Demon's Virtue

Eiro wrapped his arms around the figure ahead of him and pulled it to the ground, to make sure that he really caught the puppet like he wanted to.

And as he did, the puppet appeared in front of him. The two looked at each other as Eiro extended his perception once more, and then Eiro looked at the puppet's chest. The puppet pressed its hand against a new area, when it pulled out another blank token and handed it to Eiro. This meant that he now unlocked the possibility of giving it three different tokens.

Altogether, like this, Eiro unlocked four more different modes. He still had a few hours until the sun would go down, so maybe he should try and get through one of the new ones for now. But which one...

"Eiro?" The Demon heard in the distance, "Where the hell are you?"

Eiro turned around and looked in the direction of the sound's source. It was James, and he seemed annoyed. Judging from his tone of voice... He probably called for Eiro a couple of times already, but he didn't notice because he limited his perception so that he could chase the puppet properly.

"Sorry, is something wrong?" Eiro asked as he approached the light elf, but James just sighed deeply, following by a cough-attack because he forgot that he shouldn't waste his breath like that right now.

"Could we try training a bit?" He suggested. Eiro raised his brows surprised as he looked at him, "You sure you can do that already?"

"Of course I can, I'm not some little bitch." James pointed out bluntly, while Eiro crossed his arms, "Hm, you know what? Sure, let's give it a try. But we'll stop the moment I notice you're struggling."

"Don't patronize me like that, man. Just come on over, let's start before it gets dark." James turned around and started making his way toward the training area, grasping both of his daggers. Of course James' wooden arm wasn't capable of moving that well yet, since it was just regular magic wood instead of the special kind that James was feeding mana to every day, but it should still be able to help him out a bit.

"Then let's start with the basics. And before you say anything, let's just see this as a warm-up of sorts." Eiro suggested as he waved his hand, pulling some snow from a few meters away toward him. That snow was formed into small, marble-sized spheres that the Demon had float in the air in front of James.

"Try to break them all as quickly as possible. We'll start to 'measure' once you first move with intention to break one of them."

"Urgh..." James groaned, "This one again?"

"Yes, this one again." Eiro replied bluntly, "It helps you analyze patterns more easily, and its a good way for me to make sure that you move cleanly."

"Right..." James said. He took a deep breath, pulling in slowly and steadily. The muscles in his chest around his lungs tensed up quite a bit, but for now, James didn't seem to have too much of an issue breathing. It seemed like his body adapted to its new 'state' rather easily.

James swung his arm as he pressed one of his feet forward, moving to cut through some of the marbles of snow. Eiro started measuring how long it was taking him, and a few seconds later, James only had a set of four of them left. Perfectly in a line, so he could cut through them in one go.

The light elf swung his dagger downward and cut through them. The moment that James pulled back into his base stance, Eiro stopped measuring his time.

"Huh, roughly half as fast as you usually are." Eiro said, and James snapped his head to lock eyes with him, "What? What do you mean?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong, that's a good thing. If you were able to move just the way you normally do with those sorts of restrictions, you wouldn't need this specail training in the first place. I expected you to be only a quarter or a third as good as before, but the fact that you're already half as good means that your body is changing incredibly quickly in response to what I did to you." Eiro explained, properly looking James up and down as he was doing so, "On the other hand..."

James seemed a bit surprised, as he understood what Eiro was saying, however he was still kind of nervous about what was coming next, "What is it?" He asked with heavy breaths.

"Stamina, obviously. The way you're now, it's like you have the stamina of a man that was in a coma for half a year, so you have to work on yourself in that regard a bit more. I would say put more focus on your stamina for now, since your progress is otherwise incredibly impressive already." Eiro explained. James grumbled quietly, as he turned away and took up his stance again, "I don't wanna admit it, but you got better at explaining shit since you started teaching..."

"What do you expect, it's my literal job right now." Eiro said with a wry smile, as he waved his hand and brought the marbles of snow up into the air again so that James could continue doing this same thing as a warm-up.

--- 

Eiro sat on a block of ice as he watched both James and Krog practice. Seeing that James was actively working on improving himself already, Krog figured that he should 'man up' and do the same. So while James was doing a guided practice to improve his stance, since it was a bit more sloppy than usual, Krog was starting to do basic bodyweight-based muscle training as Eiro instructed him to.

It was actually surprisingly fun to watch them train while they were in that much pain after begging Eiro to do this to them. His sadistic side came out in such situations.

"Aaargh!" Krog screamed out, while Eiro rested his hand on his palm and looked at the heavy warrior, "What, something wrong?"

Krog was finishing up his set of situps, and it seemed like he had a sudden cramp that caused him quite a lot of pain. He just turned toward Eiro and glared at him, unable to speak due to the pain, while the Demon was enjoying himself.

However, those two weren't the only ones practicing right now. Ariella also took a part of the training area for herself, and was doing spear-practice. Well, it was almost more like a lance than a spear, or something in-between that. In actual combat she seemingly also used a shield and wore armor, on top of using magic in a synergetic manner with her combat.

She really was quite powerful, although, especially after seeing her practice a couple of times... Ariella didn't particularly seem powerful enough to take on a royal in any capacity. Even if Eiro had let her get the help of Avalin, they probably would have died before even seeing 'the Devil'.

So maybe he should find a way to make her stronger as well. He might end up finding some ways to do that once they killed Zaragon in the Holy Empire's capital. The Demon let out a deep sigh as he was stuck a bit in thought.

He crossed his arms and looked up at the sky.

"Hm... Maybe I'll find a way..." 

--- 

During the night a few days later, Eiro stood on the roof of his manor. He was wearing his armor that was made by Armodeus, as well as his good old mask made by Jura. It's been a while since he wore this, and it somehow made him feel a bit more confident. It felt familiar, so he might be able to fight a bit better like this. And of course, with the hood that was included in the armor, it also made it possible for the Demon to just hide his identity as a demon.

Now, he just had to wait. He waited and waited, until the hairs on the back of Eiro's neck stood up. With a wry smile, he said, "You could just come here like a normal person, you know?" Eiro pointed out, and he soon felt Koperia's hand on his shoulder, "But I'm not a normal person, sweetheart."

"I'm aware, don't worry." Eiro replied, "Now, you're all prepared, right?"

Eiro turned around and looked at Koperia, as well as the other figure standing beside her. It was a short figure, maybe 4 feet tall, with a large box on its back. Its face was blank, quite literally as it didn't have any sort of details like eyes, nose or even a mouth, and otherwise didn't move either. As if it was just a statue.

"And what's that one for?" Eiro asked, pointing at that undead, and Koperia quickly smiled, "Ah, this is just a special toy of mine! I use its help to harvest certain parts of my enemies... And this one enemy we are seeking out is quite unique, so I can't forego this chance."

"Right. Well, I guess it's good to be prepared. But let's just go for now, we should just get this over with. I'm sure there'll be some curious soldiers in the prison that didn't vacate the place as they were told, so we'll have to deal with that."

"Oh? Some more to-"

"And with 'deal with that' I mean that we're going to send them away under the authority of the king. We won't kill them."

"Awe...."