Demon's Virtue

Chapter 618: Disciple

“Wait, you want me to do… what?” Noma asked with a confused expression, looking at the man standing in front of him. Eiro let out a sigh and rubbed his temples so hard that he nearly rubbed Bavet away from his skin, “Just gather a bit of your flesh magic over your palm. Don’t actually use the magic, just gather it. You’re a student in the magic course, that shouldn’t be so hard for you, right?”

“That’s… an advanced technique, though…” Noma pointed out, and Eiro raised his brow with an awry expression, “How is it an advanced technique? You do what you normally would do when trying to cast a spell anyway, and then leave the formation step out of it.”

“But that’s exactly it, that’s super hard to do, it’s like making yourself fall forward and telling your body not to try and catch the fall, it’s just… unnatural,” the student replied immediately, and Eiro let out a groan, “Fine, whatever. Then, just… try to cast an ‘Earth Wall’ and feed it flesh magic instead of earth magic or something.”

Now, Noma was staring at Eiro as if he was looking at a madman, “I’m sorry, Lord Daemonherz, but are you… insane? First of all, that’s already hard enough as is without you saying it so casually, but if I were to do that, the spell would backfire and I’d end up getting hurt by my own mana.”

“No you won’t, you brat. I’ll obviously interrupt the casting before that happens. It’s still not preferable because it’s going to place intent into the flesh magic, but it’s still better than having to forcefully extract it from your core,” Eiro said bluntly, “Except, if you would prefer that, I can do that as well. Don’t worry, the recovery time won’t be any longer than two, three months.”

“…I’ll try.”

“Atta boy,” Eiro replied, watching as Noma raised his hand in front of his body. Slowly, the rather simple magic circle for the ‘Earth Wall’ spell was forming in the air, and Eiro noticed Noma’s magic starting to move inside. Once the magic circle was finished, a stream of magic left Noma’s body, which was immediately syphoned by the Demon. He gathered the magic by entrapping it within his own, compressing it down to a small point. Then, he disrupted the mana used to construct the magic circle and sent an instant worth of mana into Noma’s head. It didn’t do much, it only interrupted his thoughts for a moment. It felt like when you were in the middle of a conversation and suddenly you lost your train of thought, before recovering a moment later. This was only to make sure that Noma wasn’t going to subconsciously continue trying to feed magic to a magic circle that didn’t exist anymore, since that might end up injuring himself as well, considering the nature of the magic that Noma used.

.....

“See? Not so tough, is it?” The Demon said, quickly rubbing his hand through Noma’s hair as he started walking toward the door. Eiro wanted to immediately head to the hidden room in the attic where he could infuse his own body with flesh magic immediately to try and increase his affinity with this special element.

But before he left, Noma stared at Eiro’s back, “How- How did you do that?”

“What exactly? Interrupting your spell, or controlling your magic?” Eiro asked quickly, and Noma immediately, and nervously, nodded his head, “Yes! I mean both, I guess?”

Eiro turned back around and explained, “Mana is much, much more fragile than it appears at first. With just a slight interruption, it just diffuses back into the ambient mana around us. That’s what stops any random fellow from actually using it; they don’t have the ability to actively control it. But when it comes to most mages, especially mere apprentices like you, their control over their own mana is effective enough for what it’s worth, but still weak. Interrupting someone else’s mana is easy enough.”

With a slight frown, Noma looked at the place that Eiro had gathered the flesh magic in, as he was still able to somewhat feel where it was, “Then how can you do… that? I’m not controlling it anymore, so why isn’t it falling apart if it’s as fragile as you say?”

“For one, this is magic, not mana. You feed mana with elemental influence to turn it into magic, which stabilizes it. It still dissipates quickly, normally, but I’ve got my means of stabilizing it. But well, I guess the easiest way to describe it is that I’m not giving it space to dissipate in the first place. The mana from two different people won’t mix together unless under very special circumstances. Like mixing pure oil and water. That property is kept by one’s magic, so I can use my mana as a shell to keep your magic safe,” Eiro explained. Of course, he wasn’t really lying, he just didn’t say the whole truth. What he was saying was definitely possible, and Eiro had done this plenty of time in the past, since it wasn’t that tough if you knew the trick to it. But now, he had done something else. Since he gained the abilities of ‘The World’, it was the easiest thing imaginable to make things his own, and that included mana. He was able to simply steal the magic, and was now controlling it as if it was his own. Well, he still had to wait for Noma’s mana to actually dissipate until he could control it freely, but that wouldn’t take too long anymore, and then, Eiro would be able to freely fuse this magic into his own body.

