Chapter 271: Severing Authority

Ravian could no longer tell how much time had passed since the intruder launched its final assault.

His connection to the outside world had grown increasingly distant, forcing him to neglect most of his physical senses just to maintain his concentration. He understood the danger of leaving his body unattended, particularly while half of it remained under another consciousness’s control, but there was nothing he could do about that now.

Deep within his soul, the strange creatures emerging from the black gateways continued advancing toward the center of his consciousness, accompanied by ancient inscriptions that spread across the gray territory.

These creatures were not complete beings possessing their original bodies and souls. They were spiritual imprints preserved within the invading fragment of the Golden Scriptures’ consciousness. Nevertheless, their mere approach was enough to place enormous pressure on Ravian’s soul.

The tall creature moved first. The small faces hanging from its body turned toward Ravian, opening their mouths simultaneously.

He heard no distinct sound, but unfamiliar memories suddenly began appearing in his mind.

Some were foreign, while others seemed to belong to him. Worse, the two had begun to overlap, making it increasingly difficult to distinguish the memories he had genuinely experienced from those the intruder was forcing into his consciousness.

Ravian immediately understood what was happening.

The attack was no longer aimed at his physical body. His opponent was attempting to turn his own memories against him, exploiting their familiarity to establish additional areas under its control.

‘Damn it. He’s using my own memories against me.’

Attempting to recover every image individually would only waste time and expose him to further interference.

Instead, Ravian activated Absolute Focus and concentrated on identifying the memories whose origins he could recognize. Once he had established which portions belonged to him, he began isolating them from the foreign imprints appearing around them.

Unfortunately, the task proved more difficult than he had anticipated.

Some memories had become so thoroughly entangled with the invading force that he could no longer separate them through concentration alone. Removing the foreign portions would require the Law of Void.

And Ravian knew exactly what that meant.

The Void did not distinguish between something he wanted to destroy and something he needed to preserve. If he made even a slight mistake in selecting his target, he could erase a memory that belonged to him, or worse, destroy part of his own soul.

Yet refusing to act would eventually cost him everything anyway.

He began with one of the smaller connections, directing a carefully controlled trace of the Law toward the foreign portion. Only after confirming that the attempt had succeeded did he move on to another.

The unfamiliar images gradually receded.

However, the pressure on his soul did not diminish.

Instead, it intensified as the bronze creature approached the boundary of the gray territory. The metal rings surrounding its chest released a vibration that caused Ravian’s Soul Crown to tremble violently.

A sharp pain pierced his consciousness.

At the same instant, part of a memory he had been trying to recover suddenly went dark.

Ravian could not tell what he had lost. The image disappeared before he could distinguish its contents, and with it vanished every trace of the memory itself.

He tried to determine what had occupied that part of his mind, but there was nothing left for him to examine.

Unfortunately, he had no time to investigate.

The intruder immediately exploited the opening, driving more black inscriptions toward the center of his soul.

“Kekeke! I warned you!”

Its laughter echoed throughout his consciousness.

“You can’t use that unknown Law like this without destroying yourself!”

Ravian examined the area where the memory had vanished.

The advancing inscriptions were an immediate threat, but something else had caught his attention.

The primary connection he had spent weeks searching for was now clearer than at any point before the assault.

To deploy the spiritual imprints it possessed, the intruder had been forced to channel a substantial portion of its power through that connection. The greater the pressure it applied, the more clearly Ravian could perceive the structure sustaining its authority.

In its attempt to overwhelm him, the intruder was revealing the very thing it needed to protect.

‘Good. Come closer.’

When the next wave of invading energy approached, Ravian made no attempt to stop it.

He withdrew slightly instead, allowing the black gateways to move closer to the boundaries maintained by his Soul Crown.

The intruder noticed his retreat and interpreted it as a sign that his resistance was finally collapsing.

“So you’ve finally begun to understand the difference between us!”

Ravian ignored the remark.

His attention remained fixed on the primary connection, whose structure became increasingly distinct with every new surge of energy passing through it.

