Demon's Virtue

With horror on his face, Eiro watched as the flaming portal made of bones, flesh, and blood disappeared by simply crumbling to dust. It seemed as if it simply collapsed onto itself, disappearing without a trace but a specific unfamiliar smell that Eiro couldn't really place anywhere right now.

But either way, Eiro was still terrified beyond anything he had experienced in the last few years. Slowly, Eiro got up with shaking legs, the singing pain in his body that he momentarily felt before gone, albeit replaced with the feeling of some object in his chest. It wasn't painful, just uncomfortable.

"Is this the mark..? Or that Foreign mana?" Eiro muttered quietly, and then simply stumbled forward. Everything that he had constructed with his magic just now was still there, at least to an extent. Enough to let him get over, that was for sure.

Eiro swiftly ran over the dirt bridge, before the speedy current broke up the ice blockage and swiftly swept away the dirt bridge, before the whole river returned to its regular state.

"What took you so long?" Arc asked with a slight frown as Eiro climbed back onto Lugo's back as the stag stood right next to the carriage, and the Demon just lightly smiled. "Sorry, I was a bit overwhelmed after all, it seems." The Demon admitted.

"Well are you alright?" The boy asked next, as he got the horses to move again, "Don't worry, I'm fine." Eiro admitted as he slowly rubbed his chest to try and get rid of the uncomfortable feeling that he found there. But unluckily, it just constantly stayed in place without disappearing or moving in the slightest.

When Eiro was trying to figure out what this feeling was, and if he could somehow change something about it, Nelli floated up next to him. It seemed like she had finished properly treating both Leon and Clementine, with the former of those two now silently sleeping like always.

"Why did you do something like that? You were using a huge amount of mana there! And you were even pulling in ambient mana!" She exclaimed, seemingly quite mad at the demon over doing something as rash as he did.

"I know, I'm sorry. But everything worked out in the end, right?" Eiro pointed out, before Nelli slowly nodded her head, just slightly looking at the top of his head, "Yeah, everything did work out... With just minor repercussions..." She muttered quietly. With a puzzled expression, placed his hand on top of his head and swiftly ran them over it, trying to find if anything happened. Technically, the notifications did say that his body was slowly changing...

And then, he found something that did indeed change. It wasn't by much, but just by a little his horns increased in thickness, "Erm, my horns changed, didn't they?" The Demon asked, and Nelli just slowly nodded, squinting her eyes in response.

"There's a little bit more mana concentrated in them, I think..." She pointed out, "In general, you have a little bit more mana... Wait, did you increase your stats just now?" Nelli inquired surprised, and Eiro nodded his head in response.

"Mhm, I have. Intelligence and Wisdom both by 25." Eiro explained, and the Naiad looked at Eiro with a curious expression, "Ooh, they're both over a hundred now, right? What did you get?"

"You mean the abilities I got..?" The Demon replied. "Of course I mean those! There are a few different ones you can end up with, so I'm curious what yours are!" Nelli pointed out, and Eiro just slightly scratched his cheek and explained.

"Thought Processing and Speed Learning. Although I was supposed to get 'Perfect Memory', but because the ability from my Scholar-Imp evolution is better than that, it got replaced by speed learning."

"Huh... That means you're basically really set for learning whatever you need, right?" Nelli muttered quietly, and Eiro just slightly shrugged, "Kind of, I guess?" He replied with a wry smile, and Nelli just sighed deeply in response, seemingly a little annoyed by that reaction. But instead of saying anything about it, she simply floated back into the carriage, "Let's talk later, then." She said.

With a light frown, Eiro leaned forward toward Lugo's antlers. He finally got the chance to properly calm down after what just happened with <The Devil>, and before that with Leon.

How did he suddenly find him? Why now of all times? And why did Eiro know about him being there in the first place. And about what he said... so Eiro really was an artifical being, like he already thought he was.

After thinking about what exactly the Devil was saying, Eiro managed to at least put a rough picture together. The reason why he was able to find Eiro was that he let his anger loose in town. He was a Demon with the sin of 'Wrath', apparently. At least judging from what happened back in the 'Town of Sins'. So maybe, since the Devil had already been 'watching' Eiro since back then, he was able to notice when he was actually indulging in his sin, and then found him as easily as that. It was obvious that the Devil was immensely powerful, Eiro knew that much just from standing in front of him. He could instantly create a portal to hell, and whatever that weird living chair creature was that was carrying the Pyromancer around.

Maybe because they were both Demons, Eiro knew about his presence there, or it was just another 'Sense' that increased through the Five of Pentacles. Either way, it actually turned out to be... unnecessary. No matter if he had continued on forward along the regular path toward the bridge or not. Since Eiro ended up running into the Devil anyway, that was useless. But at least Eiro was the only one that noticed him being there this time around, so maybe it was a good choice after all.

