Demon's Virtue

"Rudy, show me the book you're reading~!" Clementine exclaimed happily, as she jumped onto the bed that the young boy was laying on. With a slightly embarrassed expression, Rudy nodded his head and slowly held the book over toward her.

"It's a Cookbook specialized in making food from ingredients in the wild... So it also explains a little bit about how to best gather them and know what's edible and what's not." He explained, and Clementine smiled brightly in response. "Whooa! That's such a grown-up book! Can you read to me a little?" The young girl asked excitedly, before Rudy nodded his head, pointing at one of the words on the first line to concentrate on where he was at.

"An ea-easy way to... to know if a plant is edi...edib...edibel... is to see if any ani...aminals... animals have eat-eaten it..." Rudy read out loud, letting even the Imp hear him. He read that part in the book before briefly as well, and it wasn't all that hard to the Imp. But on the other hand, Clementine looked at him with an excited expression. "Whoaa! You're so good at reading!" She laughed, seemingly truly meaning what she was saying, and Rudy scratched the back of his neck excitedly.

Was that normal? The Imp really wasn't sure, but maybe he should ask them about it. "How high are your language comprehension skills?" The Imp asked rather loudly so that everyone in the room could hear him. It seemed like the skill that supported how easy it was to read and write and such things was that one, after all.

"Erm... I don't know... I can't read my status..." Clementine admitted embarrassedly, but on the other hand, Rudy, Sammy and Arc seemed to be at least somewhat aware. "Apprentice Level 5." Sammy replied relatively coldly, and Arc nodded his head. "Mine is similar, Apprentice Level 11, hehe." Arc said smugly, and Rudy quickly smirked smugly and crossed his arms.

"Hehe, mine is Apprentice Level 19!" He exclaimed, and the Imp looked at them surprised. They were able to speak so well, so he didn't think that their skill level would be so much lower than his own.

"What about you, Mister?" Arc asked curiously, and the Imp slowly opened his status and chose to take a look again. It seemed like the most important things were the word at the start and the Level, huh?

"Apprentice Level 89." The Imp explained, and the others looked at him excitedly.

"That's really high, right?" Arc asked surprised, and Sammy quickly shook her head. "Yes... Even my papa was stuck at Level 99..." She explained with a slightly bitter expression, and the Imp looked at her confused.

"What do you mean, 'Stuck'?" The Imp asked, and Sammy slightly frowned at him in response to the sudden question, and then crossed her arms with a huff.

"Hmph, how can you not even know something that basic?" She replied and looked away, before Rudy smirked in reply and slightly laughed. "You don't know either, huh?" He asked her, and Sammy's face flushed red and she shook her head.

"Of course I do! I just don't want to tell him..." Sammy replied, before Arc chuckled and looked at the Imp.

"Well, I don't think I'm completely right, but I think different people can do different things better than others, and that expresses itself in how fast a skill can level up, and to what Grade you can bring your skill. Some people can't even learn certain skills at all... That's just how it is, apparently. It does change over time though... As children, our skills level up really slow, and babies like Leon or the Priestess can't learn skills at all yet." The boy explained, before scratching his cheek embarrassedly, "As long as they aren't Unique Skills, at least." He added, and the Imp slowly nodded his head in understanding.

It seemed like he wasn't really able to teach the babies how to speak after all. That would make things a little more annoying, though. With a slight sigh, the Imp stood up from the chair he was sitting on in the corner and placed his book down on the table, before stepping up to Rudy's bed, sitting down on it next to the boy.

Confused, Rudy looked at him as the Imp took the book from him, and then ran his finger over the first line that Rudy just read. He did it similarly to how Avalin did it back then, so that Rudy would be able to learn it properly.

"A Good way to know if a plant is edible is to see if any animals have eaten them." He said out loud, while looking over at Rudy, showing him the next sentence while just looking at him through the mask on his face.

"Keep reading." The Imp told him, and slowly, Rudy nodded his head and did as he was told, although slightly startled by the Imp sitting next to him.

"E-Erm... Ma-Many amin...animals c-can inst... instict... instictiv..." Rudy started, although he felt pretty nervous being watched by the Imp like this, although the Monster just placed his finger on the word and then turned toward Rudy. "Instinctively." He told him, and Rudy looked at the word and slowly repeated what the Imp said, trying to start the sentence again.

