Chaos' Heir - Chapter 1109

Chapter 1109: Gift
The Great Old One was undeniably strong. Its massive body wielded breathtaking strength, and Khan couldn’t even fathom how much mana it contained. That ancient creature could probably fight for months without needing a break.

That wasn’t all. The Great Old One’s most incredible ability was its perception. Its senses stretched for entire quadrants of the universe, gathering information at a shocking rate. The ancient creature was close to being all-knowing, possessing wisdom that stretched for countless star systems and years.

However, that wasn’t a battle of perception. Khan was facing the giant snake head-on, and he was destruction incarnate. Khan was infinitely smaller but also more intense than the ancient creature could ever be. His abilities suited fights more.

That wasn’t to say that Khan held any kind of advantage. His attacks were deadlier than the snake’s, but the latter was too big and mighty to budge under them. The Great Old One also wasn’t a pushover when it came to counterattacking, and Khan’s body wasn’t anywhere as strong.

Similar fights would often turn into battles of exhaustion where stamina and resilience decided the victor. The Great Old One would have Khan beaten every time there, but he had one saving grace. The mana obeyed his commands, and he had a world of it at his disposal.

The Great Old One looked interested in the barrage of lightning bolts. Its giant head swung left and right, pointing its damaged reptilian eyes at it. The ancient creature seemed surprised by that ability, but completely different words escaped its mouth.

“A pale imitation of our mana,” The Great Old One hissed. “We could stretch past Coravis in our infancy. In our maturity, we touched the stars.”

“This power has nothing to do with you,” Khan declared. “It was a gift from my greatest weakness.”

Khan lowered his arm, pointing it at the gargantuan snake, and the lightning bolts shot forward, crossing the sky at high speed.

The Great Old One hissed angrily, its voice resonating with the symphony’s pale green strands of energy. The ancient creature mostly used that mana as an extension of its perception, but making it tremble took no effort and led to surprising results.

The lightning bolts were unstable by their very nature. They wanted nothing more than to explode and unleash their destructive power, and the faintest interference could achieve that.

Khan’s mana usually destroyed the pale green energy, shattering it before it could create any interference. Yet, the closer the lightning bolts got to the ancient snake, the more intensely the symphony shook, and the disturbance eventually became too much to bear.

One lightning bolt ended up exploding several meters from the Great Old One, and its detonation touched the other spells, triggering a chain reaction. A barrage of crackling purple-red spheres expanded before the snake’s immense frame as if attempting to hide its giant head and part of its body.

The explosions expanded everywhere, filling the sky with their blinding radiance and thunderous noises, but a massive figure dived through them. The Great Old One didn’t care about the shallow wounds those destructive sparks inflicted on its scales and flew forward, only to discover that Khan had the same idea.

The Great Old One only realized the event when it was too late. A tiny figure materialized above its damaged nose, unbothered by the purple-red sparks digging wounds into its body and clothes. Khan had dived headfirst into the explosions, releasing one of his best kicks as soon as the giant head appeared in his view.

More of the snake’s scales rose and shattered, revealing the blue flesh underneath. Concentric wounds dug into the ancient creature’s head, finally exploding into cascades of blood. Khan was scraping away layer after layer of that massive body but knew one kick wouldn’t suffice.

As the Great Old One started to lift its head, Khan landed on its broken scales. The creature’s nose had become a marsh of gory puddles, squishing flesh, and broken scales, but Khan’s stretched leg didn’t dig into it at all. His toes touched it, and the sky fell when he shouted words the ancient snake couldn’t understand.

“[Help my legs],” Khan coldly requested, unleashing Maban’s technique.

The strain on Khan’s leg became almost unbearable. Diving into the purple-red explosions had already littered it with cuts, and blood spurted out of them as soon as he unleashed the technique.

Pieces of Khan’s damaged flesh burst outward. Some of his tendons snapped, and his muscles tore themselves apart. Khan stopped feeling anything from below his right knee, but his mind only focused on the technique’s success.

The Great Old One had already experienced the Transcendent Step’s third advanced form. It had also opposed it through sheer physical strength, but what landed on its head now was several times stronger.

The giant head jerked downward. The snake lost control of it, and a big chunk of its body followed. The ancient creature’s massive frame shot down, coming dangerously close to the raging sea before stopping.

As always, the sea opened, flattening into a vast, even circle. However, something similar happened to the snake’s head. Its injuries, exposed flesh, pouring blood, and broken scales blended into a compact, shallow hole that made its skull ring.

The snake’s head had gone past being a mess by then. Almost half of its upper part featured destroyed layers of scales and flesh, with blood flowing non-stop from those injuries. Nothing was too deep, but chunks of it started to lose their connection to the main body, threatening to fall into the sea below.

The Great Old One couldn’t accept that insult. It had happened for merely a second, but Khan’s attack had managed to surpass its physical strength. That was unacceptable and only convinced the ancient snake of the value of that final meal.

Nevertheless, thunderous noises filled the sky as soon as the Great Old One called upon its quasi-divine perception. The world turned purple-red, and the ancient creature only needed to look up to notice the new barrage of lightning bolts that had materialized above it.

Khan obviously was at the center of that deadly arrangement of spells, but something else grew above him. A series of sparks condensed above his head, giving birth to an intricate array of lines resembling some sort of symbol.