Demon's Virtue

Eiro followed the executive through the underground part of the organization's headquarters. Once more, they reached a door with runes inscribed onto it. Judging from how the executive was acting, Eiro would once more need to open this up himself using his tag, which now showed the Letter 'J'.

The Demon did just that, and the door opened up to let him inside. And from here, Eiro could already see the place where he wanted to be. This was the place where the research for the improvement on different artifacts was done. 

It was a large room with a number of walls lined up here to create some more artificial rooms. From just a quick scan-through of this place, it didn't seem like they were actively creating the artificial artifacts here. That made sense, Eiro already figured that they belonged to the overarching organization in the first place.

It was still a bit disappointing, but at the very least this organization had the funds to improve on already existing artifacts. And that meant that they had the knowledge of how to do it.

Eiro looked around the room, and on the other side, quickly saw a large bookshelf with numerous high-quality books lined up. The titles weren't written on the spines, but it seemed like they would be useful to the Demon.

Without hesitation, he rushed over there and pulled one of the books out of the shelf, "The advanced theory of artifacts." Eiro read out loud, "Interesting."

He flipped the book open and started to read it, then and there. It was rather quick of course. What he was doing now was just taking in the raw information so that this would end up in his mental library. There, he could read this again and again and analyze it more closely if he needed to.

After about a minute, Eiro was done 'reading' the first book, and placed it to the side, before grabbing the next one. For a good twenty minutes, Eiro continued doing this until one of the researchers here finally walked up to him.

"Excuse me? But those books aren't actually supposed to be accessible for members... Only executive, research, and leading members are allowed to read them. We could get in a lot of trouble for this, you see?"

Eiro turned his head toward the researcher and rolled his eyes underneath his mask. He held his right hand forward. It was currently covered in the gauntlet that Armodeus made for him, and of course that meant that the Three of Swords was also currently active and acting as the claws in this form. 

The Demon moved the blades out of the gauntlet and made them float around the researcher's face, "How would you improve these?" 

The researcher's eyes opened wide in shock, "The Three of Swords?! I thought this card was lost! A civilian stole this card from one of our members, and we didn't see we would ever see it again!" The researcher exclaimed. 

Eiro looked at the man standing next to him a bit surprised. He must be talking about the guy that Eiro got the card from in the first place. It really didn't seem like he was capable of handling it... Which showed after he was taken over by the blades nearly immediately.

"Well... Now what would I do for these...?" The researcher muttered curiously, "For one, I would probably improve on their shape a bit. They are quite small, so while they're good for attack, they aren't great for defense, so you will still always need something like a shield to block incoming attacks. Reforging artifacts is only possible in theory... Or rather, we didn't have the chance to test it out yet, but it should be possible... Maybe combining these blades into a single, more powerful one would be a good idea." 

Eiro looked at the researcher with a loud groan, "That's the dumbest idea that I've ever heard. For one, look at this." The Demon pulled out his dagger and made one of the blades wrap around it, before they combined. The dagger's blade was now floating there.

Not only that, but Eiro also walked up to a pretty thick square sheet of metal laying on a workstation near him and combined it with another one of the blades, effectively turning it into a shield-blade.

"Reforging them is completely unnecessary, and would get rid of a huge part of what makes these blades what they are. You would be downgrading them." Eiro explained, "And I don't want a downgrade. I want an upgrade."

The researcher stared at the items that so effortlessly combined with the Three of Swords' blades, trying to slightly touch them. Eiro could see that he was just curious, and considering that he was moving the blades closer to his face, Eiro wasn't worried about this guy suddeny trying to attack him.

"Then... The only restriction are these threads, are they not? Would it be possible to disconnect them from one another?" The researcher suggested. And this was more like what Eiro was hoping he would hear here.

