Demon's Virtue

"Who else would like to try their luck? It would be great if I could make it to the single digits today, you know?" Eiro pointed out, slowly glancing down at the tag that he was holding in his hand, which at this point read the number '23'. Well, that made sense to an extent, considering that Eiro killed 9 different people in a pretty short amount of time without taking a single point of damage. And two of those people were actually of a better rank than Eiro at the time. And while this was happening, Eiro even leveled up a few more times, and even reached level 8! 

He continued assigning his stat points somewhat randomly into his stats so that it would seem more like they grew to that point naturally. And of course, that still increased Eiro's power a bit, considering that he still increased his stats by a total of 40 points.

A rather large amount of people had gathered here, after hearing that the guy that literally just became a member today was already close to reaching the single-digit range, something that others didn't manage to achieve even after many years of hard work.

"Really? Nobody?" Eiro asked with a sigh, "Yeah, I figured, you all seemed like scaredy cats anyway. Out of my way, I'll take care of this in another way, then." The Demon told them as he slowly made his way toward the exit of this space, while the corpse of the latest person that Eiro killed was being carried out of the room by some of those 'minions'. Similarly to the three corpses that Eiro had at the manor, which had been reduced to one and a half corpses at this point, their internal structure had been completely modified and changed. Eiro was surprised that they were even able to function like this, but it probably had something to do with the special research that was going on in this organization.

But just as Eiro was walking through the crowd, followed by John, he noticed that there was someone else here. Someone with something a bit surprising written on their tag.

"Oh, what are you doing here, Mister Z?" Eiro asked as he turned his head over toward the man, who just smirked back at him, "Figured I'd check out this rookie. Someone told me I'd probably have a new challenger soon."

"Information travels quickly, I see. Let me guess, there's no ways for us to hold this kind of duel already, is there?" Eiro asked bluntly, and the man, the 'Letter Z', stared back at the demon with a light smirk, "I'm afraid not, bud. Not even outside. If a Number just kills a Letter outside, they're sadly banished from the organization, so I don't think that would be worth it to you."

"I'm glad to see that you're already acknowledging the fact that I would kill you." Eiro smiled lightly. The man grinned and stepped to the side to let Eiro through toward the room, "I ain't conceited enough to think there'd be no chance for me to be killed, ya know?"

"Hm... Well, at least not everyone here's a complete moron." And with that, Eiro swiftly made his way out of the building and went straight for the building he was in before, where he basically 'signed up'. That was because this organization weirldy enough worked a lot like the Adventurer's guild, at least if you were in the two-digit range. Because at that point, you were able to work on those special requests that John mentioned before.

The Demon made his way inside and quickly stepped up to the desk that the same female exclamation-mark from before was sitting at, "Welcome back." She said with a blank expression, and Eiro immediately got to the point.

"Show me what kinda 'quests' or whatever there are right now." Eiro told her, and the woman slightly sighed and nodded her head. She got out a small booklet and handed it to the Demon, "This is a special notebook that has been directly connected to the central 'Tome of Quests' that we hold. In there, you will be able to find 100 random currently active quests. Choose up to three that you wish to take and rip the page out of the book, if you please."

"How often are these requests taken?" The demon asked, and the exclamation-mark slowly shook her head, "Amongst those that can actively take quests, only 13 have actively taken on a quest in the past week. Others are simply not interested and prefer finding ways to increase their strength rather than their rank."

Eiro slowly flipped the booklet open as he listened to the exclamation mark explain the system, and soon noticed that this may be a bit more annoying than he thought. At first, he thought that there would be proper explanations like he was used to from Adventurer's Guild requests, but instead, all it said were the 'names' of the quests. They gave Eiro a rough idea of what they may be about, but none of it was really specific. 

In the end, he figured that he would get more information from the exclamation-mark after making his choise. He ripped three pages out of the book with titles that didn't seem too troublesome, and then all of a sudden, all three of them turned to dust and completely disappeared before they even hit the ground. And then, notifications appeared in front of Eiro.

[You have taken three Quests from the <Tome of Quests>]

[Murder the Murderer]

[Time Limit] 1 Week

[Description] A young woman was viciously killed and gutted in the slums around last midnight. Fine the murderer and dispose of him. 

