The battle continued.
Neither side could completely overwhelm the other, but every clash on the level of divine authority gave Ian a deeper—and more dangerous—understanding of his own power.
"I'm evolving, but... what about you?"
He addressed the god that had been so certain he could not win.
His tone was contemptuous.
Within his sea of consciousness, the divine light of paradox and decaying darkness were like two giant serpents tangled in combat, biting, corroding, and twisting each other. Ian's will was like a lone boat in a storm, yet he kept a firm grip on the helm. He was no longer merely defending passively or searching for openings to counterattack. He had begun actively guiding this clash of divine authorities.
Whenever the darkness tried to brand the laws of "ending" and "decay" onto his soul, Ian used even subtler paradoxes to distort them, dismantle them, and even attempt to "graft" them elsewhere.
He defined "decay" as "another form of stability" and swapped the concept of "ending" with "a node in a cycle."
This was not mere sophistry. It was his understanding of the Cosmic Rules, forcibly driving a "wedge" of his own into the other party's domain of divine authority.
The process was extraordinarily perilous, like walking a tightrope over a bottomless abyss. One misstep, and his sense of self could be polluted and assimilated by the other side's frenzied faith, or his Paradox Divine Authority could collapse under the weight of too many contradictions. Yet Ian's mind was as steadfast as stone.
His desire to explore the nature of power overwhelmed his fear of danger.
And so.
His use of divine authority became increasingly skilled.
He truly was growing.
He could feel that, in this high-pressure confrontation of divine authorities, his Paradox Divine Authority—which had originally been more