Demon's Virtue

Eiro looked at Nelli with a purely surprised expression. That was something he really hadn't expected her to ask.

"You want to try fusing with me?" Eiro asked her, just to make sure he understood her correctly, and Nelli just shrugged, "Well if you don't want to, then don't bring it up in the first place." She replied to him, and Eiro immediately shook his head.

"Oh, it's not that at all! I just expected you to be against it." The Demon pointed out, and Nelli lightly raised her brows, "Well, amongst anything and anyone currently living on this planet, you're the one I trust the most. I know you wouldn't want to actually injure me, so since you seemed so excited, I doubt it's harmful to me too much."

The Imp smiled back at the Naiad and nodded his head, "Well, thank you. I also do trust you to that extent... Then do you want to try?" Eiro then asked, and Nelli swiftly floated up to his chest.

"Sure. I guess this is the best place for that, huh?" She suggested, as she pulled Eiro's shirt up so that she could actually touch his skin, and then pressed her back against Eiro's chest.

Before either of them knew it, Nelli's body practically fell into Eiro's, and the Demon felt the surge of cold water travel through his body as a notification appeared.

[Your body has merged with the Naiad, Nellissa Arigata]

Eiro's arms, legs, and parts of his back were covered in a thin layer of water. Underneath that water, the blue parts of his skin had spread outward completely, so that even the parts that weren't covered in water had blue spots creeping up on them, although it mostly stayed the same crimson red as always.

Despite the water covering Eiro's limbs, it didn't necessarily look all that unnatural, even. It wasn't like what Eiro did when he covered his body with water magic normally, but it actually took the shape of Eiro's own body. His hands could be used normally, and his palms did actually still have their skin revealed, although it was just wood when it came to his right hand, and the same seemed to be the case for the soles of his feet.

To top it off, while Eiro's clothes were obviously pressing right onto the water, the cloth didn't become wet at all. It was like the water was 'dry'. Well, it was how Nelli's magic water did usually work, it couldn't be used to do things like water plants either, so it made sense.

And right around Eiro's body, the demon could see some droplets of water floating around him, just like they did with Nelli's body.

But there was something else that Eiro could see. It was something completely new, something that mixed into all of his senses at once while being uniquely different to any of them. He was able to see, smell, feel, hear, and somewhat even taste the mana around him.

It was an amazing new feeling to an extent, although the actual mana was quite sickening. It still had the miasma that came from the original <The World> mixed into it. Since Eiro was feeling bad about it even without this new sensation, it was obvious that he would be disgusted by it like this.

'This is amazing...' A thought popped into Eiro's mind, although it wasn't his own by any means. It was a thought produced by Nelli's consciousness, which currently existed inside of Eiro's body beside the Demon's own.

"It really is, isn't it?" Eiro replied with a smirk on his face.

'Can we try something out? Could you try and create water yourself without me?' Nelli asked him with another thought, and Eiro slowly nodded his head. He raised his hand forward and it was as if knowledge simply poured into Eiro's mind.

It was similar to what Eiro experienced whenever one of his skills got to the Intermediate grade. How he got a deeper understanding of Water magic, of how to properly use his dagger and how to deeply interact with wood he was carving. And of course, the sudden knowledge of different words that Eiro hadn't even heard of before at that point.

The knowledge that Eiro gained through this was the knowledge on how to create water on his own. Mana poured out of the demon's body like a river and cumulated in front of his palm. Bit by bit, and drop by drop, a small amount of magic water was created in front of Eiro.

[Apprentice Spirit Magic skill leveled up!]

[Apprentice Spirit Magic skill leveled up!]

Eiro looked at the notifications in surprise. Sure, with two spirits, it seemed like it was rather easy to level this skill up, but... It still took Eiro at least a couple of days of intense practice to level this skill up normally at this lower apprentice stage.

But just when Eiro thought that... He became incredibly tired, and he was overwhelmed by a strong, stinging headache. And the moment that Eiro realized what was going on, both his and Nelli's consciousness made the active decision to split up again, and so Nelli swiftly appeared in front of the Demon's body again, floating there similarly exhausted.

"Seems like it takes a bit too much mana to do this for now, huh..?" Eiro pointed out, and the Naiad looked at him with a silent nod, seemingly thinking for a little while.

