DEMON'S VIRTUE

Shortly after the discussion ended and the Lady and her daughters disappeared again, Eiro was preparing to make his way back home, rather tiredly, and simply stopped to talk to a few people here and there, getting some free food from some of the stalls, and then also grabbed Arc's Guild Card from Tom.

And just when he was about to actually leave the town to be able to take his mask off and eat some of the stuff he was just given, a rather annoying man stepped up right behind him.

"Eiro." Rumia said with a deep frown, and the Demon turned around toward him and with a smug tone shook his head, "That's Lord Eiro for you, peasant." He laughed, playing around with the fact that the Lady of Winter practically commanded Rumia to do whatever Eiro wants, and the man himself just ground his teeth and looked at him, "Do not speak to me in that manner. No matter what this Goddess said, you are still a heretic through and through, and will be judged for your sins once this is all over."

"Sure, sure. If you would excuse me, I have some babies to sacrifice to the lord of the underworld. See ya." The Demon said and then swiftly climbed onto Lugo's back, and then innocently waved at Rumia and his men as he was leaving. Luckily, even Rumia wasn't dumb enough to actually think what Eiro just said was really the truth.

And once Eiro was sure nobody was around him to see him anymore, he removed his mask and finally started indulging in the snacks that he was given, "You really can eat, huh..?" Nelli asked as she watched him, and the Demon looked at her with a slight frown.

"I know it's just Beginner, but I DO have the Overeating skill, you know?" He pointed out, and the Spirit looked at him with a light frown, "Right, where exactly did you get that again?" She asked, and Eiro swallowed the food paste he just made in his mouth and turned toward her, "When I ate three other Imps, immediately after being captured by a group of Adventurers. I mentioned that, didn't I?" The Demon pointed out, and then slowly shook his head as he saw Nelli's shocked expression.

"Sorry, you were inside with Jura then... Well, nevermind that. For a period of a few days, I had to eat more than my body could have usually handled to provide myself with the energy to break out of the Ownership someone placed over me." Eiro explained, just as he was pulling some meat off a skewer with his teeth.

"Is that so..?" Nelli asked with a wry smile, "I probably should have expected that kind of thing, to be honest." She said, simply accepting it, since there was no reason to worry about it in the end. For now, they just had to make their way back home.

The next few hours went practically like any other trip to or from the town went, with Eiro just reading a bit until they got home, and once they were actually there, the Demon just made his way into the house to warm back up properly after riding through actually rather snow for that long. His body didn't get cold like normal though, he just got more lethargic, and that was a bit uncomfortable to him.

"I'm back!" The Demon said with a bright smile as he entered the house in the darkness, while everyone was just sitting around the table playing with some cards, and then looked at the Imp with smiles on their own, before Eiro threw the Guild Card over toward Arc.

"Here you go." He laughed, and Arc looked down at the thin piece of metal excitedly, "Whoa, that's so neat! Thanks!" Arc exclaimed, before Eiro just chuckled and sat down on one of the free chairs, slowly using fire magic to heat himself up a bit from the inside out.

"Anything happen while I was gone?" Eiro asked, but it seemed like everything was just like normal. And that was something that Eiro was rather glad about. Hopefully they could live somewhat normally for another nine months.

---

Eiro could feel the air envelop his body as he was running around the forest, using his air magic to boost his movement as much as he could while using Earth Magic to at least sligthly change the terrain to his advantage. For example right now, he was creating a bit of a ramp to be able to take a higher path than the puppet was.

Over the past few months, Eiro had grown capable enough to catch the Puppet basically half the time that they were practicing together, although he was never able to complete the one hour that was set as a requirement to pass the second half of the freerunning task.

Hopefully, that would change today. Eiro had tried his best to manipulate the paths that the Puppet would take by subtly changing the angle of how he was running to make the puppet want to go into another direction, and now, the Puppet was in a place where Eiro was able to catch it and then rather easily escape along a route that he knew would allow him to build up a fair amount of distance between them.

Eiro dropped his body down and used Air Magic to catch his fall just when the Puppet was jumping inbetween a small gap in the ground and then lightly touched the Puppet's back, before the mode immediately switched to Eiro being the hunted and the Puppet the hunter.

But, the Puppet still had to stop and turn around, and more importantly find Eiro, who dove into the gap in the forest ground to use it as a good starting point, swiftly making his way through the thin gap before pushing his body out of it by placing one of his feet on one of the walls, and the other foot on the other wall, before pushing his body up and out of the gap and starting to just book it.

