DEMON'S VIRTUE

As Eiro stood in front of the Inn that he and the children were staying at for tonight, he noticed that there were actually some of Solomon's guards stationed around the place, probably to keep an eye on them. After all, it was possible that someone that Eiro pissed off tonight could look for revenge. And so, the Demon stepped past the building into the yard in the back where the stables stood, quickly making his way over to Lugo.

"Well then, bud. Had a good day here?" Eiro asked the Stag that just nodded its head immediately, although Lugo was apparently quite curious about the Gnome that was floating by Eiro's side.

"Ah, yeah, we have someone new with us. He doesn't have a name yet though." The Demon explained as he rubbed his hand over Lugo's back, just making his way over toward the carriage while Lugo started sniffing the Gnome a bit.

As Eiro opened the door, he soon saw the Puppet standing in front of him inside, seemingly already having waited for his return. With his brows slightly furrowed, Eiro started sniffing the air a little, and then stepped into the carriage.

"Someone came in here?" Eiro asked as he took a look around, but the Puppet immediately shook its head in response to the Demon's question. With a slight sigh, Eiro looked back at it, "Did someone try to come in here?"

The puppet nodded its wooden head, and Eiro just steppeb back out of the carriage, "Stay in here and keep defending it. I'll head inside to see if there's some sort of issue." Eiro said, and swiftly scooped the gnome up and brought it with him into the Inn, while Nelli just floated right next to them.

"What are you going to do with the person that wanted to get into the carriage?" Nelli asked, and Eiro just shrugged, "Not much. Can't really do much with so many guards and scouts watching us, can I?" The Demon pointed out, and the Spirit looked at him with surprise, "Scouts? What Scouts?"

"Oh, right, I didn't tell you yet. There's probably half a dozen scouts surrounding this building on top of the regular guards. Solomon himself had maybe a dozen watching him at all times. These guys are all different ones though." Eiro explained, "But I definitely think that those guys are the least of our worries." He pointed out.

"And what worries you the most then?" Nelli inquired, before the Demon just slightly turned his sight toward her, "Enka, obviously."

"Eh? That idiot? Why are you worried about him at all?" The Spirit asked, and Eiro sighed as he stepped in front of the door to their room and knocked on it to have someone let him in, "I'll explain it in a bit. At least Felix is going to have some sort of use."

It seemed like Nelli was just completely and utterly confused at what Felix had to do with this now, but Eiro didn't expect anything else. He didn't have a chance to share the information he got from looking at Enka's status with her, after all. Without those, Eiro probably wouldn't have thought that anything was wrong with Enka either.

Soon, the door in front of Eiro opened, and the Demon stepped inside. Leon and Avalin were both asleep in the other, adjacent room that was connected to this one by another door. Clementine and Arc were in there with them, but Rudy, who just opened the door, Sammy and Felix were in this room, seemingly speaking about what happened today.

But without hesitation, Eiro stepped in front of one of the three people here. Maybe it should have been Sammy for the sake of apologizing, but instead he stood in front of Felix for a whole other purpose.

"Open your status." Eiro said in a commanding voice, but Felix, who was still relatively scared from watching Eiro 'rampage' before, just looked at him confusedly, "Wh-What? Why do you want me to open my status?"

"To confirm that you have the 'Charming Voice' skill." The Demon explained, and Felix immediately jumped up in shock, "H-How do you know about that skill?! We never reveal that skill's name to anyone!"

"I don't care, just open your status already." Eiro said with a deep glare, getting pretty agitated at Felix trying to protest needlessly. But luckily, since the act of opening your status was relatively easily and quickly done, Eiro could soon see the reflection of Felix's status inside of his eyes.

With a slow nod, Eiro closed his eyes under his mask and quickly went through the status a couple times, "I see. I think I've roughly grasped the situation." Eiro said, and Felix stared at him with confusion once more, "What did you grasp from me openi-"

"Your father is a horrendously bad person, is he not?" The Demon asked, before Felix kept just staring at him before laughing with a wry smile, "Wh-What are you talking about?"

Eiro sat down on the free bed in the room and just kept staring at Felix for a while, seeing how he just grew more and more nervous.

"Your father is incredibly strong. That's undeniable. But his strength wasn't actually what surprised me the most about his status. Three of his skills caught my eye." Eiro explained.

"First of all, the 'Charming Voice' skill. I've read of bloodline skills before, this seems to be one of those since you have the same one. Then, it was the level of Enka's language comprehension skill. It was at Advanced Grade, Level 12." The Demon pointed out. The others seemed to not really understand what Eiro was trying to say, however. Although, Sammy just didn't seem to even care, so that was that. She was obviously still upset with Eiro...

Either way, Eiro continued to explain, "Enka's speech was simple. Incredibly simple. At least when you compare it to what you may usually expect from someone with Advanced Grade language comprehension. So, to me it seemed like he was trying to hide the fact that he was obviously intelligent enough to have an intelligence-based skill be able to reach that high a grade." Eiro explained, before he looked down onto the ground.

