Chaos' Heir

Princess Virrai and Princess Saintilon were only the first of many visits. The other Princes and Princesses followed, keeping Khan in the communal area for hours. Luckily for him, he had plenty of booze to spare.

The meetings went over various topics, but the core issue never changed. The Princes and Princesses wanted to size Khan up and opened up negotiations when possible. Needless to say, Khan stayed true to his cold stance, sometimes sealing favorable deals.

By the time the meetings ended, the night had already descended on the planet. Everyone had retired to their quarters, leaving only Khan and the patrolling soldiers roaming the building. A short exchange of messages confirmed that Monica was still busy with Princess Montares, so Khan retrieved a few items before flying away.

Khan had long since committed the quadrant's layout to memory. He knew every gorge, mountain, and isolated spot, and those locations had influenced his final decision about where to place the city.

The city's central buildings had a vast and complete array of training halls that met all of Khan's requirements. He had even built them with chaos-resistant alloys, like everything else in the settlement. However, his experiments remained dangerous and demanded privacy.

Moreover, nothing beat being surrounded by natural mana, so Khan flew to a nearby hill that featured a few caves. Those cavities were damp, slightly cold, and isolated, just how he liked them. He had occasionally brought Monica there, too, but that night was about training.

Khan dived into the nearest cave and sat on its rocky surface before dropping the items he carried. Wires, tubes, T-shirts, and more filled his vision while his mind played simulations.

The idea had been inside Khan's mind since the conversation with the two Princes and had grown so loud he didn't even notice the wet patch expanding under his butt. The cave's humidity attacked his pelts, but he was too focused to care.

Turning the [Blood Shield] into a rune was possible, at least theoretically. Any source of power would do, but the shape could cause problems. The alien technique naturally used the blood vessels to trace a barrier, but Khan couldn't replicate that.

The issue was purely technical. The [Blood Shield] didn't only use main blood vessels. It also clotted the blood in the smaller channels, creating a semi-complete barrier that shielded most of the superficial skin.

Khan could obtain materials with similar shapes and quantities but couldn't manipulate them with his bare hands. They were too small, and the likelihood of malfunction would only increase with each additional channel.

Machines could solve the issue, but Khan would know what orders to give that equipment only once he built a functioning prototype. The hurdle was too steep, so Khan decided to tackle the problem from a different direction.

The blueprint sounded impossible, but Khan had spent years bending his mana to his will through intense feelings. He had even created spells with that method, and the [Blood Shield] would theoretically only be a matter of imitation.

Khan looked at his open palm. His eyes saw past the cave's darkness, studying the black spiderweb spreading on his skin. He had relied on the [Blood Shield] so often he had committed its deployment to memory. The issue was whether that image was clear enough to implant in another substance.

'Let's start simple,' Khan thought, bringing a bucket near his crossed legs and spreading his palm over it. His fingers traced a line, and his skin opened, dropping blood into the container.

Khan repeated the process multiple times since his body's resilience kept stopping the bleeding. Nevertheless, the bucket eventually had enough blood to start the experiments, and he dived right into them.

Khan had mastered changing the blood's nature long ago. Due to his greater skill and more intense mana, the process had become even easier now. It only took him twenty minutes to achieve satisfying results, and that period involved holding back. Khan had to suppress his power to avoid breaking the bucket and what it contained.

The blood had grown dense and dark after enduring Khan's influence. By then, it basically was slimy mud, but some mana ran through it. It looked more resilient, but Khan only had one way to test it.

Khan emptied the bucket on the ground. The slimy blood spread on the rocky surface, but the narrower channels stopped it, limiting the size of the puddle.

The size didn't matter to Khan. He almost slashed his hand at the puddle before opting for something different. Nearly nothing could stop the Divine Reaper's moves now, and he couldn't expect that first attempt to survive its deadly properties.

Purple-red light covered Khan's right hand, creating a bright, ethereal sword. He lowered the weapon toward the puddle, and the chaos element's influence created ripples on its surface.

Holes and bubbles appeared on the puddle as Khan lowered his hand. The reinforced blood tried its best, but his spell eventually made it burst, sending splashes in every direction.

Khan didn't expect anything less from mere reinforced blood. The first test only needed to confirm that he could increase that substance's resilience to decent levels, and the result was a success. Normal blood would have directly evaporated under his element's influence.

'The hard part now,' Khan thought.

Reinforcing the blood was easy, almost natural for Khan, but he couldn't just immerse T-shirts into it to turn them into magic items. The Princes' standards were far higher than that, and Khan even surpassed them in that field.

Khan refilled the bucket with his blood and began applying his influence. Yet, the procedure had an additional step now. He still focused on reinforcing the substance, but his mind played specific images in the meantime. He pictured the [Blood Shield] expansion, summoning all his memories and sensations of the alien technique.

The second attempt took longer than the previous one. Khan actually slowed it down to bathe the blood into his mental images, and the result confirmed that he was on the right path.

After the procedure, the blood inside the bucket had grown darker and denser again, but clearer lines existed in its texture. Faint spiderwebs with higher resilience had formed inside the now-slimy substance, which became more evident once Khan poured it to the ground.

The puddle's expansion highlighted the denser lines. Part of the substance even detached itself from them, leaving behind a smaller, more resilient hexagonal spot. Needless to say, testing it with the Chaos Claws spell provided better insights.

Most of the hexagonal spot splashed away or evaporated under the spell's influence, but its spiderweb-like structure survived longer than before. The change wasn't significant since everything soon crumbled, but Khan could work with those results.

'Making it stronger isn't an issue,' Khan considered. 'Making it useful is the problem.'

Khan could stop at creating a simple defensive layer. He only needed to keep testing until he arrived at a strong enough final product. Attaching it to any clothing would turn that into protective gear.

Khan could even take that one step forward, translating the final product into a rune, removing his blood from the equation. Replicating decent effects with mere mana would be hard, but Khan could get there.

However, that result wouldn't make Khan's creations any better than what the Global Army could already produce. They would actually be inferior in many ways. Khan could try to surpass the competition in general efficiency, but the human blacksmiths could build similar items anyway.

'The defensive gear is easy enough,' Khan thought. 'I just need to find the right iterations of lines and materials to create something stronger than average.'

Turning simple clothes into armor with no special effects was only a matter of trial and error. Khan would get there if he invested time in testing different combinations of meanings and materials. Yet, that merely scraped the surface of what his innovative field could do, and he wanted it to achieve its full potential.

'How do I make this special?' Khan wondered.

Khan's mind instinctively moved to Prince Duter's commission. Something about the disposable items spoke to him, even if he couldn't yet put his finger over it. That idea had a path, but his brain struggled to define it.

The answer arrived when Khan glanced at his waist. The cursed knife rested silently in his pelts, but its existence was ever-present in his mind. That weapon had a will of its own, which human blacksmiths had created without knowing much about alien arts.

'A weapon that can act on its own,' Khan imagined, letting his thoughts flow freely. 'An item that can flare at the first sign of danger.'

Khan didn't know much about blacksmiths, but it was evident that only masters in their craft could achieve similar results. However, he had turned the violent, wild chaos element into proper spells. His feelings were strong enough to bend the most unyielding will. Khan only had to transmit the right one to his creations.

'Something instinctive,' Khan brainstormed. 'Something pure and unstoppable.'

The topic involved defensive gear, so Khan browsed through his life to find suitable feelings. One quickly popped out, reminding him of a sad scene he recalled clearly. He couldn't forget the emotions he experienced when his body moved on its own at the sight of Liiza falling into the darkness.