Noma looked at Eiro with a nearly shocked expression. He wasn’t aware that something like this was actually possible. With a determined expression, Noma clenched his fist. He looked deep into Eiro’s eyes and opened his mouth, “Lord Daemonherz, will you-”

“Absolutely not,” Eiro replied immediately and instantly, “I am not going to make you my disciple or anything of the sort, and that is final. You’re already my student, so if I see it to fit you, I’m going to be teaching you these techniques anyway. If I don’t, then I won’t.”

“But, I… I need to get stronger, I…” Noma tried to plead, staring down at the ground in front of him, but Eiro let out a deep sigh, “Noma, no. You’re not a fighter in the first place, that’s just not where your talents lie. Rather, the opposite. You’re nurturing and protective, that’s why your elemental affinities are that of earth and flesh. And over the past few years as you’ve worked hard to understand and practice your amgic for the sake of your sister, you’ve built up all the experience you need to walk a whole other path that clearly fits you much better,” The Demon said to the young man standing in front of him, “I’m going to be recommending you for a healing specialization. And don’t worry, I’m going to be taking responsibility for you so that nobody can say anything about your flesh magic affinity, but that’s the most I’m going to do for you. I can’t favor you any more than this, boy.”

“…Healing..? But that’s not the path that I…”

“I know, you were going to specialize in architectural and construction-based magic, and if you prefer that, you obviously still can do that. But I think healing is a much greater fit for you. Clementine is in the garden, you should have a talk with her about that,” Eiro said as he turned around once more, this time leaving the room without Noma interrupting him again. Obviously he didn’t mind teaching Noma more about his flesh magic. He was truly of the opinion that a skilled healer making use of flesh magic was the greatest gift this country was going to receive anytime soon, and Eiro would do anything to make that happen. But even then, he didn’t feel the need to take Noma on as something like a disciple.

“Urgh, good. Kinda annoying, him thinking that he can just be your disciple, huh?” Bavet groaned right into the Demon’s ear, who rolled his eyes and and grabbed the slime’s core, pulling it out of his chest, “Shut up, I actually sort of respect him for trying to ask me, I just don’t think I would be a good fit as his direct teacher. The kind of person that would be a good disciple to me would be… well, someone so monstrous they don’t fit in with regular people.”

“You sound like you’ve got someone in mind there already,” Bavet replied, and Eiro smirked lightly, “Not really, no. I won’t be taking her as my disciple either, I’m just saying, Naomi would be a much greater fit as my disciple. She might be in the crafting course, but her scent is that of a fighter. And seeing her eyes the moment her hunger overtook her… that’s the sort of person that would be able to properly embody my teachings, I think,” Eiro pointed out as he jumped off the ground, grabbing onto the hatch on the ceiling, pushing it open as he started to undress, “Now, if you don’t mind, I’ll be a bit busy for a while. Just go and do your own thing,” The Demon said, pulling out the mirror of duplication from his treasury before creating a duplicate of himself that would take his place within the manor in case something came up, while his original body was going to be infused with flesh magic.

“…You don’t even need me anymore, huh?” Bavet grumbled slightly, looking at the duplicate. Since Eiro was able to manipulate the physical form of his duplicates however he wanted while he created them, he started being able to duplicate the form that Eiro took on through Bavet’s help, “My main body still needs you, so don’t worry about that,” the duplicate pointed out, while the true Eiro locked himself in the chamber, “And well, even if not, I doubt you’d actually mind being able to do your own thing for a while, right?” The duplicate asked, and Bavet seemed to think about it for a while as he took on the form of a snake, “Well… there is this one thing I always wanted to ea- I mean see, I- ah who am I kidding? There’s this one monster I heard about that I really want to have a taste of. Its habitat is a bit of a distance away from here, so…”

“You can take a vacation at some point if you want, don’t worry. Once the original properly acquires flesh magic, he’s going to be spending some time in the workshop with Armodeus crafting the changes to his body. That’s going to take a while.”