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It couldn't be helped.
To fight a God.
Only the power of a God would suffice.
Against entities that walked such wildly divergent paths, Ian found it difficult to use standard magic to match them equally, let alone secure a victory; the main issue was that his deep-rooted research into magic had not yet reached its absolute zenith.
It wasn't that magic itself was lacking.
"Wizards are beings who can make all forces serve them, and Divine Authority is no exception," Ian reasoned, choosing not to confront the Decay head-on.
To do so would be stepping right into the entity's most formidable domain.
He chose a different path, lightly tapping his wand against the empty air to release an intangible, weightless ripple that carried a contradictory essence, existing yet void, being yet nothingness.
In an instant, it rippled outward with him at the center.
"Definition rewrite: within this domain, Decay shall mean New Life!"
The Divine Power of Paradox operated on the very level of universal laws! The surging wave of grey-black decay underwent a bizarre transformation the moment it touched Ian's unfurled Paradox Domain.
A portion of the destructive energy still retained its function, continuing to erode the surrounding space.
But another part, twisted by the Law of Paradox, inexplicably morphed into a faint, delicate aura of brand-new life, like a dead tree suddenly sprouting green shoots in spring.
Though this spark of newborn life was pitifully frail.
It was far from enough to completely neutralize the sweeping decay, yet it had undeniably manifested, laying down the fundamental laws of a tiny, stubborn oasis carved directly out of a dead desert.
"What?!" The Fallen God's crimson eyes flared with a mixture of shock and sheer fury, sensing its otherwise invincible power of decay being forcibly warped at its core.
"What kind of power are you wielding?!"
Paradox was, after all, the power of a New God, a synthetic Divine Authority, making it entirely reasonable that this ancient deity could not comprehend it. It roared, ramping up its divine output as a massive tidal wave of grey-black ripples surged forward, aiming to crush the offensive domain with absolute, overwhelming force.
"An ancient relic like you should learn to accept your fate, your era has passed," Ian grunted, the Paradox Domain around him shattering violently.
The fragile aura of newborn life was instantly snuffed out by the encroaching wave of rot. He wasn't a true deity, after all, merely possessing a few traits of a divine authority; in terms of sheer raw capacity, a vast gulf still separated him from this primordial entity. Yet his gaze remained unwavering as he swept his wand once more.
"Causality Inversion: Let the cause of Decay bear the fruit of Existence!"
Another layer of the Law of Paradox flared to life.
This time.
The target of his manipulation was causality itself.
The roaring cascade of decay rolled onward, carrying a rancid stench capable of corrupting all things as it bore down on Ian; however, as the immense, malevolent force drew near, the cause meant to bring about ruin was forcibly bent, twisting instead into a fruit that sustained his presence.
Before his eyes, the space directly ahead, which should have been utterly vaporized, stubbornly maintained a fragile but undeniable pocket of stability amidst the crashing waves of rot.
It was as if the decay itself had become the very foundation of its existence.
"???!!!"
This bizarre phenomenon drove the Fallen God to the brink of madness; its own offensive strike had been repurposed into the boy's shield, utterly defying every natural law it had ever known.
"Roar! Sacrilege! You dare desecrate the laws of reality!"
It howled in a frenzied rage, shedding its humanoid guise as its form bloated and warped, bubbling into an unnameable monstrosity woven from countless weeping faces and sloshing rot.
Giving up on precise manipulation, it unleashed its rawest, most volatile torrent of corrupted divine energy, letting it spill toward Ian like a broken dam.
It was a display of absolute, crushing weight, intending to shatter Ian's irritating Paradox Domain through brute strength alone.
"What an immense reserve of divine power," Ian muttered, his expression darkening as he recognized that a direct clash would be suicide. Maintaining his Paradox Domain to constantly warp, deflect, and thin the oncoming torrent, his silhouette flickered like a phantom through the narrow cavern to evade the most lethal bursts of energy.
At the same time, he kept a razor-sharp eye on his opponent.
He realized something peculiar.
Though the Fallen God's power was massive and deeply corrupted, the intrinsic quality and feel of its divine energy possessed an indescribable... artificiality.
This artificiality didn't mean it was weak, but rather that its mechanics seemed bound by an invisible framework, lacking the wild, chaotic unpredictability of an ancient deity born straight from primordial chaos.
