Chaos Heir

Chapter 1579: Manipulation

The palm strike truly couldn’t have looked simpler. Ilman had relied on the momentum from his final leap to enhance his attack, but the gesture itself didn’t feature anything special or complicated.

Nevertheless, the elderly King experienced a far different truth. On the outside, the palm strike was indeed violent and mighty, but its real power lay in what it released inside the tree.

Despite the straightforward, direct hit, the energy that entered the black and grey trunk was multilayered, as if belonging to different attacks.

Concentric and expanding waves of dense but trembling energy entered the tree’s base and rose throughout it, pushing aside its insides while forcing them to mimic their unusual rhythm.

The elderly King didn’t have conventional organs, especially in that giant form. True Chaos mostly made up his insides, allowing him to control the gargantuan tree, its branches, and its roots, acting as a circulatory, nervous, and muscular system simultaneously.

Yet, the concentric shockwaves destabilized all that. The expanding internal blow advanced in an orderly fashion, but each of its tremors unleashed chaotic consequences, making the King feel as if nukes were exploding in his trunk.

That was why the giant tree bent forward. It wasn’t due to the palm strike’s impact having enough force to cause that external reaction. The internal blows were making the King lose control of his huge shape, so he leaned forward in an instinctive attempt to suppress those destabilizing tremors.

Of course, such a sharp reaction caused massive consequences when performed by something as huge as that mountain-like tree. The sudden descent of its vast crown and part of its trunk blew violent air everywhere, creating dense winds that spread throughout the area and beyond.

The relatively calm environment was hit by storms that pushed everything away, even deepening the damage the ground had suffered. The few remaining trees in the area also rose and flew away, eradicated by those winds’ might.

The sudden, wide move caused some self-inflicted wounds, too. The violent winds blew downward, slamming on part of the trunk and most of the array of roots.

Needless to say, those thick protuberances snapped and flattened, their broken pieces falling prey to the storms. Something similar also happened to chunks of the trunk, which released countless spiky shards.

Still, that debris quickly melted into glowing smoke, fusing with the winds to create obscuring storms of True Chaos, which enhanced their might while also partially reflowing into the giant tree.

Ilman obviously was in the middle of all that. He barely had the time to land on the trunk’s slope before violent winds blew in his face, trying their best to send him flying away.

Things worsened when True Chaos merged with the winds. The storms grew denser, turning what landed on Ilman closer to waves than air, but his figure somehow endured those crashes. He didn’t cling to anything specifically, but his feet never left the trunk’s surface.

Obviously, a technique was involved, albeit a rather simple one. Actually, what Ilman had performed was several steps before that, merely applying one of the three Niqols’ fundamental fields to an incredible extreme.

Ilman’s mana had changed, gaining unusually heavy properties. He had transformed his existence into an unmovable boulder, and his body echoed those effects, resisting the gales and waves’ pushing force.

In the meantime, Ilman’s red eyes shone on the bent trunk above, also unmovable and unfazed by the black waves crashing on him. He studied the King’s reaction, finding it oddly human despite his gargantuan form. His opponent might be a giant tree, but his reactions seemed to fall within what he could predict.

Ilman tried his best not to give anything away, but traces of wise seriousness mixed with his broad smile as he finally moved again, his mana gaining different properties to aid his actions.

Dense winds kept blowing on Ilman, but somehow failed to throw him off even after he started climbing the trunk. They crashed into him, only to split apart, sparing him from their violent might.

The path was virtually vertical, but that didn’t hinder Ilman at all, either. He ran in a straight, upward line toward the higher parts of the tree, quickly getting closer to the only real landmark he could spot.

Everything had happened rather instantaneously. Ilman wasted the least amount of time possible in his split-second decision, not even stopping to adjust his mana’s properties.

However, Ilman’s opponent was a True Chaos’ King in his ascended state. The fraction of a second Ilman had wasted to plan his next move had been enough for the King to suppress most of the internal tremors, stabilizing himself to launch a counterattack.

Theoretically, Ilman’s location could create problems for the King. After all, the Niqols was literally running alongside his trunk. No matter what the King unleashed, his huge body would suffer.

Yet, the King showed no hesitation in cracking his bent-over crown, launching a barrage of shockwaves toward Ilman that cut through and dispersed all the violent gales still blowing in the area.

Ilman was fast, but the volley of shockwaves was too vast for his speed. He could probably survive a direct hit, but that would hand over the battle’s initiative to the King, trapping him in a defensive stance.

So, instead of proceeding higher or looking for cover, Ilman jumped toward the incoming shockwaves, abandoning his vertical foothold to face the King’s attack directly.

The elderly King followed Ilman’s moves attentively and reacted accordingly. He could guess how that clash would go, so he sent his crown downward, making his vast branches follow after the shockwaves.

In the King’s point of view, whatever Ilman did, he would end up in a defenseless state mid-air, leaving himself open for the incoming branches.

Still, the King couldn’t expect Ilman to do nothing at all. The Niqols didn’t wear battle stances nor summon additional mana. He simply let the generated momentum push him toward the shockwaves, clashing directly with them.

The surprises didn’t end there. The shockwaves should have torn Ilman’s body apart or inflicted heavy internal injuries, at the very least. Yet, clanging noises resounded in the sky whenever those invisible attacks hit Ilman, as if they had slammed into an unfathomably tough metal object.

And Ilman also had another surprise.

The shockwaves tore the sleeveless robe apart, but Ilman’s surroundings started to twist, marking the quickly increasing temperatures. He was somehow accumulating kinetic energy while defending, eventually unleashing that force to change direction mid-air and performing a teleport-like sprint that put him before the King’s giant face.