Chapter 268: The Trojan Horse (2)

By the twenty-third day, Ravian’s physical condition had deteriorated noticeably.

His eyes had become slightly sunken, and the constant strain and lack of sleep had diminished his body’s ability to recover. Even with the limited physical restoration provided by his abilities, he could not compensate for the spiritual exhaustion accumulating day after day.

The problem was no longer simply that he had been sleeping too little. Maintaining his defenses, studying the Law, and resisting the intruder’s attempts to interfere with his consciousness all demanded attention that he could not afford to relax for long.

Even when he managed to obtain a brief period of rest, he had to remain sufficiently alert to recognize any change in the intruder’s control.

His exceptional physique could withstand a great deal, but it did not remove the need to recover from the strain placed upon his mind and soul.

He still needed to eat regularly, but the intruder had begun using its control over the left side of his body to interfere with his meals, occasionally forcing him to waste food or spill water.

It was not particularly dangerous by itself, but the constant interference became increasingly irritating.

Under different circumstances, Ravian might have dismissed such behavior as childish. Unfortunately, sharing his body with the creature meant he could not simply ignore it whenever it decided to be troublesome.

One night, he was even forced to secure his left wrist with a leather strap while taking one of his brief periods of partial sleep.

The restraint did not prevent the intruder from attempting to move, but it gave Ravian an opportunity to wake before his opponent could force the body out of bed.

He knew the strap could not provide any meaningful protection against the possession itself. Its purpose was much simpler: to prevent the left arm from moving freely long enough for him to notice and respond.

When the intruder realized what he had done, it burst into laughter.

“Kekeke! You’ve started treating half your own body like a prisoner!”

Ravian tightened the strap as he answered.

“If I could separate you from it, I’d do something far worse.”

“Still dreaming about getting rid of me?”

“No, actually. I’ve started dreaming about getting a single night’s sleep without hearing your voice.”

The intruder laughed again, but it made no attempt to conceal the fact that Ravian had become increasingly capable of resisting some of its connections.

Over the past several days, the young man had successfully erased a number of the threads it used to impose its authority over the regions surrounding the center of his soul, and the intruder had been unable to restore them through the same means.

The losses were small, but they were permanent.

As a result, it had begun treating Ravian’s attempts with greater caution.

That did not mean its overall advantage had disappeared. Most of his consciousness remained under its influence, and his growing understanding of the Law had yet to provide a way to reclaim those occupied regions safely.

Nevertheless, the progress was becoming increasingly difficult for the intruder to dismiss.

Ravian, meanwhile, continued studying the Law day after day, even though his comprehension did not always increase.

There were periods when repeated attempts produced no measurable improvement, forcing him to reconsider his understanding of the connections he was targeting. He could not simply expend more power whenever an experiment failed, since the greatest danger remained the possibility of erasing something that belonged to his own soul.

Instead, he had to rely on what he could observe, adjusting his approach whenever the results differed from what he expected.

On the twenty-sixth day, the following result appeared before him:

[Law of Void — Comprehension: 0.00447%]

He read the number, then closed the interface.

His comprehension had risen to more than twice what it had been before his isolation. Even so, he had not attained even a thousandth of the Law’s true power, and the difference was nowhere near enough to allow him to confront the intruder through brute force.

Nevertheless, he now understood the nature of his problem much better.

The invading force was not occupying his consciousness as though it were physical territory that could be reclaimed through ordinary means. Instead, it imposed its control through a network of spiritual connections.

Some allowed the black inscriptions to spread, while others appeared to sustain the intruder’s authority over areas it had already occupied. Ravian had managed to interfere with a few of those connections, but doing so across the entire network would require far more control than he currently possessed.

More importantly, the network appeared to be linked to a single center, deeper than the other extensions, although he had not yet managed to locate it.

‘If I can reach the primary connection, I might not need to erase every individual part.’

It was a dangerous idea.

Targeting that central connection could damage portions of his soul that had already become intertwined with it, and the experiments he had conducted were enough to demonstrate that such damage was not always easy to reverse.

There was also no guarantee that removing the connection would immediately eliminate the intruder. His understanding was still incomplete, and he could not treat an untested possibility as though it were a certain solution.

But he no longer had the luxury of searching for an approach that involved no risk whatsoever.

The time during which he could maintain his physical and spiritual stability was gradually running out. Each day of resistance left him more exhausted, while his opponent remained capable of exerting pressure on the territory he had managed to protect.

Continuing his studies indefinitely was no longer a realistic option.

Soon, he would have to decide when to stop experimenting and begin the real confrontation, relying on what little understanding he had managed to accumulate.

And that moment was much closer than he had previously estimated.