Alec looked at the sky shimmering on the other side of the canopy above him. The stars were beautiful.
Unfortunately, they weren't enough to hide the ugly reality.
"System, am I fucked?"
[I can't answer that.]
"System, I want to go home."
[If you save the world…]
"I don't even know what it needs saving from! It might even be me!"
[What do you mean?] Alec was the brother of the author. Not a character from the original novel. How could the world need saving from him?
"System, do you know what the Seven Deadly Sins are?"
[Yes.]
"Wrong! They are bullshit. The original idea is bullshit, I don't mean any disrespect, of course. But the Seven Sins are just basic human traits. They are emotions that every human feels at least once in their life.
"Everyone gets angry. Everyone gets horny. Everyone gets hungry. Everyone wants to sleep in every now and then. Everyone feels pride when they or their children do something relevantly positive.
"The Seven Deadly Sins are simply seven facets of human behavior given a bad reputation.
"However, in literature, especially modern, fantasy-related literature, they have become bullshit sources of power or names of powerful characters who embody one of those seven facets a little more than most.
"For example, a character with a Skill named after the Sin of Wrath would be angrier than most but would in turn get strength proportionate to their anger. Of course, that one might be the simplest and most straightforward due to the nature of rage. But you get the point, right, System?"
[I can't say I do.]
"Of course you don't. You don't know my brother. Let me tell you something, System. He likes stuff like the Seven Deadly Sins. I'm not surprised Skills like them exist in this world he's created, even if it's supposedly swords and magic.
"But he also likes balance. He doesn't give his characters ass-pull power without reason or something almost equally weakening to weigh it down again. He wants his characters to struggle for all they're worth, and he wants them on the brink of death, insanity, ruin, or all three by the end of his books.
"Using one of the Seven Deadly Sins to do it would be right up his alley."
[...]
"Now, assuming this world that he wrote is anything like the ones he's written before and that I've read, I think it's safe to say that the Seven Deadly Sins will work like he would have written them to work."
[Meaning?]
"Getting there. I am the holder of not one, not two, not three, but all SEVEN of the Seven Deadly Sins, System. If I'm right, I have seven keys to strength within me—more if we count the other registered keywords, but we aren't talking about that right now. It's just that each key is laced with poison, each one with a…let's say a ninety-percent chance to kill me."
It was a generous estimate, but Alec had to give himself some hope, even if he knew his brother would have most likely made it less than a ten percent chance of success.
"That gives me a ten percent survival chance per key. Multiply that, and it becomes a 0.0001 percent chance of survival."
[That's bad odds.]
"You don't say. But that's not the problem. The problem is that it won't kill me. The keys will turn me into a living embodiment of the Seven Deadly Sins, you know, like what just happened. Wrath, Sloth, Envy, Lust, Greed, Pride, and Gluttony will consume me until I become a mindless beast that will do anything to fulfill the desires represented by those sins, even if it means destroying the world."
[That's not good.]
"No shit. So?"
['So?'] The System echoed.
"Can you fix it?"
[If by fixing it, you mean if I can remove the Seven Deadly Sins from the registered keywords, then no.]
"Getting rid of the [Seed of ???] also works. I can't even begin to imagine what the other keywords are, but I doubt they'll be much better than the Seven Deadly Sins."
[I can't do that, either.]
"System…" Alec didn't even know what to say. He wanted to say that the System was useless, but its voice had been so pitiful that it felt like it would be mean to say it outright.
[...sorry.]
Alec sighed.
"Whatever. Maybe I'm just overreacting since I'm still covered in monster blood and still stuck in the monster infested forest after almost dying to an ugly sheep."
[That's not impossible.]
"Are there any streams nearby? But I guess you can't answer that."
[I can actually.]
"Oh?"
[There are.]
"..." Alec waited for a few seconds.
"Is that it? Can you tell me where they are?"
[I can.]
"Then why aren't you?"
[You didn't—]
Alec held up a hand and shushed the System as he closed his eyes and concentrated. He focused on his Aether sense. It moved differently in the forest compared to the Academy.
At the Academy, the Aether was a chaotic mess.
Alec hadn't noticed it since he didn't have anything to compare it to at the time, but each and every mage and warrior at the Academy affected the Aether in the surroundings of the Academy.
They didn't necessarily disrupt the flow, but they certainly changed it. They affected it with their condensation, their training, and their spell casting, turning it into a jumbled mess of movement and elements.
In the forest, the Aether was in a more natural state.
Alec didn't know why, but it felt like his Aether sense had grown more sensitive. It was to the point where he felt like he could sense the flow of nature itself.
The glowing particles, motes, and streams of Aether told Alec where to go. It didn't tell him the way home.
It told him the way to another part of itself. It guided the way to water since areas with water had Aether affected by the element of water.
It wasn't water attribute Aether. It was just Aether that would more easily transform into water mana upon entering the body of a water mage.
It was nothing fancy.
But it was enough for Alec to find somewhere to clean himself of the dried blood. The smell refused to leave his nose long after his bath, though, no matter how hard he scraped and scrubbed his body.