The thing with these blades was that while it at first might seem that the thread was controlling the blades, that was really not the case. The blades were floating on their own, and the threads were loosely hanging there. They were basically just the connection between Eiro and the blades. Sure, it would take a long time until it was possible to control these blades like it was possible with these threads connected, but it would open up quite a few possibilities.

"Well, would it be? You tell me, you're the researcher. I'm not particularly caught up on the literature yet, as you can see." The Demon pointed out bluntly as he placed the book that he went through for now to the side to grab the next one. At this point, he read half of the books on this large shelf, but he still didn't really take in any of the information. He would take his time with that later. He didn't even know if there was going to be any useful information in these books at all.

It seemed like it, but that was because Eiro didn't know anything about it yet at all. It seemed slightly related to artificing, though, something that Eiro wanted to learn anyway.

But if he could, then he would just try to have Armodeus work on all of this. He would probably end up doing a far better job than Eiro ever could. If it wasn't wood, Eiro didn't really know how to handle it craftsmanship-wise, after all.

The researcher thought for a moment, and then nodded his head, "I'm pretty sure it would be. It would be necessary to establish some sort of link between the individual and the blade itself, however. It might be possible to harvest this special thread for that... It looks like it's able to conduct mana quite impressively."

"You have good eyes. You know what, I like you. If you bring me any other book that you have on improving on artifacts, I think I won't end up killing you." The Demon smiled softly underneath his mask, while the researcher was just confused.

"Ah, let me explain." Eiro said, and then immediately swung the Three of Swords' blades at the executive's throat. He cut through it immediately, and the executive's head flew through the air and landed on the ground a few meters away. 

"While I'm ecertainly a member of this organization, I'm not the kind that just plays along with the rules. My goal is to first become the Letter 'A', to then meet the leader of this shitty organization. And I think you're going to be quite some help with that, I'd say." The Demon explained bluntly.

"Ah, speaking of help, I do also still have an insane, cannibalistic 'Letter' in my home, locked down up there... I've been feeding him, but I want to make use of him somehow. So quick, think up something that I can use to make him fear me even while I'm not there." The Demon suggested, "But first deal with the books. That's more important for now."

The researcher slowly nodded his head, and turned around. Right now, he was the one that was scared of Eiro, "Oh, and tell your colleagues that if they want to live, they should try and help you out with your new job." The Demon exclaimed with a smile on his face, and went back to reading the books.

He was a bit annoyed that the executive's blood got on some of the books, but it was his own fault at the end of the day. Eiro was the one that chose to intimidate the researcher in this way.

Eiro rolled his eyes and continued reading the books for now. Once he was done with the shelf, the first group of researchers came over to him to give him more books to read. And it wasn't just books, but research papers and notes that they themselves were writing. Basically, it gave a lot more actual practical information that Eiro could make use of.

"Thank you. Now clean this guy's body up." The Demon said in a blunt tone, "He's starting to reek."

The researchers did as Eiro commanded them to, while Eiro kept on reading everything that he could. He was given some more notes over time, and some other executives came in here to try and stop Eiro, but they were all killed by Eiro rather quickly.

But after a few hours, Eiro was finally done. He read everything he could, but he didn't really take it in yet. He would do that later on, and then relay that information to Armodeus. The Demon stood up from where he was sitting and then walked around the room to take care of something else.

There was a group of four researchers here, all gathered around something like a crossbow. It seemed like they were trying to enhance it to try and kill Eiro as quickly as possible.

So, the Demon walked in there, grabbed the crossbow, and shot one of the researchers in the head. The bolt traveled through his head and shot out the other side, getting stuck in the skull of the researcher behind him.

While that one screamed in agony, Eiro hit another researcher over the head with the crossbow itself, "I can hear everything going on in this room, so don't even try to attack me. You won't be able to."

The Demon let out a deep groan, and left this smaller sub-room, starting to look for actual examples of how different items were enhanced.

And as he was doing so, another person entered the room. And it was one of the people that Eiro had been waiting for this whole time.

A 'Letter' with a rank above his own.