Furthermore, buried deep within that raging torrent, Ian faintly detected minute magical signatures identical to the defensive arrays of the Ministry of Magic.
The marks clung to the fragments of its shattered divinity like ethereal chains, this was no natural phenomenon, but a deliberate product of heavy human intervention.
As for the reason behind it.
It wasn't particularly difficult to deduce.
"Captive..." The word flashed across Ian's mind. This Fallen God was likely not an entirely untamed nightmare; instead, it was highly probable that the African Ministry of Magic, or the elite families pulling their strings, had bound and exploited this ancient deity through some forgotten art.
Its sudden rampage might not even be a true failure of containment, but a calculated event permitted, or even guided, from the shadows. That would certainly explain why the Ministry went to such ridiculous lengths to bury this entity so deeply.
It was absurd to think the Ministry remained blissfully ignorant of a god rotting in their own basement; after all, every magical ministry across the globe had been founded by the finest minds of the wizarding world.
Wizards of that caliber would never overlook such a blatant anomaly, especially given that brilliant sorcerers regularly emerged from every corner of the magical community.
When the global network of ministries was first established, it was spearheaded by these very legends, a period when international cooperation and communication among wizards were exceptionally fluid.
That was precisely why every nation possessed a Ministry. Smaller territories might have struggled to erect their own grand magical academies, but that was purely due to a shortage of elite wizards, not a lack of intent.
The foundational infrastructure was always there.
Built by the exact same architects who engineered the Ministry itself.
Because of this.
The choice to locate the Ministry here, and to construct a subterranean fortress directly beneath it, was highly likely because the elite wizards of those founding families had sniffed out the deep-seated abnormalities of this trench.
Perhaps.
They had discovered the Fallen God right here, and to syphon its power for their own ends, they used the administrative complex and the prison as a convenient smokescreen to bury the tomb.
This was Ian's hypothesis.
Though completely lacking hard evidence, the probability was dangerously high.
"Humans always love playing with fire," Ian thought bitterly. "Ancient Egypt did it, Africa did it, we are always trying to tame things that sit at the absolute precipice of annihilation."
"Greed truly is the original sin."
The revelation weighed heavily on Ian's chest.
If his opponent wasn't just a frenzied, broken god, but also a hidden syndicate pulling strings from the deepest shadows of the Ministry, the situation was infinitely more labyrinthine and lethal.
The moment Ian's focus wavered, the Fallen God seized the microscopic opening. A physical spear of concentrated darkness, laden with the fundamental laws of soul-decay, sliced noiselessly through the thinned layers of the Paradox Domain.
It closed the distance to Ian's brow in a heartbeat. While physical attacks could be dodged or warped, a strike directly targeting the core of the soul moved faster than thought itself. Ian barely had time to pull back his mental fortitude into a tight defensive knot before the shadow spine drove brutally into his mental barrier.
Yet.
Ian did not panic.
"To fight this... I must strike back from the very root."
Closing his eyes, his consciousness plunged deep into his soul.
Turning the enemy's trap against them.
He would.
It was a gamble he knew how to play.
Deep within his subconscious, his stolen Authority of Paradox and his Legendary Status coiled around one another like twin dragons. One represented the divine authority he had snatched, while the other was the bedrock of his power as a master wizard. They should have rejected each other, but under his iron will, they maintained a precarious, dangerous equilibrium.
A low hum vibrated through him.
Ian felt as though his entire consciousness had been plunged into a vat of boiling oil.
Millions of agonizing, desperate, and frenzied whispers flooded his mind like a virulent plague. He saw grand civilizations collapse into rot, stars blinking out into nothingness, and countless lives withering into dust amidst a chorus of screams. These were no mere illusions; they were the raw concepts woven into the Fallen God's corrupted authority.
A visceral, maddened belief in the absolute end of all things.
It sought to sear its own madness and despair onto Ian's soul, rewriting him from within. This was a mental assault far more perilous than any physical curse.
A direct collision between raw willpower and the divine essence of a decaying god.
"Dangerous indeed," Ian gritted out, the veins on his forehead bulging as his teeth clamped shut. Anchoring the final shred of sanity at the core of his mind, he pushed his Occlumency to its absolute limit.
He fought to eject the foreign, maddening thoughts, but the Fallen God's mental weight clung to his soul like a marrow-deep curse.
