Chapter 259 A Parasite's Confidence

“I’m human, that’s true, and there’s nothing wrong with being human,” Ravian replied through the right side of his mouth. “But it’s certainly better than being a parasitic leech that lives off the hard work of other people. Wouldn’t you agree?”

The left half of Ravian’s body fell silent for a little while.

“You’re good with words, boy, but that isn’t enough to provoke someone like me. You’re going to have to work harder than that,” the left half said in a deep, malicious voice.

“I don’t agree with you,” Ravian replied, his gaze calm and bright, before continuing, “I think you’re the one who ought to be working harder, parasite.”

“Kikiki…” The left half laughed at Ravian’s words, contrary to what he had expected.

“That’s good, boy, very good indeed. But again, I’m not human. All that philosophical nonsense you’re spouting isn’t going to get under my skin. In the end, this body is going to belong to me.”

Ravian gave no outward reaction to what he had heard.

“It might sound like philosophical nonsense as far as you’re concerned, but what I told you is the truth. You’re a parasite who can’t achieve anything except by stealing what other people have. And there’s something else I need to correct in what you said: no, this body has never belonged to you, and it never will… not ever.”

As he spoke, Ravian continued resisting the creatures intruding upon his consciousness, using Void Shadow to keep the presence of his own consciousness concealed.

“Kikiki.” That chilling laugh escaped the left half of Ravian’s mouth once more.

“It may look like parasitism to you because you’re the one it’s happening to, but what if you were the one in my position?” the intruding left half asked. “Would you insist on acting righteous and destroy your own consciousness, just so you wouldn’t take something you thought you didn’t deserve, something that belonged to somebody else?”

The smile on the left half of Ravian’s face widened as his left eye turned as far to the right as it could, as though trying to look at himself in the other half. Just as the intruder thought it had weakened Ravian’s resolve, a firm answer came.

“Yes.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that I would destroy my own consciousness,” Ravian continued. “I don’t steal the work other people have done, then shamelessly present it as something I’ve accomplished myself… To me, that’s simply disgusting.”

On the right half of his face, the half that truly belonged to him, Ravian looked as though he were seeing a living nightmare right before him.

The expression on the left half of his face now grew somewhat strange at Ravian’s response.

“You’re pretending to be righteous,” the left half said to him.

“No,” Ravian replied immediately. “I don’t care about righteousness or anything of the sort. I only consider what is worthy of me and what isn’t.”

“You call it a necessity, and you call refusing it righteousness. I see it as nothing more than shit I’d never do, even if refusing to do it meant my own destruction,” Ravian finished, a look of pride filling his right eye.

The left half continued staring at the right half in disbelief.

“Fine words. But the reality is very different when you’re actually the one put in that situation,” the left half said.

“My words sound fine to you because you couldn’t bring yourself to say them even if you were lying. As for me, I don’t see anything to be gained by lying to a mere parasite who can’t do anything against a Ninth-Rank ‘human’ like me,” Ravian replied indifferently.

“Boy,” the left half called. “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to, who you’re calling a parasite? Do you realize that neither you nor your master nor anyone else in your pathetic empire has what it takes to stand against me, even if you all came together and fought as one?”

Ravian picked up on several things in that response alone.

“You’ve already reached my memories of the time I spent with my master? You really are a hardworking parasite,” he said, then continued, “As for the second part of what you said, no. I’m not aware of anything like that, and I don’t believe a word of it, especially when you’re still right here talking to me, hoping I’ll become too exhausted to resist before you can finish taking over my entire body.”

“You’re clever,” the left half said, ignoring the insults Ravian was throwing at it as though they were merely dust drifting past its ears.

“So clever it could make you reckless enough to get yourself killed, boy. As you know, I could simply destroy your consciousness instead of trying to take control of you, then wait for the next person who comes along and tries to read a part of me.”

“Oh, that sounds truly terrifying, Mr. Parasite,” Ravian said, his expression half frightened concern and half mockery.

“Why don’t you go ahead and kill me, then wait for the next body to come along? Oh, let me guess…”

Ravian paused for a moment before asking in a more unhinged tone, “This consciousness of yours, the one you have right now, would be destroyed at the same time as mine, wouldn’t it?”

The left half remained silent for a while before a more sinister smile appeared on the left side of Ravian’s mouth.

“As I said, you’re very clever. Too clever for your own good,” the left half said.

“Thank you,” Ravian replied.

“But that doesn’t mean I’m taking back what I said, either. You’re far too confident in yourself, you lowly human.”

With every passing moment, the smile on the left half of his face grew more confident and more manic.

Ravian noticed this while still watching the mysterious creatures advance into his consciousness at a faster pace than before.

“You’re more reckless than I expected too, parasite,” he said, a smile forming on the right side of his mouth that matched the mad one on the left.

“This isn’t recklessness, human…” the left half said in a voice so delighted it sounded insane. “It’s called earned confidence.”

“All right, you’re welcome to keep thinking that. I’ll leave you that opinion, since you seem to like it so much,” Ravian said.

Immediately afterward, a window from the System appeared before him between one alert from Untouched Soul and the next.

[Warning: The possession is spreading.]

The signs before him were clear enough. His Law could clear away some of the contamination, but it kept circling back around from territory he lacked the ability to reclaim in its entirety.

He stopped trying to recover the ground he had lost and concentrated his resistance around the place from which he could still think. He could hold on to that area for only a short time, and he devoted that time to the ability he had not yet used.

Sovereign Paradox.

Possibilities branched from the situation as he understood it, changing whenever the boundaries between him and the intruder shifted. Among them were continuing to resist until he reached the limit of what he could endure, trying to push the contamination into another region of his soul, and surrendering part of the body while retaining a connection through which he would be able to survive.

The left half of his mouth laughed, the sound reaching him through the ear on the side of his body that still belonged to him.

“You’ve finally stopped trying to rearrange the furniture. I was afraid you’d keep doing that forever.”

Ravian did not reply. One possibility had appeared when the contamination advanced into a new area, then almost vanished when he used his trace of the Law to block the path to it again.

He examined that possibility once more, keeping the center of his presence concealed beneath Void Shadow.

The possession could end with his soul being erased entirely, yet it could not continue its advance without remaining connected to that soul. It had gained entry through his knowledge and spread to occupy the ground he had abandoned. Whenever it tried to use the portion of his body that remained under his control, it still needed to overcome Ravian’s own will before it could do so.

And in the possibility he now saw before him, his soul continued to exist while the possession was taking place.

His grip around his left wrist loosened.

“That’s better,” the intruder said, some of its cheer returning to its voice. “We could have reached this point without having to go through all that trouble.”

A window appeared before his diminished consciousness.

[Sovereign Paradox — Fate Selection.]

[Selected possibility: Spiritual possession for survival.]

The moment his choice settled into place, the laughter coming from half his mouth broke off, his right hand released its grip on the edge of the table, and Ravian’s body slid from the chair and fell to the floor of the tent, where it lay motionless.