Demon's Virtue

647 Partax Evergreen – Part Eiro was in one of the sitting rooms, drinking a sip of tea while looking over some documents for class. He had just finished reading through one of the pages when he could hear the paws of a certain creature hitting the cobblestone road leading to the manor. It seemed larger than others of its kind, and the sound of its low breathing sounded familiar as well. It was an Aria, one of the ground dragons that was usually used to pull the carriages of nobles. They were not only stronger, but had a higher endurance than a horse, so they could be used for longer trips very easily. Not to mention, they had been bred to reveal a certain number of specific colours, so many nobles often tried to get their hands on an Aria that was the colour of their family sigil. Though this one was the exception to the rule; it was a white and gold coloured Aria, one of the rarest colours one of these weak magic beasts could be.

It was the colour of the Aria in charge of pulling just a certain type of carriage; whichever wagon Solomon traveled in, this Aria would end up pulling it. Which meant that there would be royal guards lingering around the place, which was more than just annoying. Eiro looked toward the door at the Kobold head-butler, “Please make sure everyone inside of the manor is disguised.”

“Yes, my lord,” the Kobold replied, quickly pressing his palm onto the bracelet on his wrist, which quickly activated the illusion that covered his body. Instead of the dark brown, albeit graying fur that covered his body before now, he showed the bronze skin of a middle-aged man with a thick, but well-kept beard with silver streaks running through it. He walked toward one of the walls and knocked on it. Before he knew it, one of the small paintings beside him flipped open, revealing a copper red spider the size of his head, “We have visitors. Call for sir Bavet and prepare another set of teaware. And bring the silverroot leaves.”

“Hm? How’d you know that’s what I was going to give to him?” Eiro asked with a raised brow, and the butler quickly turned around, “The only individual you so readily invite into your home without another thought, but would still have to disguise yourself around, would be his Majesty, when he visits with his knights on official business. In such situations, you always opt to serve him silverroot tea.”

With a smirk, Eiro closed his eyes and nodded, “What can I say, it seems to calm his nerves,” the Demon pointed out, watching as one of the spiders came over to the table in front of him, carrying the teacup and accompanying plate, together with a small bag filled with dried silverroot leaves. Once again, he was happy that he picked out such competent individuals for the manor.

The carriage came to a halt outside, and Eiro could soon hear hurried footsteps approaching the stairway in front of the main entrance, with two guards quickly walking beside him. As the butler headed to the door, a small red bird flew into the room, dropping down onto Eiro’s head and perching on his horns, “Urgh, can’t you at least have one of the butlers or maids tell me instead of those spiders? They’re so rude to me all the time...” Bavet complains, before the bird-body turned into ooze that covered Eiro’s form in a matter of seconds, quickly transforming him into his human form.

Eiro shrugged, “Sorry, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t seem to understand their language, so I can’t really tell them off properly. Just bear with it for a while. They’re probably just teasing you because you’re the only one that understands them.”

“Don’t treat them like kids now, man... those things are fucking annoying... Also, don’t give them enough credit to call it a language, it’s just random words that they repeat over and over again,” the slime pointed out annoyed, but quickly quieted down when the footsteps in the manor’s hallway became more obvious. Solomon rushed through the sitting room’s door, right as Eiro started pouring the tea into the cup reserved for the king, “Have a seat, I can already guess what you want to-”

“I want him gone,” Solomon ground his teeth, “That man, he simply stormed into the Academy! Do you even know how traumatised those kids were?! Charles practically had a breakdown when he saw the guards rushing to the building, hearing the other students mutter about the situation. I understand that you deal with some unsavory individuals, but someone that would do things like that-”

.....

“Partax Evergreen,” Eiro interrupted the angry monarch, who was slightly taken aback, “Par- What? Why would someone like that purposefully invade the academy? After everything that happened there?”

“Believe it or not, but he didn’t know about it. Didn’t Lognir tell you?”

Solomon slowly walked over to Eiro and sat down across from him, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “...I guess he might have, I was a little preoccupied at the moment. He came back and said it was ‘fine’, but I couldn’t hear anything else,” Solomon sighed, and Eiro slowly handed him the cup of tea he had just poured, “No thanks, I’m not in the mood.”

“It’s silverroot.”

“...Fine, one cup,” the king slowly took the cup and then sipped at its edge, clearly enjoying the special taste of the silverroot leaves. He placed the cup down on the table again, and then looked at Eiro with a frown, “Even if it’s Partax Evergreen... he can’t get away with what he did. And you can’t expect me to simply let it happen without consequence either.”

