Demon's Virtue

Eiro looked at the monsters sitting in front of him, and then turned his head toward those that were still standing. Due to the sheer size of some of them, not all of them were already able to sit down, but luckily the ceilings were high enough to house them for now.

"Alright, so. I need you three to teach the other leaders how to speak common with extreme priority, alright?" The Demon said, "Because right now, I'm pretty sure they don't understand a word of what I'm saying." He slowly looked at the monster leaders, basically all of which were looking at him curiously, unsure what exactly he said.

"Eh..? But that's so much work..." Kitsue pointed out annoyed, before Eiro rolled his eyes, "I know it is, but I want you to do it anyway. The next time I come here, I want them to, at the very least, be able to greet me. And if possible, I want them to be able to do even more than that. Understood?" He explained to them, before Gobo, Kitsue, and Boju all slowly nodded their heads.

"Good. Now, I also need you to accomodate some of them a little bit for now. I already spent the time to change the form of some of the sealing collars, so I will put them on each of the leaders for now. I want you to concentrate on properly integrating them into this village first, alright? If they are no longer controlled by their monstrosity, it's going to be a lot easier to teach them things and live alongside them. Although for some of them, you don't need to worry too much." Eiro explained, looking in particular at the moleman leader and the seafolk leader, the latter of which was in control of multiple different races of water-based monsters, which is why Eiro referred to her as something other than her race for now, which was that of a siren.

The seafolk leader was currently in just a small pond of water that Eiro created for her here in the floor, since there was really no other way to have her join the discussion.

"Anyway, after each of the leaders is integrated, I want you to make sure to assign the leaders to the role of integrating the monsters they represent into the village as well. My guess is that the first ones this will affect will be the molemen. While they aren't particularly aggressive or powerful, meaning that they aren't really particularly threatening to anyone here, they're kind of... tricksters. They might end up playing a few pranks here and there. And since none of them fought back against me at all, there's a lot more of them than all the others I brought today. But that's a good thing to an extent. They will be able to work incredibly well with your earth mages, Boju." The Demon explained. "I was able to see the underground structures they built where I got them from, and it was really incredible. They don't speak as much as some of the others, but that's because their language is somewhat more... intuitive. They should be able to tell what you want them to do more easily than the others. So, please, as soon as you can, work together with the molemen to expand the village." 

After Eiro's suggestions, Boju quickly spoke up about something that seemed to worry him, "Erm... We were actually talking about this a few days ago, but we're not sure if we want to just expand deeper and deeper into the rock-walls, since it's just going to make some of the monsters have to stay stuck in colder, darker areas while others have more access to sunlight." He pointed out, and Eiro slowly crossed his arms, "That is a bit of an issue, yeah... Techncially, the Mountain Goblins and Highland Orcs should both be alright with cold and darkness, although I do get why you wouldn't want to constantly live in such an environment... Alright, how about this... To bring all the monsters here, I constructed a bit of a tunnel between here and the place I brought them from. That place in itself will be off-limits, but there was another nice open area near there that you could make use of. The basic space is about two to three times as much as you have just here." Eiro pointed out, before thinking a little bit.

Soon, he had an idea, "Alright, let's do it like this. Move some of the storage and production spaces into the tunnel, simply build rooms right onto it. Then you can have a few more spaces open up here, and then you can slowly expand further into that new space I mentioned." 

"But that would make it a lot harder to get an overview of everything that goes on in the village. If something were to happen over there, it would take us way too long to get there, right?" Gobo voiced his concern, and Eiro slowly crossed his arms as he continued to think.

"Let's just have this be a temporary solution. If possible, I would like to move this whole village elsewhere at some point anyway." Eiro pointed out, "It's further away from any onlookers, and it's practically the perfect place. It's a very wide, tall space, there's a lake right next to it that the lake-monsters can live in, and in general, it's further away from places where people will usually be. It's probably going to take a few weeks until that space becomes available, though." He explained. He was talking about the space that he now currently filled up with the floating island. It really was a great place, and they would probably have a decent use for the island relatively soon, meaning that Eiro won't need to hide it anymore.

"But then, what about the mines we have here?" Kitsue asked, "Should we just abandon them?"

"No, no, I don't think you should, but they're already partially running dry, right? There's less reason to concentrate on this place as the central base soon. We can still have some of the monsters commute here for a few days at a time to continue their work here, though. But that place will offer some other possible mines as well. That whole area had an incredibly metallic scent to it, so there are probably other mines in the area. Of course, it's very unlikely for there to be any magic stone veins, but we gathered plenty of those here already. Right now they're not really used here in the first place, but we might be able to figure out some ways to integrate them into this village a bit better. But that's going to have to wait until I return with Armodeus."

Boju was busy writing all the plans down into a notebook, before he slowly raised his head and looked at Eiro again, "I have our to-do list finished now, then. Do you have anything else you would like us to work on?" Boju asked, and Eiro slowly shook his head, "Right now I wouldn't say so, no. But I will leave you with this item here for now, so that you can contact me whenever you need my help." The Demon explained, pulling out a small, fist-sized brass orb and placing it on the table in front of Boju.

"You grab the bottom and top with your hands, and then twist it into opposite directions. The orb will then transform into a small metallic bird, who you can give a scroll with a message on it. Then you just tell it my name. I already made it remember my mana, so that's all you need to do. And make sure to do it outside, or else it might be a bit confused when it's in this kind of inside space." Eiro explained, before James stood up from the seat behind Eiro to take a look at it as well, "Wait, was that one of the items we took from Zaragon?"

"Mhm, but don't worry, there were about half a dozen of these particular ones, so I took the liberty of grabbing one for these guys. I would also like to leave one with my children, with Solomon, and then with one of you guys if I'm ever gone for training." Eiro explained to them, "And they're re-usable, so we can pick something else what to do with them later."

"Hm, alright... And they can only send messages to those whose mana it remembers?" James asked, but Eiro just shrugged, "I think so. I didn't have too much time to play around with it yet. We can test it out when we get back home later. I left all the others there already, so."

"...Got it." James said, although this all seemed somewhat weird. Eiro didn't expect him to react this way to this item, although he had a rough idea what exactly James wanted to do with this sort of item.

"Anyway, again, if you need anything, please let me know and I'll be here as soon as I can. Although you should be aware that I'm only a few levels away from my next evolution, and it might be a rather... violent one. It might take a bit longer to get here during that time." Eiro pointed out, as he stood up from his seat, "I'll help you get all the other monsters settled in for now, but I would like to leave before nightfall so that we can get back as soon as possible." Eiro explained, although Gobo was a bit surprised.

"Did you not make time to spend a few days here this time?" 

"...Actually, this was not in my plans at all... and if the kids wake up and realize I dumped a whole bunch of items at the manor just to leave again for a few days without even meeting them, they'll just be pissed off...." Eiro pointed out with a wry smile, scratching the back of his head with a bit of worry.