The thing about Elias is that… he’s careful. He likes everything to be in a well-appointed place. He’s welcoming of happy little coincidences along the way and very resourceful and adaptable, but he also needs to have a structure in place. He has the prosaic but practical system of donations and paperwork when he could feasibly use his powers to obtain money and torture any auditors that try to pester him as they come, but that’s less efficient and less safe. It’s not sustainable. Much like body-hopping, it does not grant him the security of a long-term plan. He cannot deal with threats as they come indefinitely; he would always fear that this may be the one that does the trick. Therefore, he maintains an image of legitimacy. He schedules. He destroys the world just to be at the top. So no, he couldn’t have kept body-hopping forever and be satiated.
