Demon's Virtue

Chapter 640: Table Manners

Eiro looked at the documents in front of him, trying to think of the best course of action. He had dealt with some of the problem-students in different ways. Usually, they could be reformed just by talking to them; most of the time, they had some deeper-rooted issues, and once those had been dealt with, or at least addressed, their behaviour would get better over time. There were the kind that were a bit harder to deal with though, like that child that Eiro ended up threatening right after he killed ‘Death’. He had quite little patience then, but it was a good enough opportunity to deal with the troublemaker that was actively injuring and bullying kids. And since Charles was also there to help him out and keep things under control, Eiro was able to just let it happen.

He did wish that he had been able to better deal with the situation, though. Now, Richard Melachine was the kind of student that didn’t bother speaking to anyone. He had lost his social position, despite being a duke’s son. After Richard had so openly insulted Eiro at a social event, more and more people kept coming out about Richard’s behaviour, and he became ostracized, instead of his victims. Especially those kids that he used to call ‘friends’ were now treating him rather harshly, trying to push all blame onto Richard instead of owning up to their own faults in this situation. However, it was mostly just to the extent of Richard being ignored and excluded, and sometimes having people chuckle about him. Especially since it was a new semester and plenty new students joined the school, nobody really cared for him anymore. And since Richard still did well enough academically, Eiro didn’t have any reason to bother with him. That was, until recently.

One of the new students, a case that Eiro had already been watching anyway, was causing trouble. Which was especially troublesome for Eiro, as it was known that he was one of the students that Eiro paid particular attention to. Some of the other students were annoyed by it, but the faculty, which knew of this student’s circumstances, quickly accepted the situation. Rather, they were quite happy; they knew that someone had to do it, but none of them wanted to do it themselves. Not that they knew the details, they just knew that this student was someone they didn’t want to bother with.

It was Zeke Redbrow, the student with Demon blood that the Devil presumably sent to this school as a sign to Eiro. He seemed rather quiet and calm at first, but after a short while, his personality had changed quite abruptly. Since students realized that Zeke was a special case, receiving attention from Eiro, they obviously tried to get close to him. He became popular, and even his upperclassmen, particularly Richard’s former posse, quickly took him in, teaching him the ‘ways of the academy’. That alone would have been enough to affect young minds going through puberty, but in Zeke’s case, his personality was worsened quite terribly through the study of Unholy Magic. The fact that he started actively using it in order to learn to control it must have awakened part of his demonic blood, and his personality changed through it. Once Zeke’s control over Unholy Magic grows, and he was guided in the right direction by Eiro, then those changes caused by the demonic parts of him should near disappear sooner or later, but right now, they were something quite troublesome to deal with. He was even more vicious than Richard used to be.

With a deep sigh, Eiro stood up from his desk, figuring that he simply had to speak to him for now. He left his office at the academy and stepped into the hallway, when an unsavory scent hit his nose. Zeke had passed by here earlier.

“How annoying,” Eiro grumbled, and he could feel the slime covering his body shiver just so slightly, causing Eiro to quickly reprimand him, “Concentrate, you can’t to this when we’re in front of students.”

But Bavet just scoffed, “What do you want me to do? Because of you, I ended up not evolving into combat-focused races, so you can’t blame me for not being able to deal with your… whole thing, when you get riled up like that.”

“Oh stop it, it wasn’t even that bad,” Eiro replied, however, Bavet thought otherwise, “Why do you even bother with this kid? You clearly don’t like him, and want him gone. Just get rid of him and make it look like an accident, or suicide or something.”

Eiro silently continued walking, pondering Bavet’s suggestion for a few moments, “Well… I could, but I won’t. At least not for now.”

“Seriously? Then at least calm down when you’re around that brat…”

“I’m trying, it’s just a natural reaction. Not only does he smell like a demon, he smells like… him, of all demons. It’s too disgusting not to react to, you know?”

“That’s why, again-”

“I’m not killing him yet, that’s probably exactly what the Devil wants. Or… whatever. I don’t know what the Devil is planning with Zeke, whether he’s just a message, or if there’s still more to him. But whatever the case may be, I’m not going to do the thing that the Devil would expect from me.”

Bavet stayed quiet for a few moments as he thought, before speaking up again, “So what if he expects that you act that way?”

“I know where you’re trying to go, but that’s a never-ending spiral. Yes, even I can’t fully predict the Devil, considering how little I actually know about him, but what I do know is that he’s cocky and vastly overestimates himself. He’s seen how I acted under the influence of his mark. He expects me to still choose murder and violence as the first way to resolve things,” Eiro explained, “And not even considering that, killing Zeke would be stupid. If the Devil placed him here with some kind of deeper plan, then I’ll end up being able to figure a few things out by keeping Zeke around. I’m much more capable than the Devil expects.”

“Hm… right, so then-”

“Quiet, we’ll keep talking about this later,” Eiro stopped Bavet, quickly making the slime fully concentrate on keeping Eiro’s form to that of a human again. He turned the corner toward the stairway, the one that was practically hidden in the corner of the academy. Nobody ever used it, except for a small group of students. Some teachers would regularly head there to make sure that they weren’t there loitering around, but they still always came back, since it was still the best way to do what they wanted to do. Even Eiro barely paid attention to this place, he only checked on it a couple of times each day.

And this time around, he found the people he was looking for. He could hear the pained grunting of one of the students, the iron-tinged scent of iron in the air. Others simply chuckled as they watched what was happening.

“Come on now, say that again,” Zeke said with a deep glare, staring down at the young man in front of him. Richard was holding his hands in front of his mouth and nose, trying to prevent himself from bleeding all over his clothes. He was shivering, trying to avert Zeke’s gaze. However, the young man with the devil’s blood didn’t let him off that easily; he squatted down and pulled Richard’s hand away from his face, before puting his own in its place. He squeezed tightly, forcing Richard to look right back at him, “Say it. Now.”

“Y-You’ll… you’ll regret… this…” Richard’s muffled voice was hard to understand, not just because of Zeke’s hand, but also because he was clearly trying to hold himself back from crying. It was pitiful, incredibly so. Eiro couldn’t believe that the kid that acted so high-and-mighty back then would act like this… Did Eiro overdo it when he threatened him?

Zeke let out a loud laugh, turning his head toward his new posse, “You hear him, guys? He said we’d-” he started, but quickly stopped as he widened his eyes. He tried to pull his hand away from Richard’s face, but clearly struggled to do so, until the sound of flesh tearing rung through Eiro’s ears. It was a sort of nostalgic one, the sound of teeth tearing out the flesh of a living person.

Richard spit out the chunk of flesh that he bit out of Zeke’s hand, his face looking like that of a man who was fed up.

“You little-” the pain nearly paralyzing him, Zeke fell to his knees, trying to fend off the burning feeling on his palm. His ‘friends’ quickly came to his side, trying to figure out what just happened, but before they could really react, Zeke came up with an idea.

“Hold him down. One of you press your feet onto his forehead too,” Zeke instructed, his eyes flashing red due to the veins that were nearly popping open inside of his head. He pulled the belt off of Richard’s pants and quickly pressed it into Richard’s mouth, closing it around his own ankle. With one of the other’s feet on Richard’s forehead, Zeke could force his mouth open even with just one usable hand. A hand which he quickly used to pick up the piece of flesh that Richard just bit off.

“Didn’t your parents teach you table manners, huh? You should always finish your food,” Zeke let out a maniacal grin as he placed the piece of flesh into Richard’s mouth, forcing it shut with his foot before pressing his nose closed as well.

“Swallow.”