Elliot felt awful.
Maeve needed to devour flesh and blood to gain power. That was one thing, and Elliot had tried everything he could to get her to eat monsters.
But now she was actually going to start eating people?!
Perhaps he should never have let her choose this path. The power of [Restoration] was tied to flesh and blood and desire to begin with. It really was too dangerous.
Elliot frowned, thought for a while, then slowly shook his head.
"It isn't necessarily because of [Restoration]. It seems that all supernatural paths grow increasingly distorted and bizarre the higher you climb."
He recalled Victoria's other, spiderlike form.
Vanessa had brought this up a few times. Judging by Victoria's reaction, she disliked that distorted spider form too.
She must have been forced into it as well.
Connecting this with the earlier matter of "gaining power means being distorted," perhaps the danger lay not in any particular path, but in power itself.
"If power itself is distorted and evil-" Elliot fell silent. Looking back at what Victoria had said, he seemed to find a new interpretation.
-Sacrifice is the wrong path.
Unfortunately, his believers had still taken the path of sacrifice. Even if the Difference Engine's sacrifices were different, sacrifice was still sacrifice. To grow powerful, they would ultimately have to be distorted.
"Could the original Elliot have refused to sacrifice because he knew this? Could that be why the Old Duke tacitly allowed it?"
Elliot lowered his head to look at his hands. The original Elliot had been called "First-Rank Elliot" because he refused to sacrifice. Coincidentally, with the Difference Engine's help, Elliot himself had not performed a sacrifice either.
"But there's no discernible difference at all. Refusing to sacrifice seems to bring nothing but weakness."
37
Elliot sighed and