Chapter 266: The Cost of Isolation

The days passed quickly, and although Ravian remained in the same unstable condition, the situation was gradually changing.

On the morning of the eighth day, Karius Dmitri stood outside his disciple’s tent after Malrik informed him that Ravian had not left it since returning from the city.

Karius had nothing against solitary training. In fact, he encouraged it under certain circumstances, particularly when a fighter needed to devote himself entirely to understanding a new ability. What displeased him was that his disciple had refused to meet anyone from his squad, speaking to them only through the closed entrance.

Worse still, this strange behavior had begun shortly after Ravian purchased a mysterious stone that had already caused everyone considerable concern.

“Ravian, open the door.”

Inside, Ravian was sitting on the floor with his right hand resting on his knee, while his left lay motionless beside him. Upon hearing his master’s voice, he opened his crimson eye and looked toward the entrance.

“Good morning, Master.”

He had piled several objects against the entrance in case someone tried to open it without his noticing. It would not stop someone determined to get inside, but it might provide enough warning for him to react.

Of course, if Karius discovered that his disciple had resorted to barricading himself inside a tent, he certainly would not remain as calm as he sounded now.

“Save your greetings until you’ve opened the door. I want to see you.”

That was exactly what Ravian had expected.

He could not keep using the same excuses with Karius forever, but allowing him inside now could lead to disaster, especially since the intruder had continued trying to access his memories of his master ever since learning about him.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that right now, Master.”

A brief silence followed.

“Did you hear what I said?” Karius asked, his tone changing.

“Perfectly clearly,” Ravian answered, pretending not to notice.

“Then what’s stopping you from opening the door?”

Ravian considered the question before answering.

“I’m at a delicate stage of training related to my advancement, and any outside interference could ruin the progress I’ve made so far.”

His answer was not entirely false. He was working to deepen his understanding of the Law of Void, and he genuinely feared that another person’s intervention might cause the intruder to behave in ways he could not predict.

Karius, however, did not sound convinced.

“If you’re trying to advance, why didn’t you come to me?”

“Because I don’t need your help at this stage.”

“And since when do you know more about advancement than I do?”

Ravian smiled.

“I never said I knew more than you, Master. But what I’m studying right now is connected to the nature of my own ability, and I don’t think you could help me without requiring explanations about a great many things we don’t have time to discuss.”

He disliked having to put it that way, but it was the closest he could come to an answer without revealing his secrets.

He heard Karius sigh outside the tent.

“You’re not making this easy for me, boy.”

“I’m sorry, Master.”

It was all Ravian could offer in response to his master’s concern. Any attempt to explain further would only invite questions he could not answer, and he doubted Karius would appreciate another carefully worded excuse.

After a moment of silence, Karius asked, “…Are you injured?”

“Not badly enough to require your intervention.”

“That’s not a denial.”

Ravian smiled bitterly.

‘It seems I’ve gotten rather bad at answering straightforward questions.’

Before he could respond, however, Karius spoke again.

“Listen carefully. I’m not going to force you to reveal your secrets just because I’m your master. But if you’re facing something beyond your ability to handle, don’t act as though asking for help would make you any less of a man.”

There was no anger in Karius’s voice this time, which made it even harder for Ravian to answer.

He knew his master was not interested in his secrets out of mere curiosity. Karius was worried that his stubbornness might eventually get him killed, and the fact that he was willing to respect Ravian’s silence despite those concerns only made the situation more difficult.

Nevertheless, the assistance Karius could offer against an opponent connected to the Golden Scriptures might be extremely limited, especially if the invading force could somehow exploit his presence to transfer itself into another vessel.

Ravian had no evidence that such a transfer was possible. But the intruder had already demonstrated capabilities he could barely understand, and he was unwilling to discover another one at someone else’s expense.

He would rather kill himself and start over than take that risk.

“I appreciate your concern, Master, but I need some more time. If I reach a point where I can’t handle the situation, I’ll tell you.”

A long silence followed.

Then Karius said, “I’ll allow you to continue, but you’ll answer whenever someone comes to check on you. And if I don’t hear your voice, this door won’t stop me from coming inside.”

“Understood.”

Karius had already started to leave when he stopped again.

“There’s one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“If I find out you’ve been on the verge of death all this time, I’ll make you wish you’d died instead of surviving.”

Ravian chuckled.

“I’ll try to avoid that.”

Karius finally walked away, but Ravian remained seated for some time without returning to his meditation.

He could hear the intruder chuckling softly through the left half of his mouth.

“He cares about you quite a bit.”

