Demon's Virtue

Eiro stood in the library of his mind. He saw that which was around him, or at least that which he imagined to be around him using his <Memory of a Scholar> ability. It was one that allowed him to remember every part of his past perfectly. So what if he combined this ability with itself to let Eiro remember just one part of his past?

One part that was broken, a part that he had to go through again and again, slowly filling in the gaps by remembering. By forcing himself to remember.

That is what Eiro tried next. He stood in the center of the area that he used to act the different memories out to make use of muscle-memory, and overlapped this ability with itself. Basically, he was trying to combine the aspect of his ability that allowed him to dive into a single memory with the aspect that allowed him to recall all these memories in general.

And that did something that messed Eiro's mind up rather quickly. He forgot most of the things that he did in his life immediately. Of course, it wasn't to the extent of a sort of Amnesia as he experienced before, but rather, he was now at the level at which other people were able to remember their life.

Mostly, they knew all that they had to know, but they couldn't remember every situation with particular detail. But then again, due to Eiro's rather high Wisdom and Intelligence, his base-ability to memorize and remember things was a lot better than that of the average person in the first place.

But to Eiro, it seemed as if he had lost all his memories for a moment. Of course he knew that this wasn't the case, but it felt like it for a moment.

Either way, what Eiro was focusing on now was a single memory. A memory that he still fully held, just to test this out. He didn't want to mess himself up immediately. Every book in the library changed to be the same book. The same color and thickness, and even weight. They were all completely identical to each other.

Eiro picked up one of the books, and remembered the situation he narrowed it down to. It was literally just a calming memory of Eiro wandering through the forest back home. And when he closed the book, he picked up another and opened it up. It was the same exact memory.

And that showed that it worked out. Eiro felt only that memory coursing through his mind the whole time. It helped him calm down, actually. His powerful ability was completely focused on this memory, making Eiro's immersion feel somehow... stronger than before. As if he was currently there in that moment, but also still right where he was. In two places, and in two different times, both at once.

It was interesting, to say the least.

Slowly, Eiro removed the focus of this exact memory, and quickly returned to normal. He spent a short while focusing on trying to figure out if there were any damages done to Eiro's memories through this just now, but luckily that wasn't the case.

The Demon smiled softly as he went for the next step. He tried to make his <Memory of a Scholar> focus on a broken memory. One of those that were close to completion, but not just there. Just in case something might go wrong with this, Eiro wanted to minimize the damage.

But the moment that Eiro did this, he felt... Weird. As if his body was harder to move, as if it became heavier or Eiro started walking through a swamp with muddy sludge up to his chin.

That was the part of Eiro that was currently inside of the broken memory, completely immersed in it. Because the memory was incomplete, Eiro wasn't able to truly go through it. The memory was pushing him away, keeping him in place in the part that he remember most, which really wasn't a lot to begin with.

But slowly, as Eiro tried to fully immerse himself in only this broken memory by moving around like he did within it as well, the Demon was able to proceed. Much quicker than he was able to before, and it seemed like the right scraps were falling from the dark ceiling of this room.

With a smile on his face, Eiro continued, and was able to quickly finish the memory. The moment he did so, Eiro's mind cleared up and instead of his body feeling like he was trapped in a muddy swamp, the Demon felt light and able to move around however he wanted to.

And then, Eiro tried it with the next memory. And then the next. Not only was this a lot quicker than before, but it was also far less exhausting. Since Eiro was focusing on only one thing, his mind was practically freed from everything else, which made this job extremely simple to him.

Eiro smiled lightly and proceeded to start trying to do the same for other memories that he had. There were still aspects of his memories missing for some of them, but again, he would figure out what sort of aspects they were later and complete them afterward. It was only about a tenth of the memories that had a small portion of parts that were influenced by that aspect of memories.

That meant that Eiro was able to finish up more than 90% of his work by the end of his day, nearly a full day earlier than he had thought.

With a broad smile on his face, Eiro stepped out of his library and looked at Lognir, "Couldn't you have told me about this sort of thing a bit earlier? That would have made everythina lot easier."

"How was I supposed to know you would be able to master this step so easily? Really, you're quite talented with these things. Getting new skills or abilities must be in your actual 'talents' somehow."

"Are you sure about that?" Eiro asked with a wry smile, "Actually, I don't think so."

