Demon's Virtue

Eiro sat inside of the huge crystal cave, making the island slow down bit by bit, so that it would come to a halt at a very specific point. Right above Skyhart's castle, far, far above it. Soon, the island was practically stationary, it would only slightly wave up and down now, but it shouldn't be more noticeable than it would be in the middle of a ship out on sea. Luckily this island wasn't waving from side to side, at least. It was perfectly stationary in that sense.

The Demon let out a deep breath, as he stepped out of the crystal cave, where his party was already waiting for him.

"I'll head down there first, and I'll bring Solomon up here so that we can figure out what exactly to do together. And it might be better to move him up here than Maria down there. It's going to make a lot of things a bit easier to handle." Eiro pointed out, "And if it is really his sister... then the two of them can be emotional without worrying about the people around them."

"Worrying about other people's emotions now..? What happened to you..?" Bavet asked with a deep squint, and Eiro rolled his eyes as he pushed his hand through this man's chest within just a moment, "Shut it and let's go already." The Demon said, and the slime quickly changed its form again, swiftly covering Eiro's body and transforming him into 'Baron Daemonherz'.

He looked at his friends as he straightened one of his arm-guards, "You guys can come with me if you want, but you can also just wait for now, and I can bring you down there later."

"I think we'll stay for now." James suggested, looking over at Krog and Jess, both of which also quickly agreed, "Yup, I don't wanna miss out on what's gonna happen now. We also helped you get this island, so of course we're gonna wait it out until we know where we're goin' with this." Krog added, and Eiro slightly smiled.

"Perfect, then I will be back rather soon. I'm pretty sure Solomon should be in his study right about now. I'll just kidnap him for a second and we'll be right back." Eiro explained.

"Don't say things like that in front of the guards, please..." Jess pleaded with a worried expression, and Eiro just slightly chuckled as he left, something that didn't particularly help Jess' worry. Either way, Eiro quickly stepped out of the castle, and quickly flapped his wings. In an instant, he was higher up in the sky, the bright sun hitting him from all directions, since even the clouds were brighter than ever up here. He flew over toward the edge of the island and dropped down by simply folding his wings onto his back. It would take him roughly one and a half minutes to reach the bottom, since they were flying actually rather high up with the island.

Eiro could hear some whispers in his ear as the Demon chose to close his eyes and spend this little bit of freetime just reading a book in his mental library so that he could actually comprehend its information. There were so many books in there that he just skimmed, so much so that he ended up having to split the libary up into two large wings. One filled with books he already read, and one filled with books he had yet to read. And since Eiro tried to at least skim through every single piece of writing that he came across, the latter section was filled with quite a few more books than the latter, sadly. So much has been going through his mind lately that he spent most of his time in the mental library developing new spells, or trying to learn more about the Ancient Language.

The fact that he picked up a few hundred new books in this city's library or that Imp's treasure hoard didn't particularly help him with that either. So, he tried to spend as much time reading the books he was missing out on as he could, but maybe him doing that while in the middle of a free-fall was a bit too much for Bavet.

"What the fuck are you doing, you moron?! Open your eyes, I don't wanna die!"

"Bavet, you can literally split off of my body and become a bird in a second, just let me concentrate for now." The Demon said with a sigh, "I want to enjoy this, this book is actually really interesting. It's about-"

"Eh, don't bother, I don't wanna fall asleep right now... I need all the reaction speed I can get right now." Bavet pointed out, while Eiro rolled his eyes annoyed. He went back to reading in his mind for a while, and since the time inside of his mental library flowed a lot more slowly than normal, he was able to get a fair bit into the book he had been reading.

And then, a few seconds later, Eiro stopped reading and instead spread the ace of cups' liquid around him, practically making it stick to him, so that nobody would notice him just randomly fall from the sky. He could feel Bavet starting to shiver on his skin, so Eiro spread his wings out a few seconds earlier than he planned, to considerably slow the drop down. Soon, Eiro stood on the balcony of Solomon's study, while Bavet was smoothing himself out, before knocking on the glass door.

Immediately, Eiro could hear shuffling from inside the room, as Solomon stood up and carefully approached the door, "It's just me, Solomon, no need to worry."

Eiro instantly heard Solomon's heartbeat slow down as he started to relax again, quickly opening the door for his friend, "Next time, could you use the door like anyone else?"

"I could have, but that would have been pretty annoying. I dropped around five kilometers just now, I didn't want to bother walking around out there." Eiro pointed out, and Solomon looked at the Demon confused, "What do you mean? Why did you drop that much? Wait, how are you even back already..? Did something happen in the Holy Empire? Did you fly here on your own?"

Eiro quickly chose to reply to all of those questions, "I mean exactly what I said. I dropped that much because the place I dropped from is up there. We happened to find a way to move rather quickly, and yeah, a lot happened in the Holy Empire. And no, I did not fly here on my own." He explained, although all these answers seemed to make Solomon only more confused than before.

"Eiro, please, explain it so I understand." The King said with a deep sigh, sitting down on one of the couches while Eiro did the same, sitting in front of his friend.

"Alright, I'll explain. So, we managed to kill Zaragon, and brought quite a few interesting objects with us afterward. Anyway, what you will be more interested in hearing about will probably be something else we did there... You see... I met with the former Naiad Queen again!"

"Hm? The one that gave you your first blessing?" Solomon asked, and Eiro quickly nodded, "Yep, that's the one. Anyway, she was guarding and protecting a Spirit Gateway to the plane of water, and..." With a smile on his face, he conjured a bucket worth of water to float over his hand, "...I managed to form a contract to guard that spirit gateway with this world. There, I found out I'm probably the quite literal reincarnation of the former Sage, as in his soul was used to create me, while some higher being even higher than the gods fiddled with my very being. So, that being the case, just understand that it's impossible for you to clearly comprehend my decisions right off the bat, so just listen to me all the way through until you form your opinion, alright?"

The King looked back at Eiro with a wry smile on his face, not even able to really process the things he already heard, "There's more coming..?"

"Hah, yeah... So, do you know that international law that says that if a country sends armed forces into another country to take out a monster nest, they have ownership of the whole space that has been recognized as a monster nest for a month afterward, to then harvest any natural resources of that place they wish to during that time? And amongst those natural resources could be a lot of things! Not just ores, but also general rock, clay, or even soil, you see?"

"...Eiro, what are you talking about...?" Solomon asked, not sure where exactly Eiro was going, and somewhat scared to actually find out.

Eiro slightly looked to the side, "Well, the former Naiad Queen asked me to help her with something... You know about the Lord of the Lake as well, right?"

The moment Eiro mentioned that nearly legendary creature, Solomon jumped off the couch, realizing what he was talking about, "No, you did not!"

"Listen, I made the decision as a baron of this kingdom, and I think it was actually a pretty decent one... It's not like they're gonna miss that thing! They didn't use it for eight years!"

"Because it was infested with monsters, Eiro!"

"Exactly! Nobody would want to move back there anyway!" Eiro pointed out, "Seriously, I'm pretty sure I did them a favor. And on top of that, there's the fact that the Empire is destroying itself by stealing from their people to feed their nobles' mouths, that they had been planning on capturing a Magic Beast of which there are only two of existence in all planes, something that would have destroyed that island in the process had an imp not accidentally scratched up a part of the magic circle, and that they worked together with some form of an ancient evil in order to gain their power in the first place! They didn't deserve a place like that!"

"...Alright, I'm pretty sure there are some more things I need to catch up on. Tell me more about this later." Solomon groaned loudly, rubbing the bridge of his nose as the greatest migraine he's had in months infested him.