Ravian did not answer.

“Don’t you find it amusing? That man is strong enough to make you tremble if he seriously confronts you, yet here he is, standing outside your tent and asking permission to enter.”

“And what’s so funny about that?”

“You could put an end to all this simply by telling him what’s happening. Perhaps he’d try to save you, or perhaps he’d kill us both. Either way, I’d love to see what happens.”

Ravian glanced at his left hand, whose fingers were moving slowly across the floor as though the intruder were testing their responsiveness.

“That’s precisely why I’m not telling him.”

“Kekeke! So you’re afraid something might happen to him.”

“I don’t like people I know being dragged into experiments that have nothing to do with them.”

The intruder smiled.

“You’re lying to yourself.”

Ravian did not bother answering.

He had more important things to do than discuss his feelings with a creature attempting to steal his body.

…

Over the following days, Ravian’s routine appeared much the same, but he was making slow progress in understanding the nature of the connection between himself and the intruder.

At first, he attempted to divide the invading force into smaller portions, then use the Law of Void to erase each one without affecting the surrounding areas. He succeeded several times, only to discover that the intruder could replace most of what it lost by extending its authority through other regions.

It was like removing a section of a complicated network without severing the connections that supplied it.

The experiments consumed time and energy he could scarcely afford to waste, but they also allowed him to observe how the invading force behaved when a portion of its territory was erased. What initially appeared to be a collection of similar black inscriptions was gradually becoming easier to distinguish.

Some were merely manifestations of the invading force, disappearing when exposed to the Law of Void before returning a short time later. Others were considerably more complex, connected directly to the portions of his consciousness that the intruder had already occupied.

Those were much harder to deal with.

Attempting to erase them could also destroy parts of the spiritual structure upon which they had settled, something Ravian discovered when he lost sensation in a small portion of his consciousness during one of his experiments.

It was not the pain that troubled him, but the fact that he could not restore that part of his consciousness through the usual means.

He spent hours trying to reach it, only to encounter a strange emptiness, as though something had once existed there before disappearing without leaving a trace.

‘Did I just erase part of my own soul?’

He could not be certain.

There was no clear boundary he could examine to determine whether the missing sensation belonged to his original spiritual structure or resulted from damage to the connection itself. He understood too little about the interaction between the Void and his soul to draw a reliable conclusion.

What he did know was that repeating the experiment carelessly could make the situation worse.

He stopped using the Law for several hours and concentrated on observing the damaged area until he was satisfied that the damage was not spreading.

When he resumed his experiments, he proceeded with greater caution. Rather than attempting to erase the inscriptions directly, he focused on studying the connections that allowed them to remain within his consciousness.

The distinction was subtle enough that he still did not fully understand it after several days of attempts.

On the thirteenth day, however, he finally achieved his first meaningful result.

He selected a small black inscription that had recently appeared along the boundary of the gray territory, then waited until its connection to the region controlled by the intruder had fully formed.

Instead of attempting to erase the inscription itself, he used a trace of the Law to target the foreign portion of the connection linking it to its source.

The inscription disappeared moments later.

The intruder attempted to spread it again, but it could no longer use the previous connection and was forced to establish a new extension from another direction.

The immediate difference was not particularly significant. The foreign presence still occupied most of his consciousness, and the disappearance of a single inscription did nothing to reverse that situation.

Nevertheless, the result confirmed Ravian’s hypothesis.

‘So it’s possible to remove the connection without erasing the area it’s attached to.’

He had not simply destroyed another manifestation of the invading force. By targeting the connection through which that manifestation maintained its presence, he had prevented it from returning by the same route.

That did not mean he could safely repeat the process everywhere. The deeper connections were still intertwined with parts of his spiritual structure, and the consequences of targeting them remained uncertain.

But he finally had a method worth developing.

He opened Sovereign Pride’s interface.

[Law of Void — Comprehension: 0.00363%]

The number was hardly impressive, but his comprehension had increased more than it had on previous days.

Ravian smiled, then returned to his studies without allowing himself much time to celebrate.

He now understood what he needed to do, but knowing the method was not the same as possessing the ability to apply it against the consciousness of an entity this powerful.

Even if he could identify the correct connections, his limited comprehension might not allow him to erase them without damaging himself. The amount of power he could control remained pitifully small compared to the force occupying his soul, and he still had no reliable way of judging how deeply the oldest connections had become embedded.

For now, the only sensible approach was to continue with smaller targets, comparing each result and gradually refining his understanding.

But he was no longer the only one paying attention to those experiments.

The intruder had begun noticing what was happening.