Demon's Virtue

Eiro sat at the edge of the training area of the old town. He could have stayed in the town hall, but he figured getting some air and having the monsters see him around a bit more was a good idea as well. There were quite a few other monsters around him, trying their best to improve their abilities, but no matter what they did, they were all quite focused on what Eiro, the lord of the town was doing. And what it was, was really quite grotesque. He was practicing how much he could manipulate the duplicates that he was creating with the mirror.

It was a simple exercise, really. He pulled a perfect one foot by one foot cube out of the ground, and then duplicated it. First, he tried to simply stretch it out into any direction. Soon, the cube was one foot by two feet. Of course, since he only created a single duplicate and kept anything but the shape the same, even the weight, the cube was much weaker than before. More and more, Eiro tried to stretch out the duplicates that he was creating more and more, until the cube was taller than himself.

He pressed his hand against its surface, and could feel it practically cave in under his touch. But at the very least, it looked like just a giant cube of rock, even if it wasn't nearly as sturdy. This would be good to know for fear-tactics. Wondering how far he could push this manipulation, Eiro created another duplicate, but this time, instead of keeping the cuboid shape, he created a sphere. And then a small pyramid. He tried to keep on creating more and more complex shapes. The trick to manipulating the duplicate was quite simple, really. Instinctively, he thought that a different mental image would change the form of the final duplicate, like it was often the case with magic. But rather, what one had to do was to manipulate that formless mass that came out of the mirror, which would then turn into the duplicate. The earlier he did so, the easier it was. The closer it came to turning into its final, solid form, the harder it was to manipulate, until it was simply impossible to do through the help of the mirror. Of course, Eiro could try to reform the duplicate, as if 'repairing' it, which would momentarily turn it back into its liquid form which could then be manipulated again. Now it made sense why those chimeras looked so... grotesque. It would be something hard to do for those unskilled in such detailed manipulation. But for Eiro, it was as easy as breathing at this point, meaning that he could turn one thing into another quite easily.

The fusion of different masses was a bit more complicated, but it gave Eiro some important insight into fusing different sort of magics together. He had weirdly been struggling with that more than he thought he would, but this was going to help him speed the process up quite a bit. And then, he moved on to other test subjects. He had considered manipulating duplicates of the monsters around him to create chimeras as well, but he figured he would gain more insight if he simply did it on a duplicate of himself.

And so, his practice continued like that. He created duplicates. He made some larger, some smaller. He distorted their limbs, or completely changed their physical and internal structures until he had a grotesque being of nightmares standing in front of him.

Sometimes, he changed some things to make them more useful. For example, by enlarging only the size of a duplicate's wings. Eiro's body was strong enough to take some parts of it being enlarged to three or four times their original size. And having larger wings would just allow the duplicate to fly faster. Not that it needed to. After just about half a dozen flaps of them, the duplicate fell apart into nothingness. However, it didn't take long until Eiro did find a use of it. He could create a partial duplicate of himself, of just his wings and part of his bones, and then he fused the duplicated wings with his own, letting him make them as large as he wanted quite easily.

But it didn't take long until Eiro found another use for the duplification. He took some of the processed iron that was dug up in the mines and duplicated it a few times, letting one of his own duplicates consume and absorb it. Eiro never went all that far with this himself, since he was unsure if his body could keep functioning even if he was made mostly of some sort of metal.

Whenever Eiro's duplicate finished the metal, he would give it some more. And then more and more. Soon, the duplicate's body was made half of metal, and half of flesh. It bulked up quite a lot, due to the extra mass added onto its own. It was like the normal Eiro was simply supersized a little, and his skin took on a lot more pale, metallic complexion, as one would expect.

But even so, the duplicate was able to function anyway. Movements became more sluggish, and the weight did mess a few things up, but it seemed like his unique body could take it anyway. It made sense, honestly. The former 'World' used bodies solely created by absorbing foreign masses into itself. But since back then, that 'World' was an incorporeal being, things worked different in the first place. So, Eiro didn't simply accept it like this, and figured he should bring the duplicate to its limit. It kept on feeding on more and more metal, until it soon complained.

