Delia held back, but she still pushed the invisible line that Khan had drawn between them. At first, she limited herself to caressing his head and moving her legs to make sure that he experienced her softness. Then, her approach grew bolder and started to make his self-restraint waver.
It was fine as long as Khan could divert his attention from what was happening around him. Liiza's face always appeared in his vision when he closed his eyes, and his brain never stopped comparing the sensations experienced on the couch with what she had given him.
However, everything grew unclear when Delia pushed Khan closer to the couch's back and lay down in front of him. She never did anything too inappropriate, but her hands explored his bare chest and back, and she made their foreheads to keep their faces dangerously close to each other.
Humans and Niqols were different, but Khan recognized the arousal in Delia's half-closed eyes. She didn't hold back from getting closer to him to make their bodies touch. Her warmth and softness tried to take complete control of his mind, but she never managed to be his sole thought.
Khan couldn't lie to himself. He liked that intimacy. His brain seemed to reject that thought, but he slowly stopped seeing the reason behind that stubborn self-restraint.
Liiza and Khan weren't a couple anymore. They had broken up for multiple reasons, with one of them being the need to grow without each other's support. They needed to fix themselves and leave the rest to fate, mana, or whatever. There was no painless solution to their situation, so they had opted for something that could prevent both of them from remaining stuck in their current mindset.
Khan could predict what a Niqols would do after such a sad break-up. He didn't want to think about it, but he knew. Even that vague and unclear idea was enough to rip his heart apart, but that was the reality of the situation, and he couldn't do anything to change it.
Moreover, Khan had long since distanced himself from the typical human mindset. He could pretend to think like a member of his species, but his mind had moved on the Niqols' side.
His vaster emotional spectrum allowed him to experience what Liiza was probably going through right now. She was sharing his sadness, but that only made his thoughts grimmer. He knew what Niqols did when they experienced such intense feelings since he was aware of what he wanted to do to suppress them.
Those messy thoughts eventually led to a simple conclusion. Khan realized that he was tired of feeling nothing but despair and sadness. He wanted to experience something different, even if that ended up leading to more pain. He desired a real break, and he had a chance to get it right in front of him.
Khan knew that his actions would hurt Delia. She was holding herself back for his sake, so he hated the sole thought of raising her hopes when he wasn't ready. Still, he was in desperate need of doing something for himself, something that could make that sadness stop even for a single second.
Delia was doing her best to make as much as their bodies touch, so she sensed when Khan began to move his left arm. His hand ended up between them, and his fingers traced a straight line that started from her waist and ended on her neck.
Delia gasped when Khan's fingers passed over her chest. They didn't apply enough strength to make him experience her whole softness, but she felt them, and so did he. Her breath grew deeper when he reached her neck and opened his hand to take her cheek. His thumb stretched toward the corner of her lips, but it never touched them.
Both Khan and Delia eventually opened their eyes and fell prey to a long stare filled with doubts, hesitation, and desire. She didn't want to make the first move out of fear that he could play along only to satisfy her, and he didn't want to cross that invisible line.
The minutes went on quickly as Delia tried subtler approaches to check how Khan felt. One of her legs made its way between his knees to make her waist touch his groin. She could sense him clearly, and that made a smile appear on her face. Her mouth widened enough to reach his thumb, which inevitably experienced the softness of her lips at that point.
Khan knew that his barriers were about to crumble, but he continued to hold back. Delia was there, ready for him, and he wanted her, but he didn't make the last step required for him to lose control of the situation.
The two passed short minutes in that state, staring and caressing each other without ever ending up doing more than that. They both wanted that, but they held back for different reasons, and the hour eventually went by.
"Khan," Delia called in a pleading tone as her warm breath expanded on Khan's face. "I think we have been like this for more than an hour."
"I know," Khan sighed. "My spells are waiting."
"I know," Delia whispered as she slowly separated from him and started to straighten her position.
Khan did the same. He pushed with his now free left hand on the couch to sit, but he soon found Delia on him. Her waist pressed on his manhood, and she took his face in her hands. When he raised his gaze to inspect her, a soft and wet sensation spread on his lips.
Delia quickly interrupted the kiss and left the couch while covering her mouth with the back of her hand. She muttered a hurried "sorry" before rushing toward the exit and leaving the habitation. Khan managed to snap back of his stupor only when the door closed.
'No,' Khan sighed as he touched his lips. 'I'm sorry.'
Khan knew that Delia had a good heart. That kiss had probably hurt her since she had ended up betraying her promise. Still, he could only see his faults. His actions were to blame for bringing her so close to her limit.
'I'm sorry for being so vague,' Khan said in his mind. 'I'm sorry for using you to gain some relief.'