"Yeah, but... really, that is an amazing ability! And... tell me when I'm wrong, but your understanding of water magic should be a fair bit higher now, isn't that right?" Nelli asked, seemingly quite excited, and Eiro slowly nodded his head.

"I still remember how I managed to create the water. I doubt I can reproduce it in the same manner just like this, but I definitely feel closer to it."

"And to top it off, it's only 'Minor Elemental Fusion', right? What would happen if you had the full version, or even a 'Major' one?"

"I don't know, but... My guess is that I'm going to get more abilities the stronger I get. Right now, my chance to survive activating the card is 1%, so my guess is it works similar to the three of swords, or maybe even my prosthetic. The higher the percentage rises, the more I'll be able to make use of it."

After that explanation, Eiro started stepping over toward the others again with Nelli floating right next to him. And while Eiro was rubbing the bridge of his nose, annoyed at the headache he was feeling, he heard the slime core say something from inside the bottle in the bag.

"S-So you really are <The World>... now?" It asked, and Eiro stared down toward it with a light frown, "As I said before, I'm a candidate. I'm not actually <The World>."

"Where's the di-difference?! You're the closest to... to being <The World> th-there is!"

"Hm... that might be true." Eiro muttered quietly as he turned over toward the carriage and then toward Felix. Getting his attention wasn't too hard, since Eiro could simply blow out a little bit of air and push it toward him with some air magic. It usually startled him a little, but it wasn't as bad as when Eiro just stepped up to him from behind.

When Felix looked at him, Eiro quickly pointed at Sammy and Leon, then at the carriage, and then did the handsigns for 'make space' to tell Felix to push things around a bit so that Leon and Sammy could lay down in there.

As Felix nodded his head and stepped into the carriage to get started, the Demon pushed his hands under Leon's body and quickly picked the child up before bringing him to the carriage. There, he quickly put him down on one of the cushioned seats where he could properly lay down. Leon luckily didn't really move all that much whenever he was sleeping, so Eiro didn't worry about him falling off too much.

And then, Eiro swiftly helped Felix clear out enough space so that he could lay Sammy down on the ground properly, before making his way outside to go and get her.

Eiro put her down on a blanket that Felix laid onto the ground and then covered her in another, different blanket as well. On his way out, Eiro grabbed a small piece of wood that he kept in here to keep carving whenever he could, and then just stepped up to the front of the carriage, where Clementine and Avalin were currently sitting on the front-bench of the carriage where Arc was usually sitting when driving.

"Are you two alright?" Eiro asked, wanting to make sure that the two of them were actually handling the bit of miasma in here properly, and Clementine quickly nodded her head, "Yeah, I'm fine! But... what about you? You seem to be a little bit in pain..?"

"Hm?" Eiro replied as he looked at the young girl surprised, and then slowly realized what she was talking about. Running low on mana usually had this kind of effect on him, where he got incredibly tired and it took him a while to properly follow even his own thoughts. That, and the headache that Clementine was seemingly sensing from Eiro.

"Right, yeah... Just a bit low on mana, I overdid it when testing out a new ability. Nothing a little bit of rest can't fix." Eiro reassured her, and watched as Felix came stepping out of the carriage as well, closing the door behind him.

The Demon quickly told him to go ahead and sit down next to Clementine and Avalin, to which the young man swiftly agreed while Eiro pulled his carving knife out of his treasury and started carving into the block of wood that he just grabbed. He wanted to get used to his increased dexterity properly some more, just to make sure that he wasn't somehow going to mess up when he tried fixing his hand up.

It was fine for the most part, but there were still a few cuts and notches in it that were somewhat annoying because basically everything got caught on them. That wasn't necessarily useful when trying to kill a dangerous monster.

Of course Eiro had replacement-parts for his hand, but he also had a few pieces of wood just like that. It was a waste to replace its parts just because of a few nicks, after all. So, Eiro just wanted to cut small pieces and splinters of wood off some of the wood he took from his own tree back then to fill everything in.

Hopefully it would end up as good as new. After Eiro made sure that his hands were working properly, Eiro got out a small piece of his own light blue wood and scraped away a tiny piece, before pressing it into the cut he made it for to see if it properly fit.

Eiro pushed his other hand into his satchel to grab the glue he had and then tried to pull the splinter off, before he noticed.... the splinter had merged into the wood of his prosthetic just like that, without needing any sort of adhesive.