Alice forced herself away from the window, returning to her desk with slow steps.
The fire inside hadn't diminished. If anything, focusing on the mystery of Ashen's knowledge had only made it worse.
Her mind was now fully occupied with him.
His touch, his voice, the way he'd looked at her with that mixture of desperation and determination.
"I am loyal… just a little unfaithful."
The hypocrisy should've infuriated her more… should've been enough to douse the flames… Instead, it just made her want him more.
'Damn this pathway,' she thought bitterly, pulling up her system interface with trembling fingers.
Maybe reanalyzing her new skills and traits would distract her enough until the intense need to call him back and have him ravage her finally abated.
'Status.'
==============================
Name/Arrival date: Alice Sinclair - 2023/02/11
Sex/Age: Female/26
Height/Weight: 175cm/64kg
Current condition: Healthy
Pathway: 7th step: Bound Siren
Thema: Automata
Affiliation: Atlas Defence/Creation Department/Wrath Domain
Title: None
[2. Traits]
—Determinant's Eye
—Cold Process
—The Fool's Constant
[3. Physical Level]
Strength: F- | Endurance: F- | Agility: F
Perception: E | Stamina: F | Mana: E-
[4. Abilities]
4.1 Innate Powers
—None
4.2 Path Skills
—Spark (Entry-)
—Fervor Compiler (Entry-)
4.3 Other skills
—Basic Mana Cycle (Skilled+)
—Construct Forge (Skilled+)
—Construct Command (Skilled+)
—Mana Circuit (Skilled)
—Clean (Skilled+)
[5. Cognitive Depth (Thoughts, Mindset, Disposition)]
— Ashen / Patterned Reason / Disciplined Passion
==============================
The first thing she honed in on was the step epithet: Bound Siren.
It had been a few hours since she'd confirmed her path, and she'd already done her research on the meaning of "Bound Siren."
Alice glanced at one of the holograms displaying the word Bound in bold.
Underneath it, two possible explanations presented themselves.
The first definition—and the most obvious one—was the one that carried the meaning of restraint.
Alice found this natural, since restraint was a large part of who she was.
The second, though, was a bit trickier. Bound could also be explained as being inherently drawn to something.
That something was obvious, of course.
Alice deduced from this one word that she had to draw toward Lust, all while keeping restraint.
'Isn't this too hard for a mere seventh step?' Alice groaned internally.
She'd done her investigation in the years she'd been here and knew that every Lust pathwalker started light.
Whispers, caresses, teases, seduction…
The seventh step was even jokingly called the foreplay step by some.
But it was the opposite for her. She had to indulge more.
Alice didn't take long to figure out why this happened, though.
A step's epithet was always tailored and unique to its host. If the system gave her this epithet, then it was simply because it judged that she was able to act according to it without losing herself to her Sin.
This would also make her ascent faster than the other pathwalkers who had to start slow.
'But isn't it too much to call me a siren?' She narrowed her eyes at the glowing screen.
She knew what a siren was, and she'd even consulted her private library to verify that it carried the same meaning in Seravelle.
The description was unchanged.
A siren was simply a dangerous creature that lured clueless men to their doom by song.
But that was just the earliest interpretation. The sirens evolved to not only use their songs to seduce, lure, and attract, but also their words and tone, presence and intellect, and even by feigning connection and resonance with others.
Simply put, a siren was an irresistible temptation.
'I'm not that dangerous, though…' Alice pouted, conveniently forgetting how many men she'd crippled for trying to seduce her in the last two years.
Thankfully, the Siren in the epithet here was preceded by Bound, so in actuality, she had to restrain her danger instead.
Next, she glanced at the newly manifested traits.
==============================
Determinant's Eye
The world reveals itself through patterns.
Behaviors, choices, and reactions form equations. With enough observation, outcomes often become predictable: a friendship beginning, a conflict brewing, a spark of attraction.
It isn't infallible, but the accuracy is alarming.
In both code and emotion, patterns often articulate better than simple words.
==============================
==============================
Cold Process
Emotions are acknowledged, filtered, then muted.
Clear thought is preserved above all else. Rationality dictates every choice, every reaction, guided by the belief that the mind is the only true weapon. Even in chaos, focus remains unbroken and calculations stay precise.
Where others drown in feeling, thought flows like clean circuitry.
"Always calm, efficient, and untouchable."
==============================
==============================
The Fool's Constant
All calculations fail when he is involved. Patterns, probabilities, and logic lose their hold; nothing else matters but his presence and well-being.
Even harm, betrayal, or neglect cannot shift the devotion. Every choice bends toward him, obsession threading through thought and action, unchanging and absolute.
In a world otherwise measured and precise, he is the one variable that defies all equations.
"Her constant, her flaw, her surrender."
==============================
The first two didn't surprise her. One of the boons of having such intellect and coolheadedness was objective self-observation.
She could mentally detach herself and look at her personality without bias. Doing that over the years made her know herself inside out, so what the system showed was merely a matter of course to her.
…Including The Fool's Constant.
Contrary to how the system put it, she didn't view this trait as a negative. For her, it was proof that she was indeed human.
Because getting absorbed in rationality for long periods of time made emotions fainter, to the point of questioning if she was even turning into some rational monster.
Ashen was the point of her Rational Collapse. And she was proud to have such a trait, as to her, it was simply another proof of her love for him.
