Chaos' Heir-Chapter 1169: Mouth
Even without water, oceans, or something similar, Khan could accept the existence of azure planets. He had seen more than enough that could justify that color, be it vegetation or other materials. The universe featured all kinds of strange stuff, especially when the Nak's mana was involved.
So, the planet alone wouldn't normally be enough to draw conclusions, but the moons were. Those three celestial bodies orbiting the unnamed spherical object shared its unique blue shade, and Khan's ship didn't capture any trace of life from them.
Of course, that specific shade of blue marked the Nak's passage, but Khan had been sure of that since outside that star system. Yet, as extensive as the color was, it only confirmed the planet's Tainted nature.
Meanwhile, the fact that the azure extended to the moons tried to tell a far greater, mysterious story. Whatever had happened on that planet had to have been big, bigger than anything Khan had ever seen during previous investigations.
As excited and needing a change of pace as Khan was, he didn't forget his scout training and the due process it demanded. He didn't immediately go for the unnamed planet. Instead, he brought the ship toward the nearest moon, piercing its almost non-existent atmosphere to study its environment through scanners and his eyes.
Khan didn't need to get that close for his scanners to provide conclusive results. His ship completely mapped the moon and uncovered all kinds of details by the time it reached its surface. That celestial body was dead, with no trace of life in sight, but its brittle, dusty ground was Nak blue.
The scene was beyond odd. Celestial bodies without much atmosphere wouldn't suffer from winds or other events that might alter and erode their layout. However, it must have taken some real effort to paint a whole moon azure without missing a single spot.
The moon might have always been blue, but Khan's hunches argued against that, and exiting his ship revealed more peculiar details. He couldn't spot them from the other side of the canopy, but landing on that brittle ground made them impossible to miss.
The ground didn't crack when Khan landed on it. His steps were too graceful to cause any reaction, and his innate ability to levitate had only improved that point. Yet, Khan couldn't help but feel how fragile it really was, and that issue extended far beyond the surface.
Khan believed a single one of his kicks could inflict untold damage to that environment, opening a crater so deep he would be able to spot it from space. His attack wouldn't even be to blame. Most upper layers of the moon simply looked ready to fall apart.
Still, that wasn't even the most compelling detail. Dust aside, the ground was strangely smooth, and the issue became blinding once Khan flew toward the nearest crater. That shallow hole's edges were bent as if they had melted under some external influence.
Of course, the passage of time did partially affect those findings. Khan believed the moon would have been even smoother in the past, but that discovery did allow him to get an idea about the area and what it had suffered.
After personally experiencing human nukes, Khan almost guessed something had exploded on the moon or right outside it, enveloping it with its scorching energy and tainting it forever.
However, the Nak didn't use weapons. They had ships, but their military might mostly relied on their contagious mana and suicidal assaults. Nukes weren't their style, and Khan felt confident about it, even if some reasonable hypotheses could justify the opposite.
Theoretically, Khan had never been closer to the Nak's star system. The blue planet and its three moons might have been one of the initial targets of their suicidal mission, so they might still have had weapons back then.
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Still, as magical as the Nak were, technology had its limits. Nukes or other explosions would have left deeper marks where they hit those celestial bodies. Instead, the moon had no glaring or strangely bigger craters, and the ship had confirmed that its surface was relatively even.
Technology shouldn't have been able to cause such a seamless and unified transformation, and Khan's subconscious agreed with that idea. There had to be another explanation for that unusual finding, which didn't necessarily reject the starting point of Khan's idea.
The moon could have more answers, but Khan had a better place within his reach. He returned to his ship and set off, quickly heading for the unnamed planet. The latter was bound to have more glaring clues, especially since his ride picked up traces of life from it.
Khan had sort of promised himself never to get stranded again, so he parked the ship at the edge of the unnamed planet's atmosphere and proceeded on foot from there. Needless to say, the call in his nape was stronger than ever, surpassing what he had experienced on the moon, but it lacked a proper source.
Actually, there was a source. It was also unmistakably clear. Every inch of the blue planet seemed to call for Khan, almost announcing its allegiance with the Nak's mana.
The lack of a more intense source forced Khan to pick a landing spot randomly. He noticed the absence of clouds and the oddly dense air during his descent, but those details didn't slow him down. Khan still contained his speed, and he reduced it even more when his glowing eyes started to make out some details.
The planet's surface was similar to the moon's. Except its odd details were more glaring and extensive. Khan found himself heading for what resembled a blue valley stretching between two short mountain chains, but everything about that scene was wrong.
The valley lacked a consistent environment. Khan saw occasional patches of azure grass tainting the barren ground that shared a similar shade, but both were beyond odd.
The thin grass wasn't rooted into the ground. Instead, small flowers acted as its base, seemingly giving birth to those needle-like leaves. Also, roots did exist and occasionally surfaced around that vegetation. Except they were too thick for something so small and limited.
Also, the roots didn't make any sense. They appeared made of something wood-like, but rocks randomly grew from their fabric, and that wasn't the end. Khan even saw something resembling scales on those items and managed to spot a single feather, too.
Now, Khan would never claim he was an expert in the universe. He simply wasn't. The world was too vast and probably endless, so studying all it contained was impossible. Theoretically, anything could exist, but that scene was too strange, especially since it felt familiar.
That inconsistent pattern matched something Khan had witnessed on Nitis, stored in memories he wished he could forget. The Niqols who couldn't control their mana mutated wildly and randomly under the sunlight, and that unnamed planet's environment seemed to have suffered from the same dreadful fate.
The smooth but barren ground looked relatively fine in comparison. It seemed something had melted it, but it remained empty. Still, the larger lifeforms were far worse off, and Khan couldn't help but land before one of them to study it up close.
Khan hovered before what had looked like a tree from above, but that closeness revealed concerning and horrid details. Its trunk was twisted, almost spinning on itself, and its slightly paler color revealed the darker patches that separated it from its wood-like fabric.
The darkest patches of the trunk seemed to be made of a malleable alloy that stood among the wood-like fabric, attached to it but undeniably different. Khan also spotted relatively big stretches of scales on that surface, and a stain that had initially looked like grass turned out to be fur upon closer inspection.
Khan wished the odd features ended there, but the trunk and its branches had more surprises. The latter were mostly wood-like, but horn-shaped items grew from them, clearly made of a different material.
Both trunk and branches also featured smaller spikes, which almost resembled fangs. A patch of them was even arranged in a twisted V-shaped pattern, seemingly drawing a horrid mouth near the tree's base.
Khan felt almost lucky the tree didn't have leaves. The plant wasn't dead, but Khan couldn't imagine what would have grown out of it. His stomach had survived worse, but that didn't mean he wanted to test it.
Yet, the tree did test Khan's stomach. Everything reeked of the Nak's mana there, and the plant carried a particularly intense scent. That was natural until its energy trembled, and Khan heard something resembling a breath coming out of that V-shaped cut.
