Chaos Heir

Chapter 1357: Valley

Needless to say, the sight dispersed any flirtatious or joking mood. Neither Khan nor Liiza could have any room for that after gazing at the scenery despite focusing on different details.

The relatively small, dense, and blinding sphere of mana inevitably captured Liiza’s attention. Its azure glow was so bright it almost turned white, but Liiza couldn’t help but study its deeper features.

The planet’s mana had already interested Liiza, but that sphere seemed to push all those unique features to the extreme. It was made of the same pure and unpolluted energy but somewhat carried a distinct, profound will.

That will felt as primordial as basic animalistic instincts but was also vaster and thicker. It seemed to carry an ancestral wisdom, simple but unfathomably complex. The truths of the universe, life, and death looked to be hidden in that spinning sphere, ready to be seized by anyone bold enough to reach out for them.

The depths of those truths were compelling and magnetic. Liiza found herself drawn to them, feeling infinitesimally small before that endless wheel of knowledge. Her puny life couldn’t be anything but inconsequential before it, and the realization threatened to make her forget herself.

Nevertheless, Liiza abruptly snapped out of her daze, closing her eyes and sealing her senses off. Panic spread through her brain as her mind resumed working properly, aware of how close she had gotten to losing her sanity and individuality as a whole.

Liiza quickly realized the spinning sphere wasn’t to blame for those effects. It didn’t actively try to obliterate her individuality. It was simply too great as an existence, something mortals and evolved warriors couldn’t hope to attempt to comprehend or absorb without losing themselves.

It was like staring at the Sun or any other bright star. The light those celestial bodies radiated was magnetic, but also too blinding. They were too great even to look at without paying the ultimate price.

In the same way, the spinning sphere was too boundless for a single organism to absorb or even try to understand. After all, it was the core of the energy that species and part of the universe had built their foundation upon. It was the mana’s heart, carrying all its breathtaking and annihilating magnificence.

As soon as Liiza recovered, her head snapped to her left. She had her ways of dealing with the mana and had no intrinsic connection with that fearsome spinning sphere, so rejecting its tempting promises of knowledge and answers had been somewhat doable for her.

However, Khan was bound to have it far worse. His genes wouldn’t only work against him. He had suffered through years of nightmares that had conditioned his mind, making his emotions quite susceptible to that threat.

Yet, Liiza immediately realized she had never needed to worry. Khan was indeed still staring at the valley’s center. Still, his eyes only pointed at the blue figure before the spinning sphere, which earned itself the entirety of his emotional spectrum, made of a single feeling.

An anger that defied time and reason had invaded Khan’s brain, preventing him from thinking about anything else. His stance toward the Nak had changed over the years, especially as he matured and learned more about that species.

However, that first real, and probably final, meeting made Khan default to basic and unstoppable reactions. He had waited twenty-three years for that moment, even adding the Great Old One’s species’ grudge to his emotional spectrum, so all the anger his brain was capable of came out like unstoppable, raging waves, filling his entire being.

That rage became deafening when it crossed the mental connection, spreading through Liiza’s mind and almost overwhelming her. She ended up experiencing and echoing that same feeling as if tainted by it, but her worry never returned.

Despite the bottomless anger, Khan was in control. He would have already laid waste to the valley and the azure planet as a whole otherwise, and he owed all that to Liiza. If she hadn’t shown Khan a life outside his curse, he would have found no reason or desire to avoid charging recklessly at his oldest enemy.

Instead, Khan now limited himself to inspecting that blue alien’s back, knowing exactly what its front hid. The alien was completely azure with no hair. It had three shining eyes, long, thick arms, six fingers per hand, thick legs, and no neck. Khan was also aware of the blood’s color. The humanoid figure was a living Nak, precisely like the one from his nightmares.

Liiza looked at her husband until he stretched his tattooed hand toward her without diverting his gaze from the valley. Liiza took it, and the two began to descend into that gorge, walking on a path the planet seemed to have prepared for them.

Despite the intense emotions and breathtaking situation, the couple showed no hurry, displaying utmost dignity and calm pride during their descent. They walked slowly, wary but confident, not letting any trace of doubt or hesitation affect their thoughts or actions.

The Nak before the spinning sphere didn’t react, but the world did. The air inside the valley was still made of mana, just like the rest of the planet, and it began to condense on the gorge’s floor to create more familiar figures.

Soon, more Nak appeared, each different from each other while also belonging to the same species. After looking everywhere for those aliens for decades, over thirty of them now stood between Khan and the spinning sphere, their three-eyed faces looking at him.

Those Nak were undoubtedly alive, far more so than the other mana beasts Khan and Liiza had faced. They reeked of the spinning sphere’s more profound will, sharing and echoing it, but their sudden appearance seemed to have nothing to do with hindering the couple.

Yet, Khan stopped anyway, looking down at that platoon of Nak, his glowing eyes browsing over each one of them, seemingly wanting to commit their vaguely distinctive features to memory.

Then, Khan’s aura surged, the air around him gradually gaining purple-red shades, unable to resist his influence. He seized that piece of the planet for himself, including Liiza inside it, and words spoken through the Nak’s methods eventually escaped his mouth.

"Well?" Khan asked. "Kneel."