DEMON'S VIRTUE

The wind making the dried up, fallen leaves rustle, and the smell of the Autumn-Blossoms that were growing because of the Lady of Autumn's arrival tomorrow. The sweat that was running down his body because of the two fights he just went through one after another. Right now, Eiro was concentrating to be able to perceive everything that he possibly could.

And the thing that he learned to make special use of was his earth magic. At some point, during his training to be able to somehow find the puppet, Eiro remembered the basic practice method for Earth Magic, which was meant to make a person try to find simple small things around them through the ground itself.

At first, Eiro thought that it would be something that he didn't really need, considering that he was able to usually find anything and everything around him with just his regular five senses, but now that he wasn't able to do so anymore, this extra sense actually came in pretty useful, and surprisingly actually grew rather strong the higher Eiro's Earth Magic skill rose. It seemed like the perception stat even increased this sort of magical perception, meaning that Eiro's card helped with that as well. He just never figured that out since he didn't have the base to perceive anything in that manner in the first place.

Either way, now with his mana spread out in the dirt in a roughly ten meter radius around him, he was able to properly use this as a base for widespread detection.

Because the way that Earth-Magic based perception worked was to detect vibrations to the ground, so regular movement could be found relatively easily. But that wasn't all, since that step could be taken even further.

It was possible to cause tiny tremors through magic, and you were then able to make use of the way those tremors travelled through the ground to figure out far more than Eiro had initially expected, such as what stationary things were standing where, how heavy something was, what it was made of, and especially it also helped finding things that weren't on the surface or that were 'locked' away so that his usual perception wouldn't be able to reach it.

And with this, Eiro could expand on something that he started working on a year ago, when he first got his superior perceptive ability. The mental map of the world around him created out of senses outside of visuals.

Now, it had a new base layer, and that was the world as shown through his earth-magic based perception. For now, it was basically just a rough mental recreation of what it would be in reality. Then, everything would be colored in a way that corresponded to the smell it gave off. And at last, the sounds that were created through any sort of movement were shown through ripples in the air.

Those three parts of perception already created a quite detailed map of Eiro's surroundings, and once he worked everything out as much as he could with just these three senses, there was something else that was added on top, something that Eiro had been working on lately.

Considering that it was possible with the ground, and also with water as the Demon had tested already, to perceive things around you, then why shouldn't it be possible with the air as well? Of course, 'Air' wasn't usually a carrier for such things, but Eiro already knew that he was able to perceive the slightest breath of someone that was a dozen or so meters away from him even normally just through the feeling on his skin.

So if you pair that with Air Magic, Eiro was able to strengthen the reaction that wind showed when hitting against surfaces so that he was able to notice it, even if it was a change that others weren't able to notice.

Like this, Eiro was able to perceive parts of the world that he already mapped out that even the earth-magic based perception didn't reach, while further increasing the detail of the parts that he did already figure out.

While this drained a fair amount of mana, it seemed like it would be worth it this time, especially since Eiro would finally try to add the most important sense for this to the mix. And that sense was sight.

And even if it maybe didn't seem that hard to do, if you actually try to visualize something in your mind while actively looking at the world around you, it was rather hard to do. Of course, since he was visualizing what he was looking at, it was a bit easier, but he was also at the same time trying to keep the parts that he couldn't properly see visualized at the same time.

This was what Eiro spent every free second practicing for weeks now, and finally, he managed to get a rough grasp on it. While he could see the world normally, on top of that he could also see the colors that he assigned to what he smelled as well as the ripples that sound now created for him.

And of course, he also instinctively could tell what was behind whatever blocked his sight, while his mental image was just slowly getting filled in in incredible detail in correspondence to the visuals that were just added.

Slowly, once Eiro managed to get this all started, he slowly stood up and lifted his foot up, balancing his own weight on only his left foot. This movement alone created small ripples through the sound his clothes made.

With his Life Force pushed mostly into his lower back, hip, and right leg, Eiro prepared his mana to be pushed out of his body as quickly as possible as well, and then took a deep breath to fill his lungs with as much air as he could.

And with a single motion that just took a split-second, Eiro pushed his right foot onto the ground with as much force as his body could muster while pushing mana out of that foot into the ground to create strong tremors to use as a perceptive base, while at the same time letting out a scream as loud as he could and pushed out all the air that he pulled into his lungs beforehand at once.

