Demon's Virtue

After the carriage had been properly prepared and everyone was ready to leave, Eiro first told them what he was planning on doing next.

"We're heading off to see Solomon now. We're mostly going to bring back this carriage, but I guess I could also check in on that boy's leg." Eiro pointed out, and Arc slowly leaned back against the side of the carriage, "And what then? We gonna live in Skyhart from now on?" The boy asked, and Eiro slowly nodded his head.

"I was thinking of letting you guys attend school there. The one that Solomon mentioned." He explained, and the children stared at him with a mixture of confusion and excitement.

"School? With other people our age?" Clementine asked with a broad smile, one that Eiro quickly returned, "That's the idea, yes. I could continue teaching you whatever you need to know myself, but even I don't know anything. From what I gathered, a school is a place where you can study up on anything, right? I want to give you guys the chance to do that."

After the first major excitement subsided a bit, Rudy looked down at Avalin, who was getting second-hand excitement despite not really knowing what was going on, "But that means we would all have to live in a big town, right? What about Avalin? The rest of us can hide our abilities, because they don't change anything about what we look like, but... If it's exposed that she's the Holy Priestess, that's going to be realy bad, right? And even if she has those contacts, what if she forgets to put them in one day in the future? It just needs to happen once, and we're screwed! That's way too risky, right?"

"Of course it is. But I already have an idea for that." Eiro explained, pushing his hand into his satchel to take out the small box with Avalin's special contact-lenses in them, "Last night, I tried to Merge with Nelli again, and then noticed that these lenses work with magic. That was a bit obvious, to be fair, but now I know that they work with Light Magic specifically. The only school of Light Magic I know that could do that would be Illusion Magic." The Demon pointed out and looked over toward Clementine.

"It was similar to Clementine's Light Magic, after all. And I also tried to figure out Leon's and Avalin's affinities yesterday. Leon's affinities are with Darkness and Earth Magic, and there seems to be a specific combination for them that he's got a talent for. I don't know which, though. And Avalin has an affinity for general Light magic. So, I'm thinking of teaching her illusion spells so that she can hide her eyes herself. Of course the contacts will always be an amazing option, but just in case she ever gets into a situation where she can't wear them, I think it would be better to have magic to fall back on."

After a bit of thought on this idea, Nelli nodded her head and floated up to the young girl, "Yeah, illusion magic should definitely help. And she does have a great amount of mana... She is the Holy Priestess, after all. Ah, by the way, you should also teach her how to control that part. Or else there are going to be completely different ways to find out who she is."

"Hmm, that's true. Well, we have a little bit of time to worry about that, I think. For now, we should probably head off. But just to make sure, all of you are alright with going to school, right?"

"Of course we are!" Clementine exclaimed. She seemed to be mostly excited about the parts about school that weren't study-related, though. Either way, since everyone was agreeing with her, Eiro figured that they should just get going. They've spent a couple of days inside of this place, so now it was time to leave.

Eiro didn't really get the chance to kill any more monsters and level up, but that wasn't really that big a deal. He could just do that whenever he wanted anyway. There were more than enough monsters in the wild to get experience from if the demon actually went out of his way to go and look for them.

The Demon climbed onto the back of Lugo, slowly rubbing his hand over his head, although it didn't really seem to be that comfortable for him. After all, Eiro still had cuts in his hand that he didn't fix yet, but he would spend some time doing that now.

"I'll go first, so just follow me." Eiro instructed Arc as the demon placed his mask onto his face. Lugo started walking forward toward the gate leading to town while the two Aria did the same. And like that, their trip toward their new home begun.

---

Over the next week, the group made their way toward the capital of Skyhart as quickly as they could while stopping as little as possible. Whenever they had the chance, Eiro helped Leon practice the activation of his skills, then helped Sammy get her voice under control some more, or tried to instruct Felix on the basics of woodcarving, and with that sculpting.

