Eventually, he falls asleep from the strain, just after taking the remedy. The stars of his memory still shine in the Duelist room where he was training, the door open just a crack.
In his dreams, this time, he faces himself in vicious combat.
Sometimes, this other Hriob is an adversary that simply cannot seem to die no matter what he throws at him, and takes almost obscene pleasure in using his own attacks against him in ways he would never have managed to make himself: Telekinesis used like a knife to cut off limbs and heads, cut arteries with a blink of the eye, sever the spine ruthlessly, even decapitate him. Teleportation used in much the same manner, or to send him inside solid rock to asphyxiate, or inside lava to burn to death in seconds drowning on solid rock, or inside a pit of venomous snakes or a battlefield between demons... or many other crafty and imaginative methods of killing a man. Any time he seems to gain the advantage somehow, the other Hriob turns it against him before he can make any headway, and it ends in his death before he knows it.
Other times, the 'other Hriob' is simply the unimaginable force of a storm, the sky itself a weapon against him, with rage and fury beating down on him from all sides. He tries to escape only to be struck down by lightning faster than he can even think, winds literally rip his flesh away when he tries to fight, he is given no quarter and no chance to do anything but try to hold off the inevitable. It isn't as cruel as the other, but at least it gave him the facsimile of a fighting chance... this nightmare version doesn't give him any such illusions.
It is as if he is stuck between an unstoppable force and an immovable object, between Scylla and Charybdis, between a Rock and a Hard Place.
As if he was his own worst enemy.
Still, rest is rest. He sleeps, spread eagle on his back on top of hard frost-laden stone, and lets the strain that could have been from weeks of rigorous mental and physical training fade and resolve into new strength and power. The kind of strain he has been facing would be too much for most people his age, but he has been used to long periods of heavy exertion as well as constant brain-wracking for weeks at a time without sleep... this is nothing he cannot handle, if it isn't right to say he was born ready for this kind of endeavor's risks and overall toll on him.