Demon's Virtue

"All of you, hold your weapons. Those that already have a bit of experience and think they know exactly how to use that weapon, please move over here to the side. The others, step over here to the other side." Eiro told his students. Most of them apparently already knew how to handle their weapon of choice, whether spear, staff, sword, dagger... They had some form of experience. But a handful of students didn't, and they were all just holding regular wooden swords in their hands.

Of course, as Arc was part of this class, he was part of the former group.

"Since I have no knowledge about the level of each of your actual skill, I would like you to form a line, the order is unimportant, and one after another show me a few moves you are confident in. If you need a target, I can make it for you, so just tell me." Eiro explained to the students, who quickly entered a line as they were told.

While they were doing so, Eiro turned toward the students without any particular experience, "You guys just keep watching them together with me. Knowing what other people's movements look like is the first step to perfecting your own."

The students quickly nodded their heads as they listened to the Demon's words. And just like that, one after another, the students showed Eiro a few of their moves. Overall, the majority of them were painfully average in their level of skill. There was never anything particularly great about what they were doing, and there were many wasted movements in what they were showing Eiro.

A handful of them were actually quite skilled, Arc being amongst them, but the rest would need a lot more training than they were getting right now.

It took quite a while for all students to finish showing everything off, and Eiro made sure to take a proper mental note of each and every student he saw. He remembered their strengths, their weaknesses, and of course what Eiro would need to do to help them improve considerably starting from where they currently were.

The first thing that Eiro chose to do was quite simple, "I will pair all of you up with a partner. Spar with them a bit while I hold personal conversations with you all individually." The Demon announced, swiftly pairing the students up depending on who they would be a good fit for combat-wise.

"First, you six." Eiro started, looking at the students that didn't have much experience at all, "Rather than me giving you tips right away, I need to know more about who you kids are as people. We'll just talk a bit, alright?"

Eiro looked at these students, and they quickly agreed. One of them was the bullied boy that Eiro pulled away from Richard and Avelina's group earlier.

"Okay then. To start it off with, tell me about your interests. What sort of weapon would you like to use? Especially if you are nobles, do your families have any particular 'Family-style' of sorts?" Eiro asked with a smile on his face. One after another, the students told Eiro whatever he wanted to know.

The Demon was subtly inspecting their bodies while they were doing so to get a rough idea of what would be best for them from his personal experience. And then later, the boy that had been bullied lightly raised his hand, "Erm... My parents had my talents measured at some point, and apparently I have a talent for hand-to-hand combat... But I think that was kind of wrong..?"

Eiro raised his brows surprised. The boy's hands were shaking intensely. At first, Eiro thought it was because of the shock of being bullied like that, but he seemed totally fine otherwise. Right now, it looked like the boy wouldn't be able to fight using his hands at all. Or rather, using any weapon properly, considering that his hands were shaking this intensely without any proper reason.

The Demon pulled out an empty piece of paper and a pen out of his satchel and handed it to the boy, "Could you please write your name on this piece of paper five times? I'll give you... 30 seconds." Eiro suggested.

Confused, the boy looked back at Eiro, who just casually started counting backward from 30. Soon, the boy was finished, and Eiro grabbed the piece of paper and looked at the boy's writing.

"Yup, the measurement seems right. Usually, your body and your talent aren't necessarily connected. Even if you have a great talent for music, you might be born deaf. What I think is going on here is that you think that you have talent for hand-to-hand combat, while your hands are useless for it due to the shaking. But that's not the case at all. I'll explain it to you later, for now, let me help the others out a bit." Eiro suggested with a smile.

He stood up and walked over to where the wooden training weapons were, and then picked out one dagger and one spear. He pulled out his carving knife and quickly pushed the edge against the wood, quickly changing the form of the wooden weapons to be a bit of a better fit in weight or length for the students in question.

And then, he paired them up with other students with a similar build and a combat style that seemed like it would fit them for now, and had the unexperienced students basically just shadow them for now to get used to how to even just hold their training weapons.