Eiro raised his brow, “So, what do you want? I can tell him to leave, though he’s not really the kind of person that cares if he’s banned from somewhere,” the Demon pointed out, but Solomon quickly shook his head, “I can’t afford being on bad terms with a Master, even if he did something like that... I still want him gone, but-”

“I’ll make sure he doesn’t leave the area without me, don’t worry,” Eiro reassured him, and Solomon sunk back in his seat, “That’s the bare minimum. He’s-”

“Banned from ever coming close to the Academy, I know, I already told him.”

“...And make sure that Charles never lays eyes on him either.”

“I promise,” Eiro nodded. He wasn’t intending on letting that happen in the first place, so there was nothing that Solomon had to worry about. Clearly, Solomon was still unhappy, though. It was clear that he was worried abotu a specific situation happening, “Don’t worry, Partax won’t be staying here long-term. He’s going to teach me a few things, and then take his leave again. The only permanent Master resident is Armodeus.”

Solomon raised a brow, “What about Koperia?”

“She comes and goes, but she’s gone most of the time. Haven’t heard from her in a couple of weeks. She’ll probably be back in a month or so? Said she had something to take care of,” Eiro explained, “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure that the others don’t cause any trouble. From what Jura and Armodeus told me, the three remaining masters that I invited shouldn’t cause any big incident or anything... I think.”

“Please make sure that they don’t. Because something like this can never, ever happen again. Understood?”

Eiro nodded, “Of course, I’ll make sure of that. Actually... let’s just talk to him about that.”

Solomon flinched, his face slightly contorting, “What do you mean, talk to him? You mean...”

Before the king could finish the sentence, the sound of a large number of metal legs hitting the hallway’s floors echoed out, and a figure came around the corner. It was Partax, as always sitting on that mechanical creation that was just carrying him around all over the place. An arm was protruding from Partax’s seat, holding onto one of the spiders, “This thing, how did you manage to tame it? Bug monsters don’t submit easily, I thought.”

Eiro frowned as he stared at the halfling. The spider that he was holding was fairly injured, probably from struggling against Partax’s capture of it, “Let it go, right now.”

Although he clearly wanted to complain and ask more questions, he soon took notice of the man that was sitting across from Eiro, as well as the two guards that were just about to draw their swords to defend Solomon. Partax let go of the spider that he was holding onto with that mechanical arm, and the monster just fell to the ground, it’s carapace slightly cracking, as it was already damaged before.

Eiro clicked his tongue, “Come here, kid,” he said, looking at the spider, which quickly came rushing over. Its legs seemed to be fine, at least. Eiro picked the monster up and placed it onto his lap, to the clear disdain of not just Solomon’s guards, but the king himself. Eiro expected him to not be bothered about things like this, especially after seeing these spiders quite a lot whenever he visited the manor, but it seemed seeing one up close like this was still different. Eiro just ignored it, though, and quickly used some healing magic on it. Monsters were more likely to react to certain elements of magic than others, so for this spider, Eiro used earth magic to heal it since the spider seemed the most aligned to that element. Gondos created a slight bit of rough dirt that Eiro used to quickly cover the injured areas, and then used it as a catalyst for the healing. Before long, the spider was healed, and Eiro placed it back onto the ground, befoer it scurried off into one of the hidden passages.

“You come here, now,” Eiro said, looking at Partax annoyed. The halfling seemed a bit bothered as well, since Eiro was clearly talking in a somewhat commanding tone. Well, that was because Eiro was actually commanding him. Partax didn’t like it, but Eiro could hold the fact that he was the only clue to the Tower of Books over his head. Eiro could learn Artificing and Alchemy in other ways if he had to, especially with the knowledge of the tower at his fingertips, even if he preferred to learn some secrets from a Master. However, the only person that could help partax was this Demon. It was a fairly one-sided situation, “What is it? I’m busy,” the halfling asked with a click of his tongue.

Eiro looked at him and bluntly said, “You’re going to make up for literally just invading the Academy earlier today.”

“What? I already apologized, didn’t I?” Partax complained as though he was a child. Quite literally so, he sounded exactly like Arc when Eiro told him off for messing around when he shouldn’t. Which also meant that Eiro knew exactly how to deal with that, “Right, but an apology isn’t enough in a situation as serious as this. Not to mention, your precious ‘younger brother’ caused quite a mess, so I feel as though you should help out fix the mess he caused anyway.”

“What? He’s your uncle, why don’t you help?”

“You remember why you’re here, right?” Eiro sighed, and Partax raised a brow, before quickly remembering that he was supposed to teach Eiro so that he was prepared when taking out one more Royal monster. He quickly fell silent again.

Eiro sighed, “Whatever. The way you will help is pretty simple; you’re going to build the greatest security system for the academy.”