Sudden Change

The battle continued.

Neither side could completely overpower 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 spoke to the god that had been certain he could not win.

His tone was contemptuous.

Within his sea of consciousness, the divine light of paradox and the darkness of decay writhed like two colossal serpents locked in battle, biting, corroding, and twisting each other. Ian's will was like a lone boat amid a storm, yet he kept a firm grip on the helm. He was no longer merely defending passively or searching for openings to counterattack. Instead, he began actively guiding this clash of divine authorities.

Whenever the darkness attempted to brand the laws of "ending" and "decay" onto his soul, Ian used ever more exquisite paradoxes to distort, dismantle, and even attempt to "graft" them.

He defined "decay" as "another form of stability" and substituted "ending" with "a node within a cycle."

This was not mere sophistry. Based on his own understanding of the laws of the universe, he was forcibly driving wedges of his own into the other party's domain of divine authority.

The process was extraordinarily dangerous, like walking a tightrope over a bottomless abyss. One misstep, and his sense of self could be contaminated and assimilated by the other party's mad faith, or his paradoxical divine authority could collapse under the weight of too many contradictions. But Ian's mind was as steadfast as stone.

His desire to explore the essence of power overwhelmed his fear of danger.

And so—

His use of divine authority grew increasingly adept.

He truly was growing.

He could feel that, amid this clash of divine authorities under extreme pressure, his paradoxical divine authority—which had