"This is starting to hurt. Starting at around... two cubic meters of volume. Now, it's spread evenly throughout, but removing most of it from the heart and circulatory system might be a good idea." The duplicate explained, and the original of course took notes, although he himself already knew this well enough. Vocally conveying it just felt sort of comfortable, however. In the end, they still didn't stop, though. Right now, the sheer weight of the duplicate Eiro was making it more than just tough for it to move. Rather, its bones were close to breaking if he moved too much, and he wasn't sure if he could move faster than walking pace even if he tried everything in his arsenal.

But even then, the duplicate didn't stop. Or well, technically it did. It wasn't able to feed itself anymore, so instead, the real Eiro pulled its mouth open and forced more metal down its throat. He knew that the duplicate was still conscious of course, and he knew that it was still digesting the metal. Soon, a bulking metal statue in the form of an oversized Eiro stood in front of him.

"Hm... interesting." The Demon muttered to himself, as he suddenly pulled away all of the metal. Since the iron had all been duplicated as well, this was pretty easy. And then, a grotesque mass of flesh in the shape of Eiro fell down to the ground. The duplicate, whose mind was still active, had a tough time keeping its body together. Since it didn't push the metal out of its body itself, but rather, it simply disappeared, the 'flesh' parts of its body stayed stretched out. The duplicated demon fell apart as a bizarre amount of pain rushed into the Demon's mind, soon followed by the death of the duplicate. Even Eiro couldn't be pulled apart like that and just survive. Some of the monsters around the training area that had been watching the whole thing as well were feeling more than just disgusted by what they saw. Some felt nauseous, and others threw up. It made sense. A duplicate of Eiro's body just fell to the ground in the form of some sort of weird, bloody sludge.

But at the very least, Eiro now knew his own limits when it came to absorption. And more importantly... he knew that his mind wouldn't fade away no matter how much he took in. He already figured this to be the case. After all, when he fused himself with magic, his whole body was practically replaced by it. He could turn into a sentient mass of air or shadows at will. But magic always worked a little differently compared to the regular laws of nature. And this absorption technically wasn't magic, it was a physical ability that Eiro gained.

"Urgh... do you really have to do something like that...? Man, even though we know they're not really you. Rather, they're completely different to you, but it's still horrifying seeing you like that." Nelli pointed out, floating up right next to the Demon.

"I get it. It really is, isn't it?" He replied, before wondering about something, "Also... what do you mean they're completely different to me?"

"Huh?" Nelli let out confused, "Ah, well... they don't have a soul. They're filled with magic, and something similar to a soul for a lot of purposes, but there's a lot of key differences. For example, they don't have the gateways." She explained. At that moment, Eiro felt a spark run through his mind. An idea, to let him do something he had completely given up on.

"They don't have the connection to the elemental planes..." Eiro muttered. He himself could never reach those planes through the gateways placed in his soul, since it didn't make sense. You can't push a hole through itself. However, if the duplicates didn't have the gateways, but they shared a consciousness with him... then he could do something he had wanted for a while.

Eiro summoned a duplicate in front of himself, and it immediately fused itself with water magic. Not with water itself, but with pure, concentrated magic. Soon, the transformation was complete, and the duplicate was practically an elemental himself now. It slowly stepped up to Eiro, and placed its hand on its chest, as Nelli, Gondos and Sarius understood what was happening. They could see the flow of the magic, after all.

"Oi, are you insane? What if it doesn't work? You'll just feel yourself be ripped to shreds!" Sarius exclaimed, warning his contractor not do something stupid like that. But of course, Eiro never listened to others when his mind was set on something already.

And so, for the first time, instead of pulling magic from the elemental plane to the central plane... Eiro pulled magic from the central plane into the elemental plane. And a few moments later, after feeling his body compress down to an infinitely small size in an instant, just for it to decompress into its normal size, Eiro first set foot in the elemental plane of water.