Of course, if there was the chance to, Eiro also used the 'Minor Elemental Fusion' ability to fuse with either Gondos or Nelli, and even managed to increase the level of his Spirit Magic skill by another 5 levels! The first of those times he could level it up twice with all of his mana, but for the last couple ones he only managed to level it up once with all the mana in his body. It was kind of annoying, but gaining five levels in a skill really wasn't that bad if he thought about it. It was at the level of a very low-leveled beginner-grade skill that you had a high talent for, after all. Like when Eiro learned the 'Common Language Comprehension' skill.

And Eiro was doing that with a low-mid-leveled Apprentice-Grade skill, and that even without . It was obviously pretty amazing. But at some point, Eiro couldn't continue this sort of practice as easily anymore. That was because they managed to get through the first wall of Skyhart's capital.

The way that this huge town worked was actually pretty similar to Argberg, the dwarven craftsman town they were at just a couple weeks ago, but at the same time completely different. The whole town was built on flat-land, but it also had three 'layers' to it. But they weren't necessarily split up by status, but more by functionality.

The outermost layer was the one that had the most space, and was occupied mostly by farmland. There were buildings scattered across the place here and there, but those were just the places that a few of the actual farmers lived at. Either that, or barns for different animals that were raised out here.

There were also large areas occupied by forests so that wood could be procured safely without the threat of monsters, as well as windmills that seemed to be there to grind things like wheat down into flour. Basically, out here, any sort of material or animals that was needed in the other layers was produced here.

Then there was the second layer, which was where the actual town was supposed to start. Here, the majority of people lived. Of course, it was still somewhat split up into sections of where you could go, but it wasn't like people were forced to leave. It was just the kind of natural grouping of people that were alike. Nobles stayed in one area, the scum of the earth in another.

The last layer was actually once more split up into two areas. One area where the royal castle stood, and another where the world-famous Skyhart Academy stood, overlooked by that royal castle.

Eiro could already see those two large structures climb into the sky in the distance, but they were obviously still a fair distance away from there. First, they had to get through the outermost layer and to the town. After that they had to maneuver through the town safely and then get up to the castle. This really wouldn't be an issue, since he had the brooch that Solomon gave him.

It was getting pretty late in the day when they finally reached the gate, and through the fact that they were driving a carriage drawn by Aria, they were immediately let to the front of the line of people wanting to enter town, and even got in without too much of a checkup after Eiro showed them the brooch.

"Arc, there's a lot of people here, so watch out with those two." Eiro suggested, pointing at the two Aria, and the young man slowly nodded his head.

Eiro kept leading the carriage toward the royal castle, although the Demon was a bit annoyed by what was going on around them at the moment. They were being followed by a group of different people. And most of them didn't even seem to be in the same group or organization, so it most likely was just because of the carriage and the Aria, rather than because of Eiro or the children. A couple of them were actually carrying Adventurer's Guild cards with them. From what Eiro was told by Tom back then, a lot of adventurers actually doubled as informants, so of course someone presumed to be a noble suddenly appearing with the king's brooch was something people would be interested in.

But the Demon still didn't like the feeling of being watched, so with a rather annoyed expression, Eiro looked at Gondos and asked him to create a number of small rocks.

Small rocks that he then shot in front of the feet of each of his pursuers to let them know that he was more than just aware of them being there. Some of them seemed to be scared off by that alone, although there was still a handful of them that kept following. It seemed like those guys were actually more interested in what they were doing in this town than before... So maybe that actually wasn't the best tactic, but it was enough for Eiro.

It wasn't like they were going to follow them to the royal castle anyway, so those last few people would end up having to leave as well.

And so, the pursuers stopped the moment that Eiro showed the brooch to the guards at the front of the castle-gates, and Eiro and the children were led up to the actual castle soon thereafter.

After all, now it was time for a little audience with the King, Solomon Sigurd Skyhart, himself.