And then to tha 'artificial' part... There wasn't actually any knew information there, just that he apparently had a rather high Willpower Stat value. This was something that Eiro had expected to be the case already anyway, but at least now he had a proper confirmation for that theory.

'At least something good came out of today.' He thought to himself, and just quietly looked forward. He had to concentrate now, no matter what just happened. Eiro didn't like that he was 'marked' by the Devil, since he wasn't sure what exactly being marked completely entailed, but he wouldn't be able to change much about this now anyway, right?

He just needed to concentrate on finding the closest path. They had a long trip ahead of them, one during which they couldn't afford taking long breaks on the way. And they needed to stop by the person that Jura mentioned in the letters he left behind, the one that made actual weapons and tools for the group.

With a deep sigh, the Demon concentrated on what was going on around him. They weren't on a proper path right now, so the carriage was going rather slow since the wheels couldn't turn properly and the horses had a much higher load.

Eiro was kind of trying to help them out by flattening the ground as much as he could with earth magic, but it wasn't as easy as he thought it to be at first. His wand-hand helped a lot, actually. The fact that he increased his amount of mana and his control over it by a fair amount just now probably didn't hurt either.

They soon managed to reach an area that had slightly harder and flatter ground, so Eiro could finally stop using magic on the forest ground and instead concentrate on other things. Like for example using magic and his increased senses to look for a good path in front of them.

With his mask sitting on his face, since he didn't want anyone to somehow see him without it while he was concentrating on the distance, Eiro gathered a large amount of air in his lungs all at once and then breathed out deeply. He tried to cause the same reaction as he did during the task for the Perception, or actually rather 'Stealth' task, as the demon found out recently.

Eiro looked around the area, increasing upon his visual image bit by bit through the help of sound, smell, and of course anything that his 'Magical Perception' gave him. And so, it didn't actually take that long for the Demon to then find a proper road that they could ride on. Hopefully Eiro would be able to find some sort of landmark around here, or even better, some sort of mountain or tree that peaked over anything else here so that he could take a look at where they actually were and what the best path was.

After all, the map that Jura gave them was pretty useful, but only to show bigger things like main roads, basic geography, and of course towns and villages. Since a lot could happen in a year, Eiro wanted to make sure that they would really take the best route they possibly could.

Their first important stop was in a town called 'Argberg'. He tried to find some information on it so he knew that it was a pretty large town, actually. It was a Dwarven town of craftsmanship, so it really would be the best place to look for weapons, armor or tools, that was for sure.

While Eiro had never properly spoken to a dwarf before, he remembered seeing them in passing and reading stories about them. They were supposed to be the best craftsmen you could find anywhere, some even capable of creating tools for the divine.

So, the young Demon was actually slightly excited to see a town filled with people like that. Or rather, he would be, if he didn't have to constantly worry about Leon now. He had to take the concoction in the bottles once a week, and they had enough for three consecutive months, meaning that they really had to hurry. Since anything could happen on a trip, Eiro didn't want to waste any time if it was possible to avoid at all.

"Eiro?" Arc asked with a slight frown, and the Demon raised his brows surprised at suddenly hearing his name being called, "Yeah?" He asked, and the boy slowly turned his head toward the inside of the carriage, looking at the others sitting inside of there exhaustedly.

"I asked if we should maybe take a short break and eat something if we can? We left in a hurry, so none of us really did that yet... And you seem to want to see where we are first as well, so." The boy suggested, so Eiro just slowly thought about it and ended up nodding his head, looking forward toward the path in the distance.

"Yeah, let's do that. There's a bit of a clearing right next to the road over there." Eiro pointed out, before Arc just slowly nodded his head and tiredly looked forward as well. Seeing this made Eiro just feel rather bad, to be quite blunt. He really pushed a lot onto all of them. They had to leave the one place they felt safe at and suddenly start travelling for multiple months inside of a carriage.

After the group stopped by the side of the road, Rudy handed out a little bit to eat to everyone, before they all quietly ate, although Leon was still sleeping inside of the carriage. Once they were all at least somewhat filled up, they slowly got back into the carriage, although Eiro pulled Arc to the side. He wanted to speak to the boy about something before he sat down and started driving again.

"Get in the back." Eiro told him, and Arc started at him confusedly, "What do you mean? I'm fine driving, really." He replied, but Eiro shook his head immediately.

"You can take over tomorrow again. You're obviously more tired than you try to let on. So just sleep properly and let me drive for now.. Please."