DEMON'S VIRTUE

With an annoyed grumble, Eiro opened his eyes and sat up properly. He was currently leaning onto Lugo's antlers and took a bit of a nap to make up for the sleep he didn't get last night, "Morning!" Arc exclaimed from the carriage, and Eiro tiredly nodded his head, altough he soon grew rather surprised.

"Why is Avalin out here with you?" The Demon asked, and the young girl immediately waved her tiny hand at him, "Hello daddy!" She exclaimed, and Eiro sighed deeply and slighlty lifted his mask to show Avalin a smile as well, "Hello there Avalin!" He replied before dropping his mask onto his face again and waited for Arc's explanation.

It was getting colder and colder at the moment, and it seemed like the first snow would be coming relatively soon as well, so Eiro didn't necessarily want Avalin to be out here like this. She mostly had dresses and not that many thicker clothes, after all.

"She just wanted to be out here for a while, and I couldn't say no." The young man laughed, before Eiro shook his head disappointedly, "Right. How far along are we?" The Demon inquired to change the topic. After all, he did kind of understand where Arc was coming from... He could have just told Arc to stop to then bring Avalin back into the carriage, but she just had such a happy smile on her face that he couldn't bring himself to.

"Ehh, we're near that large lake that's on the map now, I think. We could see it pretty well a while ago." Arc pointed out, before Eiro slowly closed his eyes and chose to figure out if he could notice the lake, something that he managed to confirm nearly immediately after hearing the sound of the water from a river running into it, together with the slightly muddy, somewhat rancid smell of stagnant water.

"Then we should be getting close to a town soon. We should stock up on fresh ingredients." The Demon pointed out, and then tried to compare the terrain to what he remembered on the maps that he looked at of this area, "There should be a split in the path a couple minutes from now, just take the right path. There's a town built right next to the lake."

"Got it." Arc replied quickly, and Eiro thought about how far away from the town they were right now. Luckily though, it seemed like Avalin was already wearing her contact lenses at the moment, so Eiro didn't really have to worry about having to stop before getting to the town to put them into her eyes.

The thing that Eiro was still worrying about the most, however, was something quite different. What he was worried about was the fact that over the past few days, he started noticing more and more that they were being pursued. A couple of times, there were some scouts that tried to find their position, and nearly did, but Eiro got rid of them pretty quickly and tried to hide their dead bodies.

Sure, he managed to level up once, but other than that, all of this spelled out really, really bad news. He put the ten stat points he got from that level-up completely into perception, which boosted the range at which he could notice others a fair bit more. It gave him a slight headache for a few hours, but by evening, it was all gone again.

They just really had to hurry up and get to this town as quickly as they could, get whatever they needed to, and keep moving within an hour or two.

Once the group reached the town, it seemed like news of the fact that Eiro was heading in this direction didn't reach this place yet. Or at least nobody really suspected Eiro of anything, despite him being quite hard to miss, really. Especially the carriage and the two Aria attracted some fair attention.

Eiro had Arc park the carriage in front of a grocery store while he himself went inside and made the order, just so slightly relaxing as he did so. The shop seemed to have all that they needed in store, so they would be able to get going even sooner than Eiro had hoped. But while the store clerk was getting the order together, the Demon noticed something else that was rather troublesome currently going on in this small lake-side town.

He had noticed it before already as well, but there were seemingly quite a few naiads living in this lake, and they were currently making their way through the town toward where Eiro himself currently was. With a slight frown, the Demon turned over to the side to look at the spirit currently in the inbetween-space and waited for her to say something about it.

"What? Eiro, you have a blessing from the former Naiad Queen and from the Lady of Winter, who corresponds to the water element. You think you wouldn't be attractive to Naiads?" She asked, and with a deep grumble, Eiro turned toward the store clerk.

"Just asking, but are Naiads some sort of special existence in this town?" Eiro asked, and the clerk looked back at him rather surprised. "Special existence? I wouldn't say so, no... Not more special than spirits are anywhere else, I'd assume? We simply know more about them than other places, since there's so many living nearby." The clerk explained, and Eiro nodded his head with a relieved sigh.

"Good." The Demon pointed out before turning around, "Just bring the order outside, if you can. I'll be waiting there." Eiro announced and quickly made his way out to the streets again while annoyedly standing next to the carriage looking into the direction of where he noticed the maybe dozen or so spirits approaching where he was currently standing.

"Eiro? Everything alright?" Rudy asked with a slightly concerned expression as he saw him standing there, and Eiro just slightly shrugged in response, "I don't know yet." He pointed out. And just a few moments later, the people that were walking around on the streets until now completely stopped and just looked at the sight of all these spirits floating through town, something that was anything but natural for them to do.