'Going as far as calling me a fool is really uncalled for, though.' She pouted again…
With that out of the way, her eyes traveled back to the upper part of the screen, landing on her chosen Thema.
Automata
The hologram showing Bound's description moved to the side with a swipe of her slender finger, and as she pointed at the air with the tip of her pink nails, another one showed up.
'Automata, coming from the Greek word Αὐτόματα, roughly meaning "self-moving". The Thema ties to automaton… machines that act on their own will…'
The more she read, the more she was satisfied with her choice.
She was already very proficient in building and operating all kinds of constructs, mobile or immobile. They also came in all kinds of shapes and sizes and had varying functions, from self-defense and attacking to spying and concealing.
The skills Construct Forge and Construct Command, both at Skilled+ mastery, were a testament to her skill in building and operating constructs.
The company that she'd founded with Ashen back then dealt with similar things, just less deadly. So all she had to do was transform the objects to work on another form of energy, mana, while tweaking their functions to fit her current needs.
While it might look easy on the surface, especially for a polymath like her, it was anything but.
The reality that no one had been able to succeed before her was proof enough.
After countless tries and failures, she'd finally been able to do it, and the skill Mana Circuit was the crystallization of all her theory.
It was also the only skill that still lagged behind the others in reaching the extreme of the "Skilled" mastery, even after constant hard work for more than two years, depicting how difficult such a feat really was.
The outcome more than made up for it, though.
It was akin to having the constructs go from working on coal to working on nuclear energy.
The power, response time, endurance… everything transformed to be a hundred times more efficient and precise.
Alice really felt like she'd jumped from running on steam to running on lightning.
And that was why she was excited to see how this Thema would interact with her creations.
Especially with the path skills that she'd gotten from the marriage of her Thema with the concept of Lust.
==============================
Spark
Lifeless constructs gain a faint, obedient autonomy when touched by intent.
Instead of issuing step-by-step commands, commands are embedded as high-level desires (protect, follow, distract, observe) that the construct translates into behaviors.
==============================
==============================
Fervor Compiler
Passion and creative desire are transmuted into focused insight for design and code.
Brief surges of clarity speed prototyping, reduce logic errors, and reveal elegant pattern solutions that would otherwise take hours.
Effects are temporary and scale with emotional intensity.
==============================
The first path skill, Spark, she'd already tried, and as expected from an Entry- skill, no matter how powerful and fancy the description looked, the uses were still limited.
What she'd gleaned from the test was that the autonomy was limited. Only low-complexity tasks and predictable responses were possible.
And the link required periodic reinforcement, like touch or proximity.
Finally, only a handful of creations could be bound at once. More complex or larger constructs resisted or required longer preparation.
But she knew that when this skill showed its true power, she'd be unstoppable, especially with the new designs she could cook up with the other skill, Fervor Compiler.
Alice leaned back in her chair, fingers drumming against the armrest as her mind began to race.
'Fervor Compiler scales with emotional intensity,' she mused. 'And right now…'
Right now, she was burning.
The fire inside her could be more than just desire… It could turn into creation.
{Activated Path Skill: Fervor Compiler.}
Creative hunger mixed with physical need, all tangled together in a way that made her thoughts sharper, clearer, and faster.
She pulled up a blank design schematic and let her fingers fly across the holographic interface.
Scrib….Scrib…Scrib…
What emerged was perfection incarnate.
A compact reconnaissance drone, no larger than a hummingbird, with adaptive camouflage plating and micro-mana circuits that could run for days on a single charge.
She'd been trying to solve the power efficiency problem for months.
Now, riding this surge of fevered clarity, the solution presented itself like it had always been obvious.
'So this is what the skill does,' she realized, a small smile tugging at her lips. 'It's compressing what I would take hours to think of to mere minutes…'
The implications were frightening to say the least.
If emotional intensity fueled this skill, then the more she felt, the faster she could calculate, and the more she could create.
And with Lust as her pathway…
'I'll never run out of fuel,' she thought, almost giddy.
But then her eyes drifted back to the trait description.
The Fool's Constant.
"All calculations fail when he is involved."
Her smile turned into a loving one.
The system wasn't wrong. The design she'd just created, every innovation she was planning… it all came back to him.
Making him safer. Making him stronger. Protecting him from threats she couldn't yet name.
Even now, burning with need and resentment and desire, her first thought wasn't to satisfy herself.
It was to build something that would keep him alive.
'Pathetic,' a cold part of her mind whispered.
But the rest of her didn't care.
"By then, every scar on that body will be paid for in blood, my dear Ash…"
She absentmindedly muttered, eyes half-lidded as she remembered the countless scars she'd glimpsed all over his skin.
Each one must have had a story… a near-death… a failure she hadn't been there to prevent.
Her fingers curled into fists.
She'd been absent.
Stayed too Ignorant.
Still too naive.
But not anymore.
With Lust fueling her passion, Automata shaping her creations, and Spark giving them life…
She would build an army of steel and mana.
And when that threat finally came for him… when the thing that had carved that haunted desperation into his eyes at last revealed itself…
It would face something far beyond its comprehension: an obsessive woman whose most precious had been touched, a woman with both the means and the resolve to burn the world down if she had to.
'I swear…'
She would let this Lust burn.
And from its ashes, she would forge something both exquisite and dreadful.
Something worthy of the man who had saved her twice.
Once from her father.
And once from herself.