Meanwhile, he started to speak to the bullied boy.

"Now, as I was saying before, I-" Eiro started, and the boy looked up at him nervously, "I-I don't really think that I can really learn to fight... My family has a long history of being soldiers, so they wanted to put me here, but I really don't think it's for me."

The Demon looked into the boy's eyes, "Are you saying that you don't want to learn how to fight?"

"I... I don't know..."

Eiro looked back at the boy and let out a deep sigh, "Alright, let's continue with the example from before. A deaf man with a talent for music. This is not actually just a random combination, but one of the greatest musicians of all time was born deaf. Despite that, he was drawn toward music, and learned to compose and play by feeling the vibrations of the air on his skin, rather than hearing the sounds he produced. Why do you think he went through all that hassle? Because he was only truly passionate about music."

Eiro sat down next to the boy and placed his hand onto his shoulder, "Even if you think you don't want to know how to fight, is that truly right? Talent doesn't produce passion. Passion produces talent. I believe that you truly want to know how to fight."

The boy looked down at his hands, still shaking, maybe even a bit more than they did before.

"You see, I'm incredibly proud of my senses. I have great eyes, for example, and incredible dynamic vision. I could probably still see what's going on if someone chose to move around in stopped time." The Demon laughed slightly, since that wasn't actually a lie, "And these eyes showed me something. That while you were writing your name, the shaking from your hands didn't affect what you did negatively at all. Your hands moved perfectly how you wanted them to, and you have incredibly pretty handwriting. It's incredibly consistent, as if you studied caligraphy for years."

"...Then that would give me a talent for being a scribe, wouldn't it?" The boy asked, and Eiro slowly shook his head, "No, no, that's not where I'm going. The reason your hands are so shaky isn't because they are somehow injured or subtly deformed. It's nothing that would stop you from fighting. Rather the opposite. Your hands are doing that because they want to move, they want to be used. I assume you have an incredibly high value for your dexterity stat, while your actual numbers don't catch up to that."

"R-Really, you think so?"

"Yes, I absolutely do. If you want, I can have a friend make a small item for you that you can fidget around with sometimes. If you regularly do this, that should make it quite likely for your dexterity stat to increase when you next level up." Eiro explained. He looked at the boy, seeing that he was slowly getting pretty excited. It was clear that he was less than confident in himself.

"You're friends with my son Arc, right?" The Demon suddenly asked, and the boy turned his head toward him, "O-Oh, yeah! He's really nice, and the first person that spoke to me... It's really fun to be around him..."

"I'm glad to hear that. He can be pretty troublesome to deal with sometimes, so thanks for putting up with him." The Demon smiled, "And, listen, I know that you are probably uncomfortable talking about this with your friends, but if those kids ever bully you again, you can tell Arc about it. He's the oldest of my kids, he knows how to take care of others. And he's not in the slightest afraid to stand up to people like Richard and Avelina."

The boy slowly turned quiet and nodded his head, before Eiro quickly stood up again, "Now, Rico, go ahead and pair up with Mark over there for now. Try and copy a bit of how he holds his body for now."

The boy, Rico, immediately nodded his head and rushed off somewhat excitedly. Happy that he was able to handle this like that, Eiro thought about where to start with modifying the weapons of the other students to make them a better fit for their body-type and combat-style.

But as he was still thinking about it, he heard someone approach from behind him.

"Who'd have thought, you're actually a good teacher, huh?" Kristoph sighed out loudly, and Eiro kept looking at his own students as he replied, "You think Solomon would put a total psychopath here? I'm actually a pretty good guy, believe it or not. A bit homicidal, sure."

"I think I'll be the judge of that myself. For now, just don't do anything too crazy, and keep being supportive like that to your students. Just make sure you don't start treating some better than others. Preferential treatment is quite counter-productive when you want to be a good educator."

"Of course, don't worry. I'll treat them properly." Eiro replied, "But for now, just keep on taking care of your own students, will you?" The Demon asked with a smirk on his face.