"Although the skill that honestly made it rather easy to connect the points and figure out that he was screwing with me was his Intermediate grade Torture skill." The Demon pointed out, and immediately Sammy, Rudy and Felix stared at Eiro confusedly.

"T-Torture? What, but... No, he..." Felix muttered quietly with a wry smile, incredibly terrified at what exactly Eiro was incinuating. But the fact that Felix was reacting in this way just came to show that he did know about Enka's true personality. Once more, Eiro raised his head and looked at Felix again.

"I also know about what he did to you all this time." Immediately, Felix stared at Eiro as if he was about to reveal something that would cost him his life if it was said out loud, "N-No stop it, please..." He muttered quietly, just staring forward at the Demon, trying to get closer to him with a terrified expression.

"Your class is 'Charmer'. Your highest stats are Charisma, Perception, Dexterity and... Resistance. Since the regular stat-increase is seemingly dependent on, amongst other things, the regular, everyday actions of a person, they show a lot about your life, I'd say." Eiro pointed out, while Felix just dropped onto his knees and basically crawled up to Eiro so that he wouldn't reveal it.

"Stop, please... just don't say any more..." Felix muttered quietly, but Eiro didn't really care for his begging, "Charisma is obvious, it's from your class. You're a charmer, and charm depends on Charisma the most. Perception and Dexterity probably come from your relatively high pickpocketing skill level. You easily snatched away Sammy's pouch, so that was to be expected." He added with a low tone.

Sammy seemed pretty surprised to hear this, getting just more and more upset herself. Sure, she just knew Felix for a day, but he was the first guy her age she met in seven years, besides Rudy and Arc of course, and because of Felix's 'Charming Voice' skill, she was basically instantly infatuated. Sammy just felt so dumb at the moment.

Although, all her self-loathing thoughts disappeared the moment she heard what Eiro said next, "And I assume that your high Resistance stat comes from repeated abuse, huh? You don't have a combat-based class, and your Endurance and Strength stats are far too low to say it comes from repeated hard physical work."

Felix stared at Eiro with tears in his eyes that he immediately tried to get rid of, and the Demon himself just grumbled to himself quietly, "Why do I have to... Urgh.." He muttered, and then spoke louder again, directly asking Felix a question he actually wanted an answer to, "Does your father make you approach random women like that?" Eiro asked.

He was pretty sure that when Enka kept telling Felix about 'How to treat a woman', it was more about 'How to trick a woman'.

With a slow, nervous nod, Felix kept staring at the ground. He wasn't sure what Eiro would do to him now. But instinctively, Felix nodded his head, "H-He said that I have to do this... I don't know why, but I have to find young, attractive women and... prepare them to be kidnapped... I don't know what happens to them after that, but... I just had to, I-I couldn't..."

Slowly, Eiro stood back up from the bed and stepped in front of Felix, who was simply crawling up into a small ball of complete and utter fear. It was how he was raised, after all.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry... I'm sorry... I... I... I'm sorry..." Felix repeated all over again. It seemed like he wanted to say something else at some point, but he ended up just saying the same thing again because he most likely couldn't properly think.

Both Rudy and Sammy looked at Felix with bitter, worried expressions, and Eiro just stared at him with a deep glare.

"Why should I accept your apology? You just admitted that you were planning to have my daughter kidnapped. You know I should probably jut kill you for that, right?" The Demon asked as he squatted down in front of Felix, slowly turning his head over toward Sammy.

"But in the end, I'm going to be a bit nicer. I'm going to leave the choice to Sammy." He pointed out, and the young woman looked at Eiro in confusion and shock.

"What? You want to have me make the choice of whether or not you're going to kill him? What the fuck?!" Sammy asked loudly, "First you don't tell me that he's tricking me, and now this? What's wrong with you?!" She yelled out, and Eiro just slowly placed his hand onto Felix's head to make sure he couldn't turn it to look at him somehow and instead just kept staring at the floor. And with his other hand, Eiro then took off his mask to look at Sammy directly.

"I... am sorry. I really am... I just didn't realize that it would affect you this much." Eiro said genuinely. He still didn't properly understand why she was so upset, but that wasn't something he could change this soon. Eiro hurt her, and he was really sorry about that. That was the truth. It seemed like Sammy wanted to say something, but before she could open her mouth, Eiro continued to explain what he actually just meant.

"And I wasn't asking you to just make a choice between life and death. In total, I'm giving you three choices. One, I kill him, of course. To me, that's still a viable choice." Eiro explained to her, but immediately moved to step two before anyone could protest.

"Two, we throw him out and let him fend for himself without caring for what Enka does to him." The Demon said, and both of these options seemed to scare Felix just the more. And with a deep sigh, Eiro came out with the third possible choice.

"And three... We save him from Enka and take him with us for a while until we find a safe place for him to stay."

Neither Rudy, Sammy or Nelli believed what they just heard him suggest, and Felix suddenly stopped, petrified by confusion. With a deep sigh, Eiro looked back at his daughter.

"So, what will it be?"