This actually slightly hurt his ears, but at least everything seemed to work out for him right about now. His range of perception increased by an incredibly large area, and the detail that his mental image had was at a whole new level as well.

And then, Eiro managed to find something that seemed slightly out of place. It blended in truly perfectly with where it was hiding, in the narrow gap inbetween a boulder and the ground. It seemed to have mana around it in a manner that allowed it to mess with perceptive abilities like Eiro was trying to use, but now, he finally managed to find it.

He finally knew where the puppet was. With a determined stride, Eiro started rushing forward through the forest right to where he noticed the puppet to be before. But now that he was actually standing in front of it, even his eyes weren't able to see the puppet, no matter how hard he looked.

Even when he actually placed his hands onto where he definitely knew the puppet was, he just felt some dirty, wet, and moss-covered rock, although that passed soon enough and Eiro was able to push his hand through that as the false image faded from his sight as well and he was now able to see the puppet as it crawled out from underneath the rock.

"How in the..?" Eiro asked himself quietly, utterly confused at what was going on. How was the puppet able to do this? This Task was created by Jura, wasn't it? Just how...

"Nelli!" The Demon yelled out the moment that he rushed back home swiftly followed by the puppet, and the Spirit already awaited him once he got back to the house, looking at him with a bright smile.

"So? You found it this time, huh?" She asked with a grin, and Eiro nodded his head with a slight frown, "Yeah... But this task is not made by Jura, is it?" He inquired without hesitation, and Nelli swiftly shook her head.

"Not completely, no." Nelli pointed out, and Eiro looked at her with a confused expression, "What? Then why did you tell me it was?"

"Because you're too conceited." She explained, but the Demon just looked at her with a deep frown, "What do you mean? How am I conceited?" He replied, and Nelli sighed deeply.

"Listen, I don't want to insult you. But technically, you're really young, and you don't have many experiences with other people yet. You have incredible abilities, but they're by far not the world's best. Well, maybe your perception is close now, but there's sure to be people that managed to bring it to a similar state through training. You got it by luck. Since Jura knew that you wouldn't think much of a task based on perception due to your enhanced ability through the card, he had me explain that the Token was made through his skill." Nelli explained, and Eiro just looked at her with a surprised expression, just listening to her speak. He wanted to, but it wasn't like he could actually deny anything she was saying.

"That Token was made with a Master-Grade Stealth Skill imbued in it. Jura did help a bit, and that was by fine-tuning things to make it as hard to notice for even increased perception as possible." The Spirit told Eiro, and he just sighed slowly in response as he nodded his head.

"Alright... I got it. Well, at least I know where my Stealth skill might go if I keep leveling it up." Eiro pointed out. He felt a weird sense of disappointment after suddenly finding out that this token wasn't made by Jura himself. He couldn't really explain it though, that's just what he felt like.

Either way, he knew that it was a dumb way to feel, so Eiro swiftly moved on and turned around to accept the token from the Puppet again.

Although just then, something else rather weird happened. Instead of only the last token, it also held a blank one in its hand, swiftly making Eiro divert his eyes to the Puppet's chest.

And there, he found a second slot for a token added into the mix, making Eiro just smile wrily in response, "Wait, do you mean to say that now I'm supposed to pass tasks with more than one mode enabled for you?" Eiro asked the Puppet, which swiftly nodded its head in response, before the Demon just started rubbing the bridge of his nose.

"So, what's possible with this now? Advanced Combat using kicks, throws, grapples, stabs and cuts... Then Mobile hand-to-hand and dagger combat... those types of combat where you're completely hidden from me... and a version of tag where I don't know where you are?" Eiro asked with a slight grumble, and then just sighed deeply in response.

"Are there more token slots if I complete all that?" Eiro asked next, making the Puppet simply nod its head once more, and Eiro slowly shook his head as he placed the hide-and-seek token into his treasury while pushing the blank token into his pocket, and then looked at the others.

"Seems like I'll have stuff to do for a good while from now on." The Demon told them all, and even Nelli seemed slightly perplexed at the revelation of extra token slots. Apparently not even she knew about this part of it.

"That thing is far more versatile than you'd think, huh?" Arc asked with a loud laugh, before Eiro simply nodded his head.

"Sadly enough, my greatest rival is a dummy...." Eiro pointed out disappointedly.