For now, he was running along the forest with the Puppet a good bit behind him, but if Eiro wanted to complete the full hour as the hunted, he had to increase the distance between them some more. His Air Magic did give him a little bit of an advantage over the Puppet, which had the superior techniques and physicality, so he would probably be able to increase the distance if he just kept running in a straight line for a full hour, but that wasn't the point of this task.

He was supposed to use his environment in the best possible way, and as such gathered his mana and swiftly manipulated the earth underneath his feet to increase the strength of his jump to be able to properly reach the branches of the trees above him while the earth flattened again once his mana was pulled out of the ground, and Eiro then did his best to jump from branch to branch as quickly as he could, changing directions using them as well as elevations as much as he could.

And that continued for the whole hour, although just when the last minute started, it seemed like the Puppet was about to catch him, but Eiro had been continuously running toward a certain spot. The spot where the Lady of Autumn would appear tomorrow. In that spot, it was incredibly windy around this time, so of course that helped Eiro use his Air Magic a bit more proficiently and used it to give him the last boost to get away from the Puppet with a long jump into the open space in front of him, although the Puppet was sliding toward the place where he would be landing.

But just before the Puppet touched the Imp, the full hour was finally over, and the Puppet stepped aside and turned toward Eiro, who was busy celebrating his win.

"Take that, you piece of scrapwood!" Eiro yelled out, and then pat his body down to get rid of the dust and dirt that gathered on him due to his landing, before he had something held toward him. The Freerunning Token, which the Puppet pulled out of its chest itself just now.

"Well then, thank you." Eiro said with a smile, and then placed the token into his treasury, as he found that he could weirdly enough store all four tokens in there at the same time, and then looked at the puppet with a smile.

"Let's get home and finally complete the other three tasks as well, shall we?" The demon suggested, and then started walking while properly stretching his body after running for that long.

"I managed to get my skill that high, huh?" The Demon muttered as he looked at one of the lines of his status as he was walking.

-[Apprentice Freerunning][Level – 13]

"Well, I'm still not all that great compared to a literal puppet..." Eiro smiled wrily. Sure, he may have caught it this time around, but the Puppet's techniques were still far, far above Eiro's own. It made sense though, considering that those techniques came from someone who brought the Freerunning skill to its Master Grade.

He wanted to pass each task at least once each before starting the trip to the place where Sammy and Leon's skills would be unsealed, but it obviously wasn't the last time he would try to pass the task. Just winning once didn't mean that he was suddenly as great as a master. He just got lucky with his planning. He had to be able to easily beat the puppet to say that he was at least on the same scale as a master, since the puppet itself probably wasn't even nearly as great as an actual master would be, and that was still a long time away. Luckily the Puppet could constrict its body into a rather small space so that Eiro could actually fit it into his Satchel pretty nicely.

Either way, for now, the Demon had not much time left to relax, since he still had to beat the Dagger Mastery, Hand-to-Hand Combat Mastery, as well as the Perception tasks.

And soon, the Demon found his way to the top of the hill where his house stood, and where everyone was just practicing a bit since there was not much better to do.

They already butchered some of the animals for provisions and then sold the rest with the exception of the two horses, and their things were packed for the trip that would be starting the day after tomorrow as well.

Eiro felt a little bad about leaving behind so much amazingly special wood as they had in the basement, but that was something he had to live with. He already had to leave behind all his books because there wasn't that much space in the carriage that Eiro had been constructing over the past few months. He couldn't make it too large, since otherwise the horses wouldn't be able to pull it anymore, so it ended up just large enough to comfortably hold the kids and the more important things they needed as well as all their provisions and similar.

And now, since everything was set up for them to leave, everyone was really just trying to pass the time and get rid of their nervosity, since they hadn't left for nearly seven years. The four older children were all fifteen now and one after another were signed up to the Guild, although they weren't able to get their Classes just yet, since, for whatever reason, the man from the church with the class-change crystal didn't come this summer.

Well, they would surely pass a town on their way and would be able to get their classes at a church there, so that wasn't an issue anyway.

While the children were practicing with each of their items, Eiro just pulled the dagger mastery token out of his Treasury and grabbed the two wooden practice daggers that he and the Puppet always fought with, and threw one of them over toward said puppet, and then swiftly prepared for the fight.