Repeatedly battering his defensive lines.
"Give up... mortal... embrace the end... it is the destiny of all things... the only true reality..." the Fallen God's seductive, crazed whispers crooned.
Echoing directly within the recesses of his soul.
"Destiny? Reality?"
Ian sneered within his inner world. His willpower, forged like tempered steel, swayed violently in the storm but refused to snap.
"Before my Paradox, destiny can be overthrown, and reality can be rewritten!" Abandoning passive defense, he directly channeled his Authority of Paradox.
Turning its logic upon his own mind.
He began to reconstruct his very existence.
This was no simple discharge of magic.
It was a philosophical deconstruction of the self. He shed his identity as Ian Prince, discarded his memories of Hogwarts, stripped away his emotions, and abandoned any concepts of good and evil, reducing his consciousness to a pure, unblemished vessel for his Status.
A hollow frame designed solely to bear the weight of Paradox.
This allowed a mortal body to firmly grasp a power meant for gods.
The Fallen God sensed the shift.
"You are... denying yourself?" Uncertainty cracked its voice for the first time. "You are insane! Without a self, how can you exist?"
"It is precisely because there is no 'me' that I can exist."
Ian's voice drifted out from the void, echoing from everywhere at once. "You rely on worship, on terror, and on everything given to you by the outside world. But I... I rely on the qualification of non-existence."
The Authority of Paradox awakened fully within him.
It was no longer a rune or a pillar of light, but a form of raw, logical violence. It decreed an impossible fact: a person who should not be here was standing before a god, waging war.
This sheer absurdity was, in itself, a supreme authority.
"Impossible..." the Fallen God stammered. "Divine Authority... must stem from faith... from sacrifice... from..."
"From where?"
Ian's form rematerialized, his human eyes replaced by twin spinning nebulae. "From being needed? But no one needs you anymore. You simply refuse to admit you are a corpse."
He raised a hand, pointing a single finger at the center of the entity, the Eye of the Heart.
"And I do not need to be needed. I only need to be here."
A silent shockwave rippled outward.
It carried neither magic nor divine energy, but the absolute declaration of existence.
"Paradox Domain Unfurl: I think, therefore I am, and am not!"
A paradoxical subversion of Descartes' famous maxim. Ian's mental landscape shifted into a superposition where existence and non-existence blurred. The moment the Fallen God's psychic spikes targeted his presence, he slipped into the void of non-existence, letting the strike hit nothing.
Yet the instant the attack sought to lock onto his absence, he crystallized back into existence out of the void, delivering a full-force retaliation.
It was far more than simple evasion; it shattered the target definition of the psychic assault entirely. Before this constant shifting, the Fallen God's massive, frenzied intent felt like a fist striking silk or a hand trying to grasp quicksilver, finding no leverage, collapsing into total disarray.
"Impossible! How can your soul be so... twisted?!" the entity shrieked in horror. It had never faced an opponent who could warp natural laws physically and match that unsettling, elusive nature in the psychic realm.
Ian offered no reply. Gathering every ounce of his intent, he forged his Paradox authority into a mental blade shimmering with contradictory light, the Blade of Logical Fallacy. It bore no physical edge, yet carried the weight of conceptual contradictions, false premises, and broken circular reasoning.
He drove the blade down into the frenzied thoughts wrapping around his soul.
"Your end is not my end! Your madness is not true madness! All definitions can be reconstructed!"
The blade sank into the chaotic consciousness. It did not shatter the thoughts but acted like a stone dropped into still water, triggering a massive wave of logical instability that forced the god's belief in absolute decay into a spiral of self-contradiction.
Why could this mortal withstand decay?
If the end was the sole absolute truth, what did this resistance represent? If reality itself could be redrawn, what value did its sacred decay hold?
For a divine being anchored to fixed concepts, this fundamental logical subversion was infinitely more devastating than any physical impact.
For the first time, a note of raw agony and confusion crept into the Fallen God's psychic shrieks.
While the physical cavern continued to rattle with storms of displaced energy, an entirely different, far more lethal war was playing out silently within the theater of Ian's mind.
The silver light of Paradox and the black mire of Decay devoured, twisted, and denied one another, locking the combatants in a bizarre, unyielding stalemate.
(End of Chapter)