Demon's Virtue

"... They did what?" Sarius asked, not sure if he heard Eiro properly. The demon quickly turned around with a broad grin on his face.

"The central material plane's tower is on the moon," Eiro explained, "Apparently, it's being protected by a folk of mystical people. Similar to the ones that live in the elemental planes; people that are more like magic beasts."

"But ain't the moon, like... kind of really far away?"

Experience tales at m-vl-e-mpyr

"I think that's almost an understatement," with a scoff, Eiro looked down at the page in the booklet he was holding. He was trying to calculate how long it would take him to fly there, "It would take... weeks. I can't hold my breath for that long. I'll be fine with the temperature at least, but it's too much of a risk to just go there straight on."

But as he continued flipping through the pages, Eiro saw the different methods that were described to get to the central material plane's tower. There were a handful of locations that acted as 'access points', powerful spatial magic that could almost instantly transport someone to the tower and back. But they were all in places that were extremely hard to get to.

In the continent where Eiro lived, there were just two of them; at the peak of the Divine Mountain-Range's tallest mountain, and at the bottom of the Abyss, a deep pit that was said to continue on forever. Though of course, it didn't really go on forever, it was just that nobody has reached the bottom and returned to tell the tale.

"Interesting," Eiro muttered. There didn't seem to be any other trials to use those access points, but at the same time, they also apparently didn't bring their user directly to the tower, but instead at a location on the dark side of the moon that was filled with monsters unlike any of those known in the world below.

"Isn't this a little... much? The tower is a place for knowledge, so why would you make it so that only extremely powerful individuals can reach the tower, instead of focusing on those with the wisdom to make it there?"

"..." the overseer was silent for a few moments, but then finally responded, "We don't have the confidence that those who are powerless won't misuse the knowledge they will find in the tower. That's why we want to filter out as many individuals as we possibly can. At this point, nobody has made it to even one of the access points in centuries."

"I can see why. They're all in pretty extreme places. It doesn't look like the specific access point changes where you'll end up on the moon, right?"

"Correct. The starting point will always be the same," the overseer nodded, "That being the case, there is also something more to the nature of those magic circles. A small 'boon' that we were willing to give to those who reached it. Maybe you could also see it as a distraction, but-"

"You can use the magic circles connecting to all the other access points once you reach the moon," Eiro interrupted, placing his hand over his mouth, and the overseer silently nodded, "If that's the case, that will make things a lot easier for me as well. Mind if I take over the dark side of the moon and take those magic circles for myself?"

"We would rather you not, but... as long as you don't stop anyone from having the potential to reach the tower, it should be fine," the overseer replied, and Eiro raised a brow.

"What's that about, anyway? If you don't want anyone to reach the tower, why even create these 'access points'?"

"Because it's not about what we want. It's about causality. The magic of the tower is sparked by possibility and potential. You yourself... or well, the first Morgan la Fey, curated the magic in that way. We need to leave open a door so that any single individual of any realm may have the possibility to reach the tower.

Luckily, whether that possibility is one-in-ten or one-in-a-million doesn't make a particular difference. The locations that we have placed the access points have been carefully chosen to maximize the power of causality while still making it nigh impossible for someone to even learn of them."

Eiro smiled lightly, throwing the booklets back over to the overseer. He had already read and memorized them now, so he didn't need the physical versions anymore.

"In that case, I'll make sure not to cut off the tower's power," Eiro replied, and Sarius curiously looked at his contractor.

"So what, you're gonna go to the moon next?"

"Well, not 'next'. The main body will certainly go there once his evolution is over. I've been trying to figure out ways how to travel the world anyway, right? Well, with this, there's places literally all over the world that I can visit with ease, just by reaching the peak of the Divine Mountain-range. And not just that, but all the locations are places that I've been wanting to visit anyway."

"Seriously?" Sarius asked, and Eiro scoffed and nodded as if it were obvious.

"Of course. The Divine Mountain-range, for one, is one of the best places to find Sylphs, and the Abyss is filled to the brim with Darkness magic so it's probably the best place to find Dark Spirits. And then one of the other locations is the crown of the world tree, and another is buried in a small cave somewhere in the infinite deserts.

These are all locations filled with immense amounts of magic, and not only are there Royal Monsters known to be near these places, but some are the best places for me to find clues on the locations of individuals with Splinters."

Sarius raised his brow, "Well, fair enough I guess. But it's gonna take three months until you can even think about that. And then you'll be in the middle of a semester at the academy."

Eiro turned toward the spirit, grinning, "What, you think with my new agility it's going to take me longer than a couple hours to reach the Divine Mountain-range? I can at least scout the areas out and then make some plans for the holidays to explore further."

The demon turned around and looked at the bookshelves in front of him, "Though, that's more of a matter for the main body to figure out, and it's still some months away in the first place. My job is to continue reading right now."

Eiro walked up to the first shelf, grabbing one of the books. It was a record of the crimes committed by the God of Fire during his time ruling this elemental plane, "Who knows, this knowledge could come in useful sooner or later..."

He flipped the book open and began to read. Just the first few pages already showed things that would make any true believer of the God of Fire lose their faith. And it was a thick book. There was so much information in here that it almost disgusted the Demon to read; even he had never done things like this.

Bringing people into this realm to see how long they survived in the heat, dissecting living magic beasts. The violent sexual assault of spirits, people, and beasts... tearing away at the space itself to shape it into what the god wanted it to be. Feeding on the people of this world en-masse, and breeding them just for the purpose of entertainment, food, and whatever else the god wanted.

No wonder the element of fire was known to be one of destruction and fury; with a past like this, there was no way that this wouldn't be passed on to this point in time somehow.

Many instances of these crimes were recorded, together with the death toll, sketches of the scenes that unfolded in some of these places and instances, and even many direct quotes from the God of Fire. It was disgusting. The God of Fire never had a particularly good reputation when compared to other gods, but at least he was supposed to have some virtues to him. But this?

It was something that Eiro could barely believe he was reading. If all the books at this floor of the tower held information like this, things that had been lost over time and could change the world forever if they got out... the Demon would have a pretty good time up here.