Chaos Heir

Chapter 1596: Weakness

Something in Liiza’s gesture triggered an instinctive reaction in the handsome King. Her stance was relatively casual, her simple smile enhancing that vibe, but the King found it frightening.

Still, the issue remained. Somehow, Liiza had bent the True Chaos to her will, as if she could control it no differently than her own mana. That wasn’t only impossible. It insulted the very superiority that the King’s God wielded.

As for the explanation, the second part didn’t really make sense, but the first conveyed some clues. Just as Liiza’s brain automatically translated the King’s words, so did his mind, absorbing meanings that transcended language barriers.

The word "Shaman" expressed its true and entire meaning when Liiza spoke it. That title belonged to experts in various fields, specifically when it came to the mana, be it sensing it, controlling it, or manipulating it.

Liiza hadn’t called herself that, but the King couldn’t find a better description for her skills. Besides, she had also admitted that she could dominate forms of energy, theoretically placing her above that status.

Of course, the King struggled to believe that Liiza actually wielded such a fearsome ability. The mana and True Chaos could be similar in certain aspects, but their level of power and existence were incomparable.

The King was also in his ascended state, using the version of True Chaos closest to its God. He could imagine Liiza being his match, but his superior energy had to remain outside her reach. That was an ironclad rule of existence.

Despite the strange, frightening stance, the King’s faith in his superior energy didn’t waver. He lifted his right arm properly this time, and glowing smoke immediately flooded his palm.

The frozen cavern suffered again. The air around the King’s fuming hand twisted and bent, making the surrounding ice follow those moves. The white surfaces rose and caved to match that spatial manipulation, shattering in the process.

The glowing smoke gathered and condensed until the King forcefully released it, turning it into an uneven clump of True Chaos that distorted the world during its advance.

Anything even remotely close to the advancing attack bent oddly and broke. Everything it crossed was twisted beyond what its structure could withstand, blowing pure shards everywhere.

A storm wanted to take form, only for it to also fall prey to that twisting momentum. Gales of white ice tried to blow but ended up turning sideways or bending oddly due to the chaotic space the uneven clump of True Chaos had enforced.

And, all that twisting destruction happened rather instantly since the attack was quite fast, approaching Liiza in no time, affecting the space around her and herself even before actually reaching her.

A pressure that went far beyond the physical realm fell on Liiza when the uneven clump of True Chaos got too close. The attack affected the very layer of space where her body was, creating insidious effects that defensive techniques couldn’t really stop.

That was because most techniques would express their power in the same layer of space that the advancing attack was affecting. The King’s offense would bend them, too, making them virtually useless.

However, there was nothing ordinary about Liiza. The whole reason why she had reached that lost location came from her proclivity in those profound fields. Space wasn’t exactly her specialty, but her element could touch upon it.

The whole cavern brightened, its already chilling temperatures dropping even further. A cold that reached beyond the solid world invaded the very fabric of reality, altering the flow of time.

The uneven clump of True Chaos kept advancing, and the same went for its twisting destruction, but everything slowed down. It still unfolded, but switched to an increasingly more restrained time flow that seemed to want to stop entirely.

Even the King fell prey to that slowing technique, experiencing effects similar to those his technique unleashed. He could still move and summon his energy, but every process seemed to take an eternity now, only leaving his senses unaffected.

And, as the world strived to come to a complete halt, the uneven clump of True Chaos underwent a second transformation. Shades of pure white began to appear in its glowing, darker-than-black, blackness, invaded by a will that wanted to turn it against its maker.

The King wanted to oppose that impossible conquest but was powerless to do so. The invasion happened at normal speed, while he was stuck inside a slower time flow, preventing him from sending additional energy or exerting more will over his technique.

At that pace, it seemed that Liiza would be able to stop the advancing True Chaos entirely and take control of its energy. However, when the twisting space advanced a bit farther and began to apply more pressure, she vanished, and everything went back to normal.

The uneven clump of True Chaos resumed advancing at full speed, lifting storms of ice shards until it ultimately clashed onto the cavern’s back. That whole surface crumbled, revealing more frozen layers underneath, which kept clashing with the technique until the latter exhausted its energy.

By the time the clash was over, the wall in the cavern’s back had gained a messy but relatively conical cavity, its edge and surface cracked all over from its many dents, uplifts, and twists.

The event seemed to prove the King right, but he showed no happiness or reassurance when he looked to a frozen wall to his right, which glowed more intensely before Liiza’s figure seamlessly stepped out of it.

Liiza was completely unharmed, but the King didn’t focus on that. She looked as cold and as emotionless as usual, but the King saw something odd about that stance now. In a way, it felt partially fake, as if performative.

Because, truth be told, the King knew that Liiza had proven him wrong. She could indeed manipulate the True Chaos, at least to some extent. Her technique would have succeeded if she hadn’t interrupted it.

The question was why. Liiza feigned ignorance, acting as if nothing worthwhile had occurred, but the King couldn’t think about anything else, and an answer eventually arrived.

Liiza didn’t do anything revealing now, but she had made that mistake earlier, and the King smirked, revealing his black teeth, upon uncovering its meaning.

"[You brought weakness to this conflict, child of the mana]," The King announced. "[The second life in you is holding you back]."