Sylas’ body was practically quaking under the strain, an odd tug coming at him from all sides. He didn’t know what to focus on.
“Pick one!”
The voice echoed in his head, a familiar light and giggling voice, the very one he had heard many times before. But he had never heard it so clearly before.
“Not that one!”
Sylas suddenly frowned. He hadn’t hesitated to listen to the voice because it had never done wrong by him. Although he didn’t quite know what its motives were, or maybe her motives, what he did know was that there was an opportunity to kill him not long ago and she hadn’t taken it.
During the period where the Madness Key was waiting for him to feed it Gold Genes daily, it was because of this voice that he hadn’t been swallowed whole.
The more he innately understood about the Madness Key, and the higher his disciplehood became, the more he understood about its inner workings as well.
The Madness Key had a daily quota to meet, and at the end of a seven-day period, there would normally be an increase to that Hunger. Sylas had given himself a one-week time limit when he initially made the mistake of asking a Taboo question he shouldn’t have because he knew that any backlash from the Madness Key would be manageable at least for that period.
However, if he failed to feed the Madness Key on the day its Hunger increased, he knew that it would all be over. At that point, the Madness Key would almost certainly swallow up his Will and ultimately kill him.
The backlash he should have received, though, never came. At the very least, it was so minimal he didn’t notice it.
After becoming a Level 3 Madness Disciple, he was almost certain that it was because of this voice.
But these words just now… not the first set of them, but the second… he didn’t like at all.
The feeling he immediately gravitated toward was Pride. Between the emotions he could feel clearly, there was only really Pride, Envy, and Lust. Of those three, Envy was undoubtedly the strongest.
Oddly enough, he couldn’t feel Greed very well at all, but the answer for why came naturally to him as well.
Greed was already occupied.
The moment he had this thought, he wondered if that meant that Gluttony was already occupied by him as well, but the thought was immediately struck down.
Innately, he understood that his Gluttony Seed hadn’t evolved. Ultimately… he was lagging too far behind the Rat. The Rat was a true Madness Disciple. As for him, he had no right to call himself the Snake yet.
But none of that explained why the voice didn’t want him to take Pride.
“Trust me, Lust is better for you. Just listen to me, you stubborn brute.”
It really sounded like a little girl, and honestly, it quite reminded Sylas of his little sister.
At that moment, Sylas began to miss home. He wished he could just return to his family, have dinner with them, listen to them banter back and forth with one another as they talked about their days.
The lazy sort of monotony of those days, those times when the world was boring… he missed them. He wished he could go back…
Sloth.
“Focus! You’re running out of time!”
Sylas’ gaze focused once more almost immediately. The voice seemed a hint startled.
Of the seven Madness Pillars, Sloth tended to be the most extreme of them because it could manifest in so many ways. Although all of the Madness Disciples were ruled by their Sins in one way or another, Sloth had the hardest time separating from the follies of their Seed.
But Sylas shrugged it off with ease.
Sylas felt the depths of Lust again. He really didn’t like it. He felt that his body was already too easily ruled by a push for procreation. Because he was evolving his Genes so often, and so quickly, he was already struggling in this aspect.
Worse yet, he had just been accused of being a Charysm. If he took a Lust Seed on top of that, would he even be able to refute such allegations in the future?
There wasn’t much on Charysm in the UniForm, but there was enough to know that the last thing he wanted to do as a Human was be labeled as one of them. Because there would be no safety in the Demon World, and there would certainly be no safety in these Humanoid Worlds either.
It wasn’t even just because he was a Human that the Demons wouldn’t accept him either. From what he could tell, even the Demon Races hated the Charysm, though he didn’t have 100% confirmation of that.
However, there had to be a reason the voice was telling him to pick Lust. And, from what he could feel… he had a feeling that he knew why that was.
If he was correct, it really was the smartest path to take even if it came with such risks.
Sylas made a decision.
He had always built his life on discipline and nothing at all would change that. If this was the smartest path to take, whatever came with it, he would accept it.
Sylas chose Lust.
At that moment, he felt a surge of something inside him. He had felt it once before, at a time when his Gluttony Seed absorbed the rewards of a Destiny Quest and formed for the first time.
This time, it felt like that once again, but even more potent. A second Seed was forming, and this time, it was natural… a natural sort of progression… a feeling that just felt…
Right.
Sylas sank into the feeling and a raging heat coursed through him.
The Gluttony Seed and Lust Seed formed a harmony, completely unlike the Greed Seed that seemed to want to dominate everything.
At that moment, Sylas understood something else…
The Madness Disciples were supposed to be in Harmony.
Whether things actually worked out like that, though…
That was a different matter entirely.