes behind him unleashed.