Chapter 2369: Extremes

Sylas probably should have been curious about why Nosphaleen believed he would die, especially considering the certainty in her voice, but the question barely registered against everything else he had just seen.

There was something more immediate here, something far more useful than a warning he had no intention of respecting. His gaze remained fixed on hers as he asked, "Why are you maintaining your connection to the Mortal Plane?"

Nosphaleen’s eyes flickered, and for the briefest moment something almost resembling infatuation appeared within those clear blues before disappearing beneath the same deadpan calm.

"Because it gives me the greatest amount of leeway, and remaining Mortal limits how much control they can exert over me."

Her fingers rested loosely atop her knees, shifting slightly.

Sylas nodded because that answer matched what he had already experienced.

Gentrixaul had been almost helpless against him while Sylas remained on the Mortal Plane, forced to rely on distant mechanisms and indirect influence rather than simply reaching down and crushing him.

The moment Sylas entered the Demi-God Plane, however, the situation changed repeatedly, and if that difference continued upward, then becoming a God would only expose him to even greater interference from existences capable of acting openly at that level.

The Mortal Plane offered the greatest protection.

That left another question.

"Why do they allow it?"

"They don’t." Nosphaleen’s expression remained still, but her gaze sharpened slightly. "They’re silently accepting what I’m doing because they don’t believe anything I change will matter in the end."

Sylas considered that for only a moment before raising a hand and pressing his palm against her forehead.

Nosphaleen didn’t resist.

Emerald light flashed through Sylas’ eyes as the Fate Dragon’s influence stirred beneath his Will, reaching through the structure surrounding Nosphaleen and searching for the Karma binding her to whatever had been built around her existence.

He intended to sever that connection directly, ripping apart the relationship between Nosphaleen and the God-like Karma weighing upon her, but the moment his Will truly touched it, Sylas understood that brute force wasn’t going to be enough.

He withdrew his hand. The Karma behind Nosphaleen was too strong.

Sylas’ expression remained unchanged as his thoughts accelerated. The scale of what he had sensed only strengthened the conclusion he had already begun forming.

Someone had woven Nosphaleen directly into the legend of the God worshipped by the Efivara, and now countless existences believed that Nosphaleen represented a particular figure, possessed particular traits, and should act according to a particular nature.

That belief had consequences.

When enough Living Will gathered around the same idea, reality itself began bending toward it, and Nosphaleen was trapped inside that pressure. Countless people believed she was one thing, and because that belief was continuously reinforced, the world increasingly demanded that she become exactly what they thought she was.

This was how they had created the Virtue of Envy Seed.

Or, more accurately, how they had created something that carried the power of a Virtue while continuing to function disturbingly like the Sin it should have transcended.

Whoever designed the process wanted the strength that came from the Virtue without surrendering the corruption of the Sin, allowing them to benefit from both sides at once.

The reason for retaining that corruption was easy enough to understand.

If Nosphaleen never possessed complete control over her own mind, then even after she became powerful enough to fulfill whatever purpose they had prepared for her, there would still be something they could exploit.

A flaw intentionally preserved inside her psyche could become a button they pressed whenever she resisted, turning the very power they gave her into another form of restraint.

The explanation made sense, but it still wasn’t enough.

Something remained out of place, a larger structure sitting beyond the obvious purpose of control, and Sylas could feel its absence without yet being able to name it. His mind accelerated further as he replayed everything he understood about Sin Seeds, Virtue Seeds, the transitions between them, and the experiences that had shaped his own path.

He remembered Gluttony.

There had been periods when the Sin pressed against him so heavily that even Fanelei believed Sylas might eventually be swallowed by it, and those moments had never been gentle transitions. Extremes defined the process, forcing someone toward the edge of what a concept represented until either they broke beneath it or understood it well enough to rise above it.

Wasn’t that exactly what forging a Virtue required?

Sylas had only created the Virtue of Pride because his Pride had become so extreme that he eventually learned how to exist within it without allowing it to control him.

The trait hadn’t disappeared, nor had he weakened it, because the transformation came from reaching the furthest edge of Pride and then developing enough understanding to command what had once threatened to command him.

His thoughts shifted toward Nosphaleen again.

If a Sin pushed to its extreme could become a Virtue, then what happened when a Virtue was pushed to its extreme as well?

Sylas remembered the moment Nosphaleen died and the way it had nearly shattered his Pride entirely. His Virtue had been pushed against a boundary severe enough to threaten its existence, and Sylas had found a way through only because he managed to reconstruct his understanding before the damage became permanent.

But what if that happened again? What if it happened a third time after that, then a fourth, each crisis forcing the Virtue beyond another boundary it had supposedly already transcended?

At some point, the distinction couldn’t remain so simple.

The line separating Virtue from Sin would begin to blur again. An extreme carried far enough eventually stopped resembling the stable concept it had been transformed into. Pride could become something monstrous despite being called a Virtue, just as Envy could be refined until its original corruption disappeared, and the titles themselves might only describe temporary points along a much longer path.

Sylas’ gaze settled on Nosphaleen.

The black feathers hidden deep within her eyes continued falling.

His pupils narrowed as another possibility began taking shape, one that made the structure surrounding Nosphaleen seem far more deliberate than simple control ever could.

If a Sin could become a Virtue...

Then what came after a Virtue was pushed beyond its own extreme?