Lognir turned toward Eiro with his brows raised curiously, "What do you mean?"

"I think, rather, I don't have any talents at all." The Demon said, and Lognir let out a deep sigh, "That's clearly not-"

"But I don't have anything holding me back either." Eiro interrupted. The Dragon looked back at Eiro for a few moments in confusion, not sure what he was trying to say. But then, he understood.

"You think that because you were an artificial creation, you are not limited by things such as 'talents' or 'boundaries'?"

Immediately, Eiro nodded his head, "That's exactly it. None of my skills level up particularly faster or slower than others. And if they do, it's because of their rarity rather than talents. When I do magic-talent tests, it only shows the 'affinity' for elements that I already absorbed somehow. It doesn't show me the possibility of other elements, but I can rather easily gain any element I wish as long as I have access to a pure form of the magic in question. I don't have any talent toward particular branches of magic either."

"...That would not be possible, child. If I understood correctly, your creation is similar to the creation of Spirits, is it not? Creating something without any talents or boundaries is impossible for the Planet itself, so how would the Monster King be able to do so?"

Eiro slowly turned his head to the side, looking directly at Nelli, who nodded her head in response. Lognir was an incredibly old being, and he was directly connected to truth, while obviously being insanely knowledgeable about many things that Eiro never even heard about.

Maybe... Lognir knew about this.

Eiro looked into the Dragon's eyes and took a deep breath, "Have you heard of... Someone being given Stat Points every time they level up that they can freely assign to their stats?" Eiro asked. Immediately, Lognir ripped his eyes open wide, confused at what the Demon was hinting at.

"There... There is no way..." Lognir muttered quietly as he took a step back confused, "What are you?"

Eiro looked back at Lognir, just as confused as he was. He didn't think that such a question would shock him that much... Of course, it was nothing normal, Eiro knew that, but was it really anything worth freaking out about this much? And it wasn't just that Lognir was surprised at the possibility, but rather... That he was scared of Eiro. Or at least, he was anxious. Extremely so.

But a few moments later, Lognir calmed himself down, "No, there's no way... Eiro, are you sure that you understand the implications of what you just said?"

"Of course I don't, that's why I asked. It seemed natural to me for the longest time, until Nelli told me that it absolutely was anything but natural. You seem to know something about this, though."

"...Indeed I do. But first, could you show me how this... ability works?"

Eiro slowly nodded as he took out a small notebook from his treasury together with a pen, quickly sketching out what his status looks like.

"The rest of your status is the same as normal, but that line underneath your stats is not. And then how do you 'assign' these stats?"

Eiro looked at the piece of paper and explained, "I simply think of the stat I want to give a point to, and then it's added. That's it."

"You can choose any stat you wish?" Lognir asked with a slight frown, before Eiro nodded again, "Yes. So... Do you know of something like this?"

"I know of something similar, at least. But seeing how your ability works still makes me wonder about some certain things." The Dragon looked at Eiro with a deep frown, his golden-white eyes sparking up for just a second.

Eiro could see a notification appear in front of Lognir's eyes. It said something in a language that Eiro didn't know, so he couldn't read it, but it seemed quite important, at least judging from Lognir's reaction.

"Ah, so that's it... That would explain it, to an extent at least." Lognir explained, "You see, there are a certain few beings in this world with assigned 'roles'. One of them must exist at any point in time. Those beings are, for example, the Monster King and the Hero. There are different ones as well, less well-known and certainly less powerful at times. All of these beings were created through the same 'energy' of the universe. That energy crystalized at the dawn of this world, and shattered into pieces at one point. Each shard of that energy held immense power. Some were taken by God-like beings and turned into artifacts. These are referred to as 'Shards'. And then, other parts fused with the souls of the living and became the System we all see. These are referred to as 'Fragments'." Lognir explained.

"And then, there are those that hold extremely pure and powerful parts of that primordial energy. Those are those special beings. These parts are called 'Splinters'. At some point, those splinters gathered in one place in one way or another. Some gathered and became 'Clusters' that turned them into a part of the world. The Hero and the Monster King are such beings." 

Eiro listened to Lognir, although he felt something rather eery creep up on him in the back of his mind as he heard the word 'Splinter'. And then, Lognir explained the point of this 'lesson'.

"Those that hold these 'Clusters' within them have the ability to control the distribution of 'stat points' being added to their stats."