"Many animals can instinctively... differ...enti... What's this word?" The young boy asked rather carefully, and the Imp took a quick look. "Differentiate." He explained, and Rudy slowly nodded his head and then continud to read, with the Imp helping him out wherever he could, until Rudy managed to finish reading the sentence properly.

"Many animals can instinctively differentiate between food that will kill them, and food that is safe to eat." The Boy exclaimed proudly, and the Imp slowly nodded his head in response.

"Good job." The Imp said, and even though it was in a rather monotone voice, Rudy seemed pretty happy about it.

And so, for the next little while, the Imp continued helping Rudy read the cook-book, while the other children curiously listened in as well, as if someone was reading a story to them. It seemed like before in the book store, Sammy wasn't actually reading to Leon, but instead just showed him some pretty pictures in a simple picture-book, so the Imp promised to help the other children read later as well.

But just a little while later, the Imp noticed that the children all seemed pretty tired, and the two babies that were already placed into their own beds were sleeping already as well, so the Imp slowly stood up from the bed and made his way back toward the corner of the room to the chair and table.

"You four, go to sleep." The young monster told them, "We will leave early." He explained, and the children slowly nodded their heads, tiredly climbing into the beds that they reserved for themselves, while the Imp started to read one of his books, the one he was most interested in right now.

'Magic Theories and Practices'. It seemed like a book that both went quite in-depth about magic, but also described the more general things at the start, so the Imp was most interested in that. Once he would find out what he needed here, he would look at that book about Spirits as well.

What the Imp found out while reading the book about Magic was pretty interesting, really.

Magic was largely split up into two parts. Manipulation, and Creation. The Manipulation part described the control over the elements that naturally existed in the world, something that around 95% of Magicians focused on. And now that the Imp thought about it, it was the exact same thing with him. After all, he manipulated his own blood through the water inside of it with the help of his Water Magic Skill, and the air in his body with the help of his Air Magic.

'Creation' Magic was something quite rare and hard to actually accomplish, but it seemed like this book didn't focus too much on Practical Creation Magic either. This was a book for people that just started out, so it made sense, at least in the Imp's own logic.

For now, he chose to try out some practice-methods for people with 'Beginner' Grade magic. First there was practice for Air magic, something that he already managed to do before, which was to increase the strength of your breath by pouring your 'Mana', or as the Imp called it, 'Heat', into it.

That seemed to be step one of the practice, and the next step was for those that already managed to do the former. You were supposed to control the air that left your body while it was outside of you. This had to be done by keeping your mana inside of the air at all times and constantly being aware of it. So, the Imp figured he could just try this out. He already had a pretty good awareness of the heat, so it shouldn't be too big of an issue.

Slowly gathering his concentration, the Imp let out a deep breath out of his mouth, that quickly swirled some of the dust on the ground away from the Imp. But then, the Imp slowly closed his eyes and concentrate on whether or not he could feel heat from anywhere here in this room. And as if he was trying to take it all back into his body, he took a deep breath.

Judging from the light gust of air that hit his body and flipped the pages in his book around a little, it seemed like he managed to do it right.

And it seemed like the notifications figured the same to be the case.

[Beginner Air Magic Skill Leveled up!]

Seeing that there was a slight bit of progress in his magic, the Imp thought to try and repeat this again. The Goal of this practice was apparently to properly be able to push your released breath around you quite easily. So, the Imp figured he shouldn't stop practicing until he managed to do that.

For a while, that was all that the Imp did as well, even if he got pretty tired in the process. But in the end, he managed to make great progress, because he was now able to move his breath around in a rough circle on the floor. It probably wouldn't help him much to do really anything at all, but it was better than nothing. He could expand from there.

So for now, the Imp figured he should take a little break until he wasn't feeling just as tired anymore, and leaned back in the chair, properly looking into the room in front of him. Everybody seemed to be sleeping, so that was good. Hopefully nothing would be happening tonight and they could depart just like intended. The Imp really didn't like this town at all, so he wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

"Hmm..?" Slowly, the Imp noticed something about his thoughts that he wasn't really aware of before. If he wanted to leave as quickly as possible, why didn't he? They were literally inside of the carriage while he was thinking about it before, so why didn't they just get away immediately?

But it seemed like it was slightly too late for that now. Because the moment the Imp realized that something was going on, a loud bell rang throughout the whole town, and bright, purple light shone through the window while laughter could be heard from the streets.

And the eery feeling became unbearable.