The small break from the constant desperation and sadness ended with those thoughts. Everything returned stronger than ever and made Khan cover his head in shame. He didn't only take a first step toward going over Liiza. He had also hurt Delia with his indecisiveness.
'Why is this so hard?' Khan cursed before moving his eyes toward the two caskets at his side.
The spells offered a good distraction that Khan didn't hesitate to seize. He picked the caskets and opened them without bothering to inspect the luxurious decorations or padding that kept the tiny disks in their insides safe.
Khan quickly placed the two disks on his phone, and two new labels appeared in his magical items' menu after the device absorbed them. He had successfully gained access to the chaos spear spell and the chaos claws spell, and he didn't hesitate to open one of those programs.
A series of descriptions immediately appeared on the holograms that came out of his phone. The training program featured the same mental exercises of the Wave spell, but Khan ignored them since his approach to his element wasn't exactly human.
An expert that the training program didn't bother to name or depict accurately performed the technique. At the same time, the holograms marked a series of stats that Khan had to memorize before attempting to cast the ability. The chaos spear spell appeared simple at its core, but it had a few significant differences from the wave spell, and the same went for its effects.
To cast the chaos spear, Khan had to condense a dense mass of mana between his palms, stretch it to give it the shape of a small stick, and throw it forward. The projectile would basically pierce everything that stood on its path, and the attack would end with a violent explosion.
The relatively simple theory didn't do justice to the actual effectiveness of the spell. Khan could immediately see how its long-range could prevent potential friendly fire. He wouldn't have to fear his own element if he mastered something like that.
The complicated aspect of the spell was in the ideas required to gain those effects. The Wave only needed destruction, but the chaos spear wanted a mix of that thought, flexibility, and stability. The ability risked detonating between his hands if he tried to stretch it without the proper control.
Khan wanted to test the chaos spear immediately, but the condition of his right hand didn't allow him to start his first attempt. He could still try to use it, but he didn't know whether his control over mana would be ideal in that state. Moreover, he had to think properly about the idea to put behind the execution.
The second spell turned out to be even simpler. The chaos claws would only make Khan create a series of claws-like structures around his fingers. The theory behind the ability matched the Divine Reaper, except for the meaning required and the membrane's actual length.
First of all, the claws couldn't be empty membranes. They had to cover the fingers, but they also had to stretch far past them, so they needed to be actual structures made of mana to remain stable.
Their meaning didn't even involve sharpness. The claws wanted Khan to express the pure destructiveness of the chaos element to create weapons that could cut and pierce virtually everything. The ideas behind them still involved destruction, but they tried to give it a denser and more threatening shape.
Khan had to think about the ideas to use for the spells. The Wave spell was easy since all his traumas gave him images of general destruction. However, the chaos spear and the chaos claws wanted something more complicated that forced him to immerse himself in his bad memories.
There was another issue. Khan wasn't using the human approach to his element, so the lack of emotions requested by his training programs didn't apply to him. Still, he had to fill that spot with something, and he didn't know if his desperation could work with his new spells.
The only consolation came from the current state of his mana. In theory, his energy now always expressed the nature of the chaos element. That could bring some benefits during the execution of his spells.
The only way to see where Khan stood was to test the new spells. The chaos spear seemed far too dangerous to use without a clear understanding of his mana, so he opted for the chaos claws. The movements that his energy had to make to summon those weapons were quite intricate, but he approached them slowly to make sure that he memorized everything.
A series of exercises followed that memorization. Khan couldn't express how glad he felt about the Niqols' teachings. His ability to move mana inside his body had increased in ways that he struggled to describe, and his techniques naturally benefited from that. Imitating and perfecting the flow of his energy took more than half a day, but he eventually reached a decent level of confidence.
Khan eventually found an idea for the chaos claws. He had the perfect images of an unstoppable weapon deeply rooted inside his memories. He only needed to think about the Divine Reaper to imagine the type of destruction that he needed.
For the feeling, Khan believed that he couldn't use something as bottomless and overwhelming as his desperation. He needed something denser, precise, focused, and his thoughts eventually ended on the pain he had just experienced. Hurting Delia had created a sharp and subtle sorrow that he couldn't shake off.
'Don't blow my fingers off,' Khan asked as if he could talk to his mana.
A deep breath preceded the execution of what Khan had just learnt on the training program. His first attempts to use the chaos claws spell failed due to his anxiety, but he eventually relaxed and completed the exercise.
An unpleasant sensation filled his left hand after he summoned his mana. Khan saw his red-purple energy covering his fingers and enveloping them into a relatively dense membrane that appeared far from stable. Still, his attention wasn't on the flaws of his execution. He frowned after seeing that he didn't obtain claws. The spell had given birth to a short sword that covered his entire palm.