[Reward] 1 large Gold

[Penalty] Murderer becomes aware of your existence and will try anything in their power to get rid of you

[Dispose of the evidence]

[Time Limit] 1 Day

[Description] The house of an important merchant has been broken into, but evidence possibly leading to the arrest of the perpetrator has been left at the crime scene. Get rid of it.

[Reward] 5 large Silver

[Penalty] The Merchant becomes aware of your existence and starts believing you are the one that broke into his house

[Prison Rat]

[Time Limit] 1 Week

[Description] There is a rat hiding out in the prisons. It stole the Warden's precious possession. Retrieve the possession and return it to the Warden without him noticing it was gone. 

[Reward] Copy of the central prison key

[Penalty] The Warden becomes aware of your existence and starts believing you stole his precious possession 

"Alright... What actually is that 'Tome of Quests'? Can it create things out of nowhere, or what's going on?" Eiro asked with a deep frown as he ran his fingers through all the notifications in front of him, while the exclamation-mark looked up at the Demon from her seated position.

"I am afraid you cannot find out more about the 'Tome of Quests' until you are a Letter. For now, all you need to know is that you should better finish those quests. Usually, the penalty for failing and the reward for succeeding are quite... unbalanced."

"You can say that again, although they all follow a pattern...�� The Demon groaned, "At the very least tell me if I can get all these quests done here in town."

"Of course. All quests are created to fit the place they are taken. Usually they don't extend outside the town. Also, a small side comment, since it is something you may be able to find out through conversation with other members anyway... The quests' penalty depends on the things you don't want to happen. If you have something you can never let go of, the penalty for an especially important quest may be that that 'something' simply breaks, gets lost, or ceases to exist in the first place."

"Hm, that so?" Eiro asked, "Well, that's good to know then. They penalties are certainly quite... motivating, to say the least."

"That's the point." The exclamation-mark replied bluntly, and Eiro looked down at her once more, "Also, how exactly will my rank increase after I finish these quests?"

"It happens automatically. Just finish the quest, and your rank will increase. Simple as that." She replied swiftly, and Eiro soon turned around to be on his way to finish the more troublesome one, the 'Dispose of the evidence' quest, "Interesting." Eiro muttered to himself as he left the building and walked along the streets, before leaving through the single exit.

And as he walked through the slums, he was starting to think about what exactly was going on at the moment, and the fact that a lot of these things just didn't really seem to fit together. There is more behind all of this, and Eiro really doesn't like it. But for now, he had to deal with it. Once he managed to become a letter, then he would be able to figure out more information to confirm his suspicions.

"Those quests..." Nelli soon said once she made sure that Eiro could really respond this time around, "Do you think..."

"That Enka got one of them, and that was the reason why he tried to pin the murder of that craftsman on me? Yeah, excatly my thought." Eiro pointed out, "But really, this is getting more and more bothersome. If I'm unlucky, then there's already a quest about finding the 'odd one out' in the organization. Honestly, there's just so much that's just completely weird about this."

"Hm, weird, in what way exactly?" The naiad asked, and the golem next to her soon showed similar curiosity, "Do you think you are being tricked, somehow?"

"Well, that's not completely off, I guess. I can't be completely sure, but it all feels so wrong. Quite literally, actually." Eiro pointed out, and Nelli and Gondos slowly looked at each other a bit confused, before even Bavet asked about something. He hadn't been 'allowed' to speak until now in case someone would hear, but now that they weren't around anyone troublesome, it was fine. He practically whispered into Eiro's ear.

"Was it that thing from before? After we fused, I started feeling something a bit as well... There was something off about the notifications, right? Those 'Quest Notifications'?" Bavet asked, and Eiro slowly started to smirk as he looked down at the tips of his fingers on his left hand.

"Exactly so. Usually, the mist from the notifications is the same temperature as the surrounding space. The only thing that somewhat changes it is the slight air movement because of my fingers. But the mist from those notifications was different. It was cold." Eiro explained, "It was maybe... ten degrees celsius or so? It was just like that for a second, and incredibly weak in the first place, but I could tell that the whole notification was slightly, well, cold."

"And what does that mean?" Bavet asked, something that both Nelli and Gondos also wanted to know about, and the Demon groaned deeply at the fact that they didn't realize it themselves.

"It's simple, isn't it? While we were told that the organization just has three or so Cards, it seems like they have a few more than that."