"Now, now, what do we have here~?" A female naiad, the one that reached Eiro first, asked loudly and slowly ran her fingers over his chest, "Hey boy, you interested in forming a contract?" She asked in a seductive tone, despite being only half a meter tall and made mostly of water.

But the next moment, another naiad joined, this time a male naiad, that floated up to Eiro's back and leaned over his shoulder as if hanging from it, "As if he would want to form a contract with a bitch like you! He needs a man to show him the way, doesn't he~?"

From then on, the ten other spirits as well all tried to cling to Eiro and convince him to form a contract with them, while the demon himself was just glaring at the spirit that was constantly hidden from their sight while laughing her ass off.

With a deep grumble, Eiro closed his eyes and started to speak, "If you keep touching me, I'm going to turn you into broth, you miscreant spirits." The Demon pointed out, immediately making the dozen naiads freeze up in their actions, "Wh-What..?" One of them asked confusedly. Seemingly nobody had ever spoken to them in this way before.

"You heard me, fuck off and go sleep in your disgusting, stinking water and leave me alone. I already have a contracted spirit." Eiro announced, and the naiads slowly turned around and saw Nelli floating there.

"Ehh...? You're already contracted to a spirit...?" One of the naiads muttered disappointedly, although one of them was rather suspicious about it, "But then why are you speaking to us in such a disrespectful manner? We spirits are-"

"Complete fucking idiots that can't even tell if someone has an equal-basis contract already? Yeah, I know. Now leave us alone, or make yourselves useful and clean your home up a bit." Eiro told them, and all the spirits immediately stared at Eiro and Nelli confusedly.

"Equal-basis? You really formed an equal-basis contract with a dem-" One of the naiads asked, but Eiro swiftly pulled his dagger beforehand and held it right in front of its body to interrupt it, "Don't you dare finish that sentence. I know that you're aware of who, and what, I am. But if you dare mutter a word of it, you won't be turned into broth, but bathwater instead."

"Alright, alright! I get it!" The spirit yelled out loudly, "Just place that damn thing away!" It exclaimed angrily. "Damn... Really could have used such a useful contract... what a waste, an equal-basis contract with someone like that... I bet its mana tastes just amazing~!" Another muttered disappointedly, but Eiro just kept glaring at them. However, just then, it seemed like one of the spirits had an idea.

"Oh! I think there's some people on the other side of the lake looking for this guy..." The naiad pointed out, and Eiro immediately glared at it, "Don't you dare."

"Hmm, don't I dare what~?" The spirit asked cheekily, "I have an idea... how about you two break off the contract, and then you form a contract with me instead? Otherwise, a group of certain people might find out where you are~..." The naiad threatened, and Eiro grumbled deeply.

"Ahh... You know what, fine. All of you spirits that are interested in contracting me, just come with me." The Demon said, just annoyedly looking over at Nelli to make sure she understood what Eiro was going to do, and then looked over at the children, "I already paid for everything. Get out of town once you have what I bought, I'll be right behind you then." Eiro announced, "Lugo, come." He added, and then started to make his way over toward a place that had a lot less people around, even if there were quite a few following them at the moment. The thing that Eiro cared about most was that there weren't any Guards around.

For maybe half an hour, Eiro tried to stall for time, simply telling the spirits random, bullshit tasks that they should do to be chosen as Eiro's next spirit. From their perspective, one of them definitely would end up being contracted since Eiro didn't want their position to be told to his pursuers, but from Eiro's perspective... there was obviously no chance. He was just fucking with them because they annoyed him.

But soon enough, the children rode the carriage out of the town again, and Eiro started lightly smiling.

"Alright, last task for you that will decide on who gets to form a contract with me." Eiro said, and the one who all the spirits assumed to be in lead, the oldest amongst them, slowly moved forward toward Eiro, "Of course we all know who that will be. Come on, tell me what to do." The male naiad pointed out, and Eiro sighed deeply and grabbed his dagger from his side and just stabbed it forward into the naiad's body.

Something that not many people knew was that a spirit's life force didn't decrease no matter what, as long as they still had mana. Over the past half hour, Eiro had been trying to constantly decrease the mana they had in their bodies by giving them useless dumb tasks. Like this, they couldn't attack him either since they didn't have any more mana to spare. Since they were this far away from the actual lake, they couldn't easily replenish their mana either.

And so, Eiro started rapidly attacking this spirit's body, splitting it apart over and over again, while the spirit was struggling to keep its body together. It ended up using up the last bit of its mana and soon fell to the ground in the form of a puddle.

[Lethal damage done to Narciss Nockt Narim]

[You have leveled up!]