Chaos Heir

Chapter 1142 Enough

Khan's mind was nothing short of a mess afflicted by a storm of raging or sad thoughts.

The recent period hadn't been easy. Khan had alternated prolonged periods of utter solitude with dangerous battles in alien environments. His first real interaction with fellow humans was in Blue Moon colony, barely sating a social animal's need for kinship.

The return to Nott Station had brought its share of problems. The meeting with Princess Rachel had been emotionally fulfilling but also troubling, carrying the suffocating weight of politics and feelings Khan couldn't respond to.

Michael's successful birth had been an extremely high moment. Khan couldn't express how happy he was for George, but the incredible achievement highlighted what he had lost. George's new situation perfectly reflected Khan's sad state and the prices he kept paying.

The exploration of the ancient snake's memories was a constant, heavy assault on Khan's mental health, and Garret had managed to deliver a finishing blow.

Khan could have children, but clearly, humans were unsuited for carrying his genes. Ordinary warriors wouldn't survive the pregnancy, and completing it wouldn't even ensure the birth of something humanoid. Garret didn't specify that point, but Khan could very well imagine it.

The Nak had already stolen Khan's imminent future, but the journey to reach them seemed to have destroyed any hope for a normal life after it. Khan didn't have much of it left and didn't dare to voice it, but the apparent finality of the matter pushed him past the tipping point.

'Enough,' Khan growled in his mind. 'Enough is enough.'

The battles never stopped. The shortcomings kept piling on with no end in sight, cluttering the already narrow path to happiness with unmovable and unbreakable boulders, and Khan had had enough.

'Just burn it all,' Khan thought. 'The universe, my curse, myself, my happiness.'

The training hall was perfectly smooth, as if carved from a single piece of black metal. Yet, its surfaces were made of thousands of tiles arranged into multiple layers to create that illusion, and they all started to tremble.

Khan reopened his glowing eyes to a world begging to fall apart. He heard the connection between each tile screaming to come undone. Destruction was their fate, but Khan didn't allow that just yet.

"I still need you," Khan grunted. "So, shut up."

The tremors quieted down but never disappeared. It was as if something inconceivably heavy constantly pressed on the training hall's surfaces, pushing on their structural integrity. Their tiles occasionally bent, but nothing broke.

Meanwhile, Khan lowered his gaze to his scarred hands. For all the vitality his new body possessed, those marks didn't heal. All the food and transformations in the world couldn't remove that stain. Khan had paid that price already, so that part of him was lost forever.

Cracks slowly opened on Khan's sleeves, rising until they reached his shoulders. His uniform broke, and its torn pieces fell toward the floor, turning into invisible dust before they could spend a single second floating through the air.

The sleeveless look exposed more of Khan's scars, but he preferred it. There was no point in hiding anything. Even the scanners seemed to struggle to recognize him as anything remotely human, so he wouldn't even bother pretending.

The thunderous clicking cries of the chaos element resounded in Khan's brain, almost intensifying the light from his eyes, but he ignored them. He hadn't released his element in a month, but the time wasn't ripe yet. That training hall had to serve another purpose.

The Transcendent Step was the most complicated martial art Khan had ever studied or seen. Also, he had added some of his previous achievements to it, making the ability to fly part of its techniques.

Theoretically, that didn't change much. Khan could simply use the air as another foothold, so the Transcendent Step's techniques remained unchanged to a certain degree.

However, the Great Old One's mutations had brought more than the ability to perform true flight. Khan's body could move on its own in every direction now, demanding some tinkering in his execution.

The Transcendent Step's techniques used energy solely to perform specific movements, but Khan could do part of them without requiring mana now. His body could innately dart left, right, up, and down without the command from his martial arts, opening the path for a different approach.

It was like swimming. Except Khan now had gained a tail, fins, and gills. He could still use his arms and legs to make his way through water, but that would be a waste and a bad use of his new limbs. Relying on them would also free the old ones for other purposes, changing his entire approach to the action.

Moreover, those new abilities didn't exist in a vacuum. Khan could add them to his mastered moves, generating far more power. He had tested that through his simple grip, so managing to transfer it to his martial arts promised far greater rewards.

The new approach would usually require countless tests and specialized support. After all, the martial arts were a miracle of modern science, fusing what mana-enhanced bodies could do while fueled by that same energy.

Yet, Khan didn't waste a single second in the previous month. If he weren't sleeping, he was exploring the Great Old One's memories, occasionally learning more about his new body.

Summoning the cells' power wasn't instinctive just yet, but Khan could sense how familiar the experience felt. It became almost natural as if it had always been a part of him, and he let that sensation guide his moves while strands of mana exploded inside him.

Khan closed his eyes again, immersing himself in his instincts. His cells awakened, bringing his right knee to his waist. Meanwhile, strands of mana clashed with each other inside it, filling it with fearsome power that flooded the whole limb.

There seemed to be no end to the amount of energy Khan's right leg could contain. He had to be careful about the number of mana strands he summoned in the past, but his flesh barely budged now.

More and more energy flooded Khan's leg until his muscles started to tense, and some veins popped up. Nothing broke, and he experienced no strain, but he felt the weight inside his limb, and his reasonable side told him not to release it.

Nevertheless, Khan couldn't hear his reason at the moment. He only wanted to break the world, so his right leg descended, condensing his element's entropy into a single, tiny spot under his toes. His limb usually met its limits rather quickly there, but they didn't seem to exist that day.

The fabric of reality seemed to struggle to remain intact during the deceptively slow move, but all hell broke loose once Khan finished stretching his leg. The kick had pushed the whole symphony in the training hall downward after tainting it with Khan's destructive element, and the floor simply couldn't endure that.

The floor didn't just break. The whole lower side of the training hall shattered into countless shards, leaving nothing more than torn walls behind.

The sea of shards quickly hit the mana barrier below, which flickered violently for a second before dispersing. The generator directly exploded, overwhelmed by the simultaneous and extensive attack that fell on that protective membrane.

Some shards broke during the clash, but most were blown away from the breach in that isolated atmosphere. Khan was no exception. The giant cavity sucked Khan into it, throwing him into the dark expanse.

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