I am an Eldritch Entity-Chapter 75: Cognitive Dissonance

"Why?"

Eryndor didn’t know what to tell her, so he just made up a random excuse.

As he looked up at the ceiling of the room, Eryndor couldn’t help but scan the unusual parts of his memory.

There was really nothing else which stood out, except Liliana trying to kill Ken and Hellen, using the abnormality on the planets.

Maybe he could try to investigate those? There were still more checkpoint planets left on their journey after all.

But, how would it affect the battle if they kill the two people here?

It confused Eryndor, so he simply…just sat there.

He contemplated using Cognitive Scrying, but there were some serious implications about it, which he had realized in the past.

Cognitive Scrying was essentially invading the privacy of people at the deepest of levels. Respecting others’ privacy was a part of his belief, a part of his identity.

His awakening had been when he doubted his identity.

Which meant, the concept of his identity was core to his current existence, and survival.

If it was somehow changed beyond measure, it might lead to unfavorable outcomes.

Eryndor had read about this one thing in the past which he couldn’t help but remember.

[You have these lines you won’t cross. But then one day, you cross them.

And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end.

You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray.

And now every time you cross it, it just gets grayer and grayer.

Until one day, you look around and you think.

’There was a line here once, I think.’]

It was even more true in the case of Eryndor whose identity was so important that it could determine his survival.

That was not to say that he won’t ever change. People change, he would change too.

Cognitive dissonance was the psychological discomfort a person felt when they held conflicting beliefs, values, or attitudes, or when their behavior contradicted their beliefs.

This discomfort between action and belief, would often lead people to try to resolve the inconsistency by changing their beliefs, justifying their actions, or avoiding contradictory information.

One of the examples of it was smoking despite knowing the risks.

A smoker knows that smoking causes cancer but continues smoking. To reduce dissonance, they might justify their actions, and tell themselves, "My grandfather smoked and lived to 90, so it’s not that bad."

In Eryndor’s case, if the gap of Cognitive Dissonance between his belief as a human and the action of using his Eldritch abilities became too wide, he feared it would lead to some irreparable consequences.

For that reason, Cognitive Scrying was an ability he was careful around.

If his principles changed over time, over experience, over different situations, in a direction that would allow him to more easily use his ability then the risk to his continued existence would be drastically lesser compared to now.

Eryndor shook his head, emptying his mind of the distressing thoughts.

He instead took a new approach.

Do I care about the Ravencrofts?

Assuming that Liliana’s actions were linked to the battle of Ravencroft vs the Mage Outer Domain, what she was doing could be assumed to be going against the Ravencrofts.

Hellen and Ken were both cared for dearly by Calix, who was working with the Ravencrofts. Unless killing them somehow brought a positive result, Eryndor couldn’t fathom how Liliana was on the Ravencrofts’ side.

Did the Sinclairs and the Ravencrofts have such a bad relationship all along? That they’ll sabotage the battles fought by the other family to defend humanity?

Eryndor had the idea all along that no matter how badly the two families opposed each other, they still stood on the side of Humanity.

But, I personally don’t care about Ravencrofts.

This was the answer he reached upon contemplation.

But did he care about humanity as a whole?

Honestly, no.

The ones he cared about were the people in his small circle. He still didn’t have enough of a reason to interfere.

But there was one final question which made him change his stance.

If the Ravencrofts failed to defend the city, would it cause a domino effect resulting in the fall of the Ravencroft family? And eventually the shrinking of the Human Federation’s territory?

And finally, the fall of the Human Federation?

Could he still keep quiet after viewing things from such a perspective?

No.

Eryndor was successful in convincing himself.

It wouldn’t have been an issue if the person had tried to kill him, or harm him.

Eryndor felt zero burden using Cognitive Scrying on Jeremy, who was indirectly being controlled to harm him, and the Mayor, who was also instructed to harm him.

But to use it on Liliana? It needed plenty of mental conditioning and roundabout reasoning to justify his actions.

Taking a deep breath, he activated the Cognitive Scrying, slipping into the familiar third person view.

Looking into Liliana’s room’s direction, he directed his vision there.

A second later, he was gazing at Liliana who seemed to be reading a book on her bed.

Now that he had already decided what to do, Eryndor didn’t hesitate any longer.

He targeted Liliana and felt his consciousness being pulled into her mind. He didn’t resist the pull.

Once inside, he gazed at the spherical balls of light floating around. They were the memories of a person.

But there was one problem.

There was a massive shield which stood in front of the countless motes of light.

He lightly made contact with it, then backed away. Eryndor immediately knew what it was.

A shield to defend against mental attacks? Damn.

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It was the first time Eryndor had come across anything like this.

The shield was a mental defense treasure at the peak of level two.

He had a hunch that his Active realm Cognitive Scrying could definitely break through the shield in front of him without his own mind taking any kind of damage.

But the problem was, it would definitely alert Liliana. Eryndor didn’t want that for obvious reasons.

He tried various ways to bypass the shield, and access the memories, but no matter what, a slight ripple would spread from the shield which would interfere with his ability.

Unless he broke the shield, he wouldn’t be able to access any kind of memory.

Unbeknownst to Eryndor, a change had taken place in his Mind Palace.