Demon's Virtue

Chapter 639: Sending Off

Eiro’s large body towered over the spirits, as he held the magic stone in his hand. Waves of magic crashed back into the space that Eiro had just emptied out in order to create it, and it took a few moments for all the spirits to fully recover and get back onto their feet. The only ones in the vicinity that weren’t affected were the Salamander King, Eiro himself, as well as Jyoti, who Eiro had specifically protected with a barrier so that he would be fine no matter what Eiro was doing.

The King looked up at Eiro, who slowly lowered his body, sitting down cross-legged while leaning against the tower behind him. He was sure that the overseer would be mad at him about that later, but Eiro honestly didn’t really care much about that, “This level of power… If you keep growing at this rate, you will soon come to rival even…”

“Even you? Yeah, I guess so,” Eiro replied, moving his glare toward the Salamanders who he figured were about to protest after hearing his words, trying to quickly shut them up with a bit of pressure directed their way.

The Demon sighed, “One thing that you have to understand; Everything about me is made to let me take in everything about the world around me. Whether it’s knowledge or magic, I can, and must, gather more. While I don’t have a title bestowed upon me by the system… you could probably call me the ‘Collector’,” he explained, “I am supposed to grow ever-stronger until I have everything I need.”

A gentle smile appeared on the Salamander King’s face, “I see. Then I am glad you are the one to receive my blessing, and the one to raise my successor into a proper ruler,” he explained, “However… despite your power, the fact that you are using the Spirit Gateway as you are… is naught but worrying.”

“Is it really?” Eiro asked, his voice carrying far in this form, “This is the best way to protect it. With me, on both sides, there’s nothing that could ever happen to it.”

“That I am aware of. I am more worried about you, young demon,” the king explained, “The Spirit Gateway is a powerful force. I can already tell that this realm is affecting your mind, and the Gateway itself… it must be worsening this even more.”

“…Don’t worry about that,” Eiro pointed out, letting out a deep sigh. And as he sighed, his body shrunk down, and he released the magic that he had fused into his body. He looked at the head-sized magic stone in his hand, and pressed it against his chest, and it soon disappeared, as the duplicate gave it to the original. He himself didn’t have much use for it right now, “I’m not even the original. If something goes wrong with me, that guy’s just going to ‘reset’ me when he still can.”

“…You say that he will kill you, a part of himself?”

“Well… yes, but no? Our minds are fully linked, so everything I experience, he experiences as well, but my personality just sliiightly changes over time compared to his. But it’ll still be a part of him, no matter what he does to me.”

—

As the duplicate pressed the magic stone onto his chest, Eiro was able to pull it into the treasury, and from there, quickly pulled it into the central elemental plane. Right there, a head-sized fire magic stone appeared out of nowhere, and Eiro looked at it with a raised brow, “This guy… can’t even do a proper job at it, huh?” he muttered, quickly compressing the magic properly. This magic stone looked impressive, but it was pretty low-quality the way that it was right now. Instead, having a smaller, highly-compressed magic stone was much more useful. And so, Eiro compressed that large magic stone down to the size of two fingers.

“What was that just now?” Shimour asked with a baffled expression, looking at the gemstone now glistening away in the demon’s hand. Eiro thought for a moment, before throwing the magic stone over toward Shimour. As he caught it and took another look, he noticed the incredibly hot gem wriggling around in his hand. That magic stone had quickly turned into a small gecko, staring up at Shimour, “Just some magic. I just turned that into a servant, so let’s just use it to communicat. While you’re on your way to the others, just use it however you want. To start campfires, as a lamp, to dry your clothes if you get caught in the rain. Whatever.”

“Servant? That’s a ‘royal’ thing, right? You can create these that easily?” Shimour said with a wry smile, and Eiro shrugged, “I mean, I guess so. There’s a limit, of course. If I can’t keep track of them all, then they’ll start falling apart, except if I give them a name, then they have a level of independence, but I can’t make infinite amounts of those either…”

Just as he said so, one of the manor’s butlers walked over, carrying a small, handheld lantern. The butler held it forward toward Shimour, who looked a bit confused, before realizing that the servant’s body was continuing to get hotter. He placed the gecko into the lantern and watched the small servant create its new home in there.

“Huh… that’s actually pretty neat. I’ll treat him well, don’t worry,” Shimour said, slowly closing the main hatch of the lantern before hanging the whole thing off of his belt, and then extended his hand toward Eiro, “I’ll see you again soon. I can’t make promises of when they others will come here, or if they will at all, but I’ll try to convince them at least. I have some things to take care of first too, but I should be back in a couple weeks. A month, the latest. Then we can get properly started.”

Eiro shook Shimour’s hand to say goodbye for now, smiling lightly, “Thank you for accomodating me like that. They’ll surely complain about this all, but tell them I’ll try to make up for it however I can.”

“Hah, you better,” Shimour scoffed, before turning around and walking down the steps in front of the manor. And then, before Eiro knew it, Shimour simply disappeared from sight, as if he wasn’t there to begin with.

The Demon turned around as the butler shut the door, and quickly made his way to his office. He wanted to make sure that he was going to be able to concentrate on the lessons from the masters as much as he could, and for that, he had to make sure that all of his lessons as the academy were fully prepared. Over the past couple of weeks, he had watched all of his new and old students, watching their progress and trying to figure out their individual talents, and then started making individual plans for them. Some would need some slightly closer guidance from him to become as good as they could, and others could use guidance from other instructors at the academy, so he still had to talk to them to see to what extent that was possible.

Of course, there were still the kind that either didn’t have the ability to follow that level of guidance, or the kind that simply didn’t deserve it, at least not yet. Eiro didn’t abandon either of those groups of course; the former would still receive a lesser level of guidance that would help them grow, while the latter would first need to be monitored by Eiro. That group contained trouble-makers, or the ones that didn’t put in any effort whatsoever for any number of reasons.

Eiro made sure to have some servants watch them while they were on academy-grounds; they still deserved some privacy of course, but at least on academy-grounds it was his job as a teacher to make sure they were brought onto the right path. Some of them started bullying others to show off or feel superior, and when that happened, Eiro either went there himself, or sent some senior, stronger students in their rough direction on some random errand, so that they would be interrupted. Eiro was still trying to figure out the best way to reform those kinds, so until he did that, he at least wanted to stop them from doing any proper harm to others students.