The connection was more than a passage through which spiritual power traveled. It also carried a trace of the intruder’s authority, allowing the invading fragments to establish themselves within Ravian’s consciousness and continue expanding.

If he could remove that authority without destroying the spiritual structure beneath it, the imprints might lose their connection to the consciousness controlling them.

That was what Ravian intended to test.

The difficulty lay in separating the foreign authority from the portions of his own soul to which it had become attached. He could not simply erase the entire connection without risking the same damage he had already suffered.

He needed a moment when the distinction between those two components was clear enough to target.

The opportunity came when the intruder attempted to drive all three creatures toward his Soul Crown simultaneously.

An enormous quantity of spiritual energy surged through the primary connection, causing the remaining gray territory to shake violently.

Ravian acted.

He did not attempt to erase the creatures or destroy the entire black network. Instead, he directed his limited comprehension of the Law of Void toward the precise portion that allowed the invading force to remain connected to the intruder’s consciousness and receive its authority.

Compared to the immense power moving through the network, his target was extraordinarily small.

Reaching it, however, demanded a degree of concentration he had never employed in quite this manner before.

Ravian felt as though his mind were being torn apart.

A faint gray trace appeared at the connection.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the black inscriptions surrounding the creatures began to tremble.

The intruder attempted to increase the flow of energy, but a portion of it failed to reach its intended destination. Instead, it separated from the network and disappeared into the space of Ravian’s consciousness.

“What?”

The question rang out with unmistakable anger.

The intruder immediately attempted to reestablish the connection, but Ravian had already understood what had happened.

‘It worked.’

He had not erased the invading consciousness itself. The portion he had targeted had lost its ability to transmit the intruder’s authority into the territory it occupied, leaving the spiritual imprints connected to it partially beyond their master’s control.

The principle was similar to the one he had discovered while studying the smaller threads over the previous weeks. The difference was that he had now applied it to a much larger connection, at the precise moment it was carrying more power than the intruder could regulate with sufficient precision.

“What have you done?!” the entity screamed.

Ravian offered no explanation.

Instead, he directed the Law toward the next portion of the connection.

The resulting pain was even worse. His physical body convulsed on the bed, but he managed to erase another extension of the foreign authority.

The surrounding black inscriptions began breaking apart.

This time, they did not return.

The intruder attempted to close the gateways and withdraw the spiritual imprints it had deployed, only to discover that some of them no longer responded to its commands.

It had committed a substantial portion of its power to a network that was gradually losing the ability to return that power to its source.

“Stop!”

There was no trace of mockery in its voice now.

“You don’t know what you’re trying to erase!”

Ravian laughed with difficulty.

“I think I know enough.”

“Those are imprints preserved within the Golden Scriptures! Some of the beings recorded there were capable of confronting existences comparable in power to the Taboos. If you try to absorb them with your current soul, nothing of you will remain!”

“And who said I intended to absorb them directly?”

The intruder fell silent.

In the next instant, Sovereign Pride began reacting to the changes within Ravian’s consciousness.

The System interface appeared before him.

[Foreign spiritual authority destabilized.]

[Multiple spiritual imprints detected.]

[Extractable Records identified.]

Ravian studied the notifications, and then he understood.

The spiritual imprints the intruder had been using were not merely collections of energy that he could destroy. They contained remnants of beings that had genuinely existed, preserved within the Golden Scriptures’ consciousness through a mechanism he did not fully understand.

Now that he had removed part of the authority connecting those imprints to the intruder, certain components had become available for extraction as spiritual Records.

It was not quite the same as extracting Records from a slain opponent.

The original beings had not died before him, and Ravian had obtained neither their complete souls nor their Laws. He had separated genuine spiritual imprints from the consciousness that had been using them to attack him, allowing Sovereign Pride to recognize the Records contained within some of those remnants.

‘So I can use what he’s carrying against him.’

He directed his attention toward the book and attempted to initiate the extraction.

More notifications appeared in rapid succession.

[Records extraction initiated.]

[Warning: Spiritual imprints exceed Host’s current assimilation capacity.]

[Direct absorption may result in soul collapse.]