Demon's Virtue

Eiro slowly stepped through the front door of his manor. He had been silent the whole way back from the royal castle. It was an exhausting night, painfully so.

He might have managed to unseal everyone's memories to find out more information of what happened last year, but with that, he found out so many more horrible things. Things that he really never wanted to know, even if Eiro had an inkling that something was off.

Merlin despised people as a whole, but still hated Eiro because of the way that he acted. He didn't act like a 'Monster' at all, after all. At least not most of the time. Why would someone want to act like a monster? That was just a horrific thought for him in the first place. And the fact that Merlin acted so worried for Eiro's children the first time they met... It disgusted Eiro.

While Merlin was Jura's brother, Eiro couldn't help but despise him, despite the fact that he wanted to keep whatever chance of a familiar relationship they could have alive, even when Eiro realised that something was amiss with Merlin a while ago.

Now Eiro understood why Jura and Merlin broke off contact. Jura was someone that treated all life with a certain level of respect, while Merlin had an obsession with monsters. And it was clear that Merlin would resort to extreme levels of violence when he wanted to, so Eiro understood that Jura tried to cut off contact to an extent.

But even so... They were still brothers in the end. Otherwise there would have been no way Jura would go and ask Merlin to help him out with that puppet. That's not the kind of person he was. In the first place, Jura associated with people like Koperia as well. She was literally someone known for treating all life with little to no respect... So something extreme must have happened for Jura to stop all sort of contact with Merlin like that.

Eiro was standing in the entrance of his manor, unsure what he was supposed to do. His mind was blank, and all the choices that he tried making didn't work out in his mind?

Did he want to go to bed? No, he was too awake for that.

Did he want to go train? No, he was too tired for that.

Eiro was stuck in this sort of purgatory where his mind was racing and absolutely dead at the same time. It was truly bothersome. He was thinking about so many things, but none of them had any sort of substance or logic behind them.

"Eiro? Do you just want to go read a bit?" Nelli asked, trying to help the Demon out a bit, but Eiro simply shook his head, "No, I don't... I don't think so. I'm not in the mood."

Eiro slowly started to walk forward again. He walked up the stairs, choosing to just make his way through the manor a little. Eiro reached Leon and Avalin's room, and quietly checked on them. Through his intermediate grade stealth skill, he was so silent that neither of them had the slightest chance of waking up through him.

The Demon sat down at the side of Leon's bed, somewhat worried, "I hope you won't come to hate people someday... No matter how they may treat you..." Eiro whispered. He didn't want his son to become such a hateful person, despite how loving he was right now. However, with the relationship that the children had with monsters, especially Leon, they might all end up with some form of grudges against people as a whole.

It didn't even seem like a possibility until now. Eiro thought that he had raised them in a way that they would treat all life with a certain level of respect, just like Jura did. But in the end... Eiro didn't really do that himself. He treated most life with a certain level of disrespect until certain conditions were fulfilled.

Then again, it wasn't like Eiro immediately killed anything he came across, unless they showed him hostility and couldn't be reasoned with, for example beast-type monsters. But in the end... Eiro was never a good role-model for them. He really, really wasn't. Maybe he should try to do better from now on.

Having other people around here, such as Armodeus and Eiro's party-members would definitely be a good influence in the long-term as well, though, so that was something Eiro was rather glad about as well.

Slowly, Eiro stood back up and made his way back out of the room. After hearing the click of the door behind him as the lock caught on, the Demon walked to the end of the hallway. He quickly opened a window and then looked at Gondos, "Do you mind closing it behind me?"

"Ah, of course." The Golem replied, and Eiro quickly jumped out of the window and flew right toward the training grounds outside. It was the middle of the night, so nobody was here. That meant that Eiro had enough time to test a few things out.

After seeing Leon just now, at least Eiro's mind was able to focus again a bit. And that focus was set directly on his personal improvement so that he could protect the children for as long as he could. He needed to improve so that he could create the perfect world for the children to live in, so that they would never end up hating their own.

Eiro stepped into the center of the training area, and then took a deep breath. He should probably try and increase his understanding of the ancient language by creating and casting some new spells for now, otherwise it might be too tough for him to get a hold of the Arcane Magic skill in the future.

Eiro took a deep breath and looked into the library in his mind, where he proceeded to think about a new spell. For now, to warm up a bit, Eiro figured he should maybe try altering a spell and chant instead of making a fully new one. It sounded complicated, but it was actually somewhat easier for Eiro to alter a spell for now. Since he was able to easily split a spell up into its components, at least. For other people, altering a spell might be incredibly challenging, much more so than creating one.

But through the fact that Eiro's control over the domain of truth gave him such an incredible analytical ability, it was rather simple for the Demon to do. And so, Eiro was first searching for a spell to test out. And then, he got an idea. Maybe he should try and create elemental versions of certain arcane spells, so that Eiro could figure out the properties and potential uses of the spell beforehand.

With that, since Arcane Magic was based on cognition of the principle of Arcana, and this was a simple way for Eiro to slightly increase his understanding and experience with it without actually needing to use Arcane Magic directly himself.

Eiro took a deep breath and took a closer look at the single Arcane Spell that he already tried out. 'Mage Hand'. He thought about one of the simpler elements to replace it with considering his current vocabulary within the ancient language, and quickly made the choice.

It didn't take long for Eiro to alter that spell either, and then slowly held his hand forward. Eiro started to draw the magic circle as he spoke the chant at the same time. A few seconds later, the spell had been cast.

Flames were drawn in from Eiro himself, forming a flaming orb right in front of the Demon. The orb formed 'cracks' and a hand was soon formed. The way that Eiro was controlling this hand was very different than when it was made of Arcane Magic, of course, but it was still easy to control it otherwise. It was more like he was controlling regular Fire, just that it was automatically kept in this shape, and Eiro didn't need to worry about his concentration on it.

The spell created something like a connection between himself and this hand, and the hand would siphon the mana that it needed from Eiro itself. The Demon tried to make the hand pick up a small pebble, but of course, that didn't work. Fire was plasma, so it was logical that it wasn't able to pick anything up. It did manage to scorch the ground in the process, however.

And so, since the hand was kept up on its own for a while longer, Eiro was able to cast more of them. Many, many more. With his mana, he might be able to create hundreds, if not thousands of them. But for now, Eiro limited himself at just 10.

With a light smile on his face, Eiro played around with these hands. He manipulated them and positioned them around his body as if they were additional hands directly connected to his body. Since Eiro had a high control over Fire Magic, he was able to manipulate them with a rather high amount of precision, to the level that Eiro could adjust his martial arts so that he could use it with these flaming hands if he wanted to.

Of course, that was technically a rather useless thing to do with these flaming hands, but once he had other versions... Like for example rock hands or just the regular mage hands, especially the latter since those moved practically like another limb in the first place, the ways that Eiro could fight would increase manyfold.