Demon's Virtue

Eiro took a sip of his drink, and placed it back down on the table in front of him before looking at the man sitting in front of him, who was currently holding a small knife in his hands, looking at it curiously.

"Really, the techniques that they use here are just so interesting. You know, up north, the way it's done is to just brute force everything into the shape that you need it in. We've got access to a lot of really pure metals, so we ain't gotta do a lot of preparation. But down here? That's different. If you just look at the surface here, you can practically see the waves of the different folds ingrained in its surface. It's really quite beautiful." Armodeus explained, and Eiro lightly smiled as he replied, "Don't you fold your metals as well?"

"I mean, sure I do, but that's mostly in preparation to be able to use the metal properly later. I don't actually fold the metal specifically for a project. And I only fold it once or twice at most. As for this? It's been folded dozens of times."

"Do more folds make something better?" Eiro asked, and Armodeus simply scoffed, "No, no, of course not. It's just a different starting point because of less pure metal that then turned into tradition and habit over generations of craftsmen. It's not particularly better, and most people wouldn't be able to tell a difference if I made a copy of this without folding the metal even once, but as a craftsman, it's just interesting. You can probably see the difference, right, lad?"

"Of course, I know what waves you're talking about. But don't the swords you made for Arc have them as well?"

"Sure they do, but that's because I copied the methods of the place where they come from, so-"

The conversation between the two of them felt like it could go on for much, much longer, but they were instead quickly interrupted by a loud groan, "Urghh, can you two just shut up? Who cares about whether or not the metal was folded or not?" Koperia asked with a wry smile, and Armodeus turned his head, glaring at her.

"Don't you have some bugs to resurrect?"

"I already did that. There's not much variety around here. Just a lot of the same thing. It's more boring than I thought." The Necromancer sighed annoyed. Eiro slowly turned his head toward the beach, "If you want to grab some sort of souvenir from here, there's a rather large sea serpent swimming around in the water around here. We don't really have that sort in the north." Eiro explained, as Koperia raised her brows, "Oh? You mind hunting it for me?"

"And why would I do that? You're more than strong enough to do that yourself. Just send one of your aquatic undead to do it." Eiro suggested, but Koperia simply crossed her arms in response, "You do know you owe me one, right? Who was it that you have to thank for the insane amount of mana your body holds now?"

"..." The Demon silently stared at the woman sitting in front of him, before standing up, grumbling to himself, "Why does she keep bringing that up for every little thing..?" And so, the Demon made his way toward the beach, while the rest of his group was left to sit alone at the table again.

"Hold on, is he about to go hunt a sea serpent on his own?" Hijar asked, before James looked at the young man, refilling his glass with the bottle that was standing in front of them, "Don't worry, it won't take too long. He'll probably be back before you finish that drink."

"R-Right..." Hijar replied, not sure if he should believe that. Sure, he had a rough idea of how strong Eiro supposedly was, since he heard basically everyone here talk about the amazing things he had shown off, but they were talking about a sea serpent... there was no way that Eiro would be able to easily hunt something underwater. But despite that... nobody here was even slightly worried about him. Not even Ariella, who was sitting there with Leon and Avalin on her lap, entertaining them while Eiro was gone for a bit.

He turned to the side, at Krog and Jess, who had been practically inseparable all day, "By the way..." He muttered. The other person in this group that seemed immensely powerful was clearly Krog. He had overwhelmed one of the champions in a fist-fight, and in a really impressive way at that, "How did you get that strong? I know that Eiro doesn't really want to share his own methods, but what about you?"

"Huh? Me?" Krog asked surprised, slightly grinning. He was surprised to be asked this, since as far as he was concerned, James was the second strongest person in this four-person party, directly following Eiro of course. At least for now, until Krog would max-out his current class and move on to his next class, which was hopefully connected to the awakening of his giant-ancestry.

But either way, for now, Krog was absolutely ready to drain as much out of this compliment as he could, glancing at James with a slight grin on his face, as he continued to speak, "You know, it was actually quite simple. I just kept on training. I know it may seem counterproductive, but instead of going for advanced classes, I went for as many basic classes as possible. They don't take long to level up when you're technically too skilled for them, but then again, they don't give many stat increases. Bot those increases stack up and make a real difference by the fifth or sixth class. And on top of that, you get all of those classes' abilities, which can really come in handy." He explained, as if he was trying to convince Hijar that this was something he came up with himself.

Jess, clearly hearing this tone and seeing Krog's expression, quickly pressed up on his lower jaw to make him shut up, "Eiro taught us that tactic, on top of different techniques and battle strategies that let us level up really quickly. But the thing that really gave us an immense boost was..." Jess explained, and although she was smiling until then, that smile immediately disappeared a moment later, "The... the training..." 

Hijar looked at the three people sitting in front of him, who had all completely frozen up at the mention of the word 'training'.

"Training? Isn't that a pretty normal thing?" Hijar asked confused, and Armodeus tuned in, letting out a loud laugh, "Well, not the kinda training that they went through. Eiro forced Jess to try and read every single book in his library. James was given a mask that made it nearly impossible for him to breathe and had to run a marathon twice a day on top of the rest of the physical training Eiro put him under, while Krog had a lot of force opposing literally every single motion he tried to do. It wasn't technique-training. It was physical training." Armodeus explained, and Hijar slightly frowned in response, "And that does that much? Sure, keeping your body healthy is really useful, but at some point, raising your stats does more than training..."

James shuddered slightly as he nodded his head, "Yeah... that's what we said as well... and then, Eiro did something to us... I literally don't understand how, but he manipulated our bodies somehow, to make us grow an insane amount through this training, in exchange for an even more insane amount of pain..."

"I was practically braindead for weeks..." Jess muttered slightly, as Krog looked at Hijar with an annoyed frown, "You know what the worst part was, though? We couldn't complain, because Eiro did what he did to us, but on another level... He focused the ability on certain aspects for us, but for himself... he put every single aspect of his being under so much insane strain that he was in an amount of pain we couldn't even imagine..."

"And that is even taking the Five of Pentacles out of the picture..." James added, while Hijar sighed slightly. Clearly, these three were absolutely exaggerating. There was no way that it could have been that bad, or helped them to increase their power to such a degree like they said.

"Obviously, they still focused on leveling up, by the way. But the more strain you put on a certain aspect of your body, the more that stat is going to increase when you level up, so that's what they were going for. They were increasing the strength of their bodies at the same time as they gained higher stats." Ariella explained, noticing that Hijar was quite doubtful about what he was just told.

"Huh... do you think he could do that for me and my bro as well? We've been trying to find ways to get stronger." Hijar pointed out curiously, somewhat excited about this, but soon, the conversation was interrupted by the voices of the other people around them. Or rather, the sudden lack thereof.

Everyone had grown silent, while the sound of something dragging over the ground could be heard, together with a voice, "Oh, you want me to help you train? If you want, you can come by to my home after all this, and we can figure something out." Eiro said with a smile on his face, as Hijar turned around. And there he saw it. Eiro, his armor suddenly a dark blue instead of that golden white, was approaching this area again, a giant being floating above him. Only its tail was dragging on the ground, while the rest was supported by pillars of ice that Eiro was clearly manipulating.

"Also